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Rate my Start-up mixcloud.com | calvin: The number of fake/new accounts created to comment on this post is incredibly disturbing. |
Are "Rate my Start-up" posts OK on HN? | jasonlbaptiste: absolutely. it's great for a few reasons:a) you get constructive feedback. it may be tough to swallow, but it's usually not trollish at all.b) you get to see new products and learn just by reading the threads. seriously, someone should put together a domain or something like it, listing all these typ... |
Do you create music? Let's hear it! | jporta: http://www.last.fm/music/Juli%C3%A1n+Porta/Detr%C3%A1s+de+la...FL, Audacity and that's it. |
Rate my Start-up webticketing.net | icey: I don't know if it's too late to mention this; but this posting has all the same fake user reviews like matclayton's other post did. |
Are "Rate my Start-up" posts OK on HN? | icey: I think they're great, personally. Occasionally there is some astroturfing, but I think that's a rarity.I like seeing what people are working on; and it makes me want to keep focusing on the stuff I'm working on as well. |
Do you create music? Let's hear it! | blinks: Electronica, compared to Brian Eno and Joe Satriani; I'm on Last.FM (http://www.last.fm/music/Hacker+Blinks) and AmieStreet (http://amiestreet.com/music/hacker-blinks/)Oh, and tools: earlier stuff was with Reason, later stuff with Logic; mostly just playing around on a little Oxygen synth. |
Review New Social Network - prospectvista.com | DanielStraight: Based just on your profile on there, I don't get it. First of all, the profile is hard for me to visually parse. I don't know what's important aside from the big image in the center.Second and more importantly, there is little on this profile that I couldn't find in a phone book or a phone book website,... |
Do any small profile changes increase usage in your app? | patio11: Yes, small profile changes increase usage in my app.However, I've got to be that guy because "natural experiments" like this one are tempting and highly suboptimal. Finding a correlation between uploading a picture and higher response rates isn't useless, but it isn't fabulously useful, either: the photos mig... |
Building a web circumventor or proxy server | yannis: Internet filters seem to have an easy time to detect proxy servers and they will pick them up easily.What worked for me, I put-up a website in the US. I did use PHP at the time and used curl to scrape content from banned sites and serve it from the website.I removed possibly offensive words and presto! Obviousl... |
Building a web circumventor or proxy server | timf: Rent a linode/slicehost node and put three services up: OpenVPN, SSH, and a HTTPS server. Access in descending order of availability (blocking):OpenVPN: use it for what it's made for.SSH: use the "-D" socks5 feature.HTTPS: use CGIProxy hosted behind a password wall, http://www.jmarshall.com/tools/cgiproxy/And s... |
Building a web circumventor or proxy server | ErrantX: Spend time getting 4Chan or another huge group onboard with the problem.Whilst that might be slightly weird advice it's probably the best. As an individual you could spend hours a week providing and maintaining ways to bypass the blocks - but there is no way you will win if the Govt. is actively blocking new "... |
Design for a Software Guy? | rubinelli: Sitepoint has great books about design. Although they are geared towards web design, most of the principles are universal. There's also the obvious recommendation, "The Non-Designer's Design Book." |
Are "Rate my Start-up" posts OK on HN? | callmeed: Absolutely. In fact, I think they are possibly some of the most educational posts on here.Even if you don't want to review the site or provide feedback, you can learn a lot just from reading the comments. |
Building a web circumventor or proxy server | s2r2: http://en.flossmanuals.net/CircumventionToolsThis could be a valuable resource, too, although it might not cover setting up a large proxy server, it shows quite a few ways to reach that goal. |
please review my start-up (baseloop.com) | andhapp: I like the design but then again it is not clear what the service does. As a new start-up it is of prime importance to make that first impression otherwise you will have a lot of one-time visitors.
