Don Wilson thoughts and ideals of an internet magnate

I just found a great blog that provides recent real estate information of the stars and utterly rich - the Real Estalker. Here’s how they describe their antics:

Let’s face it, for better or worse, we as a culture are obsessed with celebrity and celebrity lifestyle. We all want to know where they go, what they wear and who they’re sleeping with. And of course, where they live. This blog is focussed on who lives where, who’s buying and selling and for how much. Enjoy. But children, have some sense. Do not knock on any of these doors. These people do not need you ringing their bells and tripping their security. Seriously.

The author provides housing prices, square footage, photos, the real estate salesman’s cheesy description of the house, as well as humorous commentary.

Definitely an interesting find and I’ll be sure to subscribe to their RSS feed.

Yep.

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I always waste a lot of time and bring a lot of stress on myself when I’m working on multiple website projects on my desktop. You load up your htdocs folder and it’s cluttered with numerous folders and require you to read the entire list before you eventually find the folder that contains your desired work.

I eventually figured out how to setup multiple ports inside Apache’s httpd.conf file and it has been a life saver, however folder naming schema has been a problem until I developed a solution this weekend. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been spending the entire weekend trying to determine what I should use with the site shell I just built.

What is a “site shell”? Basically it’s a shell of a website that presents the content with a structured set of menu bars and set width with room to expand. It helps the user stay in tune with controlling the website and allowing the programmer to provide anything they want into the “content” area.

Anyway, I’ve been struggling to figure out what exactly I want to use it on. I have the ability to tie together multiple ideas together, such as social news, dating, and other ideas, but it’ll feel too forced and won’t flow the way a normal friend network should.

What I’m going to do while I’m building ideas for the general basis of the site is focus on user management. Provide visitors with profile editing, about me sections, etc. Possibly start a groups section, inbox, and other general sections.

I’ve had my credit cards increase in credit limit in recent time, but nothing like what Scott Wainner just went through. If anyone wanted proof that credit card companies want to ruin your credit and financial well being, here it is.

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I received a call earlier this week from a Best Buy automated phone system informing me that I’ll be receiving a $50 gift card due to my purchase of the now-dead HD-DVD player.

I purchased the Xbox 360 external HD-DVD player the day it came out from one of my local Best Buy stores. I rarely watched movies on it (I’m more of a fan of watching movies on my DVR) so it merely collected dust until I sold it to a nearby Gamestop for $50 or so. Now that I know I’m going to get a gift card for “losing out” to Blu-Ray, suffice to say I couldn’t care less what the end result was from the High-Def war (read: a “war” between two companies that will be forgotten five years from now when the next version war sparks).

Will I make a smart purchase or buy something that I’ll end up regret purchasing in a month’s time? Likely the latter, but I’m glad it won’t be coming out of my bank account this time.

This is one of the reasons why I’m glad to join customer programs such as Best Buy’s Reward Zone and the like. When a company feels compelled to reimburse their customers when a product sours (read: never), they have the necessary contact information and you’re usually first in place. The last time that I can remember this happening was when I was given the $100 in-store credit from my early iPhone purchase after their price reduction.

I’m not sure if this is a growing trend amongst retailers, however I’m glad to be apart of it when it happens.

I just fixed my server’s incorrect date/time within a minute or two via the command line thanks to a helpdesk message found here.

It’s great to fix something on your server using an easy to follow tutorial and get the exact results you’re looking for. Now, if only I could find something like this to setup personal business email for my server, I’d be substantially happier than a simple date/time fix.

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Found a great post regarding the internals of facebook by a blog entitled Scalable web architectures. Interesting, indeed.

I can’t pinpoint why I like their header so much, but I’m just stunned every time I see it. The level of quality is extremely high for such a popular site. Most news sites try to dumb down their designs so people focus primarily on their content; MSNBC has been going against the grain and I hope it pays off for them.

Another great site that knows how to do their header’s properly: MTV.com.

It seems that lots of great design ideas come from domains that start with M. Perhaps that is something to pay attention to? Unlikely.

All you really need to create something that will take down a beast is a talented entrepreneur, a smart guy or two on your team, and enough horsepower to keep your stake in the competition alive.

What I’m talking about, specifically, is taking a competitor, someone the size of Facebook or IMDB, down to their knees by providing more privacy and more ability to interact with their friends in innovative ways. When I mean a smart guy or two, or more specifically in my case, are people who know how to control highly dynamic and efficient database manageability, as well as another server optomization guy. With the skills that I have as a PHP developer and service builder, a team like that could easily, given the space for rapid growth early on (server bandwidth, processing power, storage), one could take on a giant like Facebook within months.

The only problem that is in my way at this moment is the lack of ability to devote my entire attention to such a project, as I’m focusing on building up income again. I wonder, however, if I were born into a family with tremendous wealth, would I have the ability, nay the desire to go after something like this? I wouldn’t think so, and for that I am the most thankful. I am able to prove myself when some cannot. Since I’ve been given the ability to do such a thing, I believe I’m going to chase it as hard as possible.

In the mean time, for inspiration on my goal, I’ve been reading an eBook that I purchased a few days ago, called Inside Facebook. The story is about the first senior engineer to land into the then tiny Thefacebook, watch it prosper to over many, many millions of pageviews a day, who he runs into in the process, and suggestions for things to take into account when starting your own startup. Very inspirational for someone in my shoes. I would’ve died to work there when he did and to watch something explode wildly with popularity. I haven’t gotten to the part as to why he eventually left within little over a year, if that even is in the book. I’m about 25 pages in and I’m already throughly enjoying it. I’d recommend it to anyone looking to start any kind of large goal such as Facebook or the like, or if you’d just like to hear what it’s like to work in the starting stages of a prosperous company.

Anyway, back to my original statement regarding taking them down within a few months. I absolutely know something like that couldn’t realistically happen within a few months, but that’s always been in the back of my mind. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that I have most of the skills available to take on such a challenge and at least present a viable candidate to take on a big guy.