MarkMaunder dot com

Where's the Disruption from the Change in Startup Economics?

It’s been a year long break from blogging and getting back to writing and getting a so many new visitors this soon is cool. [Thanks HN!]   This blog runs on the smallest available Linode 512 instance for $20/month. It runs several sites including family blogs and hobby sites. I run nginx on the front end […]

May 28, 2011 | Economics, Innovation, lighttpd, Nginx, Startups | No comments

It's OK to make an extra $2k per month if you're a programmer. Here's how.

This quote, which went viral 2 months ago and that Steinbeck probably never said, has stuck with me: “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ~Maybe not Steinbeck, but it’s cool and it’s true. As temporarily embarrassed millionaire programmers I feel we sometimes […]

May 27, 2011 | Innovation, Inspiration, Printing Money, Startups | 13 comments

What the Web Sockets Protocol means for web startups

Ian Hickson’s latest draft of the Web Sockets Protocol (WSP) is up for your reading pleasure. It got me thinking about the tangible benefits the protocol is going to offer over the long polling that my company and others have been using for our real-time products. The protocol works as follows: Your browser accesses a […]

October 25, 2009 | Innovation, Technology | 1 comment

An immaginary conversation about immigration with Glenn Beck

Update: I wrote this blog entry and then predictably, I unposted it after my more diplomatic side took over. But it got out via my RSS feed anyway and a friend enjoyed it. So here it is in all it’s left wing liberal glory. I’m switching the published date to today. Enjoy. I’m an immigrant. […]

October 12, 2009 | Immigration, Innovation, Startups | No comments

The importance of not knowing what isn't possible

A Microsoft quote from an NY Times article I’ve already cited has been bugging the crap out of me. It bugged me when I first blogged about this article and it bugged me as I wandered around B&N last night doing the last of my xmass shopping. I wound up in the management section and […]

December 23, 2007 | Code, Innovation | No comments

Open Coffee at Louisa's

I’m at open coffee this morning at Lousa’s Coffee shop in Seattle – here early to get some reading in. Come down if you’re free this morning. There’s going to be an awesome group of entrepreneurs and innovators here from 8:30 until everyone leaves (usually after 10:30).

July 17, 2007 | Innovation, Startups | No comments

Saving server costs with Javascript using distributed processing

I run two consumer web businesses. LineBuzz.com and Geojoey.com. Both have more than 50% of the app impelemented in Javascript and execute in the browser environment. Something that occurred to me a while ago is that, because most of the execution happens inside the browser and uses our visitors CPU and memory, I don’t have […]

July 16, 2007 | Code, Innovation, Startups, Technology | No comments

Business innovation for developers

Many entrepreneurs, particularly the MBA set, start with competitive analysis. Sure, it’s a valid approach and you might find a gap in the market that you can easily fill or a product or service that could do with some improvement. But if Larry and Sergei did that before they started playing with the PageRank algorithm, […]

July 15, 2007 | Innovation | No comments

My name is Mark Maunder. I've been blogging since around 2003 when I started on Movable Type and ended up on WordPress which is what I use to publish today. With my wife Kerry, I'm the co-founder of Wordfence which protects over 5 million WordPress sites from hackers and is run by a talented team of 36 people. I'm an instrument rated pilot and I fly a Cessna 206 along with a 1964 Cessna 172 in the Pacific Northwest and Colorado. I'm originally from Cape Town, South Africa but live in the US these days. I code in a bunch of languages and am quite excited about our emerging AI overlords and how they're going to be putting us to work for them.