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How to spell check HTML pages? | slater: Sorta, kinda:
http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/requests
(search for bookmarklet)The steps seem to be:1) Install Spellbound2) Hit the bookmarklet to set the whole page to designMode3) Start SpellBound |
Deciding between microISV and something bigger | omnivore: I think starting something small, making money and having success is how you decide whether to grow that project bigger or taking the money and pushing it into something else.When you don't have the advantage of resources or time to devote to a home run, it seems hitting lots of singles could have a much better effect and while the results are the same, the ways to accomplish your goal are more attainable.I've found trying to go after "big" projects without building small ones successfully is too much of a gamble. Small successes + networking + revenue generation = the opportunity to seek out something bigger when the time is right.Otherwise, you're probably wasting your time. |
How to promote an API contest? | asmithmd1: The contest looks to be these guys:
http://www.dandyid.orgWhat, exactly, are you offering with your API? A quick look around makes me think you are trying a two-sided sale.
First side: get users to create a DandyID to use with all the DandyID enabled sites.
Second side: get websites to use your API to let all those users who have created a DandyID sign-up to their site more easily.From the users perspective it looks like there is exactly one application - a wordpress plugin - so why should I trust some random site with my credentials? So I can then install a wordpress plugin of unknown quality on my server?From the website side I would guess after you subtract all your test accounts the number of live DandyIDs is in the dozens.A two sided sale like this is very tough.At first I thought you were offering the ability to look through all the sites you have aggregated (scraped?) by username - that could be useful. When I saw the need for a DandyID account before the API was useful I realized the API was not very useful.To your original question: "Apply for an API key" is a little off-putting. If I am cool enough maybe you will give me one? And when you click on the link:http://www.dandyid.org/beta/apiprofileyou get this:Whowzers! Lets try that login again.
You must be logged in to do that!I guess if I clicked on that signup link, gave up who knows what kind of info, I could then "Apply" (oh please, please let me in)but at this point I am gone.You are essentially asking developers to work for you for free. The developers are doing you a huge favor - you have to have that attitude. |
What's your process for generating startup ideas? | josh_nyc: I am in a heavy brainstorming phase as of late, thinking and mulling over various "idea areas" that pertain to my domain, software I would use, etc. Not really a set process though...But much to my delight a few days ago, I was with a friend and we were talking about a service we both use, and some of the utility it lacks. I said "Oh man, I wish somebody would make that! Why has nobody done that?" He then asked, "Why don't you make that? You told me you were trying to think of a good project."Duh. So, like many things, sometimes the ideas come to you when you aren't mining for them, and the people around you can help point out the obvious.(The particular idea wasn't that exciting, but it was a real surprise that such an obvious improvement to something I use a lot didn't surface while I purposefully mined for ideas). |
What's your process for generating startup ideas? | quizbiz: They just come naturally, pop into my head when I identify a problem and corresponding solution.I would be much more interested in learning how those hear take concepts beyond the idea phase and properly begin execution.A collection of great start up ideas is not as good as one original start up idea that is properly executed. |
Review my prototype (webnodes) | zxcvb: The 'home' link in the top left corner is hard to read due to the font colour on the background colour. Red on a dark background is bad.When first landing on your site, I have no idea what I'm looking at. It's just random boxes with unrelated text, I guess once you have a userbase this won't matter as people will know what's what, until then, you'll need to make it more obvious why I'm looking at your page, then you need to give me a reason to stay.You also need to explain that clicking "next n" shows you children of the current parent comment. It's just not obvious. Don't make me think.Reading your description, this sounds like something that is just not useful. I just don't see this working in any way that will bring money in, or even attract a community.Honestly, yet another 'web2.0' pointless app that will die due to lack of funds or users. Sorry to come accross as being harsh, but I'm trying to be honest. You should use your python skills for something that actually provides 'real' value.Don't be too put off by me though, I'm not exactly what you'd call an 'early adopter'. |
How do I penetrate the hosting market? | lsc: Try to create something that is more valuable than your competition. Either go cheaper (difficult, in the shared hosting biz.) or provide some service above and beyond your competitors (I know of many successful hosting companies that targeted a certain kind of customer, for example, real-estate agents during the boom, and basically sold nice templates for their niche.)Another thing I notice is that if you post good technical info about what you are doing, you get good links (and thus pagerank.) You need documentation anyhow, so cleaning it up and posting it online is like free advertising.But what do I know. it's not like my hosting company is wildly successful, and I had what was once a unique product, Xen VPS hosting (I started before ec2, using Xen2 on NetBSD. Of course, I now have a whole lot of competition, and I don't have the cool provisioning systems they do.) and I still have a almost 2x price advantage over my nearest competitor. My biggest problem is credibility. I need to dedicate a weekend to web design, as my current website is inconsistent and out of date. (I have some technical issues, too... but after last weekend, I've cleaned most of those up. I will be writing up a thing on puppet this coming weekend. So embarrassing. I was aware of the problem, and policy was to fix it on all new servers, I just forgot to edit the config files in question. Yeah. moving to puppet.)Still, my company is growing about as fast as I can get new infrastructure up (which isn't as fast as you'd think. I've got two other essentially full-time jobs.) |
