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Have you created alternate accounts to post questionable responses? | reduxredacted: No based on how the question was framed. If a response is "questionable" then I have to question whether or not I should make that questionable response.Most of the time I post under my real name (actually, I don't know why I'm using a pseudonym on HN, frankly, just reflex when I first joined).The exceptions are:
Discussions on Politics or Religion.
I don't want my name associated with any religious (or atheist) group nor do I want it associated with any particular political party.
I have worked for people that once they discovered my political views, I was treated differently because we either agreed or disagreed.
I know that my name is going to be googled the next time I apply for a job and could run into someone who will toss out my resume simply because I'm conservative, liberal or other.If a site is overly political, or it's associated with a political cause, I will always keep only one ID on that site. If the site allows anonymous posting, I'll use my real name and post anonymously when broaching a subject that is controversial. If the site does not allow anonymous posting, I'll keep two IDs handy for when I want to join into discussions that would identify my political or (non/religious) affiliation. |
Have you created alternate accounts to post questionable responses? | makecheck: I have just one account.For me, it boils down to this: a goal of the site is to improve quality of discussion.There are two main parties to discussion: "you", and "everyone else".When "you" post: if you already suspect that your topic will earn down-votes, then why post it (from any account)? Apparently the topic is not something interesting to this group.When "everyone else" down-votes: they have a responsibility to be smart, and not childish. It's shallow to click the down-arrow simply for disagreeing with somebody or not liking them personally. If there is a general feeling that down-votes are always for legitimate reason, I think people would be less likely to "hide" behind anonymous accounts. |
Have you created alternate accounts to post questionable responses? | Tangurena: No.Everything I post, I'd be OK seeing it on the 6 o'clock news. But then, I'd expect that as I ran for election last November. |
Please review our RSS feed filtering app | avinashv: I think you're going to get much better feedback if you let people actually use your service. How much trouble could it be to make a bunch of HN invitation codes? You're essentially asking us to critique your front page and screencast.That said, from the screencast itself, this seems like a tremendous amount of work for not a lot of benefit--especially if I have to (and that's what it seems like) go back into your reader to change these scores and then return to GReader. Why shouldn't I just hit "j" in GReader when I come up to something I don't like as opposed to doing all your work?Also, the screencast itself: (this is basically just pedantry) you should normalize the vocals. The levels jump around. And while I'm glad you took the time to run it through what sounds like a noise-reduction filter, it would sound much better if you were talking louder and clearer when you recorded it. |
What is your favorite charity? | maxharris: The Ayn Rand Institutehttp://www.aynrand.org/ |
Where to find great designers? | jmtame: You should browse CSS top sites and try and look up the designers behind the sites.Are you open to remote work arrangements? If you want to get in touch with me I'm happy to refer some guys I know who are really good. Rates may be a bit high, but you tend to get what you pay for. More than anything, I've found referrals of both programmers and designers to be the most effective route of finding talent.As for your other question about characteristics. Check their portfolio first. Just ask them what their whole belief on design is, and they should be able to go on and on about it. If they start sounding like they wrote portions of Keeping It Real (37 signals), you have a winner. Any smart designer knows design is never about making something pretty, it's always about creating something that any normal human being can use without any pain and minimal thinking involved. |
How does Twitter help your company? | selcouth: So I found this post on a new community site, and I'm honestly curious. I hear that companies HAVE to use it, that it is a GREAT way to talk with your clients and customers. But I've tried...and I don't get it.You guys are a pretty tech savvy bunch - how do you use Twitter? |
How/Where can I find a part-time gig so I can work more on my startup? | coconutrandom: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=part+time+jobs+in+san+diego&l=1 |
How/Where can I find a part-time gig so I can work more on my startup? | blizkreeg: I only know dice.com where PT jobs sometimes show up.What are job boards that cater towards part-time gigs? Also, if someone on HN knows of a startup or are looking to hire themselves, I'd be happy to send you my resume. |
How does Twitter help your company? | auston: My favorite of company twitter usage is from Kogi (http://twitter.com/kogibbq) - They use it to tell people where their Korean BBQ Taco trucks are around L.A. |
How does Twitter help your company? | jrockway: The real-time search makes it easy to find people to lay off. |
How/Where can I find a part-time gig so I can work more on my startup? | melvinram: a) Talk to your friends.b) Great involved with an open source project, which will give others experience working with you so they can recommend you into a positionc) http://jobs.37signals.com/d) Call Ruby/Rails development companies w/ good code & tests ready to showe) I don't know if this is ethical or even legal, but you could find a partner and ask them to pay you minimum wage to solidify your part-time requirementf) Get creative. Come on man, you're a Ruby guy! |
