I like this quote best -

I’ve also come to loathe this mentality, at times. It’s the same mentality where someone whips up a two-page website and asks people to “review their startup!” I think startup is a phrase that’s been abused. You’ve made a project, or a mashup, or a hack, not a startup.

And that’s cool! Embrace that. More people need to do stupid shit. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Don’t do it to make money. Don’t even do it to learn hip new technology X. Do it for the sake of doing something stupid

Not to take away from Facelette, but for others who want to be on TechCrunch: make something with any new Apple product this week and the next.

The first guy who makes a Mac Book Air case-mod WILL be on TC.

Mark my words.

I’ve also come to loathe this mentality, at times. It’s the same mentality where someone whips up a two-page website and asks people to “review their startup!” I think startup is a phrase that’s been abused. You’ve made a project, or a mashup, or a hack, not a startup.

I think this is so true. A startup seems to imply that it will at least in theory become a business at some point. I bet that Facebook didn't even call itsself a "web startup" when it started out at Harvard until it started to spread and raised some real money.

To call every little project that someone hacks together in a weekend a startup is a misnomer, similar to the tendency for founders to give themselves C-Level titles in their startup companies which consist of nothing more than a prototye and a pitch, rather than just calling themselves 'founders'.

I happened to come upon a novel idea

A derivative idea. Not that this takes away anything from the service. Most ideas and successful implementations aren't of the kind we've never seen before.

We’re in the most ridiculous industry on earth. You can whip something up in a few hours and before you know it, people around the world will be using it.

Oh how I love this field! Its exhilarating!

The awesome thing about holman, is that he did this app just for fun and the love of "the hack". In my opinion he will gain much more than a chunk of ad revenue. A very well-respected reputation. This to me seems much more valuable than even $5k ad revenue. I don't feel like we would be talking about him near as much if facelette.com was some spammy looking "made for adwords" app.

When you go to the site it is just so pure and honest, it doesn't make you question what you are doing, or who is doing what with your information.

It's funny that the HN crowd talked about something like this 4 months ago, and it took holman just a few hours to ship. Only goes to show that ideas are cheap :)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1472597

"Don't be afraid to build things for the sake of building them"

Completely agree here. Plus, it's only after you actually build out an idea that it really has any transferable value. There are definitely going to be ideas you have that seem a little off or even stupid, but don't let that stop you. Otherwise we would live in a pretty dull world of gray color and political correctness.

Push yourself a little. Always Be building.

What you are witnessing is the predictions of Alvin Toffler comming about. From WP,

<quote>The gap between producer and consumer is bridged by technology using a so called configuration system. "Prosumers" can fill their own needs (see open source, assembly kit, freelance work). This was the notion that new technologies are enabling the radical fusion of the producer and consumer into the prosumer. In some cases prosuming entails a "third job" where the corporation "outsources" its labor not to other countries, but to the unpaid consumer, such as when we do our own banking through an ATM instead of a teller that the bank must employ, or trace our own postal packages on the internet instead of relying on a paid clerk.</quote>

As more internet users become Prosumers, the idea of a 'startup' becomes trite. Instead, everyone is a business or two on their own.

Cool how he recommended iWantMyName.com Has anyone else used it?

Have been looking for a good domain registrar to move my domains from GoDaddy for a while.

I have often thought many of the review my startup postings are not startups but projects. I am happy that someone was brave enough to write this.

I tried it on my mbp with facetime beta, connected with couple of people in spain, US, it was fun initially. we gave small intros, asked where they were from etc

but the later group was not interested even to talk, they wanted chatroulette style, you would see empty walls, close up eyes and nose, they all disconnected under 5 seconds probably they wanted a girl on their screen

So where's the code? I don't see it on GitHub?

How's chatroulette doing anyway? They were the media darling just a few months ago. Nice work whipping up this project.

Why did the registrar give you a refund?

my facelette style stupid project project for the week: catmapper.com

what happens if I submit someone else's phone number?

Congrats.

Stop and consider this for a second then move on with your day:

Does this speak of Facelette's product quality or TechCrunch's editorial quality?