TechZing is an informal bi-weekly chat show aimed at entreprenures and hackers interested in creating their own web app startup. The show is both educational (with practical advice) and conversational.
152: TZ Discussion - Do It Right or Don't Do It at All
Justin and Jason discuss Justin's new Pluggio partnership and Pluggio's latest revenue numbers, the progress being made on AnyFu and ideas for how to launch, Jason's thought's on Google+ and his recent post "Letter to a Flash Developer", a list of recommended geeky audiobooks, an econometric article extending Jason's "Do * Tell" concept and Jason's realization of why he should have studied applied rather than pure mathematics.
151: TZ Interview - Chon Tang / Inside the Black Box of Algorithmic Trading
Justin and Jason speak with Chon Tang about his journey through MIT, the Dot-com bubble and angel investing to how he ultimately became a successful and independent algorithmic trader. Due to Jason's background in the field, this episode digs deep into the details of algorithmic trading to discuss everything from the development, testing and optimization of trading models to trading software, execution gateways, clearing firms, leverage and risk management.
150: TZ Discussion – It’s Getting a Little Meta Up in Here
Justin and Jason discuss the TweetBoard.me results and it's impact on Pluggio's revenue, Justin's upcoming blog post about three dimensional pricing plans, the tradeoffs of using PayPal Adaptive payments for AnyFu, Justin's new consulting client and the possibility of their involvement with Pluggio, the Bitbanter podcast calling it quits, Matt Swanson's generous donation to the show, Jason's blog post about why he quit algorithmic trading and his meta follow-up post of Google+, why Uber is having a hard time hiring developers, whether instantiating a virtual machine for each Appignite app would be overkill, Moneyball and other math geek movies, and Jason's poll on what he should write about next.
149: TZ Discussion - TweetBoard Goes Live
Justin and Jason discuss the release of Justin's latest project, TweetBoard and it's potential impact on Pluggio, some thoughts on writing single page web apps, why Jason is using Google+, whether the ORM is an anti-pattern, the latest on AnyFu and Appignite, an update on Justin's plant-based diet and why Jason remains unconvinced of it's scientific validity, Jason's idea for using JSON to define the structure and behavior of a hierarchy of javascript widgets and the recently released book Design for Hackers.
148: TZ Discussion - Turning the Corner
Justin and Jason discuss the status and recent progress made on Pluggio, Appignite and AnyFu, lessons learned about when to initiate the design process, The Birdy's custom feature voting system, Dan Filipe's startup filming project, using NLP to cure "the madness", when it makes more sense to incorporate as an LLC vs an S-Corp or C-Corp, a documentary on the evil business practices of Monsanto, an update on the sit vs stand debate, the weirdness of Benford’s Law, creating rich interactive web apps with KnockoutJS, the launch of Trello and whatever happened to Skyboard, finite state machines and the State design pattern.
147: TZ Interview - Stavros Korokithakis / Historious
Justin and Jason talk with Stavros Korokithakis, founder of bookmarking service Historious, about how he bootstrapped a simple side project into a money generating startup while running a freelance consultancy.
146: TZ Discussion - The Truth About Oil, Twitter, Riots and Smiley Faces :)
Justin and Jason discuss the movie Forks over Knives, how a Twitter-based hedge fund beat the stock market, the cause of riots and the price of food, our oil-constrained future, the Japanese wind power breakthrough, the surprising truth about what motivates us, Puggio's new three-ways business plan, why Jason is translating Appignite to Javascript, Steve Jobs and the eureka myth, lab grown meat, why the UK startup scene is doomed, rational home buying, Paul Graham's patent pledge, Bid On My Day, when it's better to increase conversions and when it's time to hire a sales team, how John McAfee lost 96% of his wealth, going mobile first, the idea of investment tithing and how enthusiasm goes a long way over email.
145: TZ Discussion - Bad Cop, Sensitive Cop
Justin and Jason discuss why staying up late can screw up your life, how Skype is almost the full realization of the magical CTU tech of the TV show 24, Peter Cooper's Javascript Weekly newsletter, the prospect of migrating Appignite to a single-page web application, the advantages of leaving a problem unfinished at the end of a work session, Justin's idea for a collective version of Groupon for websites codenamed Groupio, the high-cost of the context switch, whether AnyFu should be incorporated as an LLC and some ideas about vesting and founder death, Justin's review of Zarrella's Hierarchy of Contagiousness, using Twitter's location based search streams, the science of extreme life extension and Leslie Kean's History Channel documentary Secret Access: UFOs on The Record.
