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Do you trademark your brand / app name / business? | mtkd: You absolutely need to do this.If cost is an issue - you can file a single application in a couple of classes in your local country, then broaden it out when funds allow until you cover the main countries you plan to operate.At the company I work for at the moment, we filed globally from very early on (probably cost £100k or something and takes a year or so), but every time we have an issue with a fraudulent domain name registration or something, we can recover it in days.Plus you can capitalise this as an asset, it's not an expense, so there are no downsides to it.I can recommend a specialist firm like Williams Powell (http://www.williamspowell.com) in the UK. |
Do you trademark your brand / app name / business? | DocSavage: I filed our name myself for the bare minimum filing fee ($275 now). I think it's useful to put your stake in the ground and it increases the liability for those who violate your trademark. I went the cheap route because I felt if I could get it approved by the USPTO myself, it's a done deal. In the case of patents, how you formulate the claims has a major impact on how defendable your patent will be -- so pays to get some expert eyes. |
Review my startup, After the Deadline - Proofreading Plugin for Wordpress, TinyMCE, etc. | nfriedly: I liked the cliche explanation. I don't do all that much writing, but I might run some of my homework through this before turning it in. |
Why are you proud of your species? | jackzombie: I think that we should try to eliminate the distinction between artistic works and technological/scientific works. They should both go hand in hand. The word technology comes from the Greek word techne which roughly translates to art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techne |
Why are you proud of your species? | cmars232: We have laughter, fire, art, lovemaking and the best tools around. |
Do you trademark your brand / app name / business? | prawn: If you're a sole developer or small team of friends, don't bother until money is rolling in. First priority (over lawyers, accountants and whatever else) is just getting something up and running. Invest too hard early and if you abandon the project, you've wasted more than necessary. |
Why are you proud of your species? | gills: Humanity has survived long enough to produce me. Yeehaw. |
Managing Two Contracts | nfriedly: Here's an idea that I don't think anybody else has suggested: find another developer to help with the first contract. You can't be the only Actionscript 2 expert out there.I'm not sure this is the best solution, but I think it's better than leaving them hanging. |
Why are you proud of your species? | ErrantX: I find pur ability to achieve and improve the most amazing.I could single out a list of things ot be hugely proud of as a species: but that belittles (not deliberately) all of the other achievments (especially the ones in the past we have forgotten or ignore).The capacity of humanity always amazes me (and, conversely, it saddens me to see so many people waste it). |
Why are you proud of your species? | c1sc0: Boiling water to make tea (East); brewing and fermentation of wheat to make beer (West); the realization that human health begins with clean water. In more recent times: the LifeStraw. |
Review my startup, After the Deadline - Proofreading Plugin for Wordpress, TinyMCE, etc. | ggruschow: I pasted in a few pages of my writing from one of my sites into your http://polishmywriting.com and clicked "Polish."It didn't appear to do anything.Apparently it didn't find anything wrong with any page except one that contained the word "infuriating", which it felt was spelled incorrectly. I think that's irony. Also, Oxford disagrees: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/infuriate?view=ukSo back to the first point, if you don't find anything wrong with my text after processing it, I'd recommend putting up a note like "Looks good to me" or some sort of indicator that something happened rather than the button just being broken. |
Managing Two Contracts | Vandy_Travis: I've been there. It's a good place to be. If you have other (trusted) coders that you know, see if any of them are willing to take the work from job 1 at the going rate ($19/ hr). Ethically, I believe you can send the work to them (and they might be grateful, given the economy...) Additionally, be sure to bill for the hours that you spend spec'ing the work to your subcontractor (these will be few and far between -- but most companies would be willing to pay to have stuff completed sooner).If you don't have trusted colleagues (and/or cannot find someone working for $19/ hr), I'd start looking for them. I recommend trying out oDesk (outsourcing). As long as you have decent specs, they can crank out work quickly for you. Of course, you will still need to rewrite a bunch of their stuff (most don't have great code quality, IME), but you bill that out as well.This leaves you time for the real money making project.The big problem is the on-site requirement. After working with them for 5 weeks, you should have some trust karma built. Talk with your manager, explain that it is necessary for you to work from home for the remainder of the project. Tell them that you need to work with other programmers in order to finish in a more reasonable amount of time. A decent company will agree. |
Review my startup, After the Deadline - Proofreading Plugin for Wordpress, TinyMCE, etc. | aston: Pedantic (but so's your product): The caret that indicates an insertion goes underneath the baseline of the text, not above it.http://www.colorado.edu/Publications/styleguide/symbols.html |
Review my startup, After the Deadline - Proofreading Plugin for Wordpress, TinyMCE, etc. | jbrun: Hi,Looks really good. I have recommended www.polishmywriting.com to my team before. We would probably be interested in integrating this in our ROR app, as we do a lot of writing. I just put it up on my blog and it does the trick. It did freeze up when I clicked on explain a passive voice (Safari 4).20$ a month for 5 users is ok if all 5 users are intensive users; but, for example, our blog has two regular users and then 2-3 people who blog twice a month. So, what I am trying to say is the pricing structure might need to be tweaked.Otherwise, keep up the good work. How about a French version? Antidote has great software, but no web version.Cheers,Jonathan |
Do you trademark your brand / app name / business? | quizbiz: What's in a name? |
Any users of SimpleCDN? | bseker: I've tried using SimpleCDN. They are cheap and probably for a reason. I was going to use about 10-15Mbps, for tiny files, so it seemed like a cheap solution to my bandwidth problem.
