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Accelerate or slow down? | bprater: If you mean "step down" as in leaving your current employ, the critical question is this: How many months savings do you have?And if you have at least a year's saving, what is the revenue model and how quickly can you get to the point where you can ship product?Oh, and don't listen to what people around you say about your ideas. They'll either think it's brilliant or say it's stupid, but rarely have anything critical or useful to say.The genius is in your passion for the idea. |
Accelerate or slow down? | apage43: Certainly not the time to quit your day job and then try a start-up, but i don't see why you couldn't throw together your startup in your spare time. Is there a reason you need the 'time-consuming adventure' to actually consume so much time? It'll take longer to launch but on the whole, be less risky. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | skmurphy: The Dish tells the story of the Australian downlink that provided communications support for the Apollo moon landing. True to life and truly funny picture of engineers collaborating on some hard problems against a deadline.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/ |
Accelerate or slow down? | vaksel: start now.Better to do a startup for 3 years @ 20 hours a week, than 2 years @ 80 hours a weekGrowth isn't instant, it'll take time to get new users. And if you are taking the long view, you'll actually be more mentally prepared for when your startup isn't an instant success |
Why would anyone go for ASP.NET ? | akronim: > So, Why would anyone go for asp.net?Because they have an existing investment in C# and/or the microsoft stack, and a team of developers who know C#/visual studio. In that situation it's pretty hard to sell PHP. |
Why would anyone go for ASP.NET ? | scorpioxy: Because sometimes you don't have a choice. Either by policy or by inheritance, you might be stuck with that environment.In my day job, i use ASP.Net MVC framework because we're an all Microsoft shop. And although i recognize the danger of proprietary systems in the medical field, I am unable to change anything at this time.Also i find that Microsoft products work best with other Microsoft products so SQL Server with Windows Server 2003 and ASP.Net along with Active Directory and so on...But, echo'ing the other comments, using a limited metric such as number of lines to implement a feature is a bad idea. Try it out on some application and then you'd be better equipped to dismiss or recommend it. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | streblo: Waking Life. Not so much a 'hacker' movie per say, but a great film for anyone who is interested in some heavy thinking and interesting cinematography. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | sjs382: BBS Documentary |
Accelerate or slow down? | lsc: If you are self-funded, or can self-fund, accelerate. I personally see this as my only chance.Nothing has changed for me, in terms of revenue. I still have more consulting work than I can handle, at ridiculous rates. What is different now is that none of my competitors can get loans or venture capital, and I can hire really good people for quite a lot less than usual.Marketing, too, seems easier than usual. Consumers care about price now, which unlike the intangibles people usually compete on, is an area where I can compete.but then, I don't have kids. |
Review my site - RepSheet.com - Look up your elected representatives | jollyjerry: You mentioned reverse engineering NYTime's tool 'Represent'; Have you heard of their 'Congress API'? http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/introducing-the-con...Maybe you can use this data also. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | there: 23 (not the jim carrey one)http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0126765/if you've ever read the cuckoo's egg, 23 is sort of the other side of the story, following karl koch and the germans (though stoll was mostly tracking markus hess in the cuckoo's egg, not koch). |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | mark_h: At the other end of the hacker spectrum (the cry-yourself-to-sleep reality end not the fantasy end), there's Office Space. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | tom_rath: The Dam Busters (1955 - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046889/ ) is excellent. You can see real-world examples of the hacker problem-solving mindset right from the start of the movie and it continues on throughout.(PC Warning: One of the main characters has an unfortunately named black dog, which I suspect is the reason this superb film is only rarely seen). |
Idea for Next Generation of Social Networking | rscott: Honestly, I read through this a few times and I have no idea what in the hell it does. Maybe I just missed the ball, but I have no idea what your product would do. Buzzwords galore. |
Accelerate or slow down? | axod: Do it in spare time and see how it goes :) |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | noodle: incentives to try and help build the community. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | davidw: Not a movie but "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr." is great fun, and is available on DVD. There's something kind of hackerish about it. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | aduk98: There was a sort of 'unofficial' 'hackers 2' with Skeet Ulrich playing Kevin ("My kung-fu better than you kung-fu!") Mitnick in Takedown (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159784/) - the story following the book of the same name by Tsutomu Shimonura. Also, I think they recently screened 'Wargames 2 : the dead code' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0865957/) over here in the UK. Don't forget Tron! Ah.. just hearing the sounds of the video arcade at the beginning... |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | ardit33: 5th Element, I think is the ultimate guy/hacker movie. Disutopian reality, future, flying cars, spaceships, tech and gadgets, weapons, awesome soundtrack, action, funny, love story, and hot chicks...What do you want more from a movie? |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | imp: Slightly off topic, but a good hacker TV show is "Big Bang Theory" on Monday nights on ABC. It's about 4 physics PhD students at Cal Tech.The best part is that they don't water down the physics at all. One guy got dumped by his girlfriend because of their differing opinions on string theory.I just got the season 1 DVD and it's great. |