144: TZ Discussion - Justin's Big Left Nav
Justin and Jason discuss whether software is actually eating the world, why Elon Musk is the most impressive entrepreneur in modern times, splitting payments using PayPal Adaptive Payments, how to solve the problem of the fractured social web, why Justin posts the kinds of links he does, some upcoming changes to Pluggio, the status of Jason and Guyon's custom scrollbar component, Justin's concern about working on code with Jason, whether begging is a type of social defection, Justin's theory that the recent Anonymous attack on BART was a false flag attack, the movie Apollo 18, NASA's discovery of nucleobases on twelve different meteorites, a recent discovery that early life was sulfur-based, the current status of Appignite and the design of the AnyFu logo and character.
143: TZ Discussion - What It Takes to Be Entry Level Rich
Justin and Jason discuss Scotty Jackson, the magical genius illustrator, why Justin is impressed by the Gooveshark UI, Jason's frustration with the design process, what it takes to be entry level rich, more on the downgrading of US debt, the ethical implications of Justin automating his Twitter feed, the Bloomberg Risk Takers profile of Elon Musk, an update on the Pluggio SEO strategy and affiliate marketing campaign, how markets are efficient if and only if P = NP, how the San Francisco police asked wireless providers to turn off their signals to prevent a protest, possible causes for the London riots and who should be held accountable, former Clinton and Bush counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke's accustation airing on ABC news about a CIA cover-up of 9/11, how Apple is stepping up to defend iOS devs against patent troll Lodsys, why Jason thinks losing weight is like doing a startup, adding TameJS to CoffeeScript, SafeCast, Jason's interview about high-frequency trading and the prospect of open-sourcing some Uber code.
142: TZ Panel - Rob Walling and Mike Taber
Justin and Jason chat with Rob Walling and Mike Taber hosts of Startups for the rest of us.
141: TZ Interview - Guyon Roche / Jason's Partner in Crime
Justin and Jason talk to Jason's partner in Appignite, Guyon Roche, about how they began working together and the advantages of pair programming, Guyon's take on Appignite and AnyFu, why design can be important for startups, what percent of Twitter and Facebook accounts are real, an investment manager's take on the top 1%, the most likely way to get rich, the reason for AnyFu's high-end pricing policy, the potential impact of S&P's downgrading of US debt, Rob Walling's advice to bootstrap as a partnership rather than as a LLC, Jason's idea on using resources like OpenCourseware and Tutorspree as an alternative to traditional education, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX, the status of Justin's juice diet and an update on Pluggio's growth.
140: TZ Discussion - Back on Track
Justin ans Jason discuss Steve Perlman’s impossible wireless tech known as DIDO and the technology of WiTricity, why Pluggio's growth has suddenly stalled out, logging slow queries using MySQL's Slow Query Log and monitoring your site using SiteUptime, Jason and Curtis's upcoming post on Uber's Node.js based dispatching system, the designer they've hired to create AnyFu's brand identity and UI and whether they should use Braintree or PayPal for payment processing, how Jason tried and abandoned jScrollPane to build his own custom scrollbar, Justin's new Juice diet and the movie that inspired it, the sophistication and complexity of SQLAlchemy and Doctrine and the ORM Jason is building for Appignite, the Airbnb fiasco and some ideas on how they could mitigate that kind problem in the future and the industrial scale patent trolling of Intellectual Ventures.
139: TZ Discussion - This Week in Holy Sh*t
Justin and Jason discuss the suspension of Justin's 600 calorie per day diet and whether his plan to move to Ireland is such a s good idea, the process of finding a designer for AnyFu and the progress on the site mockups, the incredible rise in the value of Bitcoins and whether Bitcoins will ever really go mainstream and threaten the dollar, how the Japanese character set cracked Pluggio and made Justin confused, the importance of momentum in just about everything, Justin's crazy work schedule and how Jason is juggling five client contracts, why Jason is considering open sourcing some of his code, whether the Singularity is near or far, the possibility of a CrunchFund, the worrisome addiction of drawing Anime, "black ops" in Pakistan, whether the world economy is near collapse and whether following the news is worth the effort, using Qwerly to clout rank your email list, why working for startups is a smart career move, how MemSQL offer's a 30x performance enhancement over MySQL and the coolness of Google Web Fonts.
138: TZ Discussion - R.I.P Nigel Vincent
Justin and Jason discuss the death of Justin's father, Udi's blog post about Appignite, Uber's technological origins and the new Node.js based dispatch server, rapid UI design using mockups, the core problems that AnyFu needs to solve, using Showcase Lane to get feedback on UI design, a La Critique of The Birdy, an update on Pluggio's growth, whether it's better to use dashes or underscores in SEO slugs, finding a logo design for AnyFu and the importance of good design, Jason's slightly contrarian position on the lean startup model, using MySQL fulltext search vs a search engine like Solr or Sphinx, running server-side Javascript on RingoJS, Justin's strategy for curing himself of diabetes, how Kevin Rose and Evan Williams are both starting incubators, the possibility that Justin will be moving back to Ireland and the idea for an open version of Y-Combinator.