I'm pretty sure this was intended to be intense specifically to push students from taking it. The professor is ensuring that he has enough TAs for students. By encouraging students to not take the class he's making the class better for those who decide to stick it out.
This is why you set up milestones to get paid instead of waiting for your complete payment at the end. Develop on a test server and then after the final payment, move to the production server. This is a highly inappropriate response to a problem, and I would never work with this designer because of it.
Something tells me this was written by some arrogant kid to his friend. I disagree with nearly everything in this e-mail. I spent more time reading a rant than reading any actual advice.
Just wanted to say that's an incredibly slick approach at a sales letter. Rather than directing the letter to the consumer it's directed to Mom & Dad, which creates an audience to whom the concept can be explained in a simple manner. There are all sorts of emotional responses to this approach too, which creates warm and fuzzy feelings toward Boxee.
Agreed, I would be interested in his device if I didn't already have a media server with mplayer and youtube-viewer installed. I even have a nice apartment complex that unknowingly multicasts all available cable channels to me for free!
It was a great article though, even if it was a sales pitch.
You should put together a screencast demonstrating the product. A few paragraphs and a brief, general description of the product didn't convince me to sign up to check it out. People will want more information on what they're signing up for. You should put particular emphasis on how easy it is to review resumes.
Also, make sure you point out what differentiates you from Monster or Dice. You don't offer job listings, just application tracking, and people will be unsure of why they should use your service rather than a job board.
