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Review my rapid AJAX idea | junetwo: rad idea.
if you limited yourself to live events/even delegation, that could take away some of the headache of screwing with existing js on the page. it'd be a tough one to do though. don't get me wrong.hurdles i see are browser pagination (which would need to be done by iframe state storage/hash tags), favouritable urls (hash tags again), and inline js execution. you could also run into major memory issues if the previous page wasn't dumped properly, but all in all, a real cool idea, whether or not it's practical. |
Review my rapid AJAX idea | tlack: Instead of actually doing the diff process on the client or server side, this may be useful as a method of returning Javascript events and transformations from the server side to the client side for rendering; i.e., instead of returning script fragments, or JSON detailing the data itself, as the result of an Ajax call to the server, the server script would return an abstract set of "changes" to perform in the DOM, potentially along with other data. Sort of a server-side "DOM diff" structured with JSON, allowing a higher level of description than just spurting out some Javascript or an array of data.Wow, that was way too many tacky web 2.0 terms for one paragraph.. forgive me. |
Handling Aggressive Competition | ctingom: If it's a large company, talk to the manager of the person who is sharing incorrect information and ask them politely to talk to the person about it. |
Idea Management App | jcnnghm: That could be really interesting, but I think the implementation could be tricky. I'd love to see something like that if it was done right. |
Idea Management App | plinkplonk: There was a web app that purported to do this kind of thing at Intuit. There was even talk of Brad Smith managing to convince some CEO folks in other companies to license this. So there does seem to be some need for this.(In my opinion this was crapware and rarely produced any useful results. There were a lot of shiny pages and features though and management loved it.But that may have been a result of it being deployed at Intuit - which is a typical dysfunctional Big Company- vs any problem with the tool (or idea) itself)If I were you I would just go ahead and make it for myself and then see if other people wanted it. |
Idea Management App | workhorse: Neat, straightforward idea management.
http://www.kindlingapp.com/Iphone feature, bit more commercial.
http://www.ideascale.com/And of course probably the best option:
http://www.evernote.com/ |
Idea Management App | frossie: Well, sorry to be so low-tech and all, but I tackle this problem in a couple of ways:1. A (private) blog - person with the idea posts it, discussion happens in the comments. Pluses: Easy, clients for everything under the sun, easy mail gateways etc. Minuses: Someone has to cull the important stuff into an actionable request.2. Our fault tracking system (homebrew but think bugzilla) - someone posts something (severity=wishlist) - you can close it if the discussion goes nowhere, or turn it into an active item if there is a conclusion. Pluses: very searchable, keeps all know-how about the project in one place. Minuses: Not the friendliest UI on the planet.Seeing the words "startup" and "3-person team", my gut reaction is "don't ovethink this". |
Handling Aggressive Competition | adrianwaj: Find out if you have legal recourse. Assess the extent of the situation, and the clients involved. Place correct information on your website. Expose your competitor in whatever way necessary, especially for people cancelling with you. |
Idea Management App | dpnewman: Pivotal tracker can work for this to some degree. Tho not custom built for your defined need.I would venture to guess there's a fair bit of functionality that lies under the iceberg tip and this is harder to nail one might expect.It would have to be exceptional imho to be something people would pay for vs using existing tools. However if done well ...certainly has potential. |
Idea Management App | aneesh: If you're co-located, a whiteboard does wonders. I haven't seen a webapp that even comes close. |
Idea Management App | catweasel: I would have thought google wave might be a good fit for this. Or even a wave plugin if you require something more specific, like the 'accept/reject' feature?Concept Draw Office also offers something like it.. integrating brainstorming, mindmapping and project management in one suite. |
Idea Management App | fbailey: We work on something for this, there will be a non public web app service for teams and a public "justshareyourideas" space. LVP launch alpha version in the next three months.If you like I can send you an alpha invite when we are ready, I would love to have your feedback (real need always makes better feedback) |
Do you know of any basic android handset with only wifi, no cellular? | jacquesm: Get a bunch of them as 'pre-paid' phones and ditch the sim ?The motorola lajolla is due to be out and should be one of the cheapest android handsets. |
Is a .net domain good enough? | krav: In a nutshell, nope. If your startup takes off, part of your traffic (the type-in kind) will go to the .com, where it'll be a parked page full of Google or Yahoo ads, and will make the domain owner money.Move on and find something else. |
Do you know of any basic android handset with only wifi, no cellular? | blasdel: Google should have left the cell radio out of the Nexus 1, and sold it at the iPod Touch markup instead of the iPhone markup.Then they'd really have filled a huge hole that isn't being met by the market, helped developers immensely, and not pissed off their partners. |
what are you favorite/absolutely must have/niche Ruby gems? | jlangenauer: If you're using Rails:
- searchlogic: incredibly easy searching of ActiveRecord models. I've cut out huge amounts of code by using this gem.
