apollo

A couple years ago you proposed competing with Google on design (http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html). What do you think about efforts to compete with Google with human-powered algorithms (like Wikia Search)? Is there any potential there?

http://techcrunch.com/2009/03/31/jimmy-wales-deadpools-wikia-search/

Do they just rely on Google Keyword Tool, or what?

Does a javascript ODBC driver exist that works over websockets? If not, is it feasible?

I'd like to be able to send queries to an SQL database directly from the browser, with no proxy.

I'm asking this to test the YC mantra "make something people want."

I want to be able to find performance bottlenecks after usage spikes, so I would like a tool which monitors and logs cpu, memory, disk io over time on each of my servers. These are ubuntu servers.

If you have any other suggestions for tools I can use to help find bottlenecks, I'd appreciate that too; I'm new to this.

I'm currently using Admob to publish ads. Adwhirl seems to be better because it aggregates ad publishers, but I haven't been able to find any online discussion about it.

How would I go about building a craigslist-type phone verification system, which, when given a phone number, either texts or calls the number with a code that the user can use to verify that it's their phone?