What's your process for generating startup ideas? | floozyspeak: Map them out. Grab a black sharpie, a stack of yellow postits, and find a big ass blank wall. Next jot down everything about the idea in bit statements on postits. Dont try to organize them in advance, just get out of your head.Use the voices in your head to dissect the idea, why this idea, why not others, how does it work, whats the value, benefit, experience, competition, barriers to make, barriers to sell, who is the customer, what makes it rock, who would buy it right now, why did they buy it, how do they use it, aspirationally connect it to other like ideas- its like x brand but with y, or what not. Just generate a crap load of notes about the idea.Start grouping them on the wall and eventually into buckets and themes.Lastly project yourself to the end game. Use a different color post its if you can. Think as if you've done the idea, its out, done, map that experience. Everything from how someone finds out about it, getting it, experiencing it, note the rewards of it, and does it end, how does it self sustain? Think ideal, but with a tint of reality based on what ya know.Now step back, odds are you have a heck of alot more ideas up there than one you just started.If you're hungry for more, get yet another color of post its and pick out the themes you see around the notes. There's probably 3-4 themes at work around your idea, bounce these themes off other people you know, if they resonate that alone could tell you you're in the running for making something that could work. Ideas always need constant validation, don't go at it alone, simply them and bounce them off people, friends, family, anyone. And dont get stuck on what they say, just record it, and save them for another wall session. |
Could stackoverflow.com work for other fields? | madcaptenor: Mathematics, perhaps? |
Feedback on Age Directory based on Yahoo BOSS | chris11: You may want to filter some of the pics you use. The one you are using for Lance Armstrong has him naked. |
how do you process payments? | ehaus: I agree with pretty much everything said here. Just for full disclosure - I work for Zuora, one of the companies listed above.All the above methods have pros and cons. I would echo the sentiment above to look at payment processors and payment methods as separate entities. I would also echo the sentiment about Google Checkout. With its now higher rates, less customer support and higher fraud rates, there are fewer reasons to choose it over others.When choosing a payment processor, be sure to take into account your business needs, not just who is cheaper. For example, some payment processors work better in different geographic regions (or if not better, have different commission rates). So make sure to look at where your sales are coming from. If the the vast majority of your sales are (or will be) in North America, then you can probably just compare prices. If you sell to Asia or Europe/EMEA, make sure to see if the commissions are different in those areas. If you do a significant amount of transactions in multiple geographic regions, it may be worth the cost to support more than one payment processor (ie, use PayPal in North America, someone else for Asia because they offer a lower rate, etc)While commission/rate is probably the biggest driver in choosing a payment processor, be sure to take into account a few other things:* Ease of integration - how much work does it take to integrate with a payment processor. Moreover, if you are using a pre-built shopping cart, see if they have integration with a payment processor (most support Authorize.net, Paypal, and Google Checkout, with some even adding mobile payment processors as well).
* Customer service - this isn't just if you can call someone. Most will rely on self service - be sure to vet their self service portals as well.
* Fraud/chargeback - (especially in gaming and social networks). How much emphasis this is given really depends on your business. If you are selling physical goods, not usually a huge concern. If you are selling digital or virtual goods (usually consumable goods, as opposed to service), it can become a bigger problem.For handling recurring fees/subscriptions, it also depends on your business needs. If you are looking for a simple recurring flat fee on a monthly basis, and will only have one fee per customer, many providers can help here. I know that Paypal can support this today, and from this thread it seems that Authorize.net and Braintree can handle it well, too. If you are already considering one of them as your payment processor, then that may just suit your needs. Google just released a subscription product as well, but that is brand new, and I have no experience with it (or know of anyone who has used it). So I cannot offer too much commentary there. From what I have seen (and also mentioned elsewhere in this thread), Google Checkout does suffer from higher fraud rate. I've known other companies to drop support for this reason.Subscriptions can get complex quickly, but if your needs aren't likely to grow beyond a single product with a simple monthly charge, then I would look into Paypal/Authorize.net. However, if you are looking for more complex features like offering multiple rate plans for a single product (ie, offer different payment plans - like $9/month vs $99/year), offer usage based pricing (similar to a pay-as-you-go cell phone plan), offer multiple products/rate plans to a given subscription, offer ability to change from one plan to another, etc, then using a subscription processor is the way to go (e.g., Zuora, Vindicia, Aria, eVapt). I could give the whole spiel on Zuora, but I'll save that for a different forum. Hope that helps. |
Feedback on Age Directory based on Yahoo BOSS | huhtenberg: Does it solve a problem that actually exists ?I am having hard time seeing how "estimating an accurate age of a celebrity" could be worthy of a standalone service. |
Feedback on Age Directory based on Yahoo BOSS | raju: Shouldn't it be so that dead celebrities don't have an age? John Lennon shows up at 68 (which I believe to be correct) but that's assuming he was still alive, yes? |
Feedback on Age Directory based on Yahoo BOSS | villageidiot: Are you planning on publicizing it on gossip sites & making money from advertising? Or is this just a toy project? |
How Can We Make Our iPhone Game More Enjoyable? | cubicle67: I'm not familiar with the original, and so I have no idea what this game is about or how it works. The screenshots and the description don't help at all either. Instead, they make it look like some sort of budgeting app.Suggestion - Make me want to play it. Include a small description of the gameplay and have the screenshots reflect this. At the moment I'd give it a quick look and a wtf!? and then move on. |
How Can We Make Our iPhone Game More Enjoyable? | tmadsen: I don't know the game you're trying to remake, so I would like some info on how to play it (in the app). So far I bought some shopping bags, but I can't see how that helps me (I might be stupid though).Otherwise nice interface, I like the travel screen :) Unfortunately I don't know what I gain from travelling. |
How Can We Make Our iPhone Game More Enjoyable? | dtap: I played the original game through many classes in middle school. As long as you don't have big dreams, maybe play it as an updated version of the old game. If the old game got 1000s of kids to play when the only way to transfer games was cables, you should be able to get some good traction. |
How Can We Make Our iPhone Game More Enjoyable? | teej: Are you familiar with the similiar apps on Facebook (Mob Wars, Mafia Wars, etc)? I'd love to draw a lesson from them, but if you're not too familiar with it, my advice might not be helpful. |
how do you process payments? | fastspring: Be sure to evaluate FastSpring.com as well.Before you go with PayPal, you may want to read up on some of the issues people have been having with PayPal:
http://www.fastspring.com/blog/2008/...nt-processing/Also, this post explains the difference in a full service e-commerce solution and a basic payment service like PayPal and the others:
http://www.fastspring.com/blog/2009/...ng-e-commerce/Keep in mind that one of the ways customers can pay when using a full service solution is via PayPal, but customers have numerous alternative payment methods available as well. Some vendors won't need the features of a full service solution, while for others it makes a huge difference in their bottom line.- Dan |
How Can We Make Our iPhone Game More Enjoyable? | nategraves: So, it sounds like a better description would be very helpful. We are adding some in-game instructions, but would it also be helpful to have some basic instructions in the description? |
How should I approach publishing a book? | RobGR: I don't have experience in this, but there are some actual numbers in this article:http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comm...Good Luck ! |
Why is there a 'Zoom' feature in Flash? | eob: My guess is that it dates back to the Shockwave days when:
1) Flash was used solely for static & animated vector graphics, and
2) Browsers didn't have the zooming features they do nowWe take Cmd+/Cmd- (and whatever the Windows bindings are) for granted nowadays. Browsers didn't always have the ability to scale things up and down for us, so it was a nice feature back then. |
Do your users actually use those social bookmarking icons (ShareThis/AddThis)? | patio11: On my non-technical site, I got about 1 add in the last 100,000 page views. Its mostly a waste of screen space and user attention.However, when I publish pillar reference content aimed at geeks, the simple Delicious button which shows number of people who already added it performs VERY well for me. (Incidentally: that social proof is totally missing with ShareThis/AddThis/etc. I wish they would incorporate it.)Delicious also generates long term traffic, whereas most of the other social sites do not. |
Why is there a 'Zoom' feature in Flash? | jskopek: On a related note, has anyone found the different quality settings for a flash app to have any effect? I used to browse the web on an ancient G4 powerbook that would choke under most flash apps and movies, and lowering back the quality never had any impact for me. |
What would an ideal online learning platform look like? | bokonist: My high school had amazing math textbooks. The books had been written by the faculty over the course of many years. Each page consisted of 10-12 word problems and nothing else. There would be no explanation, no section introductions, nothing but problems.The problems were designed to be just hard enough that you could solve them by making a little bit of a leap from your previous knowledge. After solving a series of leading questions, you would make one last leap, solve a problem, and the book would tell you: "Congratulations, you have just derived the Law of Cosines!"Because the difficulty was set just right - not too hard, not too easy - doing math homework was like playing a game of Sudoku. ( well, the difficulty was right for me, students who had less aptitude for math tended to hate the books). Also, because you learned by figuring out things as you went, the knowledge stuck the first time. No tedious drills or memorization were ever required.If I was to design the perfect online education system, it would be like those books. No reading and memorization, just problems designed to be in the sweet spot between boring and frustrating. Online you have the big advantage that you can dynamically adjust the difficult level of the problems. This would actually solve the major problem with the textbooks.The textbooks are all online here: http://www.exeter.edu/academics/84_9408.aspxIf I was creating an online learning site, I would try and license the material from them. Then I would put the problems online, make the difficulty dynamic, add hints and helpers for tough problems, etc. |
What would an ideal online learning platform look like? | toisanji: Since as long as I can remember, my work and fun has been programming languages and learning foreign languages. Recently, I am building my ideal language learning site. So its pretty focused on tools for learning foreign languages which I think is fairly different from being a general learning platform. I think that really the fastest way to learn a language is live in the area that speaks that language, but everyone can't do that, so I'm trying to build a community where people can practice reading,writing,speaking, and listening in the langauge they are targeting. It is a work in progress and still not where I want it to be in terms of features. You can check it out at http://sanbit.com . I used Blackboard a bit during college, but I don't even really know what it does. Whatever you build, I think to create value, it should help both teachers and students save time, when I used blackboard a few years ago, it seemed for of a hassle rather than actually help me, but maybe we weren't using it to its fullest potential. |
What would an ideal online learning platform look like? | vaksel: It needs to be free. An online "college" is a joke in the eyes of the world, so you shouldn't even try to compete in that segment by trying to charge money.You should instead focus on teaching people the subjects. Think of it as a secondary tool that students could use to learn the material on their own. I'd focus mainly on problems, I think thats the only way you actually learn anything but doing examples.You also should make it competitive, have different rankings and achievements etc that the students can strive for. i.e. Algebra Level I, Level II, etc. Each level would have a different set of questions, that get harder and harder.Then let users challenge each other i.e glen vs mike - Algebra III. The users would compete to finish the 10 questions, and the winner would be either the person who got the most answers right, or if its a tie, the person with the fastest answers. Give different point values for tests based on how hard they are.Then help users further, by letting users offer tutoring services. And to compare, the users would be able to see profiles, and see what type of achievements the "tutor" achieved.But this is mostly just brain storming off the top of my head |
Suggestions for learning statistics (& prob) really fast? | chaostheory: The Headfirst series has a statistics book now:
http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Statistics-Dawn-Griffiths/d...No it doesn't have R in it, but it's an interesting read |
Suggestions for learning statistics (& prob) really fast? | peregrine: I am in a Prop and Stats course right now would like this just so I can apply it outside of class to something useful. |
How-to make solid profits from niche websites? | zaidf: I'd start with http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/I know many people and couple close friends that are making very decent living by learning seo/adwords/copywriting(or getting really really good at one of 'em).The biggest hurdle that holds a lot of us back from this industry is our own intelligence. That is why we shrug in disbelief that a website with a cheesy 2000 word copy makes thousands of dollars in sales. For the time I dabbled with this stuff, that was the most challenging part: putting myself in my avg customer's shoes.ie. if you goto the site I am recommending, most of us would dismiss it as a "scam." Hey, I did--it took a lot of convincing and showing by my friends before I learned that may be should put my suspicion on hold and explore further.With that said, getting the initial sales funnel going is not easy and can require lots of patience. |
