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Subscription management/billing software? | NoBSWebDesign: We use BlinkSale (http://www.blinksale.com) for invoicing and like it very much. They have a nice interface for creating templates and recurring invoices as well. Though, as I began digging deeper into this area, I've begun to think that there are a lot of sites that do exactly the same thing in exactly ... |
What has been your biggest mistake? | time_management: I'm good at rolling with the punches, so I haven't yet been smashed by a big mistake, although I've made plenty. I usually recover from those, and come back bigger and badder.I have, however, lost a lot to the petty time-wasters and energy drains that eventually lead to missing opportunities for growth... |
What has been your biggest mistake? | abstractbill: I used to have regrets. For much of my early 20s, I thought not having tried to make music professionally was a mistake. Then, later, I worked at Macrovision and saw the music business up-close and was very glad not to be part of it! Similarly, for a couple of years after my PhD I regretted not staying... |
What has been your biggest mistake? | ptn: Not having looked for a scholarship to get me to a real university. Now I'm stuck here. I'm in my 4th year (1 more to go), if I transferred I'd be in 2.5 or something. |
Recommendation services? | tstegart: iTunes Music Store? |
What has been your biggest mistake? | msg: I was a National Merit Finalist, honors student, and such. I didn't go out and get scholarships for college. I stayed in-state instead of going out for my own adventure. When I got to college, I didn't know what I was doing with myself and bombed pretty badly. I wasted a lot of time and effort. I didn't drop out t... |
What resources have you read for E-Tailing/E-Commerce? | tstegart: They're hard to find, because you have to filter out so much "Make money in 10 seconds!" type spam. If you're looking for background, I think there's a Dummies book on the subject, although parts may be out of date. Finding an objective look at all the offerings out there will be hard though. What exactly are... |
What has been your biggest mistake? | fiaz: Listening too seriously to others. People like to give "advice" from their perspective and because such advice is through their own lens of reality it might be true for them, but not for you. |
Which mobile phone would you buy? | mrjbq7: I love the new iPhone 3G.And the SDK, plus the distribution that the App Store provides, makes a compelling combination.Battery life is a little light, but the screen (oh the screen!) and wifi, gps, bluetooth, 3G, EDGE, etc. |
Review my startup | mstefff: There seems to be tons of these sort of sites out there. It looks like a nice site but I never saw the appeal these prediction sites have. |
Can I use the RDBMS as an application server? | pjackson: I used to be an Enterprise architect for a Fortune 500 company. We did many of the things you are asking about. Here are my answers:1. Yes, you can. However, there will be tradeoffs. One important piece of sharing business logic involves sharing instances of running code, not just the logic itself. It's toug... |
What has been your biggest mistake? | kirpekar: Wow, interesting topic. Some months ago, I started a little (non commercial) website that would do exactly this: ask people what they regret and record it for others.http://www.regrett.com |
Which mobile phone would you buy? | geuis: I have the iPhone 3G after upgrading from my first-gen iPhone. Honestly, it's not any more useful than the old one. 3G sucks the battery in only a couple of hours. I live in San Francisco and the 3G coverage is so sporadic and unreliable it switches back to edge anyway. I mainly just leave 3G off.The gps is next... |
Social app without the social part | jlogic77: Can you just use those as a "Contacts" base? Think of those networks just as sources for contacts.Let users, point to a network with their profiles as a source for contacts. Allowing for many of these to be setup, i.e. one for each network/profile so a user can even use multiple accounts on a network (if th... |
Recommendation services? | maryrosecook: Working on a music recommendation service for which an API is quite high up the feature list. Email me at maryrosecook [at] gmail [dot] com |
What has been your biggest mistake? | tc7: Graduated with BA in comp.sci at 19 y.o. (not a mistake), then immediately took job doing web support stuff with big (non-tech) company.In retrospect, I would have loved to look at more options (like starting my own company), but a) I honestly wasn't even aware of the y-combinator sorts of opportunities, b) I was ... |
Subscription management/billing software? | blurry: I've used Authorize.net's solution. Cheap and reliable.http://authorize.net/solutions/merchantsolutions/merchantser... |
Can I use the RDBMS as an application server? | newt0311: Points 1-4 seem fine. Furthermore, I should point out that if you consider recent benchmarks, the bottleneck was not the DB but the framework on top (ie. Django or ROR). Generally DBs are extremely well designed.Furthermore, it is still possible to cluster DBs as long as there is one write master and multiple... |
What resources have you read for E-Tailing/E-Commerce? | mkull: Hey Dave just adding what I sent to you by email for posterity...http://www.ecommerce-blog.org/
http://www.varien.com/blog/
http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/webtogs-diary-of...