small projects to network with other programmers | aneesh: I think this is an interesting idea.I decided to throw together a quick-and-dirty webapp for this purpose, inspired by an HN post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=426127). I'm taking a little detour & learning Python & Django along the way. I'll submit it here when I have a reasonable prototype ready, maybe in a week or two. |
Why would anyone go for ASP.NET ? | icey: Microsoft has done a lot of things wrong in terms of its various software offerings. Visual Studio is one of the things that they have done a pretty good job on though.Asp.net is also very attractive to the legions of .Net developers who may not have much exposure to the web way. It mostly abstracts web interactions away, so that it's not a huge leap to go from client/server applications to web apps.Sure, there is a lot of code in the final result, but the IDE helps automate a lot of that, and in combination with ReSharper, it's not a bad environment to work in. |
Accelerate or slow down? | glow: Thanks a lot for the comments.As I read through some of the comments, I see that my arch-nemesis "time management" probably is one the reasons I'm sweating over this. Using the right amount of spare time effectively and letting it take it's time is probably key, but oh so hard to do.You've given me good food for thought, thanks! |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | TooMuchNick: Po Bronson's book "The Nudist on the Late Shift" says that CitySearch cold-called all kinds of businesses in every city it launched in. Have you read enough articles about Yelp to see if they did the same?Incidentally, how do you plan to win people over when they're already on Yelp? I'm confused about what value you add that they don't. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | prakash: no wonder the netflix prize is such a hard problem. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | aditya: More sci-fi than pure tech, I just saw:
"The man from earth", http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/Highly recommended. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | Setec_Astronomy: Not all are hacker movies per se, but these have great general geek appeal:Existenz http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0120907/Cube http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0123755/The Nines http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0810988/The World's Fastest Indian http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0412080/October Sky http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0132477/Three Days of the Condor http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0073802/ |
Why would anyone go for ASP.NET ? | nopassrecover: ASP.NET annoys me so much with leaky abstractions BUT ASP.NET MVC is the best thing since PHP. |
iPhones are mundane. What's the new grail? | seraph321: OLED screens that either fold, or roll up, could free us from the tiny-screen limitations of current mobile devices. These are supposedly very close to reality. The next step is lasers that just draw the image directly on the retina, but that's a bit further down the road. |
Idea for Next Generation of Social Networking | tokenadult: If you can filter out trolls, sign me up.I conceive of this as primarily a project to increase the aggregate intelligence of the worldI can introduce you to a very valuable network of participants for that who have already been talking to me about forming new online communities. If you'd like to seed your project with a bunch of people who meet that goal, contact me through my HN profile. |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | axod: You have your work cut out for you. There's a massive competitive market for getting customers opinions. The usual method is to pay them."Get paid to fill out surveys, try product samples, etc etc" is big business.I'd start with a handy feedback widget that small businesses can put on their websites. (If you haven't already got that setup) |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | jfarmer: Talk to every small business in your city or neighborhood. Give them an X-day free trial and a sign/sticker that tells customers what to do.Give customers an incentive to give suggestions if they're not doing it on their own. Pay out of your pocket (IIRC Yelp did something like this, paying for reviews) or helping vendors subsidize things at their store, e.g., give a review get 5% off your next purchase.That's what I'd do, anyhow. |
Why would anyone go for ASP.NET ? | mindviews: > So, Why would anyone go for asp.net?The .NET development environment.Visual Studio is dead simple to install and use. Add-ins have been easy to install, too. (I'm looking at you, Eclipse!) The .NET Framework has great breadth and depth. It integrates well with MS SQL Server. There are plenty of quality 3rd party tools/libraries that work with the stack. API documentation is easy to get to. Building install packages is a snap. Visual designers can make building/understanding components or the database schema easier. Code generation from the designers can fill in boiler-plate stuff yet still leave it visible if you need to dig around in there by hand.As for ASP.NET WebForms (which is the sample you've given), it was meant to make it easier for Windows Forms developers to do web page design. WebForms imitates the WinForms structure and calling conventions, so you can make a working web page act more like a desktop app in terms of the programming model. Obviously, you run into limitations rather quickly because the WebForms abstraction is very leaky.ASP.NET MVC would be a good pick for new projects if you are already an experienced web developer. You get all the benefits of the .NET stack without the limitations of WebForms. You get control over the markup that gets generated and it does a good job with separation of concerns. I recommend. |
How do you handle/manage/record requirements? | matthias: 1. Open up requirements from the last project.
