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Is it worth a back-end developer's time to get into web-design and HTML/CSS | epall: If I/he were to hire out the design stuff, where is the best place to find designers? Optimally I'd love to find a designer to partner with and work on projects as equals, but I'm willing to pay somebody to do the design if necessary. Any ballpark estimates on what reasonable web designers cost? |
Good Hacker Cities | Allocator2008: I currently live in Austin, and quit driving a year or so ago. Car I had was old and just wasn't worth the hassle. Good bus system in town. Only if you work in the suburbs do you need a car. I use the bus nearly every day, other than if I am working from home on a particular day. I am a little ambivalent about getting another car. Lot of money involved which I could better spend on things like iPods. |
Good Hacker Cities | andrewljohnson: I live in a cabin in Truckee, and I only use a car to go camping and to get groceries. |
Bottom Up Programming Question | DanielBMarkham: You're always thinking top-down, even if "top" is just the next level up, as patio11's example shows.I'd start with the "outside" of the program and work inwards. This forces you to categorize features as greatest to least important.Refactoring can be significant -- much more than top-down. When used poorly, this can lead to the "design a 747 by building a wheel first" mentality, however. In other words, like everything else there's a place for it in the toolbelt.You know, you can always model the problem domain first and still code bottom-up. The structure of the data is probably the most important factor anyhow, no matter how you code or what the qualities of the language are. |
Good Hacker Cities | laut: In general I don't like public transit. But in many places you can get around without neither public transport nor your own car. Walking, bicycles, taxis, planes. |
Custom logging for web applications | bayareaguy: I'd suggest you send all your custom stuff to syslog so that you can easily consolidate events however you like and then work with your admin to deploy whatever variant of syslog best fits your requirements. Personally I think nsyslog is good. Some others are listed here:http://www.loganalysis.org/sections/syslog/syslog-replacemen... |
Afraid I've dug myself into a hole | CyberED: I too was a SAP consultant! Yeah it sux big time. I saved my money, got a biz started in my spare time and jumped ship when I had a nest egg and the beginnings of a business. I'm not a millionaire ... yet. But Much HAPPIER!The economy is not looking good right now. So I suggest hanging in there and saving as much as you can. You might even get retrenched and get some severence money to top up your savings.Of course, if you're happy with you big spender lifestyle, then that the Faustian Deal you've made.God Bless! |
What software(s) traders use to help make investment decisions? | physcab: I'd like to tack on a question to this one. Does anyone know good resources for quantitative finance? |
Afraid I've dug myself into a hole | msluyter: I found myself in a similar "hole" -- QA in my case (not to disparage QA; it just wasn't my optimal choice) -- and eventually managed to get out of it via a lateral move. I was lucky to be in a flexible enough organization and to have enough programming experience to make it possible. |
What software(s) traders use to help make investment decisions? | jwb119: As someone that has worked on the bond trading floor at a major i-bank, I can definitely say that Bloomberg is the universal standard for data/analysis. The enterprise grade terminal is pretty steep though.. around $1,500 per month if I remember correctly.From my experience, Excel (populated with your choice of data) should be able to handle any analysis/models you want to create. |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | mattmaroon: Did Ghandi use Share This buttons? Does it matter? |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | BinaryPie: We use them by demand from the customer. They are also VERY helpful for viral growth. While most tech savvy users will probably not use the feature there are many other demographics that will. |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | andreyf: Absolute waste of space. I've never clicked on one, nor do I intend to. If I really wanted one, I'd find or write a greasmonkey script, bookmarklet, or what have you.Disclaimer: Obviously, different users have different habits. These are mine. |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | gourneau: As I user I do use these buttons, when I am not on my personal machines.If I am on one of my own machines, I use the wonderful Firefox plugin Shareaholic http://www.shareaholic.com/ to easily share links.As a developer would I use these buttons?