It looks like some kind of social networking sort of thing but not exactly clear and I would not want to go thro... |
please review my start-up (baseloop.com) | ErrantX: I think your main problem is one you yourself have mentioned.Sign Up and Find Out What's Going OnI have no idea what it's about or why I should sign up.The most important part of any site is the WIIFM factor: tell your consumers what is in it for them to sign up. |
please review my start-up (baseloop.com) | andhapp: Go with "About us" or "Learn more". It should explain in clear, concise way what exactly the service does. I would go with some sort of pictorial flow-chart sort of thing..where if I sign-up --> I get <something>. You know what I mean. |
Switch to mac? | andhapp: You could actually debate the Mac pricing and you would find numerous articles on it.
Anyhow, I switched to Mac recently and I don't think there are any downsides. You can still run Windows using VM seamlessly only if you want to do some windows dependant development. |
I offered free promo codes for my iphone app but.... | DarrenMills: I think it's a great idea, and can't see anything wrong with offering like-minded thinkers a chance to test it out.If I had more time I'd definitely give it a shot. Surely there's some folks who would gladly give it a chance! |
Switch to mac? | thismat: Obviously this topic will tend to be highly subjective as the tools (at least for me, ymmv) have not been different enough to matter.I personally feel it's a matter of what you enjoy using more. Before Windows 7 I would have given OSX with the better user experience overall, but after using Windows 7 for the l... |
Switch to mac? | movix: After 15 years of being a PC advocate, last year I switched over as the main development platform we were using was Mac only.I would never go back to PC now, and I can't even give you a succinct or informed reason why, there's just something about using a Mac, when you get used to it, that just feels 'right'.I'd... |
Design for a Software Guy? | Gibbon: I'm a designer and the two books I always recommend to non-designers and newbies are:Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual (http://www.amazon.com/Design-Elements-Graphic-Style-Manual/d...)andThe other is the complementary case studies book "Design Evolution" (http://www.amazon.com/Design-Evolution-Handbook-Pr... |
Switch to mac? | aaronblohowiak: Make sure your Nokia emulators work on the Mac, or you'll end up running a windows VM anyway. |
Are "Rate my Start-up" posts OK on HN? | raffi: You're good to go. The neat thing about this community is strikes a good balance between give and take. My startup journey is well documented on this site. At different times I did my announcements and requests for feedback (take) but I also try to chime in on conversations like this one (give). It seems thi... |
I offered free promo codes for my iphone app but.... | byoung2: Anyone want a Free promo code for my iPhone app?I'd take one, but I don't have an iPhone/iPod Touch!Maybe Sunday was a bad day to catch people...I tend to look at HN mostly at work :) |
I offered free promo codes for my iphone app but.... | joubee: Wow.... great response so far. I've had a nice post from Darren and two more people have requested codes.Thanks so much for the support guys :)Keeps the requests coming |
I offered free promo codes for my iphone app but.... | joubee: I've had a nice post from Darren and byoung |
please review my start-up (baseloop.com) | movix: I have NO idea what this is about.Nice design though.. so that intrigues me. I'm guessing some sort of social networking, but there's no way you're going to force me to sign up before I find out what you site's about.Tell me, if it is a SN site, how do you get your first 10,000 users, so it gives the slightest c... |
Switch to mac? | stonemetal: >wondering what can I gain from switching to MacAs a person who has been using a Mac for about 5 years now, not much. Macs have a slightly better UX(for now, personally I think Win7 makes them equals) if you don't like the command line at all(or are command line only, but then it offers nothing over Linux).... |
please review my start-up (baseloop.com) | jawn: Message out a clear value to your customers. I was prompted for personal information with no idea what I was receiving in return.I think if you focus in on that clarity of message you'll see a good increase in sign-up conversions. |
please review my start-up (baseloop.com) | baseloop: The general theme on the comments so far is that the homepage is not descriptive enough to entice anyone here to sign-up. It seems to be a consensus so far, so we will definitely go back to drawing board with the homepage design. I'm glad, however, that people feel that at least the general design is nice. I ... |
