Are fantasy readers less demanding (or less logical) than sci-fi fans?

Storm Trooper Jayne (Photo credit: Cayusa)

We all know that one guy who claims to love science fiction but throws a galactic hissy fit if any story involves faster-than-light travel. But is that FTL-snob typical of science fiction in a way that, say, historical swordcraft experts are not typical of epic fantasy?

In other words, are sci-fi fans more anal about details than fantasy readers?

SF Signal convened another panel of qualified experts (and me) to debate the issue via podcast. Those answering better than me include:

• Jeff Patterson
• Paul Weimer
• Josh Vogt
• Jamie Todd Rubin
• Patrick Hester

I hesitate to say we arrived at a conclusion, except for, "FTL snob guy? Lighten up."

As always, my litany of past SF Signal podcast sins is available here.

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• Chris Nolan is going hard sci-fi with his next movie Interstellar

Kickstarter doesn't validate your product; it validates your pitch (and that's okay)

I came here to praise Kickstarter, not to bury it, but this article on major corporations using Kickstarter for product research reminded me of a lesson we covered at the Louisville Digital Association's crowdfunding workshop a few months ago: Kickstarter is sales training, not product research.

Well, that's not entirely fair. Kickstarter does provide some basic market research about your product description and maybe your price point, but only in the context of your marketing. Kickstarter can't validate a product that doesn't exist. It can only validate what you're putting in front of the consumer and all Kickstarter puts in front of the consumer is your marketing pitch.

Kickstarter validates your marketing pitch, not your product.

Twitter's 27 favorite links from Dec. 2012

Below are the 27 links I shared on Twitter in Dec. 2012 that subsequently earned at least 100 clicks

1. RT @annathemoony: I just found out about the shooting in CT and the Onion pretty much sums up my feelings. (22,337)
2. How to Become a Morning Person (1,897)
3. Please Don't Learn to Code (629)
4. "If you're not paying for the product..." xkcd+Instagram edition (618)
5. 5 APIs that will transform the Web in 2013 (556)
6. The Web We Lost (410)
7. US patent lawsuits now dominated by 'trolls' -study (377)
8. Basketball Isn't a Sport. It's a Statistical Network (344)
9. LEGO Produces Discontinued Set So Boy Who Saved Up For 2 Years Wouldn’t Be Disappointed (324)
10. Windows 8: The perfect Christmas gift for someone you HATE (305)
11. Why an A-list VC firm sold a startup to fund a lawsuit (232)
12. How tall can a Lego tower get? (216)
13. The Inconvenient Truth About SEO (210)
14. How do we read code? (209)
15. The Basement (206)
16. Search Mad Men Style: Animated Punchcard Interface for Google Search (204)
17. Losers exist. Don’t hire them (189)
18. R.I.P. Frothy Times, A Return To Normalcy for Startups and VCs (189)
19. Design Mistakes We Made in Our iPhone App (188)
20. Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want" (180)
21. A 50-Point Checklist For Creating The Ultimate Landing Page (171)
22. What science says about gun control and violent crime (161)
23. Rethinking Mobile First (151)
24. 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person (148)
25. How to Email Busy People (144)
26. Wikipedia doesn't need your money - so why does it keep pestering you? (119)
27. Why are frontend developers so high in demand at startups if front end development is relatively easier? (109)

Stats gathered via Buffer.

Some poor fools think I'm an authority on startups

Photo (Photo credit: Jay Garmon)

Here's me getting profiled by Insider Louisville, which characterizes me as...

"[A]bout as close as Louisville has to a start-up nomad. That specie of homo technicus so common in San Francisco and Silicon Valley is vital to creating, then sustaining, any city’s entrepreneurial culture. The swashbuckler who jumps from big corporation to start-up, start-up to big corporation. At the Louisville level, it’s extremely rare because there aren’t that many viable startup-to-corporate-to-startup opportunities."

It goes on from there. I'll be over here wondering who the heck they're actually talking about, 'cause surely that can't be me.

Twitter's 43 favorite links from Nov. 2012

Jeff Bezos (Photo credit: Dunechaser)

Below are the 43 links I shared on Twitter in Nov. 2012 that subsequently earned at least 100 clicks.

1. "Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas." (1373)
2. Mapping Racist Tweets in Response to President Obama's Re-election (1319)
3. 25 Entrepreneurs Tell What They Wish They’d Known before Founding Their First Startup (1071)
4. Open Source Entrepreneurship (729)
5. Some thoughts and musings about making things for the web - The Oatmeal (703)
6. Defining engagement by clicks, likes & shares works for Google’s search engine, not for a social network (549)
7. 5 APIs that will transform the Web in 2013 (442)
8. Don't Fall For Fake Facebook Privacy Notice (434)
9. It's an amazing time for things that aren't quite traditional laptops (424)
10. Follow the goal creep by David of 37signals (365)
11. The startup founder's lie about "comfort zones" (335)
12. Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works (312)
13. What the Research on Habit Formation Reveals about our Willpower and Overall Well-Being (304)
14. The truth about the "friend zone" (295)
15. Why you should take your 20′s seriously (291)
16. Want to create a new habit? Get ready to break it. (288)
17. The perfect email (273)
18. 50 Startup Lessons Learned in 12 months (258)
19. Why Coke Cost A Nickel For 70 Years (256)
20. Q: "How much does an app cost?" A: "About as much as a car." (255)
21. 512 Paths to the White House - Winning Scenarios for Both Candidates (246)
22. I Am A Terrible Programmer (243)
23. Why art is hard (236)
24. Startups: How you can do it alone (220)
25. No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinson's Law to Kick Procrastination's Ass (218)
26. A billion dollar software tech company is founded every 3 months in the U.S. (215)
27. This is why I’m not backing you on Kickstarter (215)
28. Sorry, No Calls (200)
29. Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It's Barack Obama? (193)
30. Entrepreneur’s Don’t Think Enough. Here’s What You Can Do About It (193)
31. Apollo Flight Controller 101: Every console explained (192)
32. Google Launches Ingress, a Worldwide Mobile Alternate Reality Game (158)
33. Einstein's list of demands for staying with his wife (158)
34. "It’s better to have a few fantastic things designed for you than to have many untrustworthy things poorly designed" (153)
35. 2512 (149)
36. It's fine to get an MBA but don't be an MBA (142)
37. Triumph of the Nerds: Nate Silver Wins in 50 States (137)
38. "How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting." (136)
39. Programming is a Pop Culture (133)
40. Jeff Bezos attended 60 investor meetings to raise $1m from 22 people, just to get Amazon started (133)
41. Higher education is now being disrupted; our MP3 is the massive open online course (or MOOC)and our Napster is Udacity (121)
42. If you’re 27 or younger, you’ve never experienced a colder-than-average month (119)
43. Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech (117)

Stats gathered via Buffer.