Yes.Why use these buttons when it is possible for users to manually share links using X service?Because these buttons reduce the cognitive load of sharing that link. Making it more likely that lazy users will share it.From http://tantek.com/log/2007/02.html#d19t1813
"More specifically, all other things being equal, the cognitive load required to complete an action or task in a human computer interface is directly (probably linearly) proportional to the number of clicks and keystrokes required to complete that action or task. Cognitive load can be roughly defined as "how mentally easy/hard it feels to do something". |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | aupajo: All this is speculation, we need data.Someone needs to write a script for Share This which records every time someone clicks on it and then compare those numbers to the amount of actual traffic, to find out what percentage of visitors click that button.Volunteers? |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | rksprst: I use them frequently when I want to share something. If I'm reading a newspaper story that's interesting and I want to share it with my gf or friends, I usually use the "email it" button. If it's something that I'm really passionate about, then I might submit it to facebook, digg, etc... Though mostly I mainly use the email it feature. |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | canoebuilder: Like so many things, the answer to do they "really work?"
will be quite variable.In the interest of optimizing screen space you might look into implementing something like this.http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/socialhistoryjs/ |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | patio11: In a non-technical niche, for the last 100,000 times I've displayed them, they've been clicked on 4 times and resulted in 1 save.On the other hand, for the right sort of material (authoritative "you'll want to read this later" reference aimed at geeks), Delicious buttons perform VERY well for me. |
Custom logging for web applications | rarrrrrr: A few months ago we actually created a system that does exactly this, plugging into the Ganglia data visualization system many sites use. We have bindings for Perl and Python. Your app code just emits non-blocking UDP packets to a local collector daemon and goes on with its business.
GPLv3 code here: https://spideroak.com/code (StatGrabber)"If you can't measure it, you can't manage it."It's really nice to see graphs of the business or application specific stuff (signups, connected users, revenue, anything that's event driven) in parallel with the regular system graphs of things like bandwidth, memory, and so on. When you look at the weekly or monthly graphs usage trends and bottlenecks become forehead-smacking obvious.Ganglia demo: http://monitor.millennium.berkeley.edu/ |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | siong1987: I don't know how effective it is. But, do you all know that there is actually a startup behind this "share this" button? http://sharethis.com/And, they are doing quite well too - http://siteanalytics.compete.com/sharethis.com/?metric=uv |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | Mystalic: My AddThis and ShareThis have been used over 1000 times.One of them got me to the front page of digg.That's enough evidence for me. It's about maximizing space. AddThis is the best in that respect. |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | kwamenum86: Depends on your website's audience. |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | joshu: They don't do much. Nobody clicks them.People who use those products already have bookmarklets or extensions or toolbars or whtever already installed.It's more of a subtle way for publishers to tell their audiences to share with other people. |
Afraid I've dug myself into a hole | hitokiri82: Wow!. I just want to say I'm completely amazed by the quality of the answers and the discussion that my post generated. I'm not gonna be able to check back until tomorrow night (another big part of the crappines of my job, heavily restricted Internet access).Thanks a lot to everyone for the time they have taken to participate. |
Is it worth a back-end developer's time to get into web-design and HTML/CSS | nside: You need to learn it, but you don't need to do it this work.
First hire a designer.
Then hire a integration shop. Shops like psd2html are doing it for 100$-1k-2k$
So get a good designer and have a shop do the slicing work.
Then adjust it to your needs.. |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | sjs382: This is a complete guess and have no evidence to support it:I don't believe the buttons offer ANY advantage because the people most likely to use them are the same crowd of enthusiasts that already have the bookmarklets in their "bookmark toolbar" that offer the exact same functionality. |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | oscardelben: We are using a "share this" button for a video based startup, and in my experience it is not important how many people will click on that button, but the potential traffic that those link could generate. So my conclusion is that share this button is very effective for video advertising but less effective for social bookmarking. |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | stuntgoat: When looking at music listings, the button to add the event to my Ggle calendar is kick-ass. I guess I could share my calendar with others too. I just thought I would share that with you. |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | sgupta: "Share this" buttons gently remind people to spread the word, even if they don't use the actual button.(referenced from Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz) |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | fbailey: We are working on something in that area in Germany, Kijiji doesn't compete because it's ebay. That's my personal opinion. They chose the worst name ever and they don't have their priorities clear, it's not a "used goods" market with enforced standards it's just a market.The basic problem in this area is reach, but that's not a problem or ebay so asking why kijiji fails is not going to answer your questions for a startup.Different situation different problems. |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | klon: Our stats indicate a 0.3% click rate |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | mwerty: Network effects. Brand/mindshare.One pattern that you could apply to break craigslist would be focus: http://ycombinator.com/munger.html [Search for 'travel magazine'].You'd want to pick a suitable niche within craigslist and service that like crazy. Then move on to others. |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | thwarted: I'm not sure that "because X was first" is that much different than "because X has users" or "because X has 90% of the market", so that isn't really that shallow of an answer. The challenge is to get people to switch services from one that they are