What would an ideal online learning platform look like? | neilk: Books. Even in the USA, classrooms are starved of just books. Not to mention the third world.Okay, if it has to be some gee-whiz techno-thingy, then a Kindle which is about as cheap as an iPod shuffle. Which reads aloud and can automatically adjust to your reading level, suggesting new books as you go.I think we need to look at some new economic models for teaching. Maybe a school could simply garnish 5% of every dollar a student makes above, say, 75% of the median wage, for 10 years. That gives the school some guaranteed income and the incentive to teach students economically useful skills, quickly.Also, new reasons to learn and new ways to learn.The main problem with educational software today is that the administration buys it and it serves their purposes, not the students'. This is an exactly analogous situation with corporate IT software buying. Except it's even worse because the administration is a quasi-branch of the government.Out with the state curriculum and the bureaucrats. In with selling education to the people being educated. Education for its own sake. If that means we develop a course in rap lyrics, we'll give you rap lyrics. But we'll also discuss the history of martial poetry too, from the Greeks onwards. We're also going to discuss rhetoric, the mathematics of periodicity, rhythm, and the Nyquist theorem of sampling. If you want to learn how to read the Bible better, we'll do that too, and that way we can bring in practically everything in English literature after the King James Version.Graduating from a grade should be like getting a belt in martial arts. Something you do at your own pace and a test you take at your own initiative (with parental prompting too). The difference between slow students and fast students is usually something like 33-50%. So if someone needs two years to master algebra, let them TAKE two years. It's not a race for fuck's sake.Education should be interwoven with doing actually useful things. I think pg is right on the money that kids are mainly disconnected from society because we go to great lengths to disconnect them. Drug dealers know that at least some 14-year-olds can be trusted with limited responsibilities; so would it really be so terrible to have kids doing some jobs in a more positive working environment?Let's put education in unusual places, with the people who need it and are motivated to learn. Undocumented workers are where I would start. We already know these people are ambitious, hardworking, and habituated to risk. |
Suggestions for learning statistics (& prob) really fast? | carterschonwald: http://www.amazon.com/Theoretic-Probability-Statistical-Prob... is a great book if you want to learn advanced probability theory and techniques. |
What would an ideal online learning platform look like? | jgilliam: http://www.google.com/ |
What would an ideal online learning platform look like? | buugs: Blackboard is awful I have one class that is based almost entirely in it and that class is one of the most annoying because of the website. First it is separated into 20 sections on the side, most of which I do not even use. Another issue if I'm using linux with all the prerequesites I fail the browser check and it tells me to try Firefox3... which I'm using because of the lack of support for other operating systems I almost missed an assignment as it did not attach my document.Another Issue that really bothers me is the grades, you cannot sort them in any way there is no relative dating just however the teacher enters it in and most don't really care how they enter it, at the very least I'd like to be able to see my total points or perhaps even a comparison between my grade and the average grade, something all my other classes give is averages of large assignments/tests.The main thing I would like would be something like a simple editor as default and a html editor that actually accepts html code such as bold and paragraphs.An interface that didn't use massive amounts of javascript to fetch each page would be awesome too but that might be asking a lot.Id like sections that aren't in use such as calendar or announcements or data kind of things to be unavailable if the teacher has not posted anything in them.Another good thing would be a way for teachers to change .doc into pages too many times have I seen bullets and numbered lists just copy pasted into a document to lose all formatting.Thats a lot of what I hate but probably hard to do and not feasable. |
Suggestions for learning statistics (& prob) really fast? | ian01: I took Applied Statistics 550 with all assignments in R. Caught me up on statistics real fast after I hadn't taken it in about 2 years. Concepts in Probability and Stochastic Modeling, Huggins and Keller-Mcnulty. Its good and short. Doesn't have the R assignments though. |
What would an ideal online learning platform look like? | sjs382: I've had online classes that were (essentially) normal classes, just online. Classes were set for a specific time, Lectures, notes, files were broadcast and shared via Adobe's Breeze software (its name changed.. can't remember what to). Classes were still held on campus, but I was unable to make most of the classes. It was one of my better online learning experiences.I guess this example is better thought of as a web-enhanced course rather than fully online,though. |
How to spell check HTML pages? | Pipedreamergrey: If you had read through the top headlines on Hacker News before asking, you would already have the answer: http://spellr.us/ |
Suggestions for learning statistics (& prob) really fast? | eisenkr: The best first book on R I've read is Gelman and Hill's "Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models" (http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/arm/). It's more focused on regression and Bayesian methods than basic probability, but it's a great book that's priced very competitively (only $39.99). |
Suggestions for learning statistics (& prob) really fast? | simon_kun: Well written, humorous intro to statistics using R: http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-Introduction-Michael-J-Craw... |
How Can We Make Our iPhone Game More Enjoyable? | silencio: aww i'm sad. i was working on a dope wars clone for iPhone :( are you guys open source or just free as in beer? |
Suggestions for learning statistics (& prob) really fast? | mdakin: The MIT probability class targeted at EECS students is 6.041. It is on OCW. It provides a solid foundation in probability with an emphasis on applications (rather than proof). Statistics is but one application of probability and is not heavily emphasized by the class (at least when I took it). That said if you understand 6.041 you'll understand statistics without much more work. Good luck and have fun! |
Suggestions for learning statistics (& prob) really fast? | azharcs: I liked this Lecture "Basics of Probability and Statistics" by Mikaela Keller, IDIAP Research Institute.http://videolectures.net/bootcamp07_keller_bss/ps: She is cute. :) |
