instruction stringlengths 4 105 | output stringlengths 8 56.7k |
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Good (computer) networking books? | runjake: - Network Warrior from OReilly
- The TCP/IP books, especially Vol 1, from WR Stevens
- Routing TCP/IP Volume 1 from Cisco Press
- TCP/IP Network Administration from Oreilly still has a little relevance. |
How should I pursue my passion? | barmstrong: This is a classic dilema: what you love doesn't pay well.The solution is to try to AUTOMATE your income so you can spend time doing what you love, whether it pays or not.You can automate it by putting in the grunt work up front to build something passive or save enough money to live off your net worth (rental properties, investment income, etc).I've explored this topic in depth on my blog, http://www.StartBreakingFree.com if you're interested. Sounds like you're off to a great start though, you're not alone! |
Review my new e-commerce model: self-serve group discounts | apsurd: It's a nice and simple enough idea that has a chance at doing well. The girl in the video is talking way too fast. I know there's a lot of content but the idea is simple enough that she does not need to blow through everything. |
Do you have a good source code to HTML solution? | fendrak: My software engineering professor always used Code2HTML for the code samples he posted online:http://www.palfrader.org/code2html/While I never used it myself, it produced nicely formatted results. |
Authentication solution for REST? | notmyname: S3 uses a request signing mechanism. Each request is signed by the client and the signature is sent in the headers.Rackspace Cloud Files uses a token based authorization. Authentication provides a token that is then sent in the header of each request. When the token expires, re-authenticate to get a new token.The Cloud Files method is a little simpler for the user (IMO), but it also requires an SSL connection to protect the credentials.Neither of these products allow non-public objects to be viewed in a browser (the browser doesn't send the correct headers). |
Feedback/Advice on my Website | Ernestas: You will get better feedback if you write in which area you want the feedback. Design, idea...I'm no guru but I think orange on orange is not easiest colors on eyes to read.Login button could say "login".Interesting idea btw. |
Authentication solution for REST? | lsc: I think http auth is pretty standard for REST stuff; users don't see it, so nobody cares that it is 'ugly'(personally, I still don't understand why http auth isn't in use in other areas; it brings user authentication outside of your app and into the http server, which makes it quite a bit easier to make other apps written by different people in different languages/frameworks use the same auth.) |
Review my new e-commerce model: self-serve group discounts | fnid2: I've seen this trend popping up a lot lately. Pooling buying power among individuals to get discounts up the supply chain. It makes great sense.I think there is a lot of potential here because it is only at a certain scale that some ideas become profitable or even implementable. In the old days, some investors got together and created companies at great risk in order to see if there is a market for a product.Taking these group buying systems to one more level, people who want a particular product can pool their resources in order to get the product developed. I don't think Venture Capital sees the threat from models like this.Imagine the CNC market that is getting a lot of buzz for enabling them to be built at home. If you create a company where when 100 CNC products are ordered, then everyone is charged, ALL the parts are ordered and constructed, perhaps in part by one such already existing CNC -- created just this way.This model enables the consumer of the product to be the investor in the product. Models like this eliminate the need for venture capital in a lot of spaces with currently large barriers to entry.EDIT: Yep, here's another example, right on the front page of HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149207 |
Do you have a good source code to HTML solution? | brianto2010: I've never had to do that (ever), but...Vim: :TOhtml
Notepad++: Plugins > NppExport > Export to HTML |
Should I choose a managed or unmanaged VPS? | CyberFonic: You need to look at exactly what you are getting with the managed service packages. The service levels and security guarantees are critical. As always you pay for what you get, but you may not get what you pay for. |
Machine Vision Advice | noonespecial: Check out the zoneminder project.http://www.zoneminder.com/It doesn't do what you need, but its fully open source and its made of all of the stuff you will need to do what you want. |
What can I use to make presentations that don't suck? | JayNeely: http://prezi.com/ 's front page has taken a turn for the worse, but they create some visually interesting presentations.If you have to use slides specifically, take a look at Garr Reynold's (PresentationZen.com guy) sample slides...http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/sample1.html...and presentation tips:http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/index.htmlFinally, http://slideology.com is also a good resource; checkout the most-read articles list in the sidebar. |
What can I use to make presentations that don't suck? | swolchok: I am a die-hard Linux fan. However, I recently discovered that the latest Powerpoint is head and shoulders above Beamer and OpenOffice (try SmartArt, for example), so I use the school's Windows machines just to work on my presentation. |
What can I use to make presentations that don't suck? | bhousel: check out http://280slides.com/ |
Review my new e-commerce model: self-serve group discounts | jonah: Group buys happen a lot of the (Audi) Quattro World forums for example.A member comes up with an idea, runs it past a vendor, and posts a notice - say, group buy for 10 sets of wheels. People respond by placing pre-orders with the vendor. Once the minimum is reached they turn into orders at the pre-arranged discount and shipped out.Could even be a generic service to facilitate these kinds of deals through arbitrary small vendors. |
Review my new e-commerce model: self-serve group discounts | satjot: I understand where it can become a bit cumbersome to explain to non techies. I would agree with the point above that the explanation does not to be as overblown as it is. Just get the key concept out:
1) Want to buy something, but pay less?
