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I recently discovered WorkFlowy and org-mode, and fell in love with the idea of organizing my thoughts in outline form.

I was curious if anybody wanted to share their high-level "templates" for how they organize their thoughts for their startup, or any project (web or otherwise) for that matter.

Hi,

I came across this blog post today : http://joose-js.blogspot.com/2009/02/cpan-for-javascript.html

He says, "While there have been attempts to create a CPAN (comprehensive module directory) for JavaScript it has failed just as this has failed for pretty much every language but Perl."

Is this too broad a statement? Has this really failed in every language but Perl? I know because I tried to build a "Comprehensive Module Directory" for cakePHP and pretty much failed for various reasons (lack of community support, inconsistencies in standards, etc etc)

Any thoughts on this? Any published theories on why this is hard? How do you go about starting a directory for your favourite language or framework? Does the answer lie in the fact that frameworks might be the new "module directory"? Am I being stupid? :)

I'm setting up a webapp that will play and organize clips of old musical recordings for playback and analysis, and maybe some newer ones.

How do I find out if this is legal before investing time and money into this?

So I was browsing the internet and found a site that already does EXACTLY what I'm currently working on. It is pretty decently executed, but the project is young and done by a guy in his spare time.

I don't want to cancel my project, so I emailed the developer of the site to ask him if he was interested in collaborating. He politely stated that he only collaborates with his close friends.

I'm 100% sure that I can do a better job and build a site that has a wider feature set and is more rigorous in its approach, especially since I will be working on it full time and will be hiring help.

My problem is that my version 1, at its core, will be EXACTLY like his, but with a little more polish. Is there a more ethical way of going about this or should I just release my product and make a grab at his users?

I was really stoked about my project, then got discouraged when someone else made it. I then got excited to collaborate and the opportunity was denied. I feel like I should just move forward but I don't know if I'm plagiarizing or just surfacing as a healthy competitor.

Your thoughts?

I have a web application I'm working on that essentially shares documents within a small niche community. Scribd has done alot of the hard work as far as managing documents go, their iPaper allows me not to worry about storing documents, making them easily readable, etc.. Most of the heavy lifting is done by them.

HOWEVER, I am now building a web service that depends on scribd.com for full functionality. If scribd goes down, I go down. If the documents on scribd no longer become available, my service fails. I've already discussed the implications of copyright for my service with the scribd guys and that's not a concern of mine.

I've been told that scribd has enough momentum to not have to worry about it, but adding that extra coupling still makes me wary. It will save me LOTS of time and effort though and my release date will be MUCH earlier and alot more flashy and stable. I've decided to go forward with scribd.

Am I making a mistake here? I'd like to hear what you guys have to say.