already comfortable and successful using, and sites like craigslist, ebay, and google already have a significant headstart by being both first (long ago) and good.It's not just enough to say "we have a better search engine than google" if you want to dethrone google, you actually have to be better (although the former may get you funding). Witness Cuil. Or Live -- who tried to pay people to use their search engine: even the lure of easy money isn't enough to get people to switch. With places like craigslist and ebay, the first mover advantage is significant. These sites bring two parties together. Those who have something to sell and those who have something to buy. The sellers want to be where the buyers are and the buyers will go where the sellers are.It is possible to have a successful business as a small time competitor to an established, entrenched player, but if your goal is to be competitive, you've got a long uphill battle ahead of you. It may be wiser to redefine the industry or look at it from another angle, then tackle that. What does craigslist do really bad that could be better? Is the lack of a competitor that eases that pain the reason why people still use the incumbent?I'm not sure what craigslist's weak points are. The site is extremely minimal, search works reasonably well, people automatically sort most things into the right places (because otherwise they'd be wasting their time), the majority of posters don't need to pay, fraud is managed well enough that people are not looking for something else. I can't think of any weak points -- which may be why I'm not working on craigslist competitor. |
Is it worth a back-end developer's time to get into web-design and HTML/CSS | gommm: Like a lot of people here said, I think it's important for you to learn html/css. At least enough to be able to do simple websites (or modify designs that you outsourced to integrate them in your website.)For css try to use and understand a framework like blueprint or better even compass which is a meta-framework ported on sass (sass is to css what haml is to html). It will save you a lot of time by not having to deal so much with browser inconsistencies).On the javascript side, read the book "Javascript the good parts" from Douglas Crockford, watch his videos and then play with jquery (it's very sweet and simple to use).One last recommendation on the front end is to read Steve Souders "High performance websites". It's a quick easy read and highlights a lot of important considerations for the front end performance (like this you'll know for example that it's a good idea to ask designer to slice images that they use as background in the css file)...It doesn't mean that you need to do everything by yourself (I hate doing css for example) but having a thorough understanding will help you chose the right web designer to work with and make sure that you both speak the same language. |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | trapper: Most big web companies started out either by design or fortitude by applying crossing the chasm techniques.1. Define the large market.2. Focus entirely on one small niche within that large market that will give you enough credibility to win over the late majority in the latter. See facebook [harvard college social], myspace [music], bebo [birthday reminders], craigslist [local events in san fran] etc.3. Own > 90% of your niche4. Cross the chasm into the large market. The market adoption curve demographics of the large market should ideally match the niche you chose.BTW it is unlikely that a "tech" audience are a good niche to pick, as they do not contain many peers for the larger market to identify with. It will be interesting to look at twitter in a few years to see if it crosses the chasm into the mainstream user.I'd say read the book. It's a classic. |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | davidw: You should read up on the economics of our industry. This book is a good place to start:http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/7/information-rules-a...Basically, there are what are called "positive network externalities" or "network effects" for a site like craigslist: if you you want to sell something, you want to go where lots of buyers are. If you want to buy stuff, you'll get a better selection where there are lots of sellers. |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | wesley: First of all, that name. What were they thinking?
Second of all, read the other comments. They summed it up quite nicely :) |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | pclark: interesting topic!my project will be launching soon, and it'll be interesting to see which implementation we should take:a) share this buttons
b) "email this" button
c) no buttons |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | jacobscott: Ask yourself: why would kijiji be competitive with craigslist? What advantage do they have?I suspect:* Buying pets is not a killer app for craigslist-like sites* The fancier design is a net negativecraigslist has a pretty good lock on what craigslist does -- they don't charge users for much, have the userbase, have a simple UI. |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | hardik: Here in India, where no classifieds site has emerged a clear winner, Kijiji is among the leading sites. just my 2 cents |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | pclark: because its just a clone. Haveing a "fancier" design and bending some rules != innovationDid you talk to craigslist users and see what they wanted changed? Is allowing sales of pets a deal breaker? |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | point: It is very successful actually. It's one of the top classified sites in most countries - if you are so narrow minded that you only look at one country, then that is your main problem as an entrepreneur. |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | andr: Craigslist started with a lot of word of mouth marketing. It was the de facto classifieds site in the Bay Area before it opened for other cities. It started as and still is essentially a not-for-profit.On a side note, Craigslist is hardly successful outside of the US. Even in London it's got no traction. |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | tdavis: I'd tell you if we could log into addthis.com with the credentials their site provided as our current username and password. Or if they replied to customer emails. AKA if they weren't a shit pile. |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | kragen: Most dot-com sites are kind of scummy. E-commerce dot-com sites are especially scummy. eBay is one of the scummiest of all the sites that aren't out-and-out scams. Craigslist kicks their ass primarily by being trustworthy, IMHO. |
Is it worth a back-end developer's time to get into web-design and HTML/CSS | epoweripi: I was a backend guy and was faced with the same dilemma. I thankfully listened to the engineer in me (at that time we had our UI work contracted out and was not shaping up well).