How/Where can I find a part-time gig so I can work more on my startup? | keefe: They post a lot of jobs on craigslist, but be aware that employment posts in silicon valley is down 55% from last year |
How/Where can I find a part-time gig so I can work more on my startup? | bigbang: Sorry to hijack the discussion. But I was wondering, why do you need a part-time job to stay legal? Doesn't EAD allow you to work just on your startup and still be in legal presence? |
How does Twitter help your company? | axod: The search makes it easy to see when users are having issues with my webapp.Of course that assumes Twitter is working itself at the time... which sometimes it's not. |
How does Twitter help your company? | njharman: I work for the Austin American-Statesman news company in central Texas.This is how our Internet Editor answered that question http://thequig.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/op-ed-how-the-states...Here are the many twitter accounts our reporters use to distribute and collect news and information http://www.statesman.com/news/content/standing/twitter.htmlThe team I work for wrote a tool to aggregate/retweet tweets from our staff and "widgets" to display them on various pages of our websites. This is mostly used during major events such as SXSW, elections, or Longhorn Football games as a fast way to collect and publish news and tidbits from our staff in the field. And also, of course, to engage/serve the Twitter community with news and information.In general Twitter is a communications tool. If your business benefits from communicating with its customers (not all do) then it can benefit from Twitter.But, like all things, it takes effort and can be done "wrong". It, like all things, is not a silver bullet. |
Have you created alternate accounts to post questionable responses? | buggy_code: Somewhat OT -- how do you have negative karma? I thought you can only vote up on hacker news. |
How does Twitter help your company? | darwinw: I started to twitter a few weeks ago, and I was occasionaly posting links to promote my content, but when I check my google analytics, i hardly see any referal from twitter. So at the moment, i'm still unsure about how effective twitter is to my business. |
How/Where can I find a part-time gig so I can work more on my startup? | rdouble: Part time programming work in Silicon Valley is hard to come by even when the economy is good. I'm not sure why exactly, but people here treat employment as an all or nothing proposition. I found it much easier to do random short-term and part-time contracts in Boston.However, there are some niches where companies are more likely to hire part-time contractors: systems administration, "creatives" (i.e. flash) and recently, iPhone programmers. Thus, if you can stomach doing systems-y Rails stuff, I would could check in with the Rails hosting places. EngineYard & Heroku come to mind. I know people in both crews and they seem like they might be amenable to a part time thing if you're good. Also, Twitter contacted me about a systems position last week and the guy on the phone hinted that they may also be looking for full or part time Rails contractors.Good luck! |
How/Where can I find a part-time gig so I can work more on my startup? | darwinw: how about being a freelancer, will that violate the visa requirement for part time job?if you're talking about bay area, i'd start with craigslist. |
How does Twitter help your company? | callmeed: We've started posting announcements, conversation starters and small contests on our company twitter account (I've been doing it on my personal account a little longer).It's still early, but I think it's a promising way to get the word out on stuff and start conversations. When we release new site designs or app features, it's another way (besides our blog) to get the word out.Also, another strategy is to use the search feature and find people looking for product recommendations (this happens more than you think).Search is also good for finding people who are frustrated with your customer service–or your competitor's. |
What software do you use for managing communications with media/blogs? | aaroneous: Marketwire for distribution of your press releases. They have a "tech hotspots" (or something like that) package that's startup affordable, and well targeted.If you're in an area with a decent tech scene go out and meet relevant people to your industry. Talk to them in person. In my experience this is exponentially more productive than anything else. |
How/Where can I find a part-time gig so I can work more on my startup? | haseman: I hate to suggest this, but I've had friends who've had a lot of luck with coughLinked Incough put you email address somewhere easy to read so potential leads do have to jump through any hoops when trying to contact you. |
Where to find great designers? | aaroneous: authenticjobs.com jobs.37signals.com/categories/1/jobs programmermeetdesigner.com krop.com |
advice for my startup | pedalpete: First of all, I love the way you posed the question.
Mine will be 1 year old soon, and i've got some of the issues you've got too.First off, you are in a very crowded space as far as I can tell. I've got a very tiny bit of experience with PlanetEye, so I know a bit about the space that I think you are going for.... but that is the problem.
What are you going for? what are you REALLY trying to do? What is the differentiator. There are some really good trip planning/sharing sites out there, why should I use tripntale.When I first hit your homepage I'm confronted with a big image and a sign-up, aka fail.
Below the fold you have images that link to trips.
I'd move those above the fold and make sure they are seen, and make them look more like links. Just a picture isn't good. Tell me where it is, maybe when the trip was, what user added it. That HAS to be above the fold.Move the 'sign-up' stuff to a sign-up page. One button says 'click here to sign-up' that way you can give people more info, etc.