What country does better than the U.S. in immigration law? | philwelch: De facto or de jure?De facto, tons of countries won't notice if you live and work in the country while on a tourist visa. You just need to take a trip out of the country every 90 days and get a new tourist visa to come back. |
Why is dropbox.com redirecting to Google? | byoung2: Isn't that the Google Apps standard 404 page for hosted domains? |
Why is dropbox.com redirecting to Google? | kierank: dropbox.com seems to be registered through Godaddy; if it were Google-owned it would use markmonitor. |
Is it just me or does Firefox suck now? | zv: It's just you |
Is it just me or does Firefox suck now? | jsz0: I haven't experienced any increased crashing but I don't use FF that often anymore so it's hard to generalize. I mostly used FF because it was faster than IE. Now I use WebKit because it's faster than FF. I don't care about a kitchen sink selection of plugins and themes -- I just want a very fast browser. |
Is it just me or does Firefox suck now? | nickmolnar2: I have constant problems with Firefox, but they are all related to add-ons. When I turn all of them off, the thing runs smoothly. Of course, the add-ons are why I use Firefox in the first place. |
Is it just me or does Firefox suck now? | byoung2: I used to work in tech support, so I have to ask...did you restart your computer? ;)It is probably some plugin that worked perfectly under 3.0 that is not playing well under 3.5. Try disabling all of your plugins and re-enabling them one by one. For me it was BetterGmail that was crashing FireFox. Disabling... |
Is it just me or does Firefox suck now? | SwellJoe: Firefox 3.5 in its current incarnation is extremely stable for me on both Linux and Windows. Betas were rough, and 3.0 remained pretty crappy, for me, throughout its entire cycle, but mostly that was memory usage complaints.I did have a few weeks worth of horrible Firefox instability last month, but it turne... |
Is it just me or does Firefox suck now? | Travis: Not just you. I see it on my Mac and Windows at work. There are times when it just goes unresponsive for 3-10 seconds, then unfreezes and runs fine. But it's def. a slow bloated POS at this point (and IMO). |
please review my start-up (baseloop.com) | joubee: Hi
I'm not sure what this is about :)
I went "skip" a few times and am now stuck on this pagehttp://www.baseloop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=reg.signUpLoginAn about page would be good and maybe a demo. Design is nice and I get the basic concept.Will try again if I can get out of register page |
I offered free promo codes for my iphone app but.... | simplify: I think you might have gotten a better response if you mentioned in the HN title what kind of app it was. |
Is it just me or does Firefox suck now? | Daishiman: FF 3.5 is extremely slow on Linux on comparison to Chrome, so I switched there. It's faster on Windows, but that may be because I use it less so the cache is smaller. The lookup times for the awesomebar are too slow. |
What Would It Take To Startup A Telecom Company? | SwellJoe: A time machine. The time to start a telecom company for data was 20 years ago. The telecom industry is the most insular, regulated, and has the highest barriers to entry of any tech industry I can think of. The established players are masters at playing the regulatory game in Washington, and have made it n... |
What Would It Take To Startup A Telecom Company? | babyshake: A Telecom startup is a contradiction. A Telecom company, is large practically by definition.If you wanted to somehow disrupt their business model with VoIP or something, that's one thing, but I don't know if it's productive to think about directly competing with huge multinationals without using a fundamenta... |
Is it just me or does Firefox suck now? | makecheck: On which platform? Firefox can vary a lot on other systems. |
What Would It Take To Startup A Telecom Company? | pclark: Skype? |
Do you create music? Let's hear it! | thekevinscott: I play a politician (Eugene Grant) trying to get elected. He has a rock band and sings about the joys of campaigning and politics.Our "music video" -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehsQhMbvqdAI use Pro Tools with an MBoxhttp://www.eugenegrant.us |
What Would It Take To Startup A Telecom Company? | mindviews: A reason. What's the need that isn't being met?I think the existing industry has a lot of the basics covered - wired and wireless communication in many locations. Improvements in coverage and performance seem mostly incremental and not disruptive enough to make for a successful startup. Maybe the bulk of ... |
Javascript best practices? | mindviews: I like to use separate files for organization during development and then merge and minify for deployment. Just make sure you have an automated process because you don't want to make mistakes doing it by hand. |