2. Rejig them a bit.
3. Send them off and get back to building things....we also use backpack |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | Allocator2008: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I saw it during a company outing to the cinema when it first came out. Lots of fun. Not a hacker movie per ce, but very cool animation, set in the future,etc. Also my first introduction to "gaia theory" which was interesting though actually I am on the reductionist, "selfish gene" side of that debate myself. |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | mcdowall: Definitely try to incentivize the business owners to update their listings. I think you will find if you can provide them a login to view some form of stats then word of mouth would carry a lot of weight here |
iPhones are mundane. What's the new grail? | matthias: the floppy dot. it just floats: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JILWKaQgUC0 |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | byrneseyeview: Do what Yelp did: try to launch a totally-unlike-Yelp site, and realize that Yelp is what your customers want.But seriously: that sounds like a valuable app, but it's hard to tell how you should launch without getting some details. Maybe you can start giving feedback to businesses you patronize, and just contact the first few businesses you review ("Hey! You just got a suggestion on FeedbackJar.com!"). |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | bd: The Prestige (competing magicians inventing new tricks, cameo by Nikola Tesla):http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/prestigeIron Man (fun movie where the main character is hacker/inventor):http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/ironmanThere Will Be Blood (not a hacker movie per se, but still kind of startup-relevant, it's about creation of the oil empire from scratch):http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/therewillbebloodOdyssey 5 (TV series about a group of astronauts sent back in time to prevent destruction of Earth, AI plays a significant role):http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318236/Few Japanese cyberpunk animated classics:Ghost in the Shell 1 & 2:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113568/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0347246/Akira:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094625/Bonus: if you liked Primer, you may like also Timecrimes (even though it's not a hacker movie):http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/timecrimes |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | answerly: Yelp paid contributors to get the ball rolling with their community:http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2006/tc200...But it sounds like your service is less like Yelp and more like uservoice.com or getsatisfaction.com for the small business market. |
Idea for Next Generation of Social Networking | physcab: Your project sounds interesting, though it's difficult to see what the actual deliverable will be. It looks like you just want to model social behavior through innovative ways. I would suggest that you do some practical stuff first, and forget about "revolutionizing" the industry. Perhaps your time will be best spent doing some innovative data mining of a social network already in place. For example, you could easily do some creative things with Twitter's public feed as many people have shown recently. Second, maybe you want to build another portal like Friendfeed whereby you could incorporate social status and try to extract some meaningful data.This sounds like a fun data mining project, but I wouldn't stray too far off course if I were you. Instead of making diagrams and presentations, just get right to work by modeling simple streams of data.For the record, I do pattern analysis on materials, but I'm interested in applying the same techniques for other social projects. |
iPhones are mundane. What's the new grail? | puzzle-out: plastic logic, paper replacement - http://www.plasticlogic.com/product.html |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | thomasswift: On the social engineering tip, I'd say "Catch Me If You Can" is a good watch. It's a little too hollywood, but there are some good bits. |
Why would anyone go for ASP.NET ? | physcab: In my experience (and I'll preface this by saying that I'm not quite an expert yet) ASP.NET is fairly easy to bring people with no web experience up to speed. Our development company switched from LAMP to ASP.NET, C#, and MS SQL Server. While I wasn't involved in the decision-making process, I did ask them why they switched as I came from a LAMP background. They said that their company gets all of their employees from their internship program, and it was easier to train interns with all of the standardized tools that Microsoft puts out. Plus there is a pretty good community of .Net developers that makes the training process easy. It took me far longer to learn PHP than it did to learn C#, but maybe that's because my coding experience is better now than it was then. :) |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | lallysingh: Blade Runner's on there, too.Oh, and cowboy bebop.Another vote for:
Hackers
Sneakers |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | mschwar99: Along the lines of do one thing and do it well: Start narrow but deep in an area that you either know well or have connections to. Excel in a small, defined area in order to build buy-in from businesses and credibility with your audience and then branch out.Whether it is a core of local businesses, online businesses run by people you know, etc make sure that there is actual value to the service rather than a smattering of unrelated content. |