Move your searchbox up. top of the page would make sense, and the login stuff can probably go somewhere else.Playing around for a bit, i just wasn't dragged into the experience. I can look at photo's but maybe there just isn't enough content or something. Not quite sure, but I'd say you have some product/UI issues to deal with first.I don't think you'll get much major blog love until you get your usability figured out, and focus on the users first experience.On another note, TC is not a marketing plan, and I can speak from experience. As great as it is to have a positive review from TC, it doesn't make your company, but it is a great way to get feedback. |
Do you keep old e-mail? | brk: I keep some old emails. I clean up randomly when I have nothing better to do.Other than a few reg emails, most of it is valueless. Keep many more in my business account, "just in case".I have to admit that I use Mail/Entourage (personal/work) as a hack database in that I will often search for a person's name or product name to find associated info (contact data, etc.). So that can lead to keeping more email than I probably should. |
Do you keep old e-mail? | pedalpete: Personal e-mails, I probably wouldn't miss anything.
Work e-mails, I could probably live without 90% of the old stuff.
It's easier to have it and search on it, than deleting it though. |
How does Twitter help your company? | Zev: Not really a company, but an open source project I contribute to (there's also an App Store app, so it might qualify as a company, I suppose) has a twitter account that we use. We mostly have a few twitter searches for anyone having problems with the app (Colloquy) or looking for an IRC client on a platform we support to recommend to them. Occasionally we'll give out promo codes, either to bloggers or to anyone following us/twitter's public stream to use.Note, for this, we don't use a bot — A. because traffic is low volume, only a few tweets every few days and B. (imo), bots that send send the same message to everyone regardless of what the query is, is obnoxious. |
How/Where can I find a part-time gig so I can work more on my startup? | 10ren: Part-time programming work is reputedly rare, though no one could tell me why.Nonetheless, I fell into a part-time programming job once (they contacted me), and I found it tended to take over my thoughts - as programming tends to.Does it have to be a programming part-time job? It might work better for you to have a non-intellectual "day job", perhaps a physical one, or a social one, or just a really brain-dead one. e.g. A housemate had the job of changing tapes of a mainframe overnight (or something like that).University job boards are a great way to find part-time work (though usually only for students). |
Do you keep old e-mail? | mahmud: All the newsletters and business-mailings I subscribed to, but ignored for years, became handy as case studies to see what marketing format works and what doesn't. If you kept getting pricelists from manufacturers/vendors, you easily track the market growth of things and gain valuable insight into the direction of a niche market. This is specially true if and when you pick up AI and data mining as a side hobby and you suddenly figure out ways to infer business insight from large corpora.I say archive them to separate folder and keep them away from your inbox.Sometimes marketers make a mistake and CC thousands of people. Instant targets for your own marketing. |
Do you keep old e-mail? | tokenadult: I attempt to keep everything I have ever sent, and all but the tiniest amount of everything ever sent to me. But sometimes my software deletes for me, or my operating system puts it "beyond use," or something. In general, anyone with a legal education, which was my most recent higher education, keeps copies of all correspondence forever. |
Please review our RSS feed filtering app | toddcw: Thanks for the feedback. We anticipated that one of the initial critiques would be that it requires some work up front, which is true. It's really not much of a bubble to get over, though; after that you'll likely just add filters once in a while. The idea is that, in the long run, it will save you time. If you don't mind sifting through all of the cruft, though, a standard feed reader would obviously fit the bill.If you'd like to try it out, simply drop your email address in here: http://www.ectofeed.com/signup. Rather than generate invitation codes at the outset, we'll simply generate them as needed. |
What's the Reddit voting algorithm? | mcav: This isn't reddit. But both Reddit and HN are open-source, so you should be able to discover the algorithm. HN source is here at http://ycombinator.com/arc/arc2.tar and Reddit's can be found at http://reddit.com/code/ . |
What's the Reddit voting algorithm? | ekpyrotic: Do you mean the HN voting algorithm? |
Where to find great designers? | nreece: Checkout 99Designs - http://99designs.com |
What's the Reddit voting algorithm? | _pius: The Reddit ranking algorithm was/is this: http://redflavor.com/reddit.cf.algorithm.pngAnd Hacker News's was/is this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231209 |
Where to find public business information? | lv_: come on! |
advice for my startup | sgrove: Hey Darwin!Send me an email (sean at chuwe dot com). We're a free advice site for small business and startups, and we'd like to talk for a small project we have going! |
advice for my startup | il: There's a lot of room for improvement in your site's SEO. For example, the urls- instead of having URLs like http://www.tripntale.com/trip/4820, get some text in your URL, even something like http://www.tripntale.com/trip/mai-chau-vietnam/4820 would be better. Also, get some text on your pages! How can you rank in search without any text? If you do SEO
If you have any more detailed questions, feel free to contact me at the email in my profile. |