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/17-new-rules-for-successful-ecomm... |
What has been your biggest mistake? | icky: My worst mistakes were in doing what was expected of me, rather than what I wanted to do. |
Subscription management/billing software? | tylercarbone: Thanks for all the suggestions; I'll take a look at them. |
What has been your biggest mistake? | misterbwong: Biggest Regret: Waiting too long.Examples: I wish I learned to program sooner. I wish I started playing basketball sooner. Etc...I still find myself doing this, although less now than before. |
What has been your biggest mistake? | jnovek: Talking about regrets and mistakes s a funny thing. There is an implied hypothetical there -- like, "If I had made a different choice, I would be a in a better place."Take, for example, my (admittedly foolish) decision to drop out of the University after a year and go to community college part-time for a year.... |
What has been your biggest mistake? | qhoxie: Not focusing on ideas that interested me, but rather ones that interested others. |
What resources have you read for E-Tailing/E-Commerce? | solost: Woot! does not use drop shippers, they have their own warehouse in Dallas and they send our all of their own sales. |
What has been your biggest mistake? | skinny: 1. too much cocaine. really, it makes you feel like you can conquer anything and anyone, but it is totally not worth it.
2. learning any Windows based programming languages. seriously, what a waste of time. |
Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) | benjamincanfly: Hey guys! I've been building this app in my spare time. It's based on a simple idea I had over a year ago - somehow after all this time there still has not been a great web 2.0 chatting site to come into existence, so I've been steadily working at it whenever I've had the chance.You can read my whole sp... |
What has been your biggest mistake? | YuriNiyazov: Not quitting sooner the startup where I had to learn J2EE. |
Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) | mechanical_fish: I rather like it. No idea if it will take off or anything, but it's really nice.Your approach to user signup is superb.There should be an explicit "tag this conversation" link. Otherwise nobody will even know that they can do that.Can I post a link to an ongoing conversation in some other place, like T... |
Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) | cdr: "Under construction" is a phrase I have an immediate, strongly negative reaction to. I'm probably not alone. How about "Coming soon"? |
Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) | tocomment: Really cool!! I put all my comments in the chat system. We really need to link this with hacker news so we can discuss things. |
Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) | Alex3917: Great concept. I would start by putting everything into the dashboard page. Perhaps borrow from the look and feel of the Wikipedia main page, in terms of fitting everything into four different boxes. The theory page isn't necessary; I know it's only for HN readers, but once the site is good enough the concept... |
Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) | gruseom: I like it too. I might even use it, if there are enough high quality participants.I read the whole Theory page and it struck me as blah blah blah blah blah, except for these two points:1. Conversations on topics you want, going on right now;
2. Karma keeps the quality high.To me those are the core, and they're... |
Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) | Hexstream: Typo on the theory page:"Coupled with an analysis of your actual chatting history, this data lets Circle makes helpful suggestions as to what conversations you're likely to enjoy.""makes" --> "make" |
Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) | curiousgeorge: Not to put a downer on things, but this is not going to be useful for me at all. Why should I want to chat with complete strangers about random topics. And why online? |
Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) | dmnd: I really like the idea. A few things I noticed:Tagging a conversation with a pronoun like "I" will probably means it sticks around forever.Can you join multiple conversations at once? What happens if two conversations share a tag? Are they merged?To stop conversations being tagged incorrectly, you could perhaps a... |
Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) | sutro: Good idea and nice start.Suggestion: Add up-down voting for tags/topics, then rank the tags/topics on a redesigned front page that looks more like HN or Reddit. You could make the site behave like a HN for which all link submissions were self-referring (like this one), and all commenting/conversation happened in... |
Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) | shawndrost: The feedback here is valuable, but leaves out one point which you might not be aware of: an "intelligent chat system" will enjoy about as much widespread success as a poetry board. (Which is not to say that you should stop, or that this isn't valuable.) |
New site feedback ('ideas for things to do' - using RoR, EC2, AJAX, CC, API, etc) | thomasswift: I really dig the the design of the site, the logo is pretty rad.The one thing I noticed is how Y looks like a hand and is giving the "two finger salute" to the little guy flying in the parachute, it made me chuckle, but no one will really notice :) see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_signEDIT:(your site ha... |