Why would anyone go for ASP.NET ? | jpcx01: ASP.NET isn't the worst technology to use for a startup. There's lots of useful prebuilt components for it (commercial usually, but the value is still there).Microsoft is also offering some pretty good hosting platforms for startups, and usually you can pick up licenses for low cost. EC2 now is also offering Windows instances for easy cloud hosting.That said, I've done ASP.NET professionally for about 5 years, and 2 years ago switched to Ruby / Rails / Merb and have found the transition to be a huge improvement. The open source world has a better atmosphere, and I believe better talent overall.The worst thing about ASP.NET is the corporate culture, where unskilled VB coders adopt it, and use it to build really badly developed websites.Also, ASP.NET pretty much requires Windows. Trying to develop it on Mono, or on a Mac (with Vmware) is an effort in futility. If you go ASP.NET, make sure you're comfortable with Windows. This was one issue that I had a major problem with. Command line scripting and build tools in Windows are generally aweful. This will limit any good developer's productivity. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | bocalogic: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086856/ |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | bisi: How are you going to make money ? |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | andrewljohnson: The key to Yelp was their content acquisition strategy. Yelp is of course the classic chicken and the egg type website, so they needed clever ways to get things rolling.They incentivized them with things like private dinners, free dinners, and inside information that only the top Yelpers could see for a time.Another trick was the founders of Yelp used their site extensively - if you want to get into the content game, be prepared to write some content - if just to demonstrate what your site should look like.Putting aside Yelp's strategies, here's my number one launch idea for you - do a small launch before you do a big launch.We've been working on www.trailbehind.com since April, and our first launch was May 1. By the time we have a big launch this summer, in time for the hiking season, we are hoping to avoid the flameout problems of big launches.Remember, a Techcrunch hit comes and goes, but a Google search is forever. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | iuguy: You already had the best (Primer)
After that, in no particular order:Sneakers. Brilliant film.Hackers - I think it's old enough now to be allowed but it was really laughable at the time - in the kind of way swordfish will be almost respected 20 years from now.Wargames is the Hackers of the early 80s.Pirates of Silicon Valley is also worth a watch.Three Days of the Condor is a fantastic film if you're even slightly old school.The nines is one of those films you'll either get and love or won't - I loved it.Battle Royale is an amazing film that happens to have some hacking in it.2001 is the ultimate hacker film, even though there's not much that you could associate hacking with it. The way it's put together, the dedication to realism, the way the special effects were implemented a year before man went to the moon defines it as a hacker film for me, although YMMV. |
iPhones are mundane. What's the new grail? | gills: This one is kind of cool: http://www.engr.washington.edu/facresearch/highlights/ee_con... |
Why would anyone go for ASP.NET ? | DanielBMarkham: I've spent some time digging through the .NET internals (through books and code) and have/had a good familiarity with IIS and the HTTP pipeline Microsoft has set up.ASP.NET is an oddball. It's roots, as many have pointed out, were to make web programming look like windows programming. That's the crappy part.The good part is that there is a heckuva lot of power under the hood if you take the time to learn the mechanics of things. I can move from a drag-n-drop GUI programming of the web into all kinds of other things depending on my whims. I can go XAML, or Silverlight. I can go straight functional with F# or some of the other functional languages for .NET.And it all runs inside the same IDE with IntelliSense and debugging and machine-level inspection if I want it. And all the applications, no matter what their language, can easily interoperate with each other. And if I stick to ASP.NET 1.1, I can run on *nix boxes all day long.The list goes on.Please don't misunderstand me. I don't have the religion, so I'm not trying to pump it up more than it is. It has real problems as an architecture because the winform idea doesn't fit into web programming. Having said that, however, a good programmer can crank out ASP.NET applications as fast as anybody else in any other platform. For exploratory web application programming it's on par with any other platform. The new team stuff looks pretty cool.I find that most people who dis ASP.NET failed at learning it or are just blowing off steam. To say the same thing a different way, by the time you've wasted years figuring out where all the alligators are, you don't see what the big deal is any more.Biggest plus? I can almost go to Seven-Eleven and pick up good ASP.NET programmers. The market has a lot of them (cheap). Biggest minus? Just because a bunch of stuff is hidden doesn't mean it goes away! Great ASP.NET programmers can crank out Javascript, CGI, and StoredProc code with the best of them. By "helping", Microsoft makes it a real pain to get under the hood and take total control (but it's very possible to do once you get the hang of it)BTW, your example? You drag a label onto the form, double-click on it and type one line of code in. I'd argue that it only takes one line of code (and about 5 seconds) to accomplish. The rest is framework fluff. |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | callmeed: My side-project, ClipClipSave (clipclipsave.com), let's small businesses create printable coupons.Maybe we can team up in some way–incentivize participation by offering some sort of discount. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | pasbesoin: GATTACA might be worth adding to the list.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | lallysingh: Yelp's got a lot of space for improvement, you can do well here.For example: the iPhone app doesn't let you write reviews. The best time to write a review for a place is when you're there. But Yelp wants me to go back home and log in through a desktop to do that. EPIC FAIL.Do some use case & scenario analysis, and you should do well. Consider plugging into different parts of peoples' lives. E.g. Facebook and the iPhone. A facebook app that browses reviews of people you know, and lets you invite people to a restaurant for dinner could do pretty well. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | jobeirne: Army of Darkness. |