It took a while to get a good grip of HTML, CSS and JS. They are the tripod on which today's web UI is balanced. In the end I think it was the right decision to learn it all!Moreover if no core team member knows UI - then either get one or you become one, becoz sooner than later you will repent outsourcing it fully. |
Bottom Up Programming Question | radu_floricica: It's not that bottom up is good - it's that top down is simply impossible. Try to design a duck this way. It sounds very sensible, and you'll get a sketch in about two minutes. Not detail it: a couple of hours and 5 pages. Now continue to do this until you no longer have to backtrack: i.e. until what you discover about the duck in the current level of detail does not change at all what you have designed so far.This will have two effects: first, the complexity of the design is equal to the complexity of the duck. That's A LOT of paper. And second, most mistakes in the design will cause the duck to fail spectacularly.On the other hand, with bottom-up design you start with something which eats and reproduces, and improve it constantly until it has a beak and feathers and quacks. It will certainly not look anything like a duck at fist, but it is very likely that from the second or third iteration it will solve 80% of the client's problems. Sometimes even from the first, but that's just luck. It's messy, but it's at least doable. |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | Tichy: I think it might take over Craigslist, maybe they just started out later. In Germany I don't think Craigslist is that well known. When I needed to sell something recently that wasn't a good fit for ebay, I also found Kijiji and will probably keep using it. |
How effective are "share this" buttons? | leftnode: I can offer an alternative point of view in that they're clicked numerous times for other applications. I write tracking software for one of our clients who sends out hundreds of thousands/millions of emails to their 400,000 person email list (all legit/opt in). The emails have links to short movies that they can then click a Share Now/Send To A Friend button so their friend will get the movie link too.I don't have any numbers off the top of my head, but they have a pretty decent click rate, way more than 10%. Most of these people are a non-technical audience, so I think that has a lot to do with it too. |
Is it worth a back-end developer's time to get into web-design and HTML/CSS | ramenjunkie: as a very proficient front-end designer/developer, and a competent but generally average backend person, the short answer is a resounding YES.whether or not it's worth your time depends on why you want to learn and to what extent you want to be proficient at it.here are the best reasons why i think you should delve into the front-end:- you want to be able to bootstrap reasonably well a site from front to back
- you don't want to be completely reliant on a front-end person
- you want to become a better back-end person by learning the needs of the front-end
- you want to fully appreciate the value a front-end person brings to the table
- you want to have more control over how users directly interact with and perceive your productif you agree with any of those reasons above, you should certainly consider delving into the front-end. however, let me get to my second point.if you're going to jump in, i recommend you afford yourself the time to really get deep into the subject matter. why? because we've seen a tremendous diversity of front-end design patterns/methodologies sprout up in the last decade; all of which can have a sizeable effect on how the back-end is designed. |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | tallanvor: The name doesn't stand out - it's complicated and hard to remember the spelling, plus it arrived after Craigslist was already popular.Of course, Craigslist isn't nearly as big in other countries - In the UK gumtree is the winner, and in Norway finn.no is the place to go for classifieds. |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | vegai: 1) Name. "Kijiji"?2) Layout. Craigslist is beautifully simple. Kijiji looks like "web 2.0". |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | paul7986: Twitter could unseat Craigslist, especially for employee classifies. I.E. I Twittered Im looking for a graphic designer and boom I got 20 designers (non followers) @reply to me. Each had a portfolio and I could get a better sense for who they are via their Twitter stream.I prefer this over posting on a job board, as it's quicker and some other things too! |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | lionhearted: A few other people already mentioned network effects: It's why Ebay rules over auctions. If you're looking to sell something, you want to go to the place that already has the most buyers. If you're looking to buy something, you want to go to the place with the most sellers/selection. It's cyclical - the bigger the network gets, the more people want to and even have to use that network to be a serious player.One way you could beat Craigslist: Start in one local region and build a hell of a community around it. Maybe have parties or events. Get everyone in the city talking about