My favorite read these days is YCombinator's Hacker News. It's the online watercooler of choice for young, geeky web entrepreneurs. I'm no longer very young, but I feel like I am when I immerse myself in the community's contagious mix of enthusiam, optimism, and intelligence.

So I was excited this morning to see that Matt and Tibet of Providence-based Public Display had posted a "Please critique my startup" post for the alpha version of the FuseCal web application.

Such a request is not to be made by the feint of heart. While friendly and supportive, the Hacker News community is super savvy and smart. If your web app isn't up to snuff, they are going to let you know, and in no uncertain terms. (Worse yet, they may just ignore you.)

Thus I was psyched to see how positively the community responded to FuseCal. The thread made the front page of Hacker News - a feat in itself - and is full of praise. The hackers totally got the value and elegance of FuseCal. Here's the thread.

Please critique my startup: FuseCal.com

I think that the collective opinion of the Hacker News community is about as intelligent one as you're going to get. This bodes well for Public Display. I'm not surprised. I had the pleasure of consulting to them about a year ago. Led by serial tech entrepreneur Bill O'Farrell, the team is largely composed of recent Brown computer science graduates. It's an impressive, dedicated group.

The problem they are solving - bringing structure to unstructured events - is a very tricky one. They've applied all sorts of artificial intelligence techniques to break it down. AI is not new ground for Bill - earlier, he founded one of the leading speech-recognition firms SpeechWorks (now part of Nuance Communications).

I have a feeling you're going to start hearing a lot more about FuseCal in the months to come - I'm betting 2008 is their year.

NOTE: We're in the process of adding FuseCal to the RI Nexus Calendar - stay tuned.

UPDATE: Read/Write Web just published a glowing review of FuseCal. And you can Digg the review here - support the home team!