New site feedback ('ideas for things to do' - using RoR, EC2, AJAX, CC, API, etc) | spxdcz: Ta!Yeah, the logo (and most of the design, in fact) was done by an amazing Russian design company: http://www.turbomilk.com - I think they added the 'v sign' to make it more playful! |
New site feedback ('ideas for things to do' - using RoR, EC2, AJAX, CC, API, etc) | tstegart: That design rocks. Curious, how did you get in touch with a Russian company, and how was it working with them? |
Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) | drewcrawford: Are conversations archived somewhere? Here's my reasoning:1. Some conversation and/or the site gets dugg2. Thousands of incoming users waltz in with good karma3. Everything goes to hellWikipedia, Everything2 et al. have some resilience because the audience is more than just who's using the site at the... |
Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) | thorax: Really needs a quick way to get your friends in the room. Should actually be very visible and very easy to get them in that room chatting with you.Perhaps an obviously marked URL to copy/paste or something like that? |
How do formalize / capture your ideas? | entelarust: the best way to show non-technical people a new concept is by building a base prototype |
How do formalize / capture your ideas? | nostrademons: Code.I've found it's generally a lost cause to tell people about your ideas and expect them to understand it. They'll try to fit it into their existing conceptual framework, which is probably not what you had in mind.You've got to show them, so that they've got a new conceptual framework to anchor their ... |
News more Deliciously. How's the tweaked idea? | gaika: I really like this idea, thanks, would implement it on my site too. |
How do formalize / capture your ideas? | rw: Build it and they will comprehend. |
How do formalize / capture your ideas? | qhoxie: Simplified use cases. Present it as an animation or the like. When done properly this communicates a purpose quite well. |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | tstegart: Well, there's the real world answer, and the legal answer. Not too sure about the legal answer, thats always murky. Some things are copyrighted, some aren't. You can't just take someone's story, or art, and use it on your own site without permission. Usually the creator has all rights until they are given awa... |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | jonmc12: A few years back I wanted to set up a menu service - putting a bunch of restaurant menus online so that others could search. My lawyer advised that because the restaurant made these materials open in the public domain, we could basically do whatever we wanted with them. As if they were public property.I'm no... |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | drewcrawford: In the legal world, whenever text is set in fixed form, it is automatically copyrighted by its author, whether they claim it or not, unless they specifically say otherwise. "Specifically say otherwise" probably includes anything they might have agreed to in the TOS for a particular site, although the leg... |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | nickh: Check to see if the site that you're considering scraping has any sort of "terms and conditions", "terms of use", "legals", etc page. If it does, read that page in detail. If it doesn't, ask the site for permission to scrape.If the site doesn't have one of those pages and you don't ask for permission, you're not... |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | okeumeni: I will suggest that you mention clearly the origin of anything you get from anywhere on the internet.The truth is, it’s hard to find a site without the mention of copyright in terms and conditions page.Overall it will depend of the use you make of the copy content. Trouble starts when you use someone’s materi... |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | gm: Technically, you own whatever you write. So I own the copyright on this message, unless I granted the copyright to YC News when I signed up (I don't remember). Assuming that I did not, then I retain copyright, and you have to get the ok from me, individually.That's the theory anyway. Talk to a lawyer. |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | smakz: Relevant recent discussion on slashdot:http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/08/1245204 |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | pedalpete: I'm not a lawyer, but had to do a bunch of legal research regarding this topic for some of my sites.I think what most of the responses so far are missing is the importance of accrediting the content to the content owner (likely the site, not the contributing users), and providing a link to the source.Check o... |
What Other Community Sites Do You Read? | saundby: DZone (http://www.dzone.com/)
The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/) Not exactly a community site, though there are enough good comment threads that it does a good imitation of one. |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | micks56: It is most likely not legal.The user owns copyright to the article or story that he wrote. This ownership of copyright gives the user the right to decide how it is distributed. For you to use the material legally, you must get permission of the copyright holder. The user may be the copyright holder, or the sit... |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | mattmaroon: One of the most dangerous things you can do is rely on non-lawyers for legal advice. Ask an attorney. |