Idea for Next Generation of Social Networking | nixme: Talk to robg. I think his venture and yours might have some overlap and he might be open to your ideas. |
Why would anyone go for ASP.NET ? | eatenbyagrue: - Huge library of high quality components- One of the best available development environments (Visual Studio)- C# is much better for structuring your code base for large teams and long lived projects- If you're really using a database, SQL Server is way, way better than mysql.I prefer Rails myself, but I manage a team who prefers .Net, and I can see the advantages.I agree with other posters, Webforms are horrible and wrong, but MVC could make .Net one of the best Web dev platforms. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | ojbyrne: There's no computers in it, but Coppola's "The Conversation" is a classic - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation - it's about electronic surveillance. There's a great scene near the end that reminds me of debugging - the wikipedia article has a picture and descriptive caption of that scene:"At the end of The Conversation, Gene Hackman, as paranoid audio surveillance expert Harry Caul, plays the saxophone in his apartment, which he took apart piece by piece trying to find a bug. The scene vividly illustrates Caul's complete emotional isolation by having him literally tear away practically every vestige of the material world that surrounds him, shattering the safety and security of his carefully-constructed womb." |
What LaTeX resumé template do you use? | nshah: I personally prefer LaTeX to any other typesetting or word processing software and I use the Modern CV template to be found at http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/modernc... |
What LaTeX resumé template do you use? | Rod: I write my resumé in LaTeX. I did not use any template. What I did was:a) I collected a few sexy-looking resumés from various illustrious academics.b) I selected the features I liked the most from each of those sample resumés.c) I created my own LaTeX document from scratch, including the features I liked the most from the collection of samples. It takes some work, but you get exactly what you're looking for. |
Why would anyone go for ASP.NET ? | pragmatic: Because C# is a very good language.How many security holes have been found in the asp.net stack vs the php stack? I recall seeing a php security issue on reddit or news.y about once a month (anecdotal of course). But you don't have those problems with asp.net.Yes php provides simplicity in the language but complexity in the configuration. You have to be pretty handy with *nix to get it all working right. Remember facebook showing all it's code to the world?Asp.net windows configuration can be easier especially if you have a windows background.In the end though, if you know php use that. If you know python use that. |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | brk: My personal experience is that there is a lot half-baked shit out there for CMS systems and few, if any, really deliver on the dream.Part of the problem (IMO) is that they're trying to allow very non-technical users to do pixel-precise web layouts and the technology just isn't there yet. |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | ericwaller: Content management is very definitely NOT a solved problem.Even if you restrict the domain to just blogging software, there are a ton of unsatisfied people (myself included). Blogging software is still bad enough that a bunch of people are still writing their own.A possible solution is something that's more than a framework but less than a fully functioning software package. I think that's the general idea behind drupal, but during the limited time I spent with it I wasn't very impressed. |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | arockwell: If there's a 100 different systems out there that's a pretty amazing sign that CMS is not a solved problem. I think part of the problem is there is no way to build a one-size fits all solution. Any solution will need to be customized by a technical person. |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | AndrewWarner: Here's what I learned from the interviews I did on Mixergy:Jon Bischke told me he launched his community on eduFire by asking his personal contacts to add content first.Seth Godin told me that you need a heretic message. (Yelp's message was that communities trump experts.)Jason Siminoff told me he had Google alerts go off when bloggers talked about his industry--and then engaged them personally.Jason Fried said 37signals decided to teach what they knew as a way of drawing people in.Mateo Gutierrez told me that he always searches his sites' records for influencials and then he gives them power so they can encourage other users to participate.Derek Sivers said launch your site and don't worry if it's crappy and no one uses it at first.Douglas Atkin told me that he studied cults and noticed that the ones that let their members talk to each other were more likely to grow. |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | gibsonf1: Cms is a feature of a wider business organizational tool in the same way GTD is a feature. It is the wider business context that makes these features truly useful. |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | nx: Even if it was, why wouldn't you release? |
Funding my app myself | ieatpaste: You'll need to add a clause where a certain share of the stock (I assume you own 100%) to be bought back by the company each year. The percentage will take in account of the risk since the company will keep on growing. In any case, you'll have to have to have a business attorney to write the term sheet due to legal wording and general liabilities. Your best bet is to find a good template and have the attorney modify it - that way you save the attorney's time and your money. |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | sjs382: "Content management" is too broad to be "solved".