Day Zero Valuation | nostrademons: The question's basically meaningless - startup valuation is fuzzy enough when VCs invest after launch, revenue, sometimes profits. How could you come up with a number before you've even launched?I suspect that the prospective cofounder is trying to figure out how much of the startup he will end up owning. He knows how much he is worth in dollar terms; divide that by the present value of the startup and you get the percentage of ownership that vests per month/year/whatever. So if his present salary is worth $100k/year, and the startup is currently valued at $1M, and his shares vest over 4 years, and the startup's value remains constant over those 4 years (unlikely, but for the sake of calculation...), he's thinking he'll get 40% of the company.This is an incredibly awkward way to think about valuation and equity splits. If this is really his concern, I'd say just make him an offer for the proportion of equity you're going to give him. It should be based on how much he'll improve the startup's chances in the future, not on some made-up numbers for present salary & valuation (which is basically meaningless). So if you think he'll contribute as much as you guys will, and he's crucial to the startup's success, give him shares that are nearly equal to yours. If you don't think that, I'd suggest not bringing him on as a cofounder at all rather than trying to work out some lower equity number. Don't worry too much about what you've already done: trust me, the vast majority of work is ahead of you... |
Day Zero Valuation | gojomo: As nostrademons suggests, 'valuation' is likely the wrong question, and you should just skip to what is probably the real motivation for the question, relative equity splits.But if valuation really is the question: be careful about setting it high before you formalize and restricted/time-vested stock shares. For certain tax purposes (83b election), it's helpful if the shares are handed out at a moment when they are really cheap. Then the founders can buy them at fair value, do the 83b election, and all subsequent appreciation/vesting triggers no tax liability until the shares are eventually sold.(A good reference on 83b elections: http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2008/02/15/what-is-an-83...) |
How do you do time estimates? | lbrandy: 1. Write a list of the things you need to do. Be detailed. The more detail, the better.2. Estimate how long you think each will take, knowing it always takes longer than you think.3. Realize it always takes longer than you think, and revise your list.4. Double everything.5. Round up.6. Add it all up, walk to towards your bosses office and/or call the client.7. In a last second panic realization that it always takes longer than you think, double it again.In all seriousness, you will get better over time, namely after you do this many times. The only "secret" to the process is write down a detailed list of the things that must get done. Alot of people tend to clump up alot of the endgame details as "polishing" and that results in the 90/10 rule taking full effect (that the last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time) because things like UI testing, inserting the logo, doing the install script, etc, etc, take forever and a day. |
How do you do time estimates? | swombat: Have a read through this article for a simplified take on Function Point Analysis, which is the industry standard for estimation in larger projects:http://inter-sections.net/2007/11/10/easy-estimates |
How do you do time estimates? | mannicken: Very carefully. Never ever plan a block over 8 hours, usually between 2 and 6. And practice. It's not something you can learn easily, you have to adapt for your own brain.People say they double their estimates, but I find it no longer necessary, I usually hit the time 1 hour +/-. |
How do you do time estimates? | iamwil: http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html#id28...http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000245.htmlhttp://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html |
How do you do time estimates? | blogimus: I've worked for startups and for aerospace and defense contractors. There are of course different ways to approach software project estimation.I've worked on projects where we needed to do details work breakdown structures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structureAnd I've been in environments where I had to wing it with ever changing requirements where everything was all over the map.Somewhere in the middle is the happy ground.For perspective, I recommend reading the following book:Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art by Steve McConnel (http://www.stevemcconnell.com/est.htm)[Edit] Estimation is an iterative process both within a project (even if you are stuck in a god-awful waterfall) and with consecutive projects. You self train your estimation skills for doing similar work. Its when you hit something new that you don't have the past performance to draw upon that you really have to rely on your instincts. As a bottom line, I'm much less wrong when I go with my gut instincts than when I analyze and estimate ad nauseum. |
How do you do time estimates? | Eliezer: Ask how long roughly similar projects in the past have taken. Do not do any specific thinking about the detailed implementation. I'm serious!http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/09/planning-fallac.html |
How do you do time estimates? | cjg: On one project I worked on, we divided all feature requests into small, medium, large and huge (expected to be roughly 2, 5, 10, 20 days worth of effort respectively). This allowed us to come up with a quick overall costing of the project before starting - the estimates were gradually refined as we learned more about the system we were building. Looking back over the project, once most of the features were implemented, we could see that we had mostly underestimated the small features (they took maybe 3 or 4 days) and mostly overestimated the large or huge features. |