iPhone Web App or iPhone App? | icey: If the application was good enough (and the price was right), I'd certainly install it on my phone.There seems like a dearth right now of really good iPhone applications, so the more the merrier, I say. |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | bprater: I'm similarly curious about the legality of using screenshots. |
iPhone Web App or iPhone App? | aaroneous: If you can, I'd do both:Making an iPhone-friendly website isn't very hard, and using the iUI will allow you to easily integrate a psuedo-iPhone interface.Then, your iPhone application would pull in your iPhone website, while also providing the other functionality you want to include (location awareness, cont... |
iPhone Web App or iPhone App? | tstegart: Yeah, I agree with the other folk, doing an iPhone site shouldn't be hard. How often will people be coming back to get this information? Native apps have huge advantages in UI design and functionality that can help display information in more useful ways. But if its short, simple stuff, an iPhone friendly web... |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | webwright: Google does it, as do vertical search companies like Indeed and SimplyHired, so it's certainly legal under some conditions. Taking only a snippet and linking back to the source is generally okay (as the original publisher benefits from traffic and SEO juice). |
iPhone Web App or iPhone App? | bapbap: Seems like both is the best option, thanks everyone! |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | emmett: The real question is usually not "Is this legal" but rather "Will this get us sued". We do many "illegal" things like jaywalking all the time, but everyone with sense knows which things are truly illegal. |
iPhone Web App or iPhone App? | wmf: If you have both, maybe you can justify charging for the app (assuming that it has some advantages over the site, such as location awareness). Use the Web version for free, and pay for the app if you want more. |
iPhone Web App or iPhone App? | nickb: Are you charging for it? If you do, definitely an app. |
iPhone Web App or iPhone App? | silencio: Yelp has three options: Main site telling you that there is a Yelp app in the app store (I guess it's using the UA string), mobile site, yelp application.Ideally having both is nice, with the same functionality sans the native-only stuff (e.g. like you said location awareness and contacts). Yelp has different... |
iPhone Web App or iPhone App? | ComputerGuru: If you can get away with it, a webapp. Given Apple's restrictions on 3rd party software, a webapp gives you the most freedom and future compatibility though it does mean sacrificing the beauty and elegance of native code. |
iPhone Web App or iPhone App? | danw: Build a webapp, then build an app which is just a wrapper for the web app. All the app will contain is safari with the webapp loaded. This gives the ease of building and ability to use without installation advantages of webapp with the appstore visibility of an installable app. If the app is popular enough you ca... |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | uvince: News is one case, but how about the millions ratings & reviews floating out there on the web? What about this site? http://www.boorah.com/restaurants/CA/palo-alto/the-counter/A...They scrape, re-present abstracts from and supposedly do calculations based on of the entirety of user-submitted data collected by a ... |
iPhone Web App or iPhone App? | rdj: Based on your questions and your last comment... let's be clear here. You aren't wanting to make an app just to view content right (ala plugin)? The purpose of the native app route is to provide better/easier/more interaction with your site/web application. If it's just another way to view the site, I would just d... |
iPhone Web App or iPhone App? | auston: An iPhone web app will also work on Androids Platform and I'm assuming Nokia's S60 Platform(it uses a webkit browser).So there are some benefits to being platform "agnostic" (even though it's not as true in this case). |
iPhone Web App or iPhone App? | tlrobinson: iPhone Apps are good ifa) You want to charge for the appb) iPhone's MobileSafari can't do what you need, performance-wise or feature-wise. Note the gap is narrowing now that MobileSafari has touch events and hardware accelerated 2D and 3D transforms. |
Legality of Web Scraping User-Submitted Content? | sh1mmer: My "not a lawyer" answer to this is:It depends on the terms of service of the site.#1 The TOS of the site may not let you use a robot on their site at all#2 The TOS will define who owns the user generated content (UGC), either the user or the site#3 Depending who owns the UGC you may or may not be able to scra... |
ASK HN: How to hire good employees? | tonystubblebine: What about the people you used to outsource to? There's nothing that matters like the ability to produce and having people work for you on contract is the best way to test that.The test-type questions I've seen have been almost entirely useless. When I'm asking questions now I mostly ask what about som... |
Which are the well written open source programs? | haasted: I once added some custom functionality to MediaWiki, and was very pleasantly surprised by the codebase's organization and the readability of the code. |
Work on products, or take a break for (seemingly) lucrative consulting? | noodle: why can't you institute a consulting wing of the business?might not be as fun as writing your personal stuff, but if 1 week of consulting will carry you for the rest of the month on personal stuff, why not? |