For certain types of content it might be, but the types of content you can have is endless, even for the web. |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | apsurd: I think there are enough specific end-user needs to justify tons of specific CMS instances. It's funny to me how much wordpress is hacked up in order to try and accommodate more business oriented clients. I think tons of freelancers sell their clients hacked wordpress sites because it gives their clients CMS access, even if all they are doing is "updating a blog post".A CMS is just a tool, not a solution. So rather than asking if CMS is a solved problem I think a better approach would be asking what problems need which kind of CMS and building from there. |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | davi: I did some looking around a while ago and couldn't find anything that gracefully gives users ACL-like, fine-grained control over who can see which of their postings. This seems like a clear hole in the space, too me.I'd like to be able to create a group of users -- let's say by email address, so they wouldn't even have to be registered with the site at the time I created the content -- and then be able to post specifically to that group.Drupal Organic Groups gets close, but sort of misses the mark -- I don't want people to have join a group, I just want them to see content I've targeted to them when they come to my page on this hypothetical site. Also Drupal's permissions system seems sort of disjointed -- various plugins can too easily collide with each other's customized permissions schemes. (Caveat: this based on reading, not implementation, so maybe it can be done.)Also -- I want this to be something I can run on a server I own. I don't want to put content I care about in the cloud.This idea has been kicking around in my head for a long time now. If anyone knows of a CMS that lets you do this, I'd be interested. Someday (like when I've finished with grad school?) maybe I'll scratch this itch... |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | bufferout: I think the first point to realise is that there's a huge scope as far as potential CMS functionality is concerned.At one end of the market are the big enterprise level CMSs complete with workflow, permission groups, asset management, etc.At our end we've created a hosted solution (http://www.cushycms.com) that takes 2 minutes to install and no training, etc.Personally it always amaze me how difficult most CMSs are to use. The fundamental point of them is to allow non-technical people to edit content.The other problem we've tried to tackle is that it can often take days for a developer to implement/customize a CMS.Sure we've sacrificed some functionality (editors can't add pages) but we felt it made sense to start with base of easy/fast and build from there. |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | zach: Assuming the following:- A small percentage of internet users potentially interested in your site will find it.- A small percentage of those who come to your site will become regular users and create content.- A small percentage of those who create content will account for most of the site's content.I presume you want to find those people in the last category fast -- and you probably don't have the resources to let the funnel above just work.So find them, cajole them, steal them, hire them, reward them, make the site engaging for them -- basically don't sweat the content side for a while until you have enough content to break a sweat over.You really are creating two sites. One for consumers, the second for creators. The better the consumer site is at being a content site, the more traffic you get. The more features the creator site offers for user-rewarding social interaction, the more content you get.Look at how Yelp rewards their frequent users in every detail, using techniques that are not unfamiliar to game designers. Check out Amy Jo Kim's explications of this topic:
http://www.slideshare.net/amyjokim/putting-the-fun-in-functi...
http://www.oreillynet.com/conferences/blog/2006/03/how_game_...The best thing about getting highly active (you could say passionate) users is that they become champions for your site and bring it up in other contexts, not just blogs but in workplaces, among friends with similar interests and other potential champions.But my most practical tip would be to mine existing interest groups via messageboards and labor to introduce their champions to your site. You see this on Yelp in how vegans and vegetarians are very active users. You can do the same thing for people who know about an entire vertical business segment of their area -- they've visited every ham radio store, every bookstore, every coffeehouse, every diabetic food store, whatever. People who already, mentally, have a list of feedback they want to ask. It's a bit more challenging than reviews, maybe, because people more often have lots of opinions to give than questions to ask. So you may have to find some way around that, say to organize campaigns for active users to create and join to ask en masse about some issue they care about.I hope for the best with your launch -- congratulations. |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | lux: I make a CMS and sell it for a living (we also have an open source version). I'll be the first to say we're nowhere near 100% there, and won't be for a long time.CMS is a bit vague because it encompasses so many areas that overlap, so one product is inherently not going to excel at all of them. These areas include:- Traditional content management
- Document management
- Workflow/notifications
- Revision control
- Access control/restrictions
- Website editing
- Website layouts
- Website features (forum, search, blog, events, member registration, ad infinitum)
- Website building framework for custom developmentThe core of a web CMS is just a framework (or in traditional CMS-speak, a content server...), then come the apps that each handle different components of the site (blog, events, etc), followed by one of those apps which handles the actual content management itself which tends to encompass the rest of the above points.As you can see, this is a lot for a single app to do and do well. Some of these aren't needed for smaller sites, but the same CMS that works well for those then won't work well for larger ones. And the more features a CMS has, the less it retains of the simplicity that made it appeal to the smaller sites.Personally, these days I use our CMS as the framework that underlies the SaaS software I'm building for my other startup, so that's where my focus has been. So for at least the next while, the biggest changes in our CMS are likely simply to be framework-level things to save development time or improve performance and things like that. But again, those only benefit me and those users using it as a framework, not those who just need a simple web page editor.In short, CMS fails because it tries to be everything to everyone. Blogging software overtook it in popularity because it did exactly the opposite. Now most blogging software is following the same path and becoming bloated CMSes... Kinda funny to watch actually :) |
How would you launch a Yelp-like site? | apsurd: I think there are a lot of small businesses that still don't have websites. Or they have static, aging websites simply because they don't have the resources to commit to their internet venture.My startup is working on getting businesses online, from the ground up in a simplistic yet proactive "learn as you go" type approach.Anyway the point is your service is very useful to businesses because it generates content FOR them. When businesses get started online, generally all they want is EXPOSURE. They ask things like "how do i get on google", how do i get "clicks", "who do i pay to get customers" ...