Javascript best practices? | thingsilearned: Many frameworks have some tools for dealing with multiple javascript files. I use django-compress for example and love it.It allows you to have many different javascript files to separate your code logically, and it automatically compresses them into one file for you for deployment. In this way you do... |
Javascript best practices? | csytan: I'll assume this is for client side js, since that's what most people use =)Most of the js I write involves jQuery. As such, I find it's very useful to separate reusable components into jQuery plugins in separate files. If you don't use jQuery or another library which allows plugins, then it's best to create yo... |
Is it just me or does Firefox suck now? | fatdog789: It's not just you. Firefox has the Netscape syndrome: it gets crappier with every release. And that's without any damn addons. |
Javascript best practices? | taitems: Just remember that sometimes doing things the "right" way can really slow your code down. I started coding believing that text should be added with createTextNode and any HTML element should be created via createElement.This causes two issues:1. Memory leaks from deleted or hidden DOM that is still referenced.... |
Is it just me or does Firefox suck now? | scrame: Firefox itself is OK for me, but firebug and flash have made firefox unusable in the last 6 months. At least on linux. It seems to need a lot of memory on windows, though. |
any viewable application videos from YC companies that got accepted? | felideon: Dropbox "single" founder application: http://files.getdropbox.com/u/2/app.html(Sorry, I just noticed you asked for video. There's a screencast, but that was before 1 min videos were introduced.) |
Javascript best practices? | n8agrin: Always use "var" to define a variable, unless you know exactly what you are doing. e.g.: var foo = 'bar';
When you don't use "var" the Javascript interpreter breaks out of the current scope and continues to do so all the way until it hits the final global scope (generally the window object in browsers). If ... |
Javascript best practices? | whalesalad: Can anyone elaborate on when one giant JS file (benefit here is of course reducing HTTP requests) becomes too large? Right now I am splitting up JS files in a fairly simple manner: a single site-wide file with common methods and utilities, and then a handful of smaller files for various aspects of the site.... |
Is it just me or does Firefox suck now? | garnet7: Firefox takes ............ a very long time to start up. :( |
any viewable application videos from YC companies that got accepted? | jli: I saw a link to one before, but I can't seem to find it now. I'm interested to know what about the video is important. |
Javascript best practices? | kls: I tend to create a page controller js file that my html file loads. I do not embed any JavaScript in the page rather, I grab any dom elements that I need via JavaScript so that way there is a clean separation between code and HTML. I tend to prefer Dojo as far as frameworks, so i will use dojo.byId or dijit.byId t... |
Loaning money from the IRS? | pmorici: If you owe the IRS 25k wouldn't you have had to make like 90k+ in that tax year?If that's the case what did you do with all that cash. It just sounds like a stupid idea to me. If you can pull down that sum in "a summer" aka 4 months, why not just pay the IRS their money and then work 4 more months and then s... |
Javascript best practices? | seanlinmt: I found this quite good for constructing tidy javascript code, http://ejohn.org/apps/learn/I haven't had time to look into this but there's also a project called Doloto to help optimise your javascript, http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/doloto/ |
Javascript best practices? | erlanger: * Comment with JSDoc style* Auto-build docs and script for development and production environemnts (easy to concatenate and then pipe this to YUI Compressor)* Use an MVC project organization or something like-minded. You can't just throw files representing widgets around.* Write unit tests. JSUnit and SrewUni... |
Javascript best practices? | adrianwaj: Obfuscate variable and function names with junk words. On Windows, Jasob was easily the best http://www.jasob.com/ for it (I tried using many others including online offerings). You need to do this if worried about others seeing and using your code, especially competitors.edit: am I stupid? But when you obfu... |
Javascript best practices? | dan_sim: 3 years ago, I started a blog about javascript called Javascript Kata at http://www.javascriptkata.com . I will try to write more and more about best practices and new ways of doing things. |
When to get customers' billing info? | credo: I agree with your comments on asking for credit card info upfront.