- First problem, they didn't let me use the whole $15, even though it was enough for me for more than a day. They locked my account in a few hours, without notice.
- My sites were down all night long. There is no phone number to reach support. I e-mailed them in the morning. They got back to me 5 hrs later. Asking for money and saying I would have used up my balance if they kept the site up. What is the point of giving $15, if they don't let you use it?
- Even though I already had $13 of my credit for the evaluation period. I paid an extra $25, they opened my account.
- Then 5 hrs later, they shut down my account again, without notice. Citing terms of service. I e-mailed again. We'll see when they get back.Although price is really cheap, I don't think I will ever use simplecdn again. I will try to get my $25 back. I still have $37 in my account. |
What motivates you to keep working despite government bailouts/theft | wehriam: John Galt is a fictional character. He lives in an oversimplified world where the virtue of selfishness outweighs the rest of humanity's concerns.You (and anyone you know who you might move to Colorado or whatever) don't have the capacity to stop the motor of the world. And if you live in the United States today, you are among the least tethered, in economic terms, of any person who has ever lived.The sad reality is that we're all in this together. It's part of the social contract. Government pays for roads and public schools and national defense. If you've never taken advantage of these services and civilization has been built on your back, clearly you've been wronged. Otherwise, grow up. The world is bigger than you.I suggest you find something you like to do and learn to contribute. And stop quoting Ayn Rand, it makes you sound like an idiot. |
What have you learned from Hacker News? | mixmax: I learned to program :-)I've always been curious and somewhat technically inclined, but also the guy that would put on a tie (I can actually do three different tieknots and a bowtie...) and go out and swing my arms madly around until someone pitied me enough to invest in or buy whatever I happened to be selling at the time. Worked pretty well too.Then I started coming here, and realised that there was so much I didn't know, and that if I could learn it I would have a much easier time creating good products. Instead of the whole arm-swinging business to convince someone to program something for me I could just learn how to do it myself!And so I did. And I realised that I should have done so ten years ago.So thanks a lot, and sorry for all the silly questions. |
What motivates you to keep working despite government bailouts/theft | noonespecial: We each have as much power to stop the motor as we have to fix it. When it comes right down to it, politicians have surprisingly little say in how things turn out.They can make up dollars till the cows come home to revalue the wealth they think they have, but they can't make any more of it. We can.Given the choice to go hide in Colorado or actually try to fix this crap, I'm picking the latter. I liked Atlas Shrugged, but it was, in the end, 1500 pages of "I'm taking my ball and going home". |
What have you learned from Hacker News? | matthewer: I learned I was part of a community of people like myself, and that the only thing that matters here is what you can create and how dedicated you are to doing it. |
What have you learned from Hacker News? | zitterbewegung: A great deal of information about running a startup. Also the latest things on the web. |
What have you learned from Hacker News? | sofal: I've learned a lot about the nature of opinions. There are as many ways to approach a subject as there are people. I've read several comment threads where people were countering each other and yet I couldn't help but upmod both sides because of the excellent points that each side made. It's refreshing to see the different but valid perspectives. It adds color and breadth to understanding. It's also a tad bit intimidating knowing that no matter what I think, some smart person out there can poke holes in it if I try to generalize.I've also learned to react to others' opinions in a more thoughtful and objective manner. The culture here encourages me to consider how people may interpret what I say. People here will listen to you if you speak calmly and rationally, even if you're misguided.It's one thing to read comments written by people who know more about a subject than I do. It's quite another thing to read comments that are crafted with more emotional maturity and wisdom than I would have. That kind of experience just does not happen to me on other social news sites, and it is why I keep coming back here. |
What have you learned from Hacker News? | Shamiq: I've learned how incredibly efficient I can be at wasting time and wiling away hours when I don't want to work.It's been a real eye-opener for me. |
What have you learned from Hacker News? | TomOfTTB: I’ve learned that I need community more than I thought I did.I have a blog, I get comments and e-mails on that blog. But what I’ve started to realize is that there’s a "blogger penalty" to the conversations I can have there. No matter how hard I try to make people comfortable in saying anything to me the fact that it’s my blog still puts me in a perceived higher position in the conversation.What Hacker News does for me is to give me an environment to debate where everyone is on equal ground. Sure there are karma points but unless you go out of your way to look for them you won’t know who is at what level. That puts the focus on ideas more than people and that is a great thing.I still enjoy my blog and still post longer pieces to it. But I don’t know what I’d do without HN at this point. |
What have you learned from Hacker News? | paulgb: I've learned about the Arduino, and bought one for myself. Just last night, I learned that an LED can be used as a photodiode. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447770I'm also participating in "HN Reads SICP", a SICP book group that started on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=428248I've also attended three events that I probably would not have heard of without HN. |
What have you learned from Hacker News? | jacoblyles: I don't know yet. Certainly, it has given me a broader view of the world of computer science, which is edifying and has allowed me to speak intelligently with recruiters. It is also motivating me to do risky things (left a good job in finance to go back to grad school for CS, applying to Y Combinator this summer). Mostly, it has taught me that I am easily influenced by people I admire, and people I admire include entrepreneurs, scientists, and engineers.Basically, I am what your children will become if you allow them to read too much sci fi growing up. |
