A couple weeks ago I built http://www.hackeress.com with the crowdspring / 99Designs clientèle in mind (who seems to be your audience).
You could expand your site and add a section for designers who specialize in the code-writing aspect of design. Just a thought.
EDIT: Fixed. I'm still working on the site's content; got busy over the holiday. But the design of the site is done, as are the custom 404 error pages. :)
Since you're probably using that website to get clients, you might want to verify that all the pages work. (The link you used works, clicking on any of the links gives me a 404.)
From the standpoint of a developer who specializes in design, the problem is NOT (as the article states) "the designer doesn't know HTML" vs "the designer only knows HTML". The problem is people (programmers or not) who don't understand how design fits into the process, sequentially.
Cases in point are sites like 99designs and crowdSPRING that launch projects for "uncoded" web designs. My solution: http://www.hackeress.com
Yeah, the site is not finished yet. But it relates to this discussion.
The spirit of the OpenID concept is a good one, though. I'm one of the people who attended the first OpenID dev camp (before OpenID was adopted on a wide scale) http://openid.net/2008/01/14/the-first-openiddevcamp-was-a-s... and there was (and arguably still is) a need for something like it.
The main problem is that it complicated things when it originally set out to simplify them. Power users are hesitant to consolidate all their user names and passwords into the ultimate master key; from a security standpoint, better to use separation of control when users are also smart enough to use different names/passwords across a variety of sites.
Nice job guys. As Obama's trip to India demonstrated, India is (or rather will be) an emerging tech center, so it makes sense that it is ripe for its own version of Silicon Valley. Any online community that can facilitate the growth of its local physical economy is a good one.
Not sure I agree with all the negative comments here about the IP issues. After all, NewMogul.com was (is?) pretty much a clone of YC News here, but open to submission and discussion about more broad topics besides startups.
Also, going to the country's largest landfill showed me a lot about how much waste we create in our search for the next thing. We throw away a lot of stuff that works perfectly fine simply to get the bigger and better model.
The landfill problem is interesting in context (as the interviewee mentions Wal-Mart). First of all is the combination of Wal-Mart + rural America + lack of recycling education (in rural America). Wal-Mart got big by basically exploiting small town USA's country bumpkin mentality.
Second of all: Rural America does not recycle. . . it's actually kind of infuriating. Case in point: after I moved to Utah from Florida, I spearheaded a paper recycling program at my high school. Most of my elementary and middle-school years I'd been drilled with the very liberal environmental studies education, so I was pretty astonished that people in the country didn't recycle anything. . . one garbage bin by the curbs, and all of the trash into a landfill. Shortly thereafter the local Wal-Mart moved to the end of town and opened up as a brand new "Super Wal-Mart". The trash cans stopped being big enough, so the city bought people newer and bigger ones.
What it ultimately boils down to is Corporate Social Responsibility. Wal-Marts could do more to address the issue by offering recycling facilites and education. But for the most part things that get purchased in bulk / supersized containers from the Wal-Marts and Sams Clubs across middle America will never get recycled.
You are on the right track but I think slightly misguided. The responsibility does not rest on the corporate shoulders but on the shoulders of government. If the people value reduced/recyclable packaging they can pass laws to mandate it in a variety of ways. Look at the outlawing of plastic shopping bags in San Francisco and other locales.
A ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available. (93%)
Counterpoint: surprising to me is the number of economists who "agree" with this statement.
First of all, it does not compute, intuitively, to me as a logical "AND" statement. "Quantity" and "quality" are two completely different things.
"Quality of housing" would be a function of renting vs. owning status (e.g. paying rent vs. paying a mortgage), further subjected to the degree of separation between the tenant and the actual mortgage/title holder. "Quantity of housing" would be a function of information asymmetry between "buyers" and "sellers", and obviously price (determined by the kind of information asymmetry).
>"Quantity" and "quality" are two completely different things.
They both cost to maintain or increase though - and rent control limits the returns of increasing either; which reduces the owner's incentive to maintain the quality of existing housing or to build new.
For example, let's take the scammer in New York City whom we will call L. V. At the end of 2006, he went on a two-month buying spree in which he purchased ten investment properties in south Queens by obtaining 20 mortgages from ten different banks putting little or nothing down on any of the purchases. Apparently none of the banks was interested in checking his other purchases to see whether he had the means to handle 20 mortgages. Of course, L. V. never told the banks that he had no intention of making the payments on any of these loans.
One by one, L. V. defaulted on the loans. By the end of 2007, eight of the homes were in foreclosure. Undeterred, he continued to collect rent from tenants whom he had put into these two-family homes. When the article about his scam appeared in a December 2009 New York Daily News article, he was trying to evict tenants from two of the properties for non-payment of rent even as foreclosure actions against him were proceeding.
We need some sort of system to deter Evil landlords, such as this one. It is such a one-way street. Landlords / Property Management Companies (PMCs) almost always require credit checks, background checks, first month + last month + deposit + "fees" to move into a place they're not even getting any ownership on, just for a freaking lease!
Why shouldn't renters be able to check out their landlords, or PMCs similarly? Not just BBB stuff, but seriously comprehensive and detailed records of assets owned for passive income.
You could expand your site and add a section for designers who specialize in the code-writing aspect of design. Just a thought.
EDIT: Fixed. I'm still working on the site's content; got busy over the holiday. But the design of the site is done, as are the custom 404 error pages. :)