Suggestions for learning statistics (& prob) really fast? | albertcardona: Read the "Cartoon Guide to Statistics". It's no joke. Rather, perhaps the book that explains statistics in the clearest way.http://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-Guide-Statistics-Larry-Gonick/... |
Efficiency of StumbleUpon advertising ? | patio11: I spent about $200 on it promoting http://www.christmasbingocards.com last December 1st through December 17th or so. The idea for that site is it pitches exactly ONE thing with laser focus. The idea for the advertising campaign was "Get this in front of technically aware moms, have them blog about it, win".I received overwhelmingly targeted traffic. They loved it. I got plenty of thumbs. 95% of them left within 2 seconds. The remainder did not give me the blog links I was hoping to get from the experience.I got much, much better results from the concurrent campaign I did on AdWords. User engagement was much higher (downloads, comments, clickthroughs to my site, time on page, etc). If you compared prices per interested user (defined as someone who didn't bounce in 2 seconds or less) AdWords was something like a twentieth the price of SU. And I wasn't even using it for conversion related purposes -- if I had, I think I'd probably have spent about $10,000 on SU for every $25 sale I made.I will not be using SU again for this site this Christmas, or for any of my similar promotions. It is just drastically inferior to my other options for spending time and money to promote things.(Incidentally: I received a few thousand organic stumbles, too, and they were about as useless as the ones I paid for.) |
Efficiency of StumbleUpon advertising ? | pierrefar: Whatever advice we give you, you'll need to test it. Your landing page, your target market, your target demographic, etc are all different from our experiences and they interact in unexpected ways.If you believe it cannot not work, then throw a sensible but low amount of $ at it and see what happens. |
What technology platform would you use for an Medical Records app? | oscardelben: You should use a platform that you already know well. Starting from scratch with a new framework/language is certainly fun but I don't recommend it for paid projects unless you have a solid experience and expertise and very confident about your abilities. |
What technology platform would you use for an Medical Records app? | gstar: Medical records? Ethically your number 1 issue is security now, and it may be legally also depending upon where you're building this.While a web framework is a great place to start for things like this, I do implore you to keep the medical records that it stores as far away from the Internet as possible, if you can. At least consult really good security guy if you must have them on the net.Opinions:Both are notionally MVC web packages.* Joomla: Joomla is actually a CMS - and most medical records are text, so - maybe it'd work - but I'd be worried about the burden of the cruft, as well as laying your own security over something that's designed for publishing stuff. It'll be quick to get something up, though.* Django: You can build any kind of database, CMS or virtually anything you can see on the web in Django - so I'd start there. Django has usable security out of the box, too.Joomla is PHP and Django is Python, so in the interests of code reuse I'd personally go Django every time. Some quite big desktop apps are built in Python, so you'd be in good company. |
Suggestions for learning statistics (& prob) really fast? | tokenadult: A very good, readable, SHORT article worth rereading about what makes statistics a separate subject from mathematics ishttp://statland.org/MAAFIXED.PDFThe article includes a bibliography of recommended readings, and talks about the use of software in statistics education.Another good article ishttp://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10...Both articles will help a student in any kind of statistics course or statistics self-study better understand statistics, and how probability relates to statistics. |
What technology platform would you use for an Medical Records app? | olefoo: Don't try to make Joomla into a medical records app. That way lies heartbreak and a pile of code that does something but that you can never quite trust.Build from the database out. And please use encryption appropriately.In the US at least you are dealing with HIPAA which has a deep set of requirements your system will have to meet.And you are dealing with crucial information, if you screw up medical records such that crucial information is left out or garbled or lost you could potentially kill people.So use tools that give you a clear view into the development process and let you track, record and correct the system as you are building it.Use whatever language the team is most familiar with and don't think that any framework will make your work easier unless you already know that framework well. |
Efficiency of StumbleUpon advertising ? | bemmu: I imagine stumbleupon traffic would be even less likely to stick around on your site than Digg/Reddit traffic, which I wouldn't buy probably even at 10 cents per thousand. |
Efficiency of StumbleUpon advertising ? | jreposa: In our experience, we received a high bounce rate of 80+% and about a 20 second time spent on page. This is definitely some of the worst traffic you can get. Some days you'll get much worse results, like 95% bounce and 8 seconds on page.Keep in mind that once you put the money in, you can't get it out. So, even if you do test, put the minimum amount of money in. |
Do you trust Amazon S3 or Mosso Cloudfiles not to lose or corrupt your data? | rs: They are as safe as any other service provider. Ultimately, its always good practice to:1. Do your own backups2. Routinely test that you can recover from these backupsI would argue that point (2) is much more important than point (1). I do try to do that at least once a month to ensure that there aren't any bugs in the backups, including any missing parts of the infrastructure.For mirroring really large data, rsync is a viable solution.Edit: I do want to add that performing your own backups is really subjective and you might need to ask yourself - what's the cost to me/my business/my users in the event that I can't recover from backups and or my provider failed in their own reliability (for e.g. Carbonite) |
Why is there a 'Zoom' feature in Flash? | gstar: It's because Flash is often vector art, and you can zoom to see details in some cases (without degradation etc).I know of a fashion industry website where this functionality is expected. Makes me shudder! |
Efficiency of StumbleUpon advertising ? | AlexTheFounder: If something just "cannot not work" then it will broke unexpectedly and will take you by surprise. |
What technology platform would you use for an Medical Records app? | ballpark: I like SQLAlchemy as my DB abstraction. Then you aren't tied to a web app. However, for starting I use pylons, and have been playing with FormAlchemy. It gives you a simple admin interface, but you can customize all you want. |
BuySellAds Alternative Idea? | noodle: oh yes. advertising in its current form is severely lacking. find a better way to do it and you've found a goose that lays golden eggs. |