What have you learned from Hacker News? | lionhearted: Gained a base ability to discuss some interesting subjects I had no familiarity with before. Picked up a number of various tips, tricks, and best practices. Some really intelligent commentators that consistently offered interesting thinking points - pg, unalone, and patio11 are 3 of my favorites.But if I'm to be really, truly honest with myself - Hacker News is entertainment for me, masquerading as productive time. When I focus and read a novel or a piece of nonfiction or a scientific paper, I get a hell of a lot more long term, practical gain than I do reading HN. For quite a while, I thought HN was a great use of time. It is - but it's cooldown/relaxation time, and I won't be fooled into thinking otherwise again. |
What have you learned from Hacker News? | jonnycoder: I've learned there are a lot of people out there that think the same way I do. For example, I agree with most of the comments on this thread. I've also learned to get off my ass and start making frequent posts to my own blog and not being afraid of sharing it with the community. |
Do you trademark your brand / app name / business? | lionhearted: In the USA, you can use (TM) without any filing as long as no one else has a claim to your mark. You need to pay and do the filing process for a Registered Trademark, which carries a bit extra weight and allows you to use (R). (TM) is probably fine, and in my opinion - more recognizable. The (R) is good if you're a bit smaller and competitors might consider for gunning for you/misrepresenting.For instance, Salesforce.com has the (R) going on:
http://salesforce.comGmail is doing the (TM):
http://mail.google.comMy rough intuition is that the bigger you are, the better slapping (TM) on works, even if you're registered. Both (R) and (TM) add credibility, but I think the (R) works better as deterrent to somewhat savvy competitors, whereas the (TM) might be more recognized by consumers. Most people know that TM is trademark, and don't know what (R) means. |
Why do I always want to use an ordered dictionary? | hbien: Here's a library for it in Python: http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/odict.html |
Why do I always want to use an ordered dictionary? | gills: I usually want that when what I really need is ordering but for some reason I want key-based/random access to the values.I think Ruby added this recently. I'm not using it yet. A crappy hack can just dump the next/prev key into the value, plus a pointer to the first, and drop them all in a hash. It's not really pretty, but would give you ordering if you want it. Another hack is to store just the keys in a sorted list and keep the values in the hash (but this is equally inelegant to the list+hash hack and it has the same maintenance overhead).I think most of the ordered-hashes are implemented with something like list pointers between the hash keys, but then again I haven't looked too closely under that kimono.Edit: trees are also a good compromise. |
What have you learned from Hacker News? | cake: I learned there is a place where I can find smart and insightful articles mostly about computer science but also humanity in general, whereas most of the Internet is about silly stuff (yes digg I'm talking to you !) |
What have you learned from Hacker News? | prateekdayal: I have learnt that there are a lot of bootstrappers and its not that hard to make a profitable business :) |
Why do I always want to use an ordered dictionary? | Tichy: Java has TreeMap for that purpose. |
What have you learned from Hacker News? | oscardelben: I've learned who hackers are and what they do/like. There is often a misconception about what great programmers do and this site helps a lot to know and eventually join the hackers community (if it can be called like this). |
Why do I always want to use an ordered dictionary? | dhotson: Ruby 1.9 makes Hash ordered by default.The major reason I care about it is that when loading data from yaml files the key order doesn't get messed up. In ruby 1.8 the order got messed up.So yeah.. use ruby 1.9 :) |
Review my startup, After the Deadline - Proofreading Plugin for Wordpress, TinyMCE, etc. | mkuhn: I don't have an actual blog to test it, but I truly like the idea.One question though, are you planing to support hosted blogging platforms like Blogger? I think that could drastically expand the circle of your potential customers. |
What have you learned from Hacker News? | tristian: Through HN I have learnt that sophisticated discussion with a large number of participants is achievable. Which, up until this point, is something that I didn't really consider to be possible. Certainly not over a long term.Moreover the site doesn't require an oppressive method of control to keep the conversation in line. It is as much the communities common virtue as it is the technical merits of pg's system which brings that about. |
easy resources for learning Python? | mkuhn: I can recommend "Think Python: How to think like a Computer Scientist". It's free but can also be purchased (at least soon). It really starts with the basics but if you already know those you can skip them. http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkpython.htmlAlso I can recommend Dive Into Python: http://www.diveintopython.org/ |
easy resources for learning Python? | vladimir: I think Python documentation is a great resource for learning it. |
easy resources for learning Python? | whatusername: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=378424
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=439822
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=121779Also what mkuhn said - ThinkPython and Dive into Python are both great books. |
easy resources for learning Python? | known: http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_python.html is a good source |
easy resources for learning Python? | manvsmachine: I addition to books, I recommend getting an account with Google App Engine, which uses Python as its de facto language IIRC. You might not ever use the platform itself again, but it would provide a sandbox to play around in (assuming you don't already have a server of your own). |
