By the Way, What Have You Done That’s So Great?

By Jason Calacanis

1. Unrelenting attention to detail.

2. Impeccable taste.

3. Indefatigable passion.

4. Absolute conviction.

5. Unwavering vision.

6. Boundless curiosity.

7. Mercurial motivator.

One or two of these will help you make a living.

Three or four of these will make you successful.

Four of five of these will make you a legend.

Five or six of these will make you iconic for all time.

All seven will make you Steve Jobs.

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Hipster Ditches Location-Based Q&A for Location-Based Photo Sharing

Hipster, which started out as a location-based Q&A service, has pivoted to another popular category -- location-based photo-sharing -- with its iOS app.

"It's Hipster goal to create a real-time, visual public record of the worlds’ locations, so you'll see features and product additions over the next few months that support that goal," CEO Doug Ludlow tells LAUNCH via email. "Specifically, adding social context / information to the locations around you will be the core of our next efforts.  (And, we'll be adding Halloween themed postcards soon, but those are just for fun :) )."

[ See screen shots after the jump. ]

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LinkedIn Puts Company Updates on User Homepages -- Four Years after Facebook

LinkedIn members now see updates from companies they follow -- including job opportunities, employee moves and breaking news -- when they sign on to the professional networking service.

The updates are limited to 500 characters. LinkedIn says "tens of millions of professionals" have followed more than 2M company profiles since the feature was added in April 2010.

In contrast, Facebook's Pages let companies post up to 5K characters, and businesses have been able to post updates that appear in follower's news feeds since Pages launched in November 2007...

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Forget Pagers, NoWait Texts You When Your Table is Ready

WHAT: An iPad app for casual-dining restaurants to manage seating. Restaurant hosts or hostesses put the customer's phone number in the app and notify the guest via text message when a table is available.

Customers are free to leave the restaurant until they are notified, at which point they can cancel their table or tell the restaurant (also by text message) they will be there soon.

Restaurants can also use the system to send thank-you messages to the guest and invite them to join reward-type programs by texting a response. The restaurant does not retain customer phone numbers unless customers opt-in to their programs. Restaurants can connect multiple devices to the platform, including their iPhones.

LAUNCHERS: Robb Myer, CEO; James Belt, director software information architecture; Richard Colvin, director software engineering; Luke Panza, business development.

WHEN/WHERE: April 2011 / Pittsburgh...

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Start Google+ Extension for Posting to Multiple Social Networks Goes Premium

If you installed the Start Google+ browser extension to simultaneously post your updates across Google+, Twitter and Facebook, you can still do so for free -- but now the developer has added premium versions.
 
Priority access, which costs $3 per month, means no daily usage cap, feeds that update more frequently and faster photo transfers. Business access, which is $9 per month, lets users connected their LinkedIn account and updates feeds every minute. Right now, feeds update every five to 10 minutes.

"The reason that it exists is that the SGPlus service costs...

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