it, and own that city. Make it so that everyone in that city chooses the new local competitor over Craigslist.Another: Find one thing Craigslist is doing really poorly, and do that really, really well. Focus only on that and branch out from there.If you want to fight an empire, you don't march out the same sets of troops as them into the plains to fight. You go find a tiny, isolated, already unhappy part of their empire, and you raise hell there. Build support for the cause. Get more troops, supplies, allies, experience. Realistically speaking, there won't be a "craigslist killer" that comes out of nowhere with better classifieds unless it's backed by someone that already runs things. Someone like Google might be able to do it by making a push on sites that people already use a lot, similar to the way they're pushing Chrome right now. But if you're starting from scratch?Then think small. What or where is Craigslist failing? Go there. Take over that place. Then branch out. |
Payment options for online services? | teej: http://www.searchyc.com delivers:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=432284 |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | rufius: Because its fucking hard to spell. |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | mrtron: It started much later?For some reason it has taken off in Toronto though. |
Good Hacker Cities | jdavid: Milwaukee!It's a laidback city between Madison, WI (super liberal) and Chicago ( liberal ), and Milwaukee is a nice mix in between, which i would label progressive.Milwaukee has a great place called http://bucketworks.org which is a "fitness club for the brain," but to those of you that know about CoWorking, Petcha Kutcha, and http://BarcampMilwaukee.com, you will find http://bucketworks.org to be your second home. Its a shared technology and art space where all of the MKE hackers and innovators hangout and mix things up.WE-Energies allows You to choose to buy renewable only energy for a higher price. ($.12KWh vs $.07KWh) There are co-op gocers, and the city is really walkable and buss-able.Good cheep and hip places to live in Milwaukee are Menomenoy Valley, 5th Ward, Bayview, Riverwest, where you can rent a room for $400-$700 a month.There are a ton of microbreweries, and if you know the difference between pasteurized filtered macros, and unpasteurized unfiltered micros, you will love Milwaukee. There are a few great places to visit like Centraal, Transfer, and Palm Tavern. On Friday at 4pm go to Lakefront Brewery for a brewery tour, fish fry and polka. In the sumer every ethnicity is celebrated, each with their own festival. There is always something to do. The new thing in MKE is to have over 300 beers to choose from, YES I SAID 300, so you can sample just about any bier in the world.Most of Milwaukee is bussable, bikeable, or walkable. The city has Bike Holidays and is considering buying 700 bikes that could be rented to go between any two bike racks.Its also one of the few areas in the US that has school vouchers so your kids can go anywhere.The cafe's are AWESOME, every cafe has wifi, although many use WEBBeams so you get 2 hours free with your coffee, or for 20-30$ a month you get unlimited access at any cafe. You can totally avoid any coffee chains in Milwaukee, we have SO MANY INDEPENDENT COFFEE shops its great. We even have one on the lake. Much of the coffee in Milwaukee is from Altera, and is fair trade.Since I was there for 10 years, I put a lot of Time into building the tech culture. I can introduce to almost anyone you might need to grow your business/ code base in Milwaukee.We have an active investment community.http://wistechnology.com/http://www.wisconsintechnologycouncil.com/http://goldenangels.angelgroups.net/http://www.siliconpastures.com/http://www.kegonsapartners.com/http://govsbizplancontest.com/Check out http://urbanmilwaukee.com/ for more info.If you want to get connected to people in milwaukee just email me:
jdavid.net@gmail.comI have heard that if you like SF or Seattle you would like Milwaukee, and if you need a metropolis every now and then, Chicago is a 2hour train ride away. |
Feedback on Pocket Workout, iPhone app for exercising | pxlpshr: Here's a link for more info about the app:http://saltlicklabs.com/pocket-workout/ |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | pg: I wouldn't suggests a frontal attack. I'd suggest initially focusing either on a type of ad Craigslist is ill-suited for, or a technology that would be very useful in classified ads but which Craigslist ignores because they never change the site. Use that to get a toe-hold, then gradually expand. Ideally the new approach would seem as different from Craigslist as Craigslist does from classified ads in newspapers. |
Payment options for online services? | dnoxs: paypal |
Feedback on Pocket Workout, iPhone app for exercising | gstar: You just want a logarithm maybe? |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | r7000: For whatever reason, Kijiji was launched outside of the U.S. first and has only been active in the U.S. since 2007 (2005 elsewhere).Kijiji is very competitive with craigslist in several countries.Canada:
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=CA&ts_mode=cou...