Why do I always want to use an ordered dictionary? | lacker: Often, an algorithm that requires iteration in a certain order is a sign that you are keeping information implicitly in the ordering instead of explicitly in a more appropriate data structure. You also may be trying to pack lots of unrelated functionality into a single object when multiple objects would serve better.But it's hard to say without better examples, and there are times when you do want order and lookup. Can you give a couple situations where you want ordered dictionaries? |
easy resources for learning Python? | quantumhobbit: Pick a project and just start coding. The Python documentation is good enough that you should be able to teach yourself as you go. A coding contest site like Project Euler is a good source of quick problems to hone your skills on. Whenever you run into a tricky situation run a google search on it and you'll be surprised how often the solution is built into python. |
What motivates you to keep working despite government bailout/theft | jupiter: While I can perfectly understand you I'd suppose that the older generation also spent some of the money for your health, education, security and relatively carefree childhood. Many of them were in an undoubtedly more desperate situation during and after WWII than we are today. They pulled up their sleeves and ... you know the rest. |
What motivates you to keep working despite government bailout/theft | david927: Well, one reason I keep going is that I'm not you and I don't have 15 years of living expenses. I have a wife and three-year-old girl who depend on me. I still have value in my house, even at deflated prices; it makes no sense for me to walk away from it. With my education and skill set, I can probably weather the storm as merely underpaid and underemployed. As long as I can put food on the table and keep the roof over our heads, I'll be happy.> The older generations are gonna want us to work extra hard to pay off their debtI agree, but what hasn't played a role in the prognosis for the future is technology. Slavery used to be the only resource leverage factor. But for the last two hundred years we've had technology as well. How many "unserviced people" (people who work but are not really paid, such as slaves or machines) x does it take to do the work of y? The further we push technology, the higher we can push that x:y ratio. So, if you look at it, at current ratios, we're screwed. But if we can really push technology, we might pull out of this ok. It's not fair that we should have to, but those are our cards.And I don't want to be one of the millions of people telling you what to do, but in a similar situation to you, I would take everything and go someplace stable, safe and quiet, such as Switzerland, and keep things liquid and diverse, such as gold, silver, Singapore Dollars, Swiss Francs. I would absolutely get out. My wife's grandmother is Czech, and she was very rich before she had it all taken away in the 40's. It's not an uncommon story in such times, and such times are coming again. Get out; get safe. |
What motivates you to keep working despite government bailout/theft | RobGR: It may be impossible to preserve much savings through the current and coming crisis.A couple of years ago I went on a binge and read every book about the South Sea Bubble and other aspects of financial disasters that I could find. A story that stuck in my head was of a British magistrate who fought mightly against the South Sea Bubble, publishing pamphlets, launching investigations, militating in the streets and before Parlament, etc. He tried to move all his money into land, but the general inflation of the bubble caused land prices to explode, and the cost of maintance and taxes also rose; as the bubble churned on year after year and kept failing his predictions of it being about to collapse, he eventually declared that "if the world has gone mad one must at some point go with it", gave up, and put all his money into stock. Then it crashed.I've been thinking residential real estate was abotu to crash since 1999. If I had tried to speculate on that in anyway, I would have lost year after year before the present contraction. Bubbles being figments of crowd psychology, they can go on as long as the participants want.But, it is a bad idea to give up in disgust and walk away. While your money may not survive the next five years, business connections and experience and even whole businesses probably will. Like a woman trying to re-enter the workforce after spending some years raising children, it can be hard to re-start, so I suspect there is little advantage to being a hermit somewhere for a while. Unless you are retiring anyway.That said, there is no reason not to hold long memories against the individuals who are doing the most damage in this nonsense, both in business and in politics. |
Why do I always want to use an ordered dictionary? | makecheck: As for whether or not the data structure exists, it does. :) The std::map in C++ is a sorted dictionary, for instance.But it can be uncommon to require this, usually for two reasons. One, the data set may be huge. And two, much of your code may not even "care" if the data is sorted. In either of those cases, if automatic sorting occurs, a lot of compute time may be wasted for no net benefit. (A solution is to have data sorted "on demand" within the code that actually cares about sort order.) |
Do you trademark your brand / app name / business? | phillian: I work as an IP paralegal by day (when not fiendishly working on my own coding projects at night).My one recommendation is that if you are cost conscious, send your IP projects (copyright, patent, trademark) to a boutique or, as we call them, a 'mill'. Having worked in both boutique and large conglomerate firm settings, I can attest to the fact boutiques are far more organized and, because their overhead is so much less, far less expensive.W/r/t at what point in your development cycle you should register the TM, I have seen the spectrum of very early to very late filings. While in one instance a late-stage filing resulted in more similar marks out there (and the class claims for goods/ services had to be much more limited) I have not yet seen it be detrimental to getting registered eventually.On the other hand, small start-ups (both net based and brick-and-mortar) account for a disproporionate number of the applications we have to let go abandoned due to client request or nonpayment. |
how do you sync your software's data? | hbien: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/Sy... is pretty helpful |