BuySellAds Alternative Idea? | digispaghetti: Check out http://www.insightcommunity.com/ run by Floor64. I saw Mike Masnick do a talk in Edinburgh and he explained that rather than do ads, they get companies to sponsor conversations - in return the companies get insights into the thoughts of the community - and it seems to be working for them. |
Efficiency of StumbleUpon advertising ? | zealog: While I have never done any advertising on StumbleUpon, I will say that my experience with traffic referred from SU matches with many of the other comments here. They will generate a lot of hits but quality is low. The bounce rate is many times higher than other traffic sources and the return rate of those visitors is almost non-existant.* As a disclaimer, I do know someone who has an upper level job there, but it's pretty clear that hasn't influenced my opinions about the service. :) |
What would an ideal online learning platform look like? | tokenadult: Perhaps you should contact me off-forum for the long answer. As president of a statewide parent organization for the families of gifted children, I've had occasion to read reviews of, write reviews of, and recommend a great variety of online learning experiences for parents who want to go beyond what is offered by their local school system. My oldest son is an alumnus of distance learning courses from the Center for Talent Development (affiliated with Northwestern University, and I think a Blackboard client), Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth, and Stanford's Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY). He is now enrolled in the EPGY Online High Schoolhttp://epgy.stanford.edu/ohs/which has been rolling out implementation of eCollege and PowerSchool for various aspects of school communication to students and parents.Two very crucial things that the part of the market I know still has to get right isa) building student online communities in a way that encourages emotional and social growth of the students,andb) adaptive placement in courses so that able learners can reach a high challenge level and master lots of new materials. Most online courses are too easy and too dumbed-down for the learners I know best.See my profile for how to reach me for follow-up. |
Efficiency of StumbleUpon advertising ? | jusob: I tried adwords, Facebook Ads, and stumbleupon for http://www.reviews-web-hosting.com/Adword: $0.90 per visitor in average
Facebook Ad: $0.45 per visitor
Stumbleupon: $0.05 ($25 for 500 users)I haven't see much difference in behavior from these 3 origins, but that may be because nobody spends much time on the website :-( |
Unit testing a ZF MVC application | RossM: Question closed as "exact duplicate" by *Ross 56 secs agoI'm going to be in a similar situation to you soon, but from what I can tell using Zend_Test (http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.test.html) looks to be the easiest way to go about this. The only test framework supported is PHPUnit but I've heard good things about it. |
What's the advantage of listing your site as "Creative Commons"? | vorador: I don't think that it really matters.
It tarnishes the concept of cc : do you consider your site as a work of art ? |
Slashdot rejected my story, what next? | ph0rque: umm... post it on here? |
Slashdot rejected my story, what next? | jhancock: If you want thoughtful advice, it would be good to post a link to your story here. |
Slashdot rejected my story, what next? | asimjalis: Maybe you could turn your story into an iPhone app, publish it on Apple's App Store, and then submit a story about the app about your story to Slashdot. |
Slashdot rejected my story, what next? | firebug: Here's a few places you could try:
* reddit
* digg
* Facebook
* MySpace
* del.icio.us
* StumbleUpon
* Buzz Up!
* Mixx
* Technorati
* Google Bookmarks
* Yahoo Bookmarks
* Yahoo! My Web
* Windows Live
* Propeller
* FriendFeed
* newsvine
* Xanga
* LinkedIn
* blinklist
* Furl |
Slashdot rejected my story, what next? | ErrantX: Try print computer magazines - especially ones with an online version too. They usually take freelance/unsolicited content and pay fairly well for it if it is good.Some tips (I write on/off for such mags):* Give them a deadline to reply by - otherwise they could take ages to get back to you. Set it for 2 weeks. After 7 days send a follow up email.* Ensure you tell them you want "reprint content permission" which will let you publish it on your blog or elsewhere after they publish it (usually the grace period is a month afterwards).* 5p per word is minimum price for articles under 5000 words - if they offer you less haggle :) (the most I get under 5000 is 7p a word, above 5000 words it will be done on fixed rates depending on the mag & the content)* They will try to bully you gently - stand up strong. It will get you further :)* Be bold in your initial email (but dont gush, I learnt the hard way the "I love your mag" doesnt work with editors because they dont love it, it is their job :D). Include anything that qualifies you as an expert.* Link to previous work that has gone down well (if there is any) and also link to obviosuly respected industry experts with similar views (so they know your not just an upstart :)).Good luck! |
Moving buku files from one remote server to another? | gaoshan: In case anyone ever references this post here is the command I used: rsync -avz --progress --exclude-from=exclude username@some.location.com:/files/to/copy/ /place/to/put/them/
The exclude file is a plain list of several items to be ignored and they are just listed by name 1 per line. If you want to do a "dry run" on what will happen add a -n to the arguments ( -navz instead of -avz). |
What is the best way to track where and why your visitors disappear? | profgubler: Clicktale.com actually let's you watch users on your site. You see what they see and where their mouse moves. This is different than what Omniture offers, it is more supplemental to what you are asking. I do know that Omniture's number one competitor is probably CoreMetrics. |
What's the advantage of listing your site as "Creative Commons"? | mikeryan: It answers the question of "how can I re-use the content of this site legally"The upside is that it means the site creator has put some thought into it, and allows the user to understand their rights clearly. |
What's the advantage of listing your site as "Creative Commons"? | BSeward: CC Attribution is a well-recognized way to quickly give permission to people to redistribute and remix your work, publicizing it and increasing its value in the process. Bloggers looking for more color for their posts might grab a relevant CC'd photo.CC Attribution-Share Alike may lead to someone creating something that you can reintegrate with your original work, improving it. If you provide a dataset of 2D time-based points and someone makes a neat visualization of that, everyone is better for it.This depends on your content. Things like photos or datasets will probably be reused and remixed more than, say, written content (which will probably be quoted and linked to regardless of license). |
Slashdot rejected my story, what next? | jpirkola: Okay, thanks for your comments, I appreciate you took time to answer my question. I got really interested about http://Kuro5hin.org (thanks Thorax!) and may try that at some point, they seem to have editorial feedback system too. If I was planning to sell my article, I would have loved ErrantX comment, thanks!