- factory_girl: get rid of those awful fixtures!Also, even though it's not a gem, JRuby is an awesome platform - I actually prefer it to MRI after using it. It's incredibly stable, fast, and bugs are fixed damn quick. I reported a bug in JRuby-OpenSSL yesterday at about 9am, and there was a fix done by 1pm. Very impressive. |
what are you favorite/absolutely must have/niche Ruby gems? | gtani: full text indexing: thinking sphinx, sunspot,need to look at: acts_as_xapianused in past: acts_as_ferret, acts_as_solr |
how do startups find designers that won't break the bank? | gexla: How long is a piece of string? Different startups have different budgets. Some designers are expensive to some budgets but still cheap for other budgets. If you are working out of your home or a small office you are still likely spending much less on your business front (website) than a brick and mortor business which has to buy a building and spend money on signage.Do what you can. If you have no budget for design, then do the design yourself or use a free template. If you have no time and a tiny budget, get someone cheap off a site like Elance or Odesk. Getting the business off the ground is more important than starting out with a world class design by a high end design studio. Go take a look at what the first versions of some of your favorite sites looked like when they first got started. ;) |
Idea Management App | Shtirlic: You might also have a look at the ZoneIdeas project on http://zoneideas.org |
Do you know of any basic android handset with only wifi, no cellular? | savant: Would the Nook count? |
Handling Aggressive Competition | lsc: stick with measurable advantages. Nobody rational expects a salesman to tell the truth, so when you have a measurable advantage, the salesguy has got to work extra hard to make the sale.If you are charging $20 for something that is measurably quite similar to what your competitor charges $70 for, well, they have to do a lot of talking to close the sale, while you are in a pretty good position just slapping the price and how you are measurably similar to the competition on your webpage.Having a liberal money-back guarantee (and following through with it; people talk.) also helps overcome credibility gaps.I think Paul Graham wrote something about how 'you might be able to out-hack oracle, but there is no way you can out-sell oracle' or something like that. I'm probably misquoting him. but the idea is that large companies have huge sales advantages that you simply can not touch. your product needs to be a better enough value that it doesn't matter that the competition has better sales than you do.at prgmr.com, I focus on picking up the 'cheap' customers- I don't just mean people who don't want to pay, I mean people who don't cost as much to support. Don't be afraid to loose high-effort customers to your competition. (as much as possible, do so gracefully.) |
Why was a comment I made killed? | ErrantX: The only thing I can think of is that it got flagged by several users for some reason (though what that might be I cant imagine). I cant see how an editor would kill it.Or. Potentially a spam filter caught it; that would explain the behaviour (of appearing to you but not to others) |
Does anyone have ideas for an independent study? | Kliment: Why not design an information system for individual/small group tutoring scheduling, that collects small groups of students having trouble with some subject and matches them with someone interested in tutoring them? This could work for both high school interest groups (that needn't be bound to the classes already defined by the school) and university (especially first-year students getting up to speed). |
Why was a comment I made killed? | theblackbox: Why are you asking the community this question?
Why not just ask an admin like you would on any other forum or irc network?