Site for recent CS grads (jobs)? | keefe: I'm a few years out of being a recent CS grad and I'm assuming you have checked the normal ones like dice.com . I'm posting to encourage you to apply to any job that you find interesting, even ones for senior developers and particularly those at startups. You probably won't get the job/pay in those senior listings, but if you are a first class programmer and can prove it then the companies that are looking for developer's may have work for you, especially if they can get you at a discount. My startup (not a founder, just my employer) recently filled such a position with a new college graduate partly due to cost considerations. If you're not a first rate programmer, you should learn this and build a portfolio to prove it. That could be just an SVN repository you put code fragments into and send out as a URL in your cover letter. If you need any further resources on this, I can provide some for you. |
How to monetize 1.3 million page views? | apgwoz: I think your site's layout is not really great for ad placement, which is why that failed. It's very much a brochure like layout that you'd see for businesses. Contrast this with http://net.tutsplus.com/ where it's "blog" like, but still a great format for presenting tutorials. If you're getting 1.3 million page views, you're almost certainly ranking high in search results, which is great, because those are the people who are exploring and clicking on ads. Check out what some of the other sites in your genre are doing, I bet they optimize their design for making money with ads. |
How to monetize 1.3 million page views? | yequalsx: I have thought about doing something similar but with mathematics. My suggestion would be to package up various tutorials into a course. Instead of static pages I would add videos using Camtasia or Captivate. There are lots of colleges and universities that sell courses on this stuff and you could sell such courses for a lot cheaper. |
How to monetize 1.3 million page views? | earl: I'd bet that if you changed your site a bit you could get decent ecpms -- maybe even in the $6-$8 range. Also, links to amazon / whoever sells the software. If you want to talk more, hit me up over email. |
How to monetize 1.3 million page views? | aristus: Your tutorials are one screenshot per page.... so I'd guess that your pv per visit is high but it's fluff traffic. No one is going to abandon the "slideshow" to click on ads. Your best points to put ads are at the end or near the begining of the process of viewing a tutorial. Consider taking the pv hit and putting the whole tutorial on one page.You say your audience is mostly people at home, learning. Maybe you can advertise for rentacoder (eg "make money working with Access!") or similar services.Think about what other computer-related problems someone in that situation might have, like anti-virus, certification, jobs.Hmm. reading back these options sound kind of sleazy.
You could experiment with a tip jar as well. Don't write off display ads either -- give them an honest try for a couple of months. |
How to monetize 1.3 million page views? | tstegart: What about something that combines making money with instruction? For example, you could add anothger page after each big section where you put a list of links to other helpful tutorials/blogs/official websites, helpful books, etc.I really think your opportunity lies in putting something at the end of your tutorials. It means you don't have to do a site redesign. Just stick another page at the end, which users get to when they click next. and then you sell something.I think Amazon can be key. People are looking to learn. That means some of them will be open to buying a book about it. You appear to be an expert in many of these programs, and people will gladly take a recommendation from you about what books are good on which particular subjects.I'm not saying randomly list books, I'm saying go get them from the library, read them, and actually list what you think are the top three tutorials for each subject you have on your site. If you're upfront somewhere on the site that you earn money from Amazon commissions, I know people don't mind it. |
How to monetize 1.3 million page views? | josefresco: I would sell other e-learning products. Like the 'video professor'. Also, you could run ads in between slides, which might get you a higher CTR than alongside.Or start running AdSense, and get some sort of baseline for private ad deals. |
Why do I always want to use an ordered dictionary? | joe_the_user: Seems totally reasonable. The rise of Ruby shows that modern languages should optimize for programmer efficiency first and speed second.Modern scripting languages have several data structures: mostly arrays, hashes and strings. But it is a hassle move data between them.The next language should only have one, the ordered dictionary.x = [],
x << "hi" # 1=>"hi",
x["seven"]=6 # 1=>"hi", "seven"=>6,Etc |
How to monetize 1.3 million page views? | JeremyChase: Chris,A lot of people have suggested an Amazon affiliate situation, and unless my assumptions are wrong it just won't pay. The following is a copy/paste from a quick spreadsheet assuming some basic information. Amazon gives affiliates 4% of a standard sale, I assumed a CTR of 1% (which I think is very generous), I guessed a 2% conversion rate, and an average sale of $45.You can see that your monthly take will still be quite low.Traffic 1300000
CTR 1%
Delivered 13000
Conversion rate 2%
Converted 260
Avg Sale $45
Your cut/sale $1.8
Your take $468It is entirely possible that your CTR would be higher, but I tend to think not.You said that with Adsense you only earned $400 in a month, which means you were getting a $0.30 CPM. This is pretty low, and even in this ad market I think you should be able to pull off $1.50 or more. An Ad network would help you do that, and your traffic is high enough that they would be willing to talk to you. Of course this means ads on the site.This is what I would do:
* Add a forum; with your traffic I think you could have a community discussing issues pretty quickly. I would probably do this as a sister site given your niche name. Of course this 'only' increases your pageviews.
* Optimize the site for ads, forget Adsense, and work with the ad networks. Better still, try to beat down doors of people who might want to advertise directly.
* Despite the small payoff I do like the idea of selling books related to the topic and would try it. I tend to like the idea of dealing directly with a specific publisher however; your cut will likely be better.