Your service allows greater exposure through organic content growth...I would suggest you relate this to small business who may or may not have a website. Tell them to encourage existing customers to use your service. Their online exposure will grow and its a win/win. Prepare quick benefit packages and "getting started" guides for businesses. Encourage THEM to do the promoting and since it is in their best interest, it just might yield results. |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | seldo: There's certainly a lot of half-bakery out there in CMS land, but as others have said you can't "solve" content management any more than you can come up with a single standard size for books and publish all books that way. All content is different, and the way it's produced is different.I think there is a market for componentized solutions to CMS -- solve one portion of the problem, but solve it really well. This is basically what drupal is trying to do but I would sooner eat my foot than configure drupal.So, hey, get cracking on that awesome new CMS of yours! :-) |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | jasonlbaptiste: I'd personally say The Friday After Next just sneaks into the top ten. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | code_devil: Dare I say "Italian Job", the guy who hacks into the Traffic System. I think they said in the movie that napster was his idea, but someone stole it while he was sleeping. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | tlrobinson: On the documentary side of things (all of which are available free/legally online):1. "Code Rush", documentary about Netscape open sourcing Mozilla.http://www.viddler.com/explore/coderush/videos/1/2. "Revolution OS" was a pretty interesting documentary on Linux and the free software movement.http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7707585592627775409&...3. "Freedom Downtime", a documentary about Kevin Mitnick. There's also "Track Down", but that's more of a fictional portrayal loosely based on him.http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6746139755329108302... |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | henning: Maybe the best approach is to do as Ruby on Rails did -- do something real, and then create your tool/infrastructure around/in reaction to that (in Rails' case, it was Basecamp and subsequent applications, as well as contributions by other working practitioners -- not stuffy people sitting on committees writing specs instead of applications that people use).So, in order to make a CMS, you ought to have some content to manage. Make your CMS really, really good at managing that particular collection of bits you care about so dearly without making things complicated. That seems like a good strategy to me. Yes? No?To answer your question directly, if you think you can create some useful software that scratches your itch in a novel way (slightly novel is more than sufficient), by all means work on it, and post a follow up here so we can try it out! :) |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | niels_olson: Previous commenters have demonstrated a recurrent theme, that the CMS problem is "huge" and "far from solved".But what you must understand is that almost every use case you come across is a niche market. It's a huge number of medium-to-small problems with medium-to-small user sets. A medical school has different needs than a law school and a law firm has different needs yet again, as do hospitals, corporations, the GAO, the White House, etc, etc.One huge value someone could add would be to develop bridges between the user databases. Right now we use Joomla, Wordpress, and MediaWiki. We are fortunate (sort of) in that we have a university's LDAP server to provide user authentication, we just fetch roles out of there, and we really only need logins for the Joomla app. But it would be great if someone could come up with an uber-site authentication system with plugins for the different CMS systems and authentication systems.LDAP-----\......................../----Wordpressgmail------\...................../-----JoomlaopenID----->uber-auth>-------mediawikiyahoo-----/.....................\-----generic for your-new-appJoomla---/.........................\----.htaccessone bridge, lots of plugins for both sides of the bridge. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | tlrobinson: Mission: Impossible (the first one, not so much the others) |
Why would anyone go for ASP.NET ? | jonnycoder: I support many internal ASP.NET apps at Intel because our internal employee services applications started as classic asp/com on oracle db over 13 years ago. ASP.NET is really great if designed/written properly. Like others have said, once you are a .NET shop it's easy to find .NET talent. I'm currently working on our LMS which is Java/JBoss and I've learned to respect .NET, Java, LAMP, Rails and Python. I have web.py and django on my todo list for building some fun personal apps. Hope this helps give you perspective. |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | jsdalton: I'm not sure how you define a "solved problem." Do you have an example? When it comes to end-user software applications, I can't think of any problem that has been solved categorically (contact management, calendaring, browsers, word processing, spreadhseets).That's why I would take the other comments in this thread with a grain of salt. True, nobody has solved content management -- BUT, the leading solutions have put in a ton of work to solve vast swaths of the problem space even if they haven't nailed the whole thing.Wordpress, for example, while not the most architecturally elegant piece of software in the world, is an incredibly rich, powerful, and useable content management system. The plugin system enables a developer to extend the