How do you do time estimates? | wallflower: In earlier performance reviews, I was always called to task for my reluctance to commit to a number of hours for a task. Nowadays, I give better numbers and hedge my numbers by asking for multiple tasks at once (so I can triage and switch among them as needed, simmer and return). I don't like it when developers are micro-managed (and my managers understand that - e.g. they know I'll get it done and know they can't dictate it).In my most recent 1.0 release with was done with Scrum and Sprints, what we observed happening was that overallocated time (tasks that did not need 6 days but took 2 days) was reallocated to tasks that needed much more time (10 days instead of 5 days). We were fortunate to usually meet our backlog for the Sprint (sometimes, more complicated tasks carried over) - but in practice, it seems that we had a fixed amount of time and the time estimates merely did a initial slice-up (which was not accurate). We hit the (pushed by 3 months) release deadline - however there was a fair amount of overtime.So, if I had a lesson - the moral of the story is - time estimates are nice but being all-in and committed to getting a product out the door is more important. |
How do you do time estimates? | alexk: Go gethttp://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/books/2425.aspxI would even call this book a survival guide. |
How do you do time estimates? | utnick: 1) make an estimate2) triple it |
How do you do time estimates? | donal: You aren't alone. If I had access to the book for my Project Management class, then I could give you exact stats for how terrible most estimates prove to be. The numbers are astounding (the studies are dated, but still adequately horrifying).Even doubling your estimates is unlikely to have any real reflection on reality.One standard methodology is called three-point estimation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_estimationHow far do you want to go though? You could look up COCOMO-II, I saw someone mention function-point analysis, then you could do monte carlo simulation...The best way is to compare the task to previous similar tasks, but the trick is making sure that tasks are really similar enough to make an accurate comparison. |
How do you do time estimates? | DavidPP: Sorry, I don't have time to write a detailed answer but here are couple of interesting things to know about software estimation (from a book I have at home but forgot the name) :* For a known task, developer are usually too optmistic by about 30%* At the very beginning of a project, your estimation can be off by as much as 400%, by the time you have the UI done (at least in wireframe), your estimation can be off by around 25%.Also, I suggest reading the "Three points estimation" part of this article : http://www.projects.ed.ac.uk/methodologies/Full_Software_Pro...It's usually for "big" project, but the Three points estimation technique can be used even if you are by yourself. Also, it's more scientific than just "doubling" your number (check Standard Deviation on wikipedia if you want to understand how it work).Finally, with this technique, it's easy to spot tasks which have alot of uncertainty. |
Do you keep old e-mail? | lacker: I keep all my email, because I use gmail and keeping everything is easier than bothering to think about it. |
How do you do time estimates? | Tangurena: I keep trying to apply PSP, but I find I get distracted so much that I'm unable to keep track of my metrics and how close I come to estimates (mostly, my boss pulls a time estimate out of his butt).One of the key elements of PSP is to record what you do each day in a little diary. One of the biggest ways you can improve your estimation skills is:1 - make estimates2 - keep track of how close those estimates came to reality3 - compare what you did right/wrong so you can do less of the wrong and more of the right.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Software_Processhttp://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Software-Engineering-SEI/dp...http://www.sysmod.com/psp.htm |
How do you do time estimates? | noss: Software engineering here:Divide the project into smaller pices. If your estimate for a piece is more than a day, it is still too big.To make sure you know what is involved in implementing a piece by always including how to perform a function-test of the piece. This is powerful for those pie-in-the sky estimates that go "Ohh, that cant be so difficult..."When it comes to fixing small bugs, verifying bugfixes, or other repetitive work, collect historic and use the average time, and multiply it with the number of things to do.With this approach, I typically manage to time-estimate well enough for a 3 week sprint.I have also began using a burn-down chart where I input number of hours worked on the project each day, so in the chart i can see how my remaining time burns down, and on top of that how many hours i did work each day. Making the remaining time bars black and the hours-spent fire-yellow, it is a really pretty "burn down" chart. If the fire is as big as the estimate decrease, im spot on with my estimates. |
How do you do time estimates? | scumola: Make a realistic (some what conservative) estimate and triple it. Same rule goes for cost estimates. Doubling is never enough. Better to under-promise and over-deliver than the other way around. |
How do you do time estimates? | grinich: Nobody ever complains when you finish a project under the estimated time. In fact, it looks good even if it's only by a few hours. |
How do you do time estimates? | papaf: The most accurate method I've used is "1 week per page". This is for backend development and not web design.Surely such an overly simple estimate is going to be wrong? Well yes, but reality is complex and no calculation is going to capture it correctly.If you find 1 week per page is too inaccurate you can update your future estimates based on past performance. |