* I like the idea of premium content as well. I despise sites that show you only part of a solution, but your site shows that you have enough taste to do this in a way that users would embrace.Good luck,
Jer |
What advice do you have for a first time blogger? | teej: On having an engaging blog:1. Be topical. The best blogs in my feed reader stick to broad-ish topics I'm interested in. i.e. Rails, Package Design, App Reviews.2. Be consistent (frequency). This is simple to understand, difficult to execute. Find a schedule and stick to it.3. Be consistent (structure). Once you've found a blogging style that suits you, stick to 1-2 styles (perhaps a short-form and a long-form). 37signals SvN lost it's spot in my feed reader for mixing snippets, quotes, long insights, and code-heavy posts together.4. Quality over quantity. The blogs I respect the most are the ones who have thought out, relevant posts - even if they only come once a month.On building a community:- Look to see what Seth Godin & Tim Ferris have done to engage their blog readers beyond the comments.- Remember that blogging is still very much a broadcast medium. Don't expect more than 1% of your readers to engage you on any particular level. |
Site for recent CS grads (jobs)? | mpfefferle: This is the only method that's worked for me:
1. Comb the job boards for interesting looking positions. Don't worry about being qualified yet.
2. Find the name and location of the hiring manager.
3. Write a personalized cover letter to that manager and tell them that you're interested. If you're not qualified for the position as advertised, tell them that you'd be interested in something similar. Sell yourself to them.
4. (This one's important) SNAIL MAIL your resume and cover letter in an 8.5 x 11 envelope.The last one will make you stand out and tell them that you're really interested and not just spamming them. |
What advice do you have for a first time blogger? | ycomb: Put a picture on every blog post. Then at least it can be visually stimulating. That's my 2 cents. |
How to monetize 1.3 million page views? | pbhj: What about additional phone based tutoring, eg "struggling? phone XXXX-XXX-XXX to speak to a tutor now".Either a premium rate phone line or possible a prepaid call in 10 minute units. |
Advice on working at a large company or startup? | mg1313: You will hit beaureaucracy at big companies, that's for sure. To get done simple things you have to get tons of signatures. A, don't forget those pesky meetings...At a startups probably you will work more...but ask for options too, not just salary.In the end it depends on your personality...boring or fun? |
Advice on working at a large company or startup? | blackguardx: In the end it comes down to gut feel, unless you think you like both jobs the same.In my experience working at a large engineering company, having smart people around doesn't really help you learn much more after the first six months or so. After that, you kind of just fill a role for them and it is hard to break out of that role. You will always be "the whatever" guy or gal.Large companies offer a lot that small companies don't, but I think (hope) that working at a small company provides more job motivation. I suspect that job motivation is the key to job satisfaction. |
Advice on working at a large company or startup? | russell: Large Companies:-- In a labs or research group you get to follow your own interests. I had a lot of fun in my year at HP Labs.-- Software product development often has smart people and you can have flexibility in what you do. The key is whether you are working with a dozen or two of people or a cast of thousands where you are a pigeon in a hole. The larger the group, the more likely you are a plugin module, stuck in a role, susceptible to offshoring.-- IT is probably the pits and should be avoided.If you are looking at a raw startup, you really need to understand the environment. Sure, you get to do lots of things and have a lot of flexibility, but there is a good chance that you will have to work 60 hour weeks. If you aren't prepared for high energy and high commitment, it can take a toll on you and your family. If you are, it can be a hell of a ride. Also take into account of the funding/financial side of the startup or you may find no food on the table. One thing is do NOT go in with the expectation of getting rich, particularly if you are not a founder. Most of the time you won't. Dont take this as a negative, I think startups are more fun than nearly anything else.Another class to consider is a small fast growing company of 20 to 200 people. It's a lot like a startup, but you can have a life too. |
How to monetize 1.3 million page views? | patio11: Right now, I'm using it to pimp consulting services, but I don't expect that will generate much revenue: most of the site's visitors are individuals learning on their own, not people using it at work.Package up similar content in a way that is easy to deliver to employers for them to give to employees for training. Enroll your employees in our MS Word training, $45 per employee, just as effective as having a consultant or courses but at one-tenth the cost. You don't even have to develop the course yourself -- there are almost certainly a million available, and since they're infinitely scalable information products they should have generous affiliate payouts.It doesn't matter if most people are using your site for work. They're the fuel in the rocket, the upsell to the course is the payload. |
Advice on working at a large company or startup? | minalecs: I think it depends on your goals. If your hungry, and can really manage I would start with the startup. If your goal really is to possibly move towards entrepreneurial things then .. its good to see, and start your career off with the right understanding of how you should train in the arts of being a software jedi. Long hours, rigorous reading, training. Wearing every single hat possible, and grabbing every opportunity. When your ready to move on (if you do), then the big company will still be there. And yes working at a startup with people your age that you get along with, not only makes a crappy job fun, but can make many good friendships and connections for the future as well. |
Does anyone know a good way of reviewing code on the iphone? | cpr: Pretty small screen.I've done a little bit of Trac source browsing on the phone with Safari, but even with small fonts, you have to do a lot of horizontal scrolling.It's possible to read, but I can't imagine editing. Keyboarding is so danged painful... |