Why do people think that this is something other HNers need to know about?[edit: this is a genuine question to establish a motive that might stop me flagging this and other content, this post is worthless clutter for all I can see][edit2: anyone care to explain their downvotes?] |
Why was a comment I made killed? | gamache: I would applaud any effort to make comment-killing and user-banning a more transparent process on HN. You don't know it happens when it happens, it's often for a shaky reason, and there is no place to discuss it other than emailing PG (which just seems wasteful, a feeling that was reinforced by PG's very curt tone throughout).When seeking assistance for a hellban of my very own, I was emailed by several helpful HN power users, all giving basically the same opinion -- "The HN moderation is capricious and deaf", in one user's words. That's an uncomfortable assessment from regular site contributors. |
Do you know of any basic android handset with only wifi, no cellular? | ars: I'm looking for the same thing, except I don't expect to find one.I'm just wondering how practical using a regular android phone without a sim card is.Are there parts of the phone that just don't work over WiFi (i.e. work only over a cell connection)?Are there unexpected things that won't work without a data connection of some kind? (Excluding the obvious of course.) |
Why was a comment I made killed? | jgrahamc: You can mail pg and ask him. Recently there have been a few stories on HN from users saying 'why is X happening to me' where X is votes not counting, stories being flagged, comments being deleted.TBH I'm just not interested. If you've got a problem with something that's happened to you ask pg. Don't come whining to the group.And the user who is secretly emailing people about comments that have been deleted doesn't seem helpful either. They are working in a behind-the-scenes manner that could easily end up being counterproductive as some 'anti-HN' group gets formed by it. |
Why was a comment I made killed? | wendroid: I had an account banned, you can clearly see whyhttp://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=skwiddor |
Why was a comment I made killed? | hank777: Indeed. I commented on something and only discovered accidentally that my comment could only be seen be me, which is a horrible way for things to work. Your comment is hidden and you have no idea. I emailed the contact email (cant remember the address) and never got an answer. It really made me never want to comment again and seemed totally capricious. |
Why was a comment I made killed? | jrockway: It seems that some people who have had their early comments downmodded (for an unpopular opinion, like not hating Perl) get the rest of their comments auto-killed. It happened to a friend of mine, who wanted to use HN but has since moved on to other sites, since he can't post anything anyone else can read. (I browse with showdead on, so I can see the comments, but I can't reply or upvote, so...)It seems like the idea is to encourage the usual social-news-site groupthink, even though pg has publicly stated that he wants to avoid this. (The spaghetti-code that is news.arc is probably a contributing factor, but I digress...) |
what are you favorite/absolutely must have/niche Ruby gems? | hitonagashi: Really, it all depends on what you are doing :).For example, Geokit rocks if you need to do, or add any geoencoding stuff.If you can get past the hell on earth that is installing ImageMagick, then RMagick is amazing for image processing and handling.If you need to write HTML, Haml/Sass is your new best friend, if you need to parse it, Nokigiri or Hpricot both rock.If you need to track states in your objects, statemachine or eventmachine is pretty useful, and +1 to the commenter who pointed out ThinkingSphinx, that's blazingly fast for full text indexes.The daemons gem is really useful if you want to daemonize a process, and create quick scripts to start background applications.workling/starling are really good for background work as well, as is delayed_job.It also depends on what ruby version you are using. I'd recommend 1.9, as we've managed to get patches for pretty much everything we run, or hacked the gems themselves to work, and it is faster than 1.8.6. That said, you do still run into problems.There's loads more. There's more testing frameworks and unit test things than you can shake a stick at.As I said it all depends what you are using, and what you are using it for.Hope my ramble was informative! :-) |
Google Adsense for Search Alternatives | ohashi: Don't think anyone has size/scale except big 3: google, yahoo, MS. Smaller alternatives are stuff like AdBrite. |
How do you juggle time spent on learning vs. time building things? | anon9182: I also work 9-5 at a big corporation. I take time to learn and keep up with the latest developments in the programming world while I'm on the clock. This usually amounts to an hour or so every morning reading through my RSS reader. I've found that supervisors tend to appreciate that kind of motivation and self improvement. I'm sure there are places that would not appreciate this activity. You may be able to conduct this kind of self-education on the clock anyway with no noticeable decrease in productivity. Some people will see this as unethical, but it's likely that it will ultimately be a net win for your employer because of your increased output as a result of the knowledge. Otherwise, you may want to look for a different job that is more friendly to your proactive view of education. |