How do you do time estimates? | Edinburger: Actual time taken to complete tasks is a good input to future estimates for similar work.Agile folks have the concept of 'velocity' which helps them to predict delivery dates based on accuracy of previous estimates. |
where do you share and discuss ideas (just for the heck of it)? | mahmud: I "pitch" ideas to everyone and anyone who will listen, specially if I know they're entrepreneurs, I will flood them with feedback and can spend the night visualizing ways they can improve their business, etc.It's good sometimes, but it mostly overwhelms people. I am also known to express dismay whenever a friend tells me he will take/keep a full time job. A few days ago I was at a party when I ran into an old gym buddy. I knew he was a pharmaceuticals post graduate then and I wanted to kick back and forth a few ideas someone else raised to be about starting a medical software business. My friend said he was working full time at his university and he wasn't interested in losing that lazy but paying academic gig. It really ruined my night and I kept trying to talk him out of it.Sometimes people will come to me with ideas and I will take them and run with them. The next day I would have been exhausted all possibilities and now I have several pages of business analysis in my notebook. Only problem is, people usually "have" ideas but they're not convinced of them. It than falls on you whether to put the 4 weeks of coding necessary to launch the service and start marketing it and make $, along side your other projects in the little time you have. It's a judgment call you have to make, and I always choose to ignore it and just apply the lessons I "learned" to my own projects.Ideas are cheap, just make sure you're not telling them to an _executioner_ if you're not yourself a taker. You will waste his time and put him in a moral dilemma when he finds out you're the one dragging his feet. |
Do you keep old e-mail? | chops: I use a separate email account for newsgroup subscriptions, but beyond that, I have every email I've ever sent or received for the past 7 years or so. Before gmail, I have my old thunderbird email files zipped up and archived incase I ever need them (doubtful), but it's there. And most of those would be business related for a job I haven't had for 5 years.But yes, I keep everything. |
Feedback on Scribnia | kbrower: http://scribnia.com/ |
How are you monetizing your site? | noodle: sell a product. sell a service. sell ad space. referral programs. |
Where to find public business information? | PaulMorgan: Try one of these libraries:http://www.uspto.gov/go/ptdl/ptdlib_1.html |
ASk HN: How difficult to build a browser? | vonsydov: You can try using existing stuff - gecko, webkit etc. |
ASk HN: How difficult to build a browser? | vorador: It depends of the level of functionality you want to include in your browser.
Could you describe your needs ?And, by the way, qt now comes with webkit. |
where do you share and discuss ideas (just for the heck of it)? | vorador: What about creating a mailing list dedicated to discussing ideas ? |
How are you monetizing your site? | scumola: Sell stuff. Get people to sell their stuff on your site and take a small bite of the sale price. Don't rely on ads and seo - too competitive. Then, go out and pound the pavement and get people to sign up to sell stuff. Would be good if you get a sales guy in your startup team. |
How are you monetizing your site? | monkeybusiness: Making money is so last year. |
What do you think about the raw food diet? | monkeybusiness: I think it temporarily changes the way you feel emotionally - because our diet is tied into our mood. Some people who embark on the diet - including some people very close to me - read more into their altered mood than they ought to. |
Feedback on Scribnia | systemtrigger: I think the reason your post isn't getting traction is that you don't have anything to show us unless we leave our email addresses for you here in the open. Maybe you should leave your email address and let us privately contact you.I signed up for an alpha account a few minutes ago. If I hear back from you I'll check out your app. |
What do you think about the raw food diet? | st3fan: From what I understand it is a dangerous diet. Some foods are not to be eaten raw. Simply because our bodies can not handle that. Some raw foods (specially meat) contain bacteria that you certainly don't want in your system.Personally, I think there are better diets. |
What do you think about the raw food diet? | tokenadult: It is not evolutionarily warranted. It is very clear that by the time the species Homo sapiens came around, hominids in the human ancestral line had already been eating cooked food for a long time, and many physiological and anatomic differences between humans and chimpanzees are adaptations to eating cooked food.http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/wrangham/wrangham_index.htmlhttp://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1... |
How are you monetizing your site? | skolor: The only way I've made money on any site is by selling something. Ads are great, but I can never get them to cover anything but basic operating costs, and even then they will barely cover the costs to keep a server running.Depending on how the site is set up, you can either sell a product or a service. The problem with that is largely that you have to have something people are willing to pay for. I know quite a few blog-type sites have had success with a model along the lines of Current month free, Archives require payment. |