application in any number of directions, while the administrative toolset is sleek and sophisticated yet easy enough for hundreds of thousands of bloggers to use.Okay, I didn't mean to turn this is into an ad for Wordpress (which I've used as a CMS on several projects, btw). My point is simply that your CMS would have to get very far advanced before it even reached the terrain where the problems that Wordpress has not solved lie.I don't mean to discourage you in your project, but simply to point out the road might be more difficult than others make it appear. As a consolation here are a few areas that I haven't (in my own limited experience anyway) seen many CMSs nail effectively:* Content versioning* User commenting features (threaded commenting, ratings, user management/ownership of comments -- basically disqus's whole business is built on this lacking)* Snippet management (tools to manage little copy snippets etc., not just pages/posts)I'd be curious if anyone else had any specific features they felt were part of the "unsolved" problem set. |
Do we need to have payroll in C-Corp ? | Shamiq: I remember reading about a required minimum salary for officers, so...Where are the tax accountants? |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | nshah: CMS is definitely an NP-hard kind of problem... no matter how many features a CMS has, end users will always find something lacking...One of the other issues I have found with CMS is that the software does not evolve as fast as the business requirements... so good luck!!! |
Review my site - RepSheet.com - Look up your elected representatives | aresant: My two cents - that name is fantastic. Has PR appeal all over it. This sounds like a brilliant strategy, good luck. |
Do we need to have payroll in C-Corp ? | andrewljohnson: No, you don't. I have a C Corp and and no FTEs - just contractors - including myself. We're incorporated in California. I set up the company with legal counsel, at considerable (though thankfully deferred :)) expense. Both my lawyer and banker agree I don't have to have any employees.I don't know about paying dividends - doesn't capital gains get taxed quite heavily? I think the normal route is to pay everyone as a contractor and let them sort out their own taxes.You'll just need to send 1099s to all your contractors - and if you use special electronic payments through a bank like Wells Fargo, that'll take a lot of hassle out of it all. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | vidioradeo: Maybe not so much hacker, but let me suggest Slacker. |
Do we need to have payroll in C-Corp ? | aaroneous: Payroll doesn't have to be complicated - through our bank (Bank of America) we have an automated payroll system that handles everything, including all the tax forms and it is free (since we meet some threshold of employees w/ direct deposit at BofA). |
Do we need to have payroll in C-Corp ? | Zarathu: No. I own a C-Corp with three equal shareholders.In Texas, you need to decide on the frequency of dividend distribution. We distribute on the 1st of every month. That's all you need.You also need to have documented shareholder meetings and so forth, but I'm digressing. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | michaelneale: The Devil Wears PradaIts about fashion, but I see a lot of parallels with fashions in software coming and going and returning. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | gravitycop: Dup. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=396120Ask HN: What's a modern equivalent of the 80's "War Games" movie?4 points by gur 45 days ago | 5 comments | flag |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | ciscoriordan: Primer - Ultra low budget film about a couple of engineers who accidentally invent a time machine in their garage while working on a startup.Blow - Not really a hacker movie, but it's rags-to-riches-to-rags storyline should be interesting to a lot of entrepreneurs.Day of the Jackal - Not a hacker movie either, but the main character's methodical preparation for an assassination will appeal to a lot of hackers.The Net - A pretty good thriller about a hacker who has her identity stolen in a big conspiracy.Fat Man and Little Boy - Slow but well done movie about the Manhattan Project. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | stevedekorte: TRON |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | fergie: Content management is definately the way forward for any website that contains a significant mass of editorial content.The challenge in choosing a content managment system (CMS) is that it is typical example of 'enterprise software' (in my head I am saying 'enterprise' in a silly voice and rolling my eyes), and therefore attracts a high proportion of expensive, yet functionally unimpressive offerings.As somebody who has been around the block a bit with several CMSs, from high priced bespoke packages, to completely homegrown, to big name MeToo clones, I can tell you that in terms of functionalty there are 4 systems which lead the pack, and these are all open source. They are: Drupal, Joomla, Plone and Mediawiki.However, (and this is where it gets interesting) the solutions named above are often ruled out in the early stages of procurement precisely because they are open source. Want to actually pay for a CMS system? The field for proprietary CMSs is wide open, and there is no reason why another competitor cannot break through. |
Payment options for online services? | cnu: Amazon Flexible Payment System? - http://aws.amazon.com/fps/ |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | mct: Perhaps it's more of a good "science movie" than a good "hacker movie", but I adore Carl Sagan's Contact. I get chills whenever I watch the scene where the signal is first detected. |
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