I decided to publish the article at my own blog, even it doesn't fit in 100% there. I will post the link here tomorrow for your comments, the title will be: "IT giants back up open source 3D Web". |
How do you know what you want? | pg: One trick is to watch what you do. If you keep inexplicably being drawn to something when other people wouldn't be, you probably like it.You can also try standing apart from yourself and just watching what makes you happy. That's a bit complicated because your happiness is usually a function of the "trailing average" of what you've been doing lately. E.g. if you're happy having a beer in the evening, is it simply because you like beer, or because you like having a beer after having gotten something done that day? |
How do you know what you want? | josh_nyc: All I can offer here is a personal observation:Many times in my life when I've asked people for advice in choosing between several options, I've found myself secretly hoping they'd guide me to a certain option... hmm...When I was a teenager, I'd ask my dad for advice and find myself asking leading questions and almost arguing to get him to advise me to pick a certain option. He would get annoyed and end the conversation with "if you already know the answer, why are you asking me?"As I got older and our conversations got calmer, he would often end with "well it sounds like you already know what you want to do."I find that when asking for advice (or venting about a tough decision), this pattern persists.Now I try to have that conversation with myself, knowing I should trust my intuition. It saves a lot of time and frustration! Then, when I ask for advice, I'm actually ready to listen to it. |
How do you know what you want? | noodle: i do what i know i enjoy doing until i don't enjoy doing it anymore. lather, rinse, repeat.it usually is just that simple. your list of things you enjoy doing will shift as you grow, experience, and learn. you're wasting your own time and energy worrying about the "what if"s. either give something new a shot, or continue doing what you're doing."what if i'd like being a scientist better" or "what if i'd like starting a startup better". either go find out, or stop worrying about it, because its wasteful on many levels.its been working out for me so far. |
How do you know what you want? | rokhayakebe: This is a very interesting question with no possible answer. That is due to the fact that every single minute what you think you want is changing.What could help is to make a distinction between the material things we want (house, cars...) and the things and the other things we want (a family...).As an exercise I sat out to write down the things (material) I convinced myself I have to have before I die. To my surprise my list include between 6 to 10 items and the total cost did not surpass $200k-$250k.I then realized that I was working too hard while what I wanted (or think I want) could be easily achieved.Writing what you believe you want is a great exercise. You may be surprise that what you think you want on a daily basis is very different from what you really want inside. |
How do you know what you want? | Tangurena: What appeals to you will change over time. You're sounding like you want to make one decision that will last your whole life. There isn't one. There can't be one. The teachers at your uni have probably pointed out that you'll have 5 or so completely different careers during your working lifetime.I believe that if you really want something, anything, as improbable it may seem, you always achieve it.There are a lot of people who want immortality. A lot. And they're not going to get it. Everyone is going to get old and die.I really really wanted to design integrated circuits. When I graduated with my BSEE, there was a recession and all the major players in the IC business were laying off tens of thousands of engineers. So I ended up at GM. And when I tried to get into the IC fab part of that division, my machiavellian manager ended up pushing me out of the company completely (if I transferred, he lost the "headcount" permanently, but if I quit or was fired, he could replace me).Desire doesn't get you want you want. |
What web database(s) do you guys use? | davidw: I've always preferred Postgres because of its stability and solid construction. |
Why do Unix groups still require re-logging in to register changes? | davidw: Because no one has hacked together a good solution for it, presumably. |
Why do Unix groups still require re-logging in to register changes? | cperciva: Because each process belongs to a set of groups (set via setgroups(2)), and that set of groups isn't necessarily the same as the set of groups to which the process' user belongs. |
What web database(s) do you guys use? | andhapp: I have used both Postgres and Mysql and recently found out that Rails postgres adapter is broken for legacy databases. However, here's a good discussion on stack overflow: http://tinyurl.com/c29ftj |
Which Bank | whatusername: The Commonwealth Bank.(Sorry -- only Australian's will get that! Basically - their long running marketing slogan was the question: "Which Bank?" Long running to the point that I was once asked it playing an Australian Edition of Trivial Pursuit) |
How to deal with SYN FLOOD and extortion | Brushfire: Move yourself into the cloud and let someone else deal with it. Seriously.I'm a big fan of outsourcing anything you arent 'great' at. In this case, its running firewalls. Unless of course your app is something related to server maintenance or firewalls or security, etc.Most software companies really shouldnt try to deal with this stuff -- I had to learn the hard way. You should only spend your time on your applications, not anything else that doesnt directly benefit you. You can get lost in the maintenance. |
How to deal with SYN FLOOD and extortion | tptacek: Any large ISP should have a process and gear in house to mitigate DDOS attacks; you should escalate, first to your hosting provider and then to their upstream provider.Every ISP does something a little bit different for large-scale attacks. Some of them off-ramp traffic to scrubbers, some of them have inline devices that can characterize and block SYN floods. My previous employer, Arbor Networks, now has gear deployed at something like 90% of the worldwide tier 1 and tier 2 ISPs that will detect any major flooding event and generate a report which might be helpful to you.What I'd watch out for is the dozen odd fly-by-night operations that are promising you that, for a monthly fee or a one-time purchase of some $100k box, you can block these attacks on your own network. |
What do you use to order airline tickets online? | Nogwater: I just use the airline's website after shopping around. |
How to deal with SYN FLOOD and extortion | lsc: your provider (or your network guy, possibly you) needs to blackhole the source of these attacks (preferably notifying the ISPs in question.) most of the better co-location providers will give you a way to blackhole traffic from certain IPs. Really, you should be able to do that from your OpenBSD firewalls without help from anyone else, assuming the problem is too many syn packets rather than too much traffic. dropping all packets from a particular source IP is not expensive, even when you multiply that by a large number of source IPs.<please ignore this comment, I'm completely wrong. see the next comment.> |