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/kijiji.ca+craigslist.ca/?me...Germany:
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=DE&ts_mode=cou...
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/kijiji.de+craigslist.de/?me... |
Why isn't this site as successful as Craigslist? | jeffb: It's worth noting that Kijiji and Gumtree are both owned by eBay. eBay also owns a stake in Craigslist. |
Review my site - RepSheet.com - Look up your elected representatives | okeumeni: Look very nice. I don’t live in Chicago so its hard for me to come up with an address besides the one you have on the page as sample. I should be able to type a zip code only, an official name or a city name to get information as well. I think that information isolate enough an area for you to perform a meaningful search. |
Review my site - RepSheet.com - Look up your elected representatives | trickjarrett: Well I just played around with it, but here's my feedback as someone outside of chicago:1) You need a simple front page, "Live outside Chicago? Signup here to be notified when we add more regions!"2) The functionality and mapping looks real good, but is really something users are looking for when looking up representatives? It seems to sort of clog and confuse the UI being there on the right. I'd probably move them below the fold or at the bottom of the page and instead put anchor links or further info links on the right.3) RSS - awesome. Email alerts - awesome. Perhaps add the email alert form on the page itself instead of require an additional page view.4) Need a more clear link to the front page, the logo at the top I'm more apt to click on is the one for Windy Citizen rather than RepSheet.Overall a nice clean app that I'll use once you expand to cover my geo area. |
Review my site - RepSheet.com - Look up your elected representatives | sachinag: This needs to be integrated with EveryBlock like yesterday. Have you talked with Adrian recently?Also, this would be helpful not just for electeds, but for candidates - if I was in the IL-5 district, I would like to see information for all the people running all in one place.[EDIT] More feedback from a campaign manager of one of the IL-5 campaigns and a clerk at the Seventh Circuit, who presumably know what they're talking about:A step up from Civic FootprintLinks to ISBE and FEC disclosureIt needs to do intersectionsIt would also be nice, given that neighborhoods are a little ill-defined, if it gave you an easy way to click over to an adjacent neighborhood. If you type Lakeview, you get Tom Tunney's ward here. If you live next to Lakeview High, however, you're in what they define as Ravenswood, and you're Gene Schulter's ward[EDIT TWO]RepSheet lets you...
• look up your elected representatives...
• see the political zones you live in...
• and track news about your reps.
political zones?Needs county board badly |
Review my site - RepSheet.com - Look up your elected representatives | nadim: May I suggest geolocation, so that they don't even need to enter their address. With a simple "Wrong Address?" link in case the geolocation fails. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | mschwar99: Fan of:The headache inducing blue ribbon winner: Pi - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138704/The slightly corny but worthwhile: Sneakers - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/ |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | mechanical_fish: My Caltech friend assured me that Real Genius perfectly captured the spirit of Caltech. (It borrows a lot of legendary Caltech hacks.) It certainly is the best fictional depiction of grad school I've ever seen, though it's kind of confused about the distinction between undergrad and grad school. On the other hand, perhaps that's normal at Caltech as well. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | kobs: Antitrust: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/Pirates of Silicon Valley: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/ |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | hachiya: "Antitrust" is cheesy, but if you suspend disbelief and just treat it as fiction, it's a very entertaining movie.