Why was a comment I made killed? | bokonist: This only a guess, but your comment may have been picked up by pg's bayesian spam filter. It seems like a word based spam filter may have mistaken your comment for some sort of scam telling people to "send payment" to a "business account" for details follow the link. |
Why was a comment I made killed? | dc2k08: update: To respond to some of the comments here I must first say that my question has no intended malice. I was not aware that comments were auto-filtered which some posts mentioned and certainly the filters could be geared towards comments that mention payments, bank accounts and credit cards. I had thought the only spam detection system in place was the 'flag' feature.As long as there are no repercussions for being detected by the filters and my HN account stays in good standing there is no need to for me to be concerned.To the comments which suggested that this is not HN material and should have been addressed privately, I say that I did not suspect this post would receive as much attention as it did. I expected it to receive some sparse upvotes and an answer along the lines of "sensitive spam filter sometimes kills legitimate posts, known problem, nothing to be worried about". I did not want to clog up an admin's inbox querying it. I also wanted to check whether I was able to post. |
How viable is it for a programmer to switch to a DVORAK keyboard layout? | mightybyte: I switched to dvorak 3 or 4 years ago after 15 or so years of touch typing on qwerty. At the time I switched I could type ~120 wpm with qwerty. It took very little time to get up to 60-70 wpm on dvorak. Now, after 3-4 years on dvorak, I can type 90-100 wpm. So my advice is similar to others here. Don't switch for speed. I have never had RSI problems, so I can't comment on that aspect. |
Why was a comment I made killed? | pg: One of the admins accidentally marked a site as a spam site and you later submitted something from it, after which your account was briefly banned.This post, however, was killed because we can't have people submitting top level posts every time they want to complain about something being killed. If you have a question pertaining to your specific account, email us (info@ycombinator.com). |
Did Bill Gates took Twitter down? | TrevorJ: I doubt it, compared to the overall volume he would still be a drop in the bucket and it isn't unusual to see outages even on normal days. |
What Kinds of Comments Should Be Upvoted? | sophacles: Comments which you disagree with, are factually wrong, or are refuting your point, provided they are relevant to the discussion. My reasoning here is that these types of comments provide discussion points, which is why this sort of linksite exists. upvote == agreement can lead to boring groupthink, instead of interesting and informative communities. |
Do BillingCircle, Spreedly, Chargify, Cheddargetter need Authorize.net? | jasonlbaptiste: From what I can tell, yes. There's 3 parts to this equation:1- Logic engine that handles all the complicated stuff (chargify, zuora,etc.)
2- Merchant processor that handles the actual processing of the charges. They're the ones taking 2-3% (or less or more)
3- Bank account that stores your money until you feel like spending it on hookers and blow. |
Is lisp a language for a newbie? | yan: It depends how much work you're willing to put into it. Yes, you can treat Lisp as a first language, MIT has been doing it for years (until recently). Their Intro to CS class, CS 6.001, used Scheme and is very highly regarded.Their text book[1] and lecture videos[2] are free on the internet. Can't hurt to give it a shot.[1] http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/[2] http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussma... |
Is lisp a language for a newbie? | vorador: I'd suggest sticking with ruby before switching to something else, first because you need to have some basic programming experience before learning a new language, and second because it's much easier to get things done in ruby than in lisp, for a beginner (because there are tons of ready to use libraries - in lisp, not so much). |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | torrenegra: LetMeGo is a new service that allows travelers to submit their itineraries so that lodgings bid for their stays: http://letmego.comLetMeGo is the result of the famous/infamous immersion discussed in here "Results of: 7 developers, working 24/7 for 90 days, 1 house (in Colombia)" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=730031I know I don't participate a lot in HN. In part because I discovered you only a few months ago and in part because I've quite busy getting LetMeGo ready for launch. Anyway, I look forward for your feedback and to participate more and more in here.Thanks! |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | andreshb: I absolutely love the intro videos, especially the one narrated by Obama and Ozzy Osbourne |
Review my rapid AJAX idea | sad: This makes for an excellent academic challenge that may actually bear fruit. I'd do it and see where it takes you. The experience alone will be worth it.I do silly stuff all the time (I'm not calling this idea silly!) and I always take something away from it. This is a much better idea than the stuff I usually come up with. |