As a user, if I were to try out a 30-day trial offer, I'd prefer to provide my credit card info after the trial ...and only if I decided to purchase the product.I recently purchased HttpScoop which uses this model (great product for the Mac and t... |
When to get customers' billing info? | warwick: I'm curious how it would work if you gave a free month, then billed at the end of every month.Let's say they sign up on January 1. On February 1st, they receive an email or notice mentioning that their free trial is over, and they'll be billed at the end of the month. If they're not completely satisfied, the... |
Is it just me or does Firefox suck now? | marze: I have used Mozilla / Firefox for what seems like forever, but 3.5 just is sluggish for some reason. It might just be my installation, but ever since upgrading to 3.5 Firefox is really slow starting up.Now I've switched to Chrome but I do miss the Flashblock plugin. |
When to get customers' billing info? | tptacek: Today I finally gave up Trac for Lighthouse (I need to let customers file bugs). Lighthouse won't take my credit card information up front; I had to get a free account and then upgrade it. I actually found it annoying.On the other hand I'm sure patio11 will tell you that nothing bounces prospects faster than a... |
When to get customers' billing info? | sachinag: For a simple premium model with a 30-day free trial, you've got two reasons not to ask for the CC info until you're going to cut off someone's access to the premium product (you want to maximize the number of prospects, especially as a new entrant). I'd just make sure that you just "locked" someone's premium... |
When to get customers' billing info? | zck: I think it depends how you're placing your lower-tier version. If it's permanently free, I don't think you need credit card information. If it's a 30-day trial of your paid version, you might want to grab the card just to make sure that no one's signing up, waiting a month, canceling, and creating a new account. I... |
Javascript best practices? | irrelative: Just my 2 cents: Javascript gives you plenty of rope to hang yourself with. Personally, I try to stay away from prototypical objects unless the style fits very cleanly with what I'm trying to do. Otherwise,the best way I've found to keep my sanity is to pick whatever language you're developing the backend ... |
When to get customers' billing info? | kneath: I'm the designer for tenderapp.com, and we decided to try putting in credit card information when we need it (after the 30-day trial) instead of up front, like we previously did for Lighthouse. Well, decided may be the wrong word... let's call it a happy accident that it happened that way.Now that we've had th... |
Hosts you use for your projects? | dfrankow: I'm trying Google, as in Google App Engine. |
Hosts you use for your projects? | nreece: Linode: http://www.linode.comRackspace Cloud/Sites: http://www.rackspacecloud.com |
When to get customers' billing info? | fjabre: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=827379Thought you might find the above post useful. Anyway, thanks for this question. I think 37Signals is certainly the gold standard but I don't think I'm going to follow it for my yet-to-be-released project.They have about 5 or 6 tiers for each app and to be honest I reall... |
Hosts you use for your projects? | andrewtj: I use Linode (http://www.linode.com/) at the moment but will probably move to prgmr (http://prgmr.com/xen/) so I can cut costs — anyone got experience with them? |
Hosts you use for your projects? | prateekdayal: Checkout http://www.softlayer.com for dedicated and http://www.vpsfarm.com for VPS hosting. I have used both and highly recommend them. |
Hosts you use for your projects? | fjabre: Also check this from the webfaction site:Scale as much as you need
Our unique multi-machine load balancing solution allows you to manage your account on multiple machines from our control panel. You can easily deploy your apps on multiple machines and our system will automatically provide load-balancing between... |
Hosts you use for your projects? | marram: We use Google App Engine because we lack serious sys-admin skills, and GAE abstracts all that away from us. Also, the datastore was much easier for us to understand and hack than relational databases.For project hosting, we use hosted-projects.com because it gives us SVN+track+bugzilla and wires them together, ... |
Hosts you use for your projects? | colbyolson: I believe this question is related but, are there any special hosts for ruby/rails or python/django?Sort of like MediaTemple's containers? |
