GlennFarrant

My favourite book of all time. It also covers how audacious Apollo 8 was....the other Lovell mission. Blue skies and tailwinds Capt Lovell.

That "price rise" indicates an inflation rate of 2.9%. The average inflation rate for the last 50 years is more like 3.5%. So it totally depends on your perspective. If you've only lived through low-inflation times, then yeah 2.9% seems high.

I'm in my 50's and my reaction to the same information was "yeah, seems about right".

Apollo: The Race To The Moon Charles Murray, Catherine Bly Cox

My favorite book of this type by far.

I believe the strongest, first order, signal for a rally that sticks will be when there's a somewhat effective treatment for the virus that can be deployed in a scalable way. This will mean that the healthcare systems will be under less pressure as they will be operating in a different mode and that will mean that restrictions that have a negative economic impact will be lifted.

Until then, there's always the prospect of resurgence of the virus once restrictions are lifted, and that will keep the lid on the markets.

If there's strong news of effective treatments in the short term, that may kick off a sustained rally soon.

Of course the other things you mention are very valid too and will have positive effects, and may be "the one".

Thanks. We'll sort it out.

The subject line was: "Real time location and status startup struggling with the Infrastructure vs Application decision"

Also, on reviewing the email, there was some formatting which may have helped the readability and draw attention to the central question. There was a fair amount of whitespace between the paragraphs and the main question was center-aligned and in bold.

The response was that he generally advises startups in our situation to "dog food it" (i.e. build a solution on it first). That was the main feedback and it has worked out great for us. We have a high-value offering based on the platform as a result...and a long feature and product roadmap ahead of us.

On the topic of location-based services being over/underestimated there wasn't a clear reply from David. Our experience has been that there are great opportunities in solving problems for enterprise customers using mobile and location-based services. I can't really speak for the B2C opportunity.

Original email writer here. I generally agree with the comments about how it could have been improved. In hindsight, it was probably too wordy. My impression is that David processes emails more "deeply" than the average person, so I think he could handle the wordiness. Others would probably trash it more quickly. I did get a very thoughtful response from David which actually helped us immensely. As a result of taking the path he suggested we've now got a great business going, and the main problem is hanging on to the rocketship it has become. Obviously, a high-class problem to have.

It took me a couple of hours to write the email. Definitely time well spent.

It's my understanding that some of the key features are not possible under iOS due to restrictions in the SDK, namely:

- Reception of SMS by the app and subsequent features (like automatically reading the SMS aloud) because iOS doesn't allow the app to either be notified of an SMS or to intercept SMSs before the other SMS-handling apps (like Android does)

- Sending an SMS directly from the phone programatically - as iOS demands that the SMS send form is presented to the user and then requires a button to be tapped. So you'd be reduced to sending via an SMS gateway using a data connection.

I'd really like to be wrong here as we're currently dealing with these limitations too, so if anyone has any counter experience, I'd love to know about it

BTW, love the app Spenser. Well done!

"The Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank For me it made the prospect of running a startup much more real. It gave a good grounding in the various phases you'll go through and the challenges and priorites in each. It gives clear actionable advice at every step. For someone from a technical background or for those up at bat for the first time (both attributes describe me), I reckon it's indispensible. I carry my copy in my bag wherever I go.