Is lisp a language for a newbie? | budu: I think it may even be easier if you're just starting. If you get used to Ruby, it could be painful/hard to switch after. It all depends how much you're ready to learn and if you need hand-holding, in the later case Ruby might be a better place to start. However, beware tutorials catered to new programmers, they're not always giving good advises (being generally written by newbies) and coding on your own is always more efficient. Furthermore, if you're not shy, participating in the community is the best way to learn, so it also depends on how you get along with the others using the programming language you've chosen.My path to Lisp: C/asm > Java> Ruby (and some Scheme) > C# > ClojureI've always been a polyglot and been programming for fun in lots of strange languages, so I've skipped lots of them in the above. Others notable languages I like are Python, OCaml and Haskell, but I didn't do much with them. That route may not be the best for you though. And you can't know which way will work for you until you've found it! So you need to try one and go far enough to see if you really like it. |
Contracting out website design. | jacquesm: That seems pretty expensive for 4 pages. Why not put out a call for designers here?That has worked quite well for me in the past. |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | Vindexus: I was confused by the video tour. I clicked watch video tour and was given the option of who to narrate it. Unfortunately I didn't know what that was. I thought I was looking at a rhetorical question along the lines of "you pick your favorite music, so how do you pick your favorite lodging?" or something like that. I'd suggest changing the heading of that to "Which narrator do you want?" or something with the word narrator.That was my only nitpick. I tried out the interface and I love it. This is a really cool app that I find to be really well put together.. It does have the Catch 22 of you need lodgings to get users and users to get lodgings. Hopefully you find a way around that. |
Contracting out website design. | nkh: I think a good place to go for a "baseline" cost would be:http://99designs.com/I used them for some graphics work at my current employer and was happy with the results. It at least gives you a starting point and a place to negotiate from. |
Do BillingCircle, Spreedly, Chargify, Cheddargetter need Authorize.net? | trevelyan: You need a merchant account in the name of your business. Whichever credit card processor you use will send your funds directly to that account. So if you haven't incorporated, you will need to take care of that in order to get a merchant account. Be aware that where you incorporate will affect what credit card processors will do business with you and the rates you will consequently get. Things will be easiest if you incorporate in the United States. |
Do BillingCircle, Spreedly, Chargify, Cheddargetter need Authorize.net? | shpxnvz: Both Chargify and Spreedly require a payment gateway of some sort, no idea about the others.I believe Chargify only supports Authorize.net currently, and it looks like Spreedly supports a few more.Authorize.net is only the payment gateway, so you'll need a merchant account as well. A merchant account with a bank is where you have the transaction fee (flat fee per transaction) and discount rate (percentage per transaction). The payment gateway is a monthly fee on top of that ($10 p/month or so), and then you have the fees for the recurring billing service as well (and any special services they require, for instance Chargify requires the customer management part of the Authorize.net API which is another $20 a month or so).As far as the merchant account goes, start with this blog post: http://danieltenner.com/posts/0006-how-to-get-a-merchant-acc... |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | theycallmemorty: Looks pretty cool.When I was on the 'iternerary' view the bar at the top of the screen changing colors drove me crazy though. |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | noodle: my thoughts:too many options for the video tour. i mean, i didn't have a problem figuring it out, and i enjoyed what i saw, but you're going to find that some users will get confused. from the standpoint of converting customers, provide a default and start it playing, and then provide other options if they want to get silly.i'm not sure how i feel about the red box on the map. i kind of think that it should be a bit more static, so that it doesn't automatically re-search each time the zoom changes or i scroll the map. but i can't think of a good solution off the top of my head.there are a few references to st.hal.biz, where its clear that it should be just hal.biz. example: http://st.hal.bz/img/global/guarantee120.gif is showing up as a broken image vs http://hal.bz/img/global/guarantee120.gif |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | Lewisham: Not too impressed by being told Chrome isn't good enough for your site! |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | drewdrewdrew: Looks good...but from a usability standpoint, would it kill you to label the fields? Which one is start date, which one is end date. What about i18n? "Where are you going?" is a little too ambiguous I think. I presume that's what you were going for, but locality can be quite granular. Hopefully there is an intuitive interpreter parsing that text. |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | tyohn: I love this idea. I'll try it out on my next trip. I love the videos they're awesome - although since your site looks AJAX-ie you might want to consider opening the videos in a "lightbox" popup - I tried several times to find the close button on the first video I opened - because I didn't realize it open a new page ...or you can just sum it up to my stupidity :p |
Do BillingCircle, Spreedly, Chargify, Cheddargetter need Authorize.net? | _pius: Payment gateways, merchant accounts ... there's gotta be someone working on simplifying this side of the equation. |
Idea Management App | japanesejay: We've recently started using google wave.