How to deal with SYN FLOOD and extortion | axod: I've had a few DDOS attacks in the past, first when hosting with slicehost, and then when at linode. Running IRC related stuff, these attacks are pretty much expected from time to time.Both dealt with them fantastically, keeping me updated on progress etc.As far as I remember, there was only one instance when they decided (slicehost) to take my server 'offline' and just wait for it to pass/upstream providers to deal etc.The other times they were quickly able to escalate to upstream providers with minimal impact. I've had a few at linode, and whilst it does use up some bandwidth allowance, it hasn't been a big deal at all.Obviously if you're able to, get more IPs, use a few data centers, etc. distribute yourself so that an attack on any one part doesn't have a big impact. |
How to deal with SYN FLOOD and extortion | patrickg-zill: If they are never connecting, then why not set up a SYN "honeypot"? As soon as a valid user connects, redirect them to a different site or IP address that you do not advertise, that actually hosts your app and db servers.Thus you could rent or colo a small system on a different network, maybe even in a different part of the country and then redirect valid users to an entirely different location with a cookie in the URL. No cookie no service. |
How to deal with SYN FLOOD and extortion | mpk: The big boys seem to be a little reluctant to publish information on their DDoS strategies. (If anyone has information that says otherwise, it's much appreciated).I spent some time googling around and in case anyone's interested, these links seem to cover most of the mitigation patterns.A slideshow covering common mitigation techniques,
http://www.slideshare.net/intruguard/10-ddos-mitigation-tech...A Cisco whitepaper (which, as usual, has en emphasis on Cisco kit and a long URL),
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/vpndevc/ps5879/ps...A fairly comprehensive PDF document - A Survey of Active and Passive Defence Mechanisms against DDoS Attackshttp://www.fbi.cqu.edu.au/FCWViewer/getFile.do?id=17921 |
What do you use to order airline tickets online? | mahmud: Don't forget to keep an eye on browser cookies when you surf travel sites. Delete them often, or use a browser that lets you surf in secure "zones".For me it's Attitude Travel and Asia Room for hotels. Shoe string baby. |
How to deal with SYN FLOOD and extortion | datums: If they have already attempted to extort $$. You should keep the mitigation device in place. There are a few devices that do packet inspection and can handle multi gigabyte size attacks.But like many have mentioned contact the upstream provider |
Where's the best place to find Python or Rails programmers in SV? | mahmud: "We are microfinancing platform, like Kiva.org."Complete the sentence. "We are an X platform like Y, but with/without ..". If you can't differentiate your service from a competitor yourself how do you expect others to? Also, name dropping your competition without naming your business is not a good idea.Regarding your query, you're already in the right place. If you want to hire developers try Craigslist. For contractors try Odesk. Usually for me it's just a matter of reaching to people I already know. |
Best way to get freelance work without being treated like a commodity code monkey? | mahmud: 1) Escrow based freelance sites are a scam. Rentacoder is an outright scam. Odesk will have a little nice timer on the desk and the project owner will be able to track your progress as 1second precision. Too micromanaged.2) There is nothing inherently precious about an "American Programmer", Yourdon's 15 year old polemic notwithstanding.3) Craigslist. Nice portfolio. Cocktail parties. You will end up doing software, hardware and websites, prepare for that. You will end up moving to the business side of things, asking management types what they need done and you will be writing tens of emails a day in correspondence, meeting people face to face and juicing software requirements out of one off-remarks that people make. You might also end up becoming an integrator or procure hardware and software licenses.Just don't expect to write fancy systems software for a living and brush up on your PHP and system administration. It's a million-hat job. |
Best way to get freelance work without being treated like a commodity code monkey? | mattmcknight: For me it's been pretty simple- work with people who know your work, or show people your work. If you can establish some basis of trust, you'll be more than a rate. If you want to sell yourself, you have to network. Using those sites as the salesmen...well, let's just say they're the pimps. |
How do you know what you want? | hwijaya: My own experience and as i've seen with others, is asking a question of "what are you reading for fun / what magazines are you buying?". An example, i used to have a flatmate that work day-job as software tester, but, the funny thing is, he never read anything about technology. All he read is poker. News, tricks, techniques. All are pokers. It's so apparent that the passion for poker draw him from other things.However, while others can see it, from my own personal experience, i found it's not easy to convince yourself regarding what you want. I was lucky that i have exploited almost majority of the choices that i can get my hands on when i was 20 (and trying to figure out the same question). In a big divisions, i tried business, network-marketing, share, property and employment. But, always found life is the most interesting in business.Combine with the first point, i always found myself reading something techy whether it's magazine, google reader (and, i seriously don't mind with Sedgewick's algorithms books for bedside reading) clearly makes me realize that something about business + technology is what i really want. That's why i do what i am doing, tech-business. :)But, yes, agree that you need to figure out this question and need to be convinced heartily. Keep trying until you find it out. Good luck! |
How do you reach women 18-25? | asnyder: If you're serious about targeting this demographic then Hacker News might not be the best place to get your answer. If you're spending significant amount of time and resources in this demographic you should already know this information about them. If you don't know where they go for information, or what sites would be good promoting partners, how can you be sure that your application is interesting to this demographic?If however, your application has a different target demographic and you simply wish to test the waters with this group then sites such as TMZ (and other gossip related rags) is your best bet, IMHO. |
Where should I move to maximize my career potential? | vaksel: If you want to work with the web, SF Bay Area hands down. + its the shortest move for you |
Where should I move to maximize my career potential? | tokenadult: http://paulgraham.com/startuphubs.htmlYes, I think the SF Bay Area is the credited response here. |
Where should I move to maximize my career potential? | earl: I've lived and worked at startups in both NYC and SF. It isn't even a contest. The amount of startup activity, the character of the companies (ie are the founders left in charge or do you have to have a Harvard MBA to pass muster with the VCs), the ecosystem surrounding the companies, cheaper housing, the ability to move between companies (you mostly can't enforce non-competes in CA) -- come to SF. Oh, and the weather.Paul Graham will give you the same answer in a much more detailed form -- go read it. |
Hacking ability related to teaching language? | tokenadult: Every programmer I know who has learned Lisp (that is, some Lisp dialect) thinks that was very helpful for learning how to think better about approaching programs. It's especially the functional approach to programming that my son misses when, for example, he has to write code for a numerical computing class in MatLab rather than in Haskell, his current favorite language. |
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