How are you monetizing your site? | knightinblue: I wrote this last week for another 'Ask HN' thread regarding starting a successful blog. Thought it would also apply here -"Generating revenue - whole books can be written on this subject (and they have been). But it can broadly be broken down into five categories -1. Advertisements - the magic word here is CPM (read up on that). The higher the CPM, higher the payout for you. A word of advice in this matter - adsense is complete horseshit when it comes to CPM. Don't buy into the hype, it's absolutely pathetic. Same goes for Adbrite, Chitika etc. The real money is in PRIVATE ads. Take a look at the prominent blogs - like techcrunch.com for example - do you see any adsense or other types of nonsense on their blogs? It's mainly used as a placeholder in case any private ad spots weren't bought by advertisers. NEVER rely on adsense for your primary ad revenue. Having said that, you won't have private advertisers till you have good traffic, so it's ok to start with adsense. But as soon as traffic spikes up, dump adsense like it's the plague.2. Affiliate - this is a bit trickier than ads being that it's not completely straightforward. The basic idea is that you link to products on your site and if you readers follow your links to buy those products, you get a cut of the sale. Amazon is a good start, but they're not the best. The key is finding a good affiliate that fits YOUR blog audience the best. The next step would be to beef up on your affiliate marketing skills. Start reading affiliate marketing blogs like shoemoney.com for this.3. Merchandising - you can sell stuff on your blog. This can be as complicated as actually creating your own product or as simple as setting up a cafe press store and selling related merchandise (INSANELY easy! Just go to cafepress.com and set up a store for your blog, and they will handle the rest, by taking a commission of your sales.)4. Job Board - a specific section on your blog where ppl can post or look for jobs. Charge based on traffic. You can either set up your own job board from scratch (check out the problogger job boards on the bottom right of problogger.com) or do some research on alternatives - http://www.blogtrepreneur.com/2008/04/29/make-money-with-you... (Job-A-Matic has a good premise). Read up on this.5. Donations - Bloggers like Steve Pavlina and Leo Babauta use this method and it works out great for them. But it's not for everyone. Your audience has to LOVE you, or at least really appreciate you, for this."There's actually two more methods as well -6. Newsletter - http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2009/tc200... - this guy makes a $40 CPM, which is absolutely incredible. Sign up for successful newsletters like dailycandy to get an idea of how they monetize them.7. Sell a Service - from freelance writing to consulting etc.What's your site about? That could help narrow down your options. |
Where do you host your personal projects? | noodle: obligatory slicehost post. |
How are you monetizing your site? | udfalkso: I run this site:
http://isitnormal.comIt gets quite a bit of traffic, mostly from search, but it has proven very hard to monetize. Tried adsense, but my content was too risque for them. Was using an ad network called clicksor for a while, but their ads are very intrusive and didn't perform well enough to justify the bad user experience. I even tried the adult friend finder affiliate program for my "unsafe" content, but it performed absolutely horribly.Would love to hear more ideas from the HN crowd. How does one go about finding private advertisers without a salesforce? |
How are you monetizing your site? | mahmud: My "website" is a digital brochure for my business. Ask me how I make money from brochures if you want. |
Where do you host your personal projects? | gonick_daysbury: Google Code. |
Where do you host your personal projects? | brianto2010: My friend uses googlecode. Its free and uses svn.http://code.google.comhttp://code.google.com/hosting |
What do you think about the raw food diet? | systemtrigger: I'm bound to make mistakes when talking about this stuff but my wife got her masters in nutrition, is published in journals and for what it's worth she's a big fan of the raw food diet. We both followed it closely for about 6 months but eventually we decided it just wasn't convenient enough. There were certainly some benefits to it that I miss but I phrase these much more conservatively than what most gurus would have you believe. For example, I never felt any sort of natural high or extreme mental clarity - just comforted knowing that I wasn't poisoning my body with HFC etc. YMMV.Here is my best argument for why a layperson should go raw: it forbids you anything that even resembles junk food. Raw may be flawed but clearly it's way healthier than how most people eat. You can say it's a crutch or psychosomatic or whatever but for me once I got into the mindset of it I just stopped noticing unhealthy food. Almost everything in the modern dining world is cooked.The major downside - because it's so damn restrictive (plus we're practically vegan) is that raw gets to be time consuming. It's really impractical for people on-the-go. Sure you can always just eat an apple or some carrots but that gets boring and so you end up dehydrating your own bread etc and turning down practically every social dining opportunity. In a way that is a Good Thing because there is a lot of harmful junk in modern food, right? But it takes real dedication and eventually we decided a totally raw intake just wasn't worth all the effort.A cooked food diet opens up the floodgates to all sorts of unhealthy temptations. But in the end it came down to priorities like convenience. If you're thinking of going raw your best friend is the blender: there are a million nutritious ways to mix a surprisingly delicious smoothie (secret ingredient: jalepeños). |
What do you think about the raw food diet? | mahmud: What do I think of sun-bathing as an alternative to the wasteful water-based shower?What do I think of roofless habitat, living in nature as God/FSM intended and having sunflowers for a pillow?What do I think of human-fur as an alternative to soul constraining fabrics that bind me in slavery to my own comforts.Also, when dipped in animal fat, your nails can be strengthened to sharp claws for defense and excellent hunting tools. |