I saw a post here not too long ago (i wish i could find a link). Its pretty handy. You can start a wave, and start threads and build off of it.Another tool ive tinkered around with was mindmapping tools. There are a few out there where you can share and collaborate mindmaps. I really liked the UX www.mindmeister.com. Check it out! |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | jparicka: Cool looking site .. but where did you get the voice from? |
Is lisp a language for a newbie? | whyenot: Yes you can start out with lisp. You will certainly learn a lot if you go that route, there are good resources out there if you do (see the link to SICP someone else posted, and also look at one of my favorite books, The Little Schemer[1]). Still, I'm not sure it's a path that I would recommend. You will be able to go farther, more quickly in Ruby. There are more libraries, better resources for those new to programming, and (this is subjective of course) a more welcoming community if you need to ask for help.But, if you are willing to figure some things out by yourself, don't let me discourage you from starting with lisp.edit: forgot Little Schemer ref. see: http://books.google.com/books?id=xyO-KLexVnMC&dq=the+lit... |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | pedalpete: great idea and great execution (from what I can see). The narration idea is very original with the video intro. But I do agree with other commenter that it was odd to have to pick a narration.
I'd suggest you pick the one you like best or which best shows off the capabilities, and just use that, or rotate through them.
Even though you went through the effort to create the different videos, it is best to keep something like that simple for the user. |
Contracting out website design. | chubbard: If it's a completely original design/layout that the designer comes up with $2K is fairly reasonable. I found fresh designs start around $800 for one page and go up depending on what else you need. If you have a PSD of your design file there are plenty of services that start much cheaper. |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | jselzer: Are you able to share what strategies you have for increasing participation among lodgings businesses? It seems to me that this would be a big challenge and a huge factor in your success, and I am curious how you address it. |
Do you know of any basic android handset with only wifi, no cellular? | runjake: Check out the Zii EGG from Creative Labs:http://www.zii.com/Developer/Landing.aspxIt's basically an Android "iPod Touch" for $399. |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | mattwdelong: I'm currently employed in the hotel industry. I really have no defined role, but I perform a lot of the GM roles. I can give you a few things to think about.First and foremost, the chain to which we belong just got out of a long fight with a large Online Travel Agency [OTA]. During this "fight", the chain really noticed that OTA's had a stranglehold on the online room distributions, especially the rates so in response, they have "initiated" some policies to nip that in the butt. (OTA's are currently killing Vegas)I will show you the breakdown of our reservation distribution this year: 55% CHAINWEBSITE.com, 27% CHAIN Call Center, 9% GDS Travel Agencies, 9% Third Party Websites (broken down into Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity). In short, due to our policies we CANNOT offer a lower price outside of our best available rate available on the CHAINWEBSITE.com - we could null our franchise agreement.I only speak for one chains policies, but this chain has 6k properties and another 1k or so in development. It's not small.Thats one thing to think about. Some more thoughts:Getting GMs to lower rates is tough; if you give guest X rate Y, and guest Z finds out, they also want rate Y. It sometimes makes a messy situation dealing with this. Selling rooms in important, but keep rate integrity intact is also important.Chicken/Egg conundrum. How do you plan on getting hotels to participate?-- In response to the above, I would personally like to search my geographical area for any travelers without having to sign the hotel up. Can I do that? Why not?Some solutions to the above thoughts:Instead of getting hotels to directly negotiate prices, why not use a combination of that and a GDS system like Amadeus, SABRE or Galileo. You know, so if a hotel doesn't bid on their trip to offer occupancy, then they have the option of making a booking through your system opposed defaulting to Expedia (which books through the same systems). It might solve the intermittency between the chicken/egg problem, and having an active user base - attracting one before the other would be essential. Overall, I don't think the hotel industry will take kindly to having to bid for guests. On the other hand, there is LOTS of money to be had and I wish you the very best. Its an ambitious start! |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | eraad: I`m using Chrome/Ubuntu 9.10 and got the warning message. Everything worked fine though.After selecting my travel dates, I got the impression that the whole page would scroll down, not just the left column. It was a bit confusing I think.I´m not a fan of nesting scroll bars.I will test the service out for real in a couple of months. |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | felideon: I'd get rid of the yellow note at the bottom---at least from the home page. You could handle uncaught exceptions and then display the note, for example, or put it in the About Us page.Us Colombians are too polite, so it would probably be OK to display upfront if it was local. The Beta logo should be enough for most people. The note just predisposes users to think something might go wrong. |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | JangoSteve: Looks really good, great design. A couple minor specific notes...-"Lodgings" is an awkward word to use in the main description. I agree that it is the most accurate word to use, but I think few people think of the term "lodgings" when looking for hotels.-Your "How it works" section looks cool, but it's an image. No text. That's not very semantic. It also means I can't copy and paste the description to tell a friend. |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | drhodes: The layout reminds me of the food pyramid -> http://www.fda.gov/ucm/groups/fdagov-public/documents/image/... (Not a bad thing!) except the style of the layers is not consistent. Applying some color theory would certainly help. There seems to be ~9 different fonts on the front page.