And even Bill Gates is spoofed in the movie. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | prakash: I liked the King of Kong: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0923752/.Man on Wire is on my list of movies to watch: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1155592/ |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | vaksel: does Die Hard 4 count as one? |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | tptacek: Good movies about startups: "Tucker", "24 Hour Party People", and "Ghostbusters". |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | mixmax: I liked "a beauiful mind" about John Nash and game theory.And "The Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires" is a must-see about how Microsoft, Apple, et al. started out. |
Looking for local document OCR, tagging and filing. Somewhat like Evernote. | JayNeely: E-mail Evernote about it. Licensing their software to businesses who want similar functionality but complete privacy for their data could be a business opportunity for them, like the Google Search Appliance: http://www.google.com/enterprise/gsa/Offer to beta test for them.I don't know of any other companies that do have what you're looking for, but I would check Adobe & Xerox's offerings if you haven't already. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | rms: E-Dreams: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0262021/
Startup.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/ |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | mechanical_fish: Okay, I'll say this much in defense of the Matrices: (a) the first Matrix movie is emphatically not a stinker; (b) I appreciated the second two a lot better after reading these links [1]:http://corporatemofo.com/media_and_mediocrity/the_matrix_rel...http://web.archive.org/web/20071005000019/http://www.corpora...I mean, I still don't think the sequels worked very well, particularly #3, but I admire the audacity of the experiment.---[1] (Alas, the second link now appears to be Wayback Machine material. Essayists, defend your archives!) |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | utnick: I recently rented August from blockbuster.Its about a VC funded startup with little revenue that goes bust.It was a pretty terrible movie though and the web2.0 talk will make you cringe. |
small projects to network with other programmers | yan: I tried proposing a nearly identical idea a few months ago on here or the irc channel, and it was generally not favored. People argued that if you just wanted to code, join an open source project.If anything of sorts gets off the ground, I'd be totally interested. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | gcheong: Its sci-fi, but I have no doubt 2001:A Space Odyssey inspired many a hacker to go into AI. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | blender: Swordfish.Yah, that was a joke... |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | CaptainMorgan: Swordfish; if nothing for the totally cool monitor setup he had at Gabriel's place.Alien; the original- the next couple of movies in the series were okay but the first I think is a classic in form of technology and all that good stuff. If you watch it, it may seem a bit old-school for our time, but for their time that was pretty cool! Finding a solution to space travel at light-year speed? Come-on- that's awesome.Stargate; another one for space travel, but overall it was kind of corny- I just liked how the Egyptians, or whoever, discovered a way to transport across galaxies.Enemy of the State; cool NSA tech stuff.Deja Vu; the ability to go back in time only four days earlier or less... I like their setup and how they explained the plausibility of the technology actually coming to fruition. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | scott_s: Apollo 13 has some great hacker scenes. It has, in fact, my favorite hacker moment from any movie."We gotta find a way to make this [holds up square peg] fit into the hole for this [holds up round peg] using nothing but that [points to random assortment of crap that they know is on board].": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNDuGuerpf8 |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | azharcs: I saw "Hackers are people too" recently. I is a very good documentary about Hackers and the culture.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1279942/ |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | ideamonk: I would go for some documentaries -Triumph of the Nerds,
Hackers : Angels or Daemons
History of Video Gamesanother one on hacking from National Geographic, i can't recall the nameAntitrust too :P |
small projects to network with other programmers | shaunxcode: could you give an example of what you mean by a small programming project? Also how would you choose who you work with or would it be like playing yahoo games where you can "sit" and "stand up" from projects? Maybe you could also watch people coding/conversing as an observer? Would there be a web ide or an automatically generated svn repository? Would all the projects be unique/for charity or more on a project euler/code golf level or what? |
small projects to network with other programmers | RobGR: Real world meetups for joint hacking are better than online collaboration. If the goal is to learn from other programmers, you learn a lot more by sitting next to them. A lot of it is incidental stuff you would not have thought to ask, like tricks in vi and emacs and etc. Another reason to work with someone is it provides a kind of social discipline, you feel you have to get something done on the project on a semi-regular basis. A weekly hacking session at a coffeehouse or someones apartment provides that regular discipline, and because the hacking sessions inevitably end, physical meetings can keep a side project from growing and taking over the rest of your life.The "just work on a open-source project" advice isn't that bad, but you should pick something that you would benefit from improving. It is still a good idea to solict others to help you in a physical meeting, however. Find people who would benefit from improvement in the same project.I think rather than a website or webapp, what you are looking for is a computer club. I go to a weekly