Current hosted document editing/sharing systems and their direction? | Tangurena: Have you been forgetting Sharepoint? It is my belief that Microsoft-centric businesses will eventually move towards Sharepoint for document storage.My suspicion is that Sharepoint and Infopath will become more popular with business users. Like the way that many companies have home-grown apps that started as Access and Excel things, and grew into "mission critical" stuff as time goes by, I suspect that SP and IP will do similar in the next decade. |
Where do you host your personal projects? | smwhreyebelong: Thanks for the fast replies.Google code / github definitely make sense for open source projects. But what if the project I'm working on is not open-source ?Any recommendations for personal hosting ? |
What do you think about the raw food diet? | mindviews: Something to keep an eye on in general - a raw food diet is used and promoted in anorexia circles and can be cover for an underlying eating disorder. It can be hard on this diet to eat enough calories to be healthy. The "legitimacy" of the diet can be a way to hide an eating disorder from family and friends (when it is in fact being used to restrict calorie intake). |
How are you monetizing your site? | EvilTrout: There are also intangiable (non-physical) products you can sell.For example, my product is a web based RPG. We use a points system, where users can purchase Brownie Points in various increments. Then they can redeem those points for various products (all of which web-site only features.)It's an alternative to subscriptions (like Lighthouse). Where your users pay a monthly or yearly fee. |
What do you think about the raw food diet? | bgutierrez: I did the diet for about a month while I was poor. This was a bad time to try it, since finding raw nuts and other things is difficult on a budget, even in San Francisco.I lost weight, I was often hungry, and I couldn't stop craving meats and cheeses. When I looked at pictures of people that were also on the raw diet, they looked gaunt and unhealthy. So I decided it was all bullshit and gave it up. |
ASk HN: How difficult to build a browser? | Someone: You should make a distinction between:- developing a browser engine
- developing the GUI around a browser engineThe first is not rocket science, but lots and lots and lots of work, and will require some hacks, as there are many areas where specs aren't clear (what to do with invalid html, http headers that promise a text encoding that is not delivered, what to do when http headers say "text/html", but the url ends in ".zip", etc, etc)The second can range from the almost trivial to whatever your imagination requires.Unless you have lots and lots of time and/or resources and cannot use an existing engine such as Mozilla or WebKit, stay away from building your own engine. |
Where do you host your personal projects? | zokiboy: Beanstalk -- http://www.beanstalkapp.com/ SVN hosting. Good customer support, solid service. For me beanstalk is github for svn :) |
YouTube's storage system | gojomo: The most details I've seen are summarized here:http://highscalability.com/youtube-architecture |
Where do you host your personal projects? | JeremyChase: linode 360 |
How are you monetizing your site? | lucumo: We're running a freemium model. Users get to view ads or they can pay to remove them and get some other features. The free part gets a lot of people into the game (as a figure of speech, but also literally) and some buy a VIP account. |
Where do you host your personal projects? | smwhreyebelong: Thanks for the input, everyone. I have decided to go with unfuddle for now since they host both svn and git repositories and their free plan has more than what I need for now. |
would you (founders) use this service? | jimgoldman: I use http://www.tomedes.com for all localization needs |
what linear algebra do you use most often for practical problems? | Tangurena: Simplex algorithm, for resource optimization solver.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex_algorithm |
what linear algebra do you use most often for practical problems? | Raplh: I'm not in software, but rather algorithm development for determining radio positions (like GPS but including other methods for cell phones). I have used eigenanalysis a number of times, a lot of orthogonal basis shifting of various kinds, implicilty a lot of matrix inversions and pseudoinversions to solve things. I do most of my R&D using matlab, and have learned a lot of linear algebra reading their helpfiles. I use hilbert spaces and what I learned about them 30 years ago almost constantly. |
what linear algebra do you use most often for practical problems? | thomaspaine: Non-negative matrix factorization for text clustering: http://www.procoders.net/?p=128 |
what linear algebra do you use most often for practical problems? | kurtosis: I apologize for threadjacking but you guys might be able to help.I have a different problem - I would like to compute an approximate SVD of a very large sparse matrix, (for spectral clustering) but I can't find a good implementation which works for datasets too large to fit in core. This is a hadoop scale problem. What's the best way to do this?Of course, finding all the singular values/vectors is out of the question, but I just need the top hundred or so.Does anyone here have any suggestions for how to do this? The obvious strategy is just to construct a rank-100 approximation and optimize the singular values and vectors so that they get as close as possible to the real matrix. I guess gradient descent or something like that would work. Are there existing packages that do this with hadoop? |
what linear algebra do you use most often for practical problems? | biohacker42: SVD, PCA, all kinds of matrix transformations, all for bioinformatics. |
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