As for the concept of the site: the notion of inverting the business model is really neat, I hope it succeeds. |
Anyone have experience using CrossBrowserTesting.com or similar? | tonetheman: Hey man this is Tony from CrossBrowserTesting.com. We have a great service. ;)
We let you connect up to our service run a browser and OS combination, all through VNC (either a java applet or your own local VNC). We also do screenshots.If you have any questions ask away! I will try to answer anything you can think of. thanks! |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | thinkbohemian: I really liked in the video that you could skip ahead to different parts. What did you use to do that?I liked the videos, and thought the different voices was an interesting gimmick, though I personally would load a video as soon as the user clicked the first link, and while it is loading give them the option to switch between voices. How many people click the first link without clicking to watch the video? |
Please review my new website www.favilous.com | jparicka: Looks cool but the transparent background wasn't necesary. It's hideous. In my opinion. All the best. |
Contracting out website design. | presidentender: That seems high. I've done some development work for an independent web designer who seems to be pretty good. He can be reached at michael at cutbankdesign dot com. I know nothing about his prices, but this is in Montana, so he might be cheaper than designers elsewhere. |
Is hiring a PR company a good investment for a startup? | dnsworks: Maybe if you've already burned bridges and ruined your brand. |
Please review my startup - Accounting for Google Apps | nomatteus: Does this require a Google Apps Premier account, or will it work for the Standard (free) version as well? |
Please review my startup - Accounting for Google Apps | yannis: Having a very good background in accounts I wanted to see what the application could do for me. Maybe I missed it but I desperately needed a tour! What is your unique selling proposition? What is Google Application Engine to a non-hacker ie., a business owner?Me thinks it needs work:) |
Please review my startup - Accounting for Google Apps | Vindexus: I'd recommend adding a video tour. Right now I don't know exactly what it does without signing up and toying around with it. |
Please review my startup - Accounting for Google Apps | idoh: Make sure to pay attention to the details in your screenshots. For example:- slide 1: there are no expenses- slide 2: same price listed for 30 or 3000 boxes of paper- slide 4: improper capitalization: "Box Of paper"The basic idea is that if you can't pay attention to detail on your screenshots, then maybe that flows through for other parts of the app. |
About choosing a job | csomar: "2) I'm a inexperienced programmer(actually learning Python/Django)"and"that helps me with the difficulties I've right now"I think a job is to help the company with difficulties they have and not difficulties YOU have.Or for what do they pay you? |
About choosing a job | RiderOfGiraffes: So you're an inexperienced (but learning) programmer. Clearly you're interested in programming, and want to improve.What skills do you already have? What training do you have? What are you interesting in? If an employer had an opening, what could you do for them? Describe the ideal job, not in terms of what it can teach you, but in terms of how it will make best use of your current skills and abilities.Unless you offer something, no one will buy. If I were an employer, what could you do for me? If you answer that you might be able to find someone who will employ you, and provide an opportunity for you to learn and grow. |
Rate my startup: beepl.com | daniel-cussen: Pretty sweet, but I can't use the registration. |
Rate my startup: beepl.com | JacobAldridge: What's the purpose?At a quick glance, it's still got a lot of testing bugs showing publicly:1) Your question Test is top of the front page2) Top Members are "ad sd asd dasda" etc3) The top links (including 'About Beepl', which would have answered my original question) still have the template # link in them4) Some of the questions appear to have been overrun by spam (note the Star Trek question)5) Also worth noting that I did know "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet", but only because I'd seen it before.Congrats on putting it out there. I look forward to learning more.Edit: Here's the direct link to the front page - http://www.beepl.com/Unfortunately, the text here doesn't really explain what it does either, and the only options I have are either emailing you (not likely) or registering (also unlikely, for a website I don't know when it's not clear what it does).It seems to be suffering from the same issues as your last Rate my Startup - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612319 - mainly too much marketing speak, and not enough demonstration of the problem it solves. |