meeting in Austin of ALE, a linux users group. We meet 7 pm to 11:30 pm, and we are an "experimental" group, in that we never have presentations or a planned agenda -- people bring computers with problems and we fix them, new people show up asking for help learning linux, etc. There are about 5 people there who come regularly with programming issues, ranging from side-business startup sites that are in php and mysql to hobbiest robots.If you are really serious about this, find a place (possibly your house or apartment) and have a "Saturday afternoon hack-a-thon" every week or every other week. If you provide food and coffee people will come. Your main problem is likely to be keeping non-programmers from showing up and just talking.If you have trouble finding a place to do this, see if you can locate a co-working or "jelly" type place in your area. A co-working place might let you use the area during non-business hour such as on weekends, and the jelly people probably know all the good coffeehouses. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | mechanical_fish: Okay, I'm insane, I know that. But I have this strange urge to nominate The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai in this category. I'm not sure I can explain why. Perhaps it's just to be perverse. ;)There's just something about the character that rings true. He's a famous superhero, but he doesn't wear a costume or come from another planet. He's a mad scientist, but he doesn't cackle or plot or soliloquize. He's an odd guy with a diverse collection of obsessive hobbies and an even more diverse collection of friends, who are world-class experts in their fields while also being strange and geeky people. And somehow these people aren't his minions or his sidekicks: They're colleagues. He and his band work on things that nobody on Earth has ever heard of, but they don't seem too excited about that -- there are no breathless gasps. It's just part of their usual routine.There's something about this guy, his lab, and his team that reminds me of the actual basement of the physics department at Cornell, and of the actual people who you might find wandering the hallways of such a place. A place where the pile of junk in the corner is actually the remains of a Nobel-winning experiment from 1967, and the guy who just asked you how to find the men's room is the Secretary of Energy. |
Review my site - RepSheet.com - Look up your elected representatives | eli: You could tie to http://www.opencongress.org/ data for the House members |
Afraid I've dug myself into a hole | freda: I saw myself pretty much in the same hole as you do now. I worked for a couple of years as an SAP developer but then got bored with the ABAP stuff. Luckily, I had the chance to do a lateral move within the same company and coded in Java from then on. Finally, I left the whole SAP field and now develop industry automation applications for a mid-range company (another hole, but that's a different story.)What I want to say is, yes, you can get out of that hole. Of course, you will come across recruiters who will label you as the SAP guy. But there are others out there who know that there's more to it than just the programming language. So take the advice given in all the comments here, create something in your favorite technology and apply for the jobs that really interest you. |
small projects to network with other programmers | mrtron: We found a great project to test working together was a todo list. There are many questions and paths you could take, and it seems to be a good project to determine if you can get on the same page together. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | zandorg: Loads, but Revolution OS for Stallman fanservice, Johnny Mnemonic (which everyone criticises, but Gibson did write the script), Sneakers DVD commentary (Canadian R1 DVD), and I'll be cute and say Ferris Bueller for his hacks. |
Why would anyone go for ASP.NET ? | yan: Your comparison is overly simplistic and doesn't really prove anything. I'm a unix guy, so my exposure to ASP.NET, while existed, was limited. ASP.NET tries to make writing large apps be a manageable process, tries to use the existing .NET library and plugs well with other Microsoft technologies. I can't really argue on much deeper levels, but comparing how many lines of code some mundane task takes isn't really saying anything.I can create my own DSL whose sole purpose in life is to send dates to a browser, and all it takes is a file with the character "x" in it; that doesn't make my language any better than Rails, ASP.NET, php or anything else. Different languages and platforms exist to solve different problems and cater to different markets. |
Why would anyone go for ASP.NET ? | brk: I'm not a big ASP.NET fan, but the number of lines of code to do something is less of a concern to me than the underlying hardware requirements and licensing costs to produce a running application. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | RiderOfGiraffes: Although not obviously related to startups or to hacking, I've found that all my hacker friends (yes - I have friends) love The Princess Bride."Never get involved in a land war in Asia""Inconceivable!" |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | cgranade: Sadly, it's kind of hard for me to come up with good hacker movies, but I can at least try to make a recommendation of interest to (most) hackers: Paprika. It's an anime film (by the same team that brought us Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress) that explores the ramifications of a device that allows someone to interact with someone else's dreams. Like I said, not a hacker movie per se, but I think it's one that most hackers will probably like. |
Why would anyone go for ASP.NET ? | amuzua: As far as I remember it took me considerable amount of time to get along with C# alone, but after that playing around with ASP was much more easier. If you're planning to start asp.net or other microsoft stuff like .net, make sure your OOP fundas are thorough. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | geuis: My own cheesy favorite, The First $20 Million is the Hardest. Plus I love Rosario Dawson, so that's probably a contributing factor. |
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