Loaning money from the IRS? | mahmud: There is no worse loan-shark than the IRS. The rules:1) Make sure you never have to pay them a dime, and2) If you have to pay them a dime, do it NOW. |
When to get customers' billing info? | joez: Just a quick thought: If the product can be given as a gift, maybe you should leave a "give as gift" option. When you ask for credit card later, you eliminate the chance for your best customer. If a parent, spouse or friend gives a subscription as a gift, I feel like they are putting it on set it and forget it mo... |
Is it just me or does Firefox suck now? | Gibbon: Firefox 3.5 crashes frequently on both my macbook and my wife's older macbook. It's slow to load, sometimes slow to load some pages and hyperlinks occasionally don't actually work (mostly only on facebook.) |
Hosts you use for your projects? | redact207: A bit off topic, but in terms of source control and bug tracking, I use www.unfuddle.com which supports Subversion/Git, integrated bug tracking, simple, and has a free version |
Hosts you use for your projects? | dpcan: Slicehost.com |
Hosts you use for your projects? | tsally: Heroku is pretty kickass for deploying Rails (or any Rack framework) on. Couldn't ask for anything simpler. Integrates right into your Git workflow. |
Hosts you use for your projects? | kennethreitz: Media Temple all the way! A (dv) of course. |
When to get customers' billing info? | gte910h: Oh god please take my credit card info up front....then remind the hell out of me that the account will auto renew at 7, 3 and 1 day left.I've dealt with a couple services that won't take the account info up front, and I canceled because paying was such a hassle on the day that they actually wanted to be paid. |
Hosts you use for your projects? | Zak: I've had a VPS with tektonic.net for about three years. It's not oversold, I've never had unscheduled downtime. Scheduled downtime is very rare. Tech support answers their email.Aside from that, it's a basic VPS running Debian. They're all pretty similar. |
When to get customers' billing info? | gte910h: Additionally, you can make taking it up front optional as well... |
Switch to mac? | lsemel: After using a new Mac for two weeks, here's what I've noticed:- The typography is a lot nicer once you get used to it. It's great to look at websites using type as it was designed rather than in the blocky rendering Windows uses.- Keyboard shortcuts are worse. On Windows, all the menu options have underlined ... |
What country does better than the U.S. in immigration law? | myelin: If you speak good English (either as a native speaker, or have good scores in TOEFL or equivalent), and have qualifications and work experience in an field which has a short supply of qualified workers (engineering, medicine, software, social work, and plenty of others), New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the U... |
Javascript best practices? | ilyak: When I hear "best practices" I reach for my Giant Spiked Club of Holy Wrath. |
Hosts you use for your projects? | tezza: http://www.fdcservers.net/Services/VirtualDedicatedServersStorage is larger than other virtual hosts. |
Hosts you use for your projects? | jtg: I use Amazon EC2 for several reasons. They basically boil down to having everything I want with little hassle.- I can hold my own as far as basic sysadmin functions go, and I like having control over the entire software stack. A lot of Amazon EC2 machine images can be stripped bare to give me only what I need.- I ... |
What Would It Take To Startup A Telecom Company? | ismarc: I've been considering an ISP co-op recently, and if the economy finally hits me, I will probably give it a start. There's a lot of core pieces that are going to cost the absolute most. Telecommunications is heavily regulated and there is lots of patents/IP to make sure not to step on. So first, you need a cr... |
What Would It Take To Startup A Telecom Company? | dstik: One way to try to enter the market could be leasing lines as an MVNO, however history has shown that this approach is extremely difficult (read: amp'd mobile, disney mobile usa, espn mobile). |
Hosts you use for your projects? | thomanil: http://railsplayground.com specializes in RoR hosting - they offer both shared hosting, vps and dedicated servers. Extremely rapid and competent service.I've used them for both my startup and some smaller personal projects over the last 10 months, very satisfied so far. |
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