Please review my startup - Accounting for Google Apps | juliend2: "You data is accessible anywhere with internet access."s/You/YourI found this typo elsewhere in your website so make sure it's corrected ;) But apart from that, nice job. |
Please review my startup - Accounting for Google Apps | nobosh: I'm in the small business space and took a look at your app. What I'm not getting is, who is your customer? |
Rate my startup: beepl.com | karam: The design's pretty cool. |
What Kinds of Comments Should Be Upvoted? | Mz: Comments that set a positive example for how to discuss things without necessarily agreeing. Most online disagreements get pretty acrimonious, which isn't really necessary. |
Please review my startup - Accounting for Google Apps | cellis: Your startup looks great, but do tell what the test-case startup on your home page is selling: they've made $94,600 profit from $94,600 in sales! |
Rate my startup: beepl.com | ismarc: Ok, so, I took a quick look and the only thing that works is if you click on a question from the page you link to, you are brought to a page with stuff on it. This looks like a non-functioning, reskinned Yahoo! Answers, that may at some point start charging people to find someone to answer the question. Is this the intent? Is there some deeper thing that I've missed here? |
Please review my startup - Accounting for Google Apps | buckwild: I would love to give this a shot, but I'm going to have a hard time tearing myself away from my excel sheets.I haven't thoroughly searched your site or signed-up yet, but before I do I think it is fitting to ask: is it possible to upload excel sheets or connect it to my google docs spreadsheet? |
Please review my startup - Accounting for Google Apps | vnorby: Small UI considerations:- Top and bottom navs need rollovers, as well as the sign-up button- Support page textbox hover effects are awkward and inconsistent, and the button needs a rollover and a cursor: pointer- Same with the signup page- Re-order your site nav - Home | Sign Up | Login | Blog | Support- Your logo is cool - nice job! - but the "For Google Apps" doesn't fit- As far as I could see in the screenies - your quick search box is an ugly gray. I think white is OK in that situation.- Dashboard needs a padding-top, and you could probably slide the rest of the content over since there's a lot of blank space.- You'll want different icons for different types of actions inside the dashboard. Try reducing the size of the icons and floating the text left OR keeping the size the same but somehow centering the text underneath them.Other than these things that I could see, site is looking great! |
How to encourage entrepreneurship at a company? | Mz: You might try googling the concept of "intrapreneurship". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IntrapreneurshipBest I can do.Good luck. |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | grandalf: Great idea. I will use it next time I travel and if I get a great deal I'll be a loyal customer. |
Rate my startup: beepl.com | jparicka: login: test, passwd: test..for those having problems with the registration. |
Rate my startup: beepl.com | minalecs: I don't know , maybe its because I jumped in late, but I click on to answer and all I see are a bunch of ads. bad taste IMO |
Is hiring a PR company a good investment for a startup? | Travis: No, I wouldn't recommend this. It'll cost you anywhere from a few thousand to 10k+ per month. There are much better ways for you to "get the word out". |
Please review my startup - Accounting for Google Apps | jaxn: Just curious, did you do this on AppEngine? |
Rate My Startup - LetMeGo: Let lodgings bid for your stay | zasz: Damn. I was hoping you were making an app to let landlords bid on desirable tenants. |
Please review my startup - Accounting for Google Apps | patrickmclaren: Forgive me if I missed reading it, but how will you be returning a profit? |
Please review my startup - Accounting for Google Apps | csmeder: IMHO I would change the logo. Make it more professional and less cartoony. You asking for people to trust you with details that if mis handled could land them in tax court. Your logo is your first impression. It should leave the impression of professionalism. On the flip side I have spoke with a lot of small business owners - many of them are 2 year olds... so maybe I'm wrong :) |
Is hiring a PR company a good investment for a startup? | rmason: Noticed that Mint hired a PR person very, very early and it worked out pretty well for them.It also depends on the type of business that you're building. |
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