easy resources for learning Python? | peterlai: Whenever I start with a new language, I read an O'Reilly book from cover to cover. For Python, this is the one I chose: "Learning Python" by Mark Lutz. |
How do you use multiple AWS Accounts from the command line? | david927: http://stackoverflow.com |
hacker culture and ramen | pg: Yes, the latter. |
hacker culture and ramen | TrevorJ: Yes, they come dried with these little powder sauce packets. Dump them into a dish with water, microwave and eat. You can have a meal for about 20 cents. |
hacker culture and ramen | gaius: Top Ramen is roughly equivalent to Pot Noodle. |
hacker culture and ramen | billroberts: Thanks for the explanations! All is now clear. Yep, having to eat that would certainly make you work hard on your startup :-) |
hacker culture and ramen | nostrademons: I don't think they're all that bad. Terribly unhealthy though. One packet is like 170% of your RDA for sodium.I usually get the Chinese brands though (Nissin, Mama), which I think are a lot tastier than Ramen itself. |
hacker culture and ramen | keven: it's known as Instant Noodle for most asians |
hacker culture and ramen | indiejade: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v651/indiejade/?action=vie... |
hacker culture and ramen | patio11: You can get ramen at all price ranges and levels of quality, even in the grocery store. The cheapest stuff in America goes for about 25 cents per person per meal, so it is well-known among college students and the like as an inexpensive way to stave off hunger.My limited experience with it in Japan is that I prefer store-bought udon (which is generally sold fresh) to store-bought ramen (which is generally sold dried), but I'm sure if I looked at my noodle aisle more closely I could find a million permutations. Be that as it may, I can't eat ramen anymore without feeling like I'm cheating on the sweet old guy who runs the ramen shop by my old apartment. |
hacker culture and ramen | paulgb: In Canada we call them Mr. Noodles.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Noodles |
Vesting Schedule on Founders Shares? | Mistone: based on feedback I read in Founders at Work - I believe Jessica and many others suggest setting it at 2 years. thats what we use at our startup. |
How would you teach Python? | physcab: I'm a newbie to Python, but I think the answer will depend on the specific interests and implementations for the group.Are they looking to implement mathematical techniques? Then perhaps NumPy and SciPy deserve a mention. Are they interested in visualization? Check out Matplotlib.If I were teaching the course, I would choose a couple different problems that are common to the people in the group. Then show them the tools they would need to solve it. |
Vesting Schedule on Founders Shares? | thorax: 4 years vest with 1 year cliff for 25%, quarterly or monthly vesting after that first year. Be careful, though, when you grant these. If you don't structure things right (assuming I understand correctly), there could be tax consequences when they vest. |
How would you teach Python? | yan: The way I handled a very similar situation is as follows: I went to the official Python tutorial and took a note of every major feature with a few examples from my old code and code I found in open source projects. I then went to a conference room with a lot of people, and hooked up my laptop to the projector with a Python REPL. I then went through all major topics in the tutorial interactively with people asking me as I went along to implement some examples. I tried underlining what made something 'pythonic' and what didn't as I went along. People who had laptops were going along and bringing up issues they were having.People who attended commented on liking it.I really despise learning and teaching via slides. I think an interactive coding session is very valuable. |
hacker culture and ramen | lionhearted: There's actually some quite healthy, cheap foods if you don't mind just a tiny, little bit of cooking. The three easiest ones that are healthy, cheap, and delicious (once acclimated!) are oatmeal, cottage cheese, and eggs. You can get all of them dirt cheap, whip it together for a meal in 5 minutes or less, and they're good. Just eat the oatmeal straightup - nobody likes it when they first start eating it since it's fairly bland, but it has a good texture and you'll learn to like it after a month or so. Dirt cheap, very healthy and filling. Cottage cheese is also not so good before you're used to it, but you acclimate. If you can get chives pre-mixed in, it's even better. And eggs - well, everyone knows eggs. I just always get surprised with how cheap eggs are when I haven't bought them for a while - you can get a dozen cheap eggs for like a dollar. A few dollar for uber-premium nicely packaged dozen eggs. |
How would you teach Python? | stonemetal: the intro class would more or less cover the python tutorial. Inter would cover how to mix and match language features (classes and generators, C interop) to build more sophisticated projects. Advanced would be loosely defined personal projects external libs, alternate implementations etc. |
Books That Gratify One's Intellectual Curiosity? | aristus: Everything and More, by David Foster Wallace (history of inifinity)Lord of Light, by Zelazny (fiction, but transcendent)The Trial of Socrates, by I.F. Stone (makes the case that Socrates was a genuine threat to his society)Any book by Ryszard KapuscinskiThe Histories, by HerodotusTo Engineer is Human, by PetroskiA History of Knowledge, by Charles Van Doren |
Vesting Schedule on Founders Shares? | BenS: Thanks for the feedback. I also pinged another entrepreneur who had offered this opinion:Often 1/4 to 1/2 is vested immediately. Typically you will have accelerated vesting in the event of an acquisition. This can come in the form of a single or double trigger (first trigger is when the acquisition happens and second trigger is if you are fired or quit from the acquiring company).Assuming your non-immediately vested shares have a one year cliff (no vesting until 1 year worked) and 4 year vesting (month by month after the first year), you should consider not having any vesting in the event of an acquisition.Acquisition probably won't happen until you've been going for a couple years at least, and much of your shares were vested immediately so fractional vesting of the balance won't make a big difference to you. On the other hand the fractional vesting might make a big difference to an executive you hire between founding and acquisition and you can assume that a big time hire will negotiate to match your accelerated vesting provision (might really erode the value to the acquirer to not have that exec with golden handcuffs).If you have FF shares, those should represent 1/4 to 1/10th of your total holding and you should make sure that these shares are all vested immediately at founding. |