Work on products, or take a break for (seemingly) lucrative consulting? | sidsavara: You could try a hybrid approach - develop client software, but negotiate to own the intellectual property to parts of the software that are just "utility" and not specific to their needs. I think Matt Raible once wrote a blog post along those lines, but I don't have a link handy.Edit: Clarification, the rea... |
Work on products, or take a break for (seemingly) lucrative consulting? | trevelyan: Take your business seriously or drop it. |
Work on products, or take a break for (seemingly) lucrative consulting? | lsemel: Questions for you to think about to help make your decision:- Will the extra money from consulting reduce any worries you have about money, thereby letting you focus on the product more?- Would consulting save you from having to take a full time job, giving you extra time work on the product?- Can you consult o... |
When to do an API for my web app? | wlievens: Maybe working out the API will allow you a good second angle into how your app should interface with the world (next to the user interface, obviously)? |
When to do an API for my web app? | th0ma5: hey good question, good comments so far, i keep thinking asap... aren't we all in the platform creation business now? |
When to do an API for my web app? | mixmax: I think it's way too early for an API, and here's why:- API's are generally only interesting if there are already some users, accounts, etc. to interact with.- API's are not a main feature of the site (I could be wrong here of course) and are quite a way down the list. Fix the obvious problems first. I searched... |
When to do an API for my web app? | pierrefar: I'm building an app and found that thinking about the API from the get go made me design the app better. Why? Because the interface I'm building is just one example of how to interact with the API. The API is better and I understand my app better. |
When to do an API for my web app? | maxklein: If your application is something for whom an API is useful, then encapsulate the application behind your API. This will allow you deal with the application at a somewhat abstract level, which will lead to better programming practises. So, write your tentative API first, program for the API, test with rough mo... |
When to do an API for my web app? | steffanwilliams: Interestingly, I was wondering the same thing!I wouldn't call what I'm doing much of a web app (http://scribbleit.net), but I wanted to learn some basic PHP so I decided to create a to-do list app (wow, new idea huh?) because I hate all the alternatives out there.I had just finished hacking a bunch of ... |
When to do an API for my web app? | danw: If you're using MVC or similar framework then adding an api is a simple case of adding some alternate views. Adding these is a handy way to check if you're keeping your code all neatly partitioned. |
When to do an API for my web app? | nir: An RSS/Atom feed is usually fairly easy to build and can make for a decent read-only API. You can add your own namespace or use microformats for app-specific data.It might also make sense in your app as the more common "subscribe" use - a user might subscribe to get recommendations for new artists that fit her tas... |
When to do an API for my web app? | sh1mmer: I would recommend checking out Tom Coates' "Web of Data" talk. Presentation: http://www.plasticbag.org/files/native/ Audio: http://www.webuser.co.uk/carsonworkshops/TomCoates.mp3It explains that the data is the web site (app), or at least the most important part of it. By building a web app on top of an API yo... |
When to do an API for my web app? | richtaur: The purpose of an API is to provide a way to build an application. If you build your website on top of your own API, then you've already shown off what you can do with your API, which is great. |
Ruby on Rails Hosting | sant0sk1: Heroku FTW. (http://heroku.com/)Especially since you'd be supporting a YC startup and they are great for beginners because of their pretty powerful in-browser editor. You don't even need your own dev environnment if you don't want.Also the service is free during beta. Not sure if the beta is still closed, but... |
Ruby on Rails Hosting | pius: If you're comfortable administering a Linux slice, consider Slicehost ($20/month). If you're just learning, Heroku might be a great option. |
Ruby on Rails Hosting | alaskamiller: Linode.com is a better choice than Slicehost. Better customer service and more bang for the buck. But you do have to learn a bit about sysadmin. |
Ruby on Rails Hosting | hopeless: I may get flamed for saying so but Dreamhost support RoR apps, lots of bandwidth/disk space and all for $11/month. It's shared hosting but they support mod_rails / Phusion Passenger which is working out great for me so far (I'm running a Redmine bug tracker on Dreamhost, along with lots of other PHP stuff).H... |
Ruby on Rails Hosting | hardbap: I've been happy with hostingrails.com. The support has been very good and accounts start at less than $4 USD per month. |
Ruby on Rails Hosting | vivekamn: We have had good experience with speedyrails(www.speedyrails.com). They are cheap and their service is great. |
Ruby on Rails Hosting | lyime: Moprh |
Ruby on Rails Hosting | gunderson: I like Slicehost. I have tried Joyent and it's good but you have to learn a bunch of Solaris skills and many gems don't work quite right on Solaris, and I've tried Engineyard but nobody will return my emails to set up an account.Slicehost has never done anything but offer consistent, professional service. ... |
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