Books That Gratify One's Intellectual Curiosity? | tokenadult: Some favorites about mathematics:Concepts of Modern Mathematics by Ian Stewarthttp://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Modern-Mathematics-Ian-Stewar...Numbers and Geometry by John Stillwell.http://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Geometry-John-Stillwell/dp/038...The Pleasures of Counting by T. W. Körnerhttp://www.amazon.com/Pleasures-Counting-T-W-K%C3%B6rner/dp/...Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction by Timothy Gowershttp://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Short-Introduction-Timothy... |
How to get bloggers to write about your product? | albertsun: A few bits of advice from a journalist who has covered technology before.First, read as many blogs and publications that cover the field your app is in as possible and start paying attention to the bylines and names of the writers you have written about related products. Few things irritate a journalist more than getting pitches directed to the wrong place. An email saying something like, "I enjoyed your piece about X, here's what I thought of it. By the way, I'm working on a cool project that does (related Y), would you be interested in finding out more?" will generally be well received.Press releases style emails can also work, but keep in mind, we're used to getting those shoveled at us through a mailing list, so it'll be much less likely to draw attention than a personalized note.Either way, keep it short and simple. Explain what your product does CLEARLY in the first sentence. Don't use superlatives or make outlandish claims. I can't stress this point enough. If a press release goes on about how a product will "revolutionize this" or "reinvent that" without specifics, it's headed for the spam pile. Don't include canned quotes or statements. If we're interested in finding out more, we'll get in touch. So do include as much contact information as you can. |
Rate my Russian Roulette iPhone App | mikeyur: Looks good. One suggestion is to maybe add a couple different types of guns.Clickable link to video: http://vimeo.com/3391683 |
How to get bloggers to write about your product? | paul_houle: (1) have a really cool product that makes them say wow, for instance: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fusioinio-iodrive-flash,...(2) pay 'em |
Books That Gratify One's Intellectual Curiosity? | paulgb: How the Mind Works by Steven PinkerThe Selfish Gene by Richard DawkinsOn Intelligence by Jeff HawkinsThe Undercover Economist by Tim Hartford |
Books That Gratify One's Intellectual Curiosity? | rms: Three Worlds Collide: (~100 pages, freely available online under copyright.) http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/three-worlds-collide.h...PG has a list on his personal website: http://www.bugbear.com/bestbooks.html |
computing in 2014 : your predictions? | cperciva: How many cores will a typical personal computer have?Either 8 or 16, assuming you're counting general-purpose cores. Don't be surprised if CPUs come with separate vector computing cores (basically like GPUs have now).Will Clojure or Scala replace Java (if so, which)?No.Will the most popular languages feel like CUDA or Haskell or C#/LINQ?No. The most popular languages will be new innovations which are popular solely because they throw out existing paradigms and, in so doing, restrict themselves to a small number of developers (who therefore trumpet their use of this language in order to demonstrate their superiority over everybody else).The most widely used languages will be imperative structured single-address-space languages with extensive feature sets provided via libraries -- i.e., C and C-like languages. |
How to get bloggers to write about your product? | raffi: This is a repost of one of my old comments:I highly recommend reading: http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=198Peldi's advice and the links he give are dead on. I pitched bloggers before reading this and got a zero response rate.Then I adjusted tactics. I added a phone number to my website and a mediakit. Some of the articles Peldi links to talk about having a media kit.I also added the ability to give out codes for people to try the service for free. This is important as it takes replying to me out of the equation. The blogger can try things out (if they choose) at their leisure. The code also makes it easy to tell who is looking.I started looking for bloggers via Google Alerts, Technorati, etc.). I then sent tailored messages to a few and included the "try it" code. I also tried to say something to show my site added to the dialog of something they already wrote.Overall I kept my pitch short (unlike this reply :))I mentioned nothing about writing a review or any such thing. I merely asked for their opinion. Some folks reviewed my service, others sent me their opinion. Still, I had responses :)My mediakit is at: http://www.feedbackarmy.com/about.slpAnd my welcome page for people with a code is: http://www.feedbackarmy.com/tryit.slp?code=theircodehereGood luck! |
computing in 2014 : your predictions? | Tangurena: Will the most popular languages feel like CUDA or Haskell or C#/LINQ?No. I think the most popular languages will be the cobols of the future: java and visual basic. |
Books That Gratify One's Intellectual Curiosity? | Tangurena: Beyond Fear - SchneierSources of Power - Klein. This guy did research on how experts made decisions under stressful situations.Normal Accidents - PerrowEmergence - Johnson |
Books That Gratify One's Intellectual Curiosity? | lionhearted: Most people haven't read John Eliot's "Overachievement", which is a tragedy for anyone who strives to get a hell of a lot out of themselves. The book is loaded with counterintuitive thoughts on performance that go against mainstream ideas right now:http://www.amazon.com/Overachievement-Science-Working-Less-A...It's only $5 at Amazon right now - very cool book to learn about your physiology under pressure, fight or flight reactions, harnessing/channeling pressure to achieve more, and so on. It reads fast, has interesting anecdotes and good scientific references, and is a potential major overhaul for driven people. I've seen references to quite a few books I like in this thread, but this one is one I didn't see anyone mention. |
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