2) Invite your friends and if a few of you buy it, everyone will save.The specific dynamics of how things work do not need to be in the pitch. Good luck!P.S. I've been working on something in this space. Coming at it from a different angle, though. Hopefully I will be able to have something to show in the next couple of months. |
Should I choose a managed or unmanaged VPS? | Travis: I manage my own, but I do that for my other jobs as well. So I guess you could say I'm a part time sysadmin.I say do it yourself. You don't have that much fine tuning to do. I just personally doubt that you're going to get very good "management" from your provider. It will be most useful in a situation of "please install nginx to run on a separate IP so I can serve static content." It will not be useful in preventing attacks, etc.Although I guess they could have really high service quality, I believe most places will scrimp on the services b/c they need to compete on the price. And the whole reason for going managed is the services. |
Review my new e-commerce model: self-serve group discounts | elpuri: Some people might remember letsbuyit.com from the late nineties and early noughties. If I remember correctly it had the exact same idea. The site seems to be still up with the same brand, but it seems to have become some sort of "shopping community" without the group buying feature. You might want to find out what happened to them. |
Feedback/Advice on my Website | Travis: A few thoughts off the top of my head (feel free to contact me out of band if you want more...)- text is nearly unreadable
- there's no separation for any of the posts. no rankings, you can't visually separate elements within the post. there are too many of them on there -- which do I read first? Should I read them all, or just the top one? Are they in some sort of order? A visual redesign will help will all these things.
- Can I post w/o creating an account? I hate creating an account places. Why do I need to do that? It's not obvious that I need to create an account to post.
- Who are these people? Are they users, or celebrities? Is this their twitter feed?I'd focus on visual design. You don't really have too much "usability" that's very complex. |
Blog on Interview question re: side projects. | cj: The Google one from last week?If not, try this..http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site:ycombinator.co... |
What can I use to make presentations that don't suck? | amirkhella: Using graphics/images from iStockPhoto and similar sites helps convey the point.
An important rule to remember: your audience will either be reading your slides, or hearing what you say. So make sure they compliment each other.Guy Kawasaki has some helpful advice on how to use text in presentations: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html |
Authentication solution for REST? | frankus: keep in mind you can send username/passwords like so for browser-based debugging:http://username:password@example.com/myresource/ |
Do you have a good source code to HTML solution? | awa: http://www.stanleyshilov.com/online-tools/convert-special-ch... in combination with Syntax highlighter http://code.google.com/p/syntaxhighlighter/ |
When did the Internet get so slimey? | loupgarou21: I distinctly remember the internet being quite shady starting around 1995, but before that I hadn't really been exposed to those parts of the internet.There are two things going on here. The first is that everyone is exposed to different parts of the internet at different times. The second is how rose tinted your glasses are when looking at the past. |
Reccomend essays to a young, inquiring mind | Beanblabber: Politics and The English Language by George Orwell.http://www.ourcivilisation.com/decline/orwell1.htm |
What can I use to make presentations that don't suck? | Auzy: Powerpoint is simply a tool. If you have poor presentation skills, any software will create crappy slides.Yes using different tools may help make it easier, but similar to an artists work, the ultimate quality of the piece will lie with the artist. Yes using different tools may produce slightly better results, but the designer is the biggest contributing factor.Powerpoint is powerful enough to do anything you need, so I don't see why you shouldn't consider it. Thinking differently for the sake of doing so doesn't make sense! |
Reccomend essays to a young, inquiring mind | andyjdavis: Seems odd to suggest Paul Graham's essays on Paul Graham's site but his essays are worth reading.http://paulgraham.com/articles.html |
Reccomend essays to a young, inquiring mind | Kliment: Try Asimov's nonfiction works. He has a number of decent essay collections, if you can find them. |
Reccomend essays to a young, inquiring mind | chris11: I really like Douglas Hofstadter.Metamagical Themas is a good collection of his essays.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamagical_Themas |
Reccomend essays to a young, inquiring mind | l0stman: Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges is a must read. Especially ``The South'' at the end of the book.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficciones |
Reccomend essays to a young, inquiring mind | nfnaaron: As We May Think, Vannevar Bush, July 1945. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bushhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think"As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush has coordinated the activities of some six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare."The Computers of Tomorrow, Martin Greenberger, May 1964. http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/greenbf..."By achieving reliability along with capability, computers have won broad commercial acceptance. But what of the future? What can we expect as computers enter their third decade? Some conservatives have been predicting a deceleration of computer growth for at least five years now. Is there a plateau just over the horizon?"Not if a recent turn in computer research is as significant as many of us believe it to be. General economic and political conditions permitting, this work will nourish a new wave of computer expansion. Computing services and establishments will begin to spread throughout every sector of American life, reaching into homes, offices, classrooms, laboratories, factories, and businesses of all kinds."An essay about essays: http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html |
Reccomend essays to a young, inquiring mind | ytinas: Most anything from Noam Chomsky should be good. |
Reccomend essays to a young, inquiring mind | astrec: Francis Bacon - Of Studies. Then read Samuel Johnson essay of the same name.Edit: haha - wanted to flick you a link and discover about.com says more or less the same thing: http://grammar.about.com/od/60essays/a/studiesessay.htm |
Reccomend essays to a young, inquiring mind | megaduck: "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", A.M. Turing, 1950. This is where the Turing Test comes from. Technically a journal paper, but reads more like an essay.If you're into computers at all, this is a must read. Alan Turing not only gave us modern computer science, he also kicked off the field of Artificial Intelligence with this groundbreaking paper. He opens it with the question "Can machines think?", and then proceeds to examine it from every conceivable angle. Not only does he predict strong AI, but Turing also provides methods of development and a robust framework for testing it.This paper's massively important, but it's also a pretty good read. It's about 20 pages long, written in reasonably accessible style, and requires no serious mathematical background. Turing was an amazingly clear thinker, and that really comes through. There's also a lot of sly humor embedded in there. If you're looking for brain candy, this one's a gem.There's a copy at
http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html |
Reccomend essays to a young, inquiring mind | dmfdmf: Clay Shirky "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable"... the invention of the internet has destroyed the cultural standard bearer's authority (NYT, MSM, etc) just like the invention of the printing press destroyed the Catholic Church's authority. It is impossible to say how it will play out because no one knows what institutions will form to replace the old institutions, i.e., we are in the early stages of the greatest social/cultural revolution in the history of western civ. Most people don't seem to grasp the import of Shirky's theme, they think its about the death of the newspapers.Ayn Rand... many, many articles but three favorites of mine are "Egalitarianism and Inflation" and "Art and Moral Treason" and "The Anatomy of Compromise". |
What can I use to make presentations that don't suck? | stevelosh: If you like Markdown you could give slidedown a try. You write your slides in Markdown and then render them to HTML: http://github.com/nakajima/slidedown |
What can I use to make presentations that don't suck? | nailer: There was a presentation tool used at PyCon during one of the lightening talks that used an interesting 'zoom and rotate' concept.Any HN folk know what this is? |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | dchest: We acquired this product a while ago from TwoDesk Software (http://www.twodesk.com/), improved it, and releasing the new version today.
I know, we're going to a kind of established market (think Balsamiq), but we just love native applications, and we think that
making mockups is a good fit for a native app, and there's a market for a native Windows tool.It's written in Delphi, so it is fast and tiny (1.3 MB). Every mockup element is drawn by code, so it scales well (you can resize and zoom in and out), and there's "automagical" grouping: e.g. when you put a button inside a box, if you move the box, the button will be moved as well.What do you think about our prospects in this market? Any suggestions on the app itself? |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | uggedal: The artifacts created with this tools looks exactly like those created with Balsamiq... |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | csomar: 1. Encourage your visitors to download the product, put more screen shots that looks dynamic and interesting (may be a slide if you wish).2. Good size 1.3 MB3. product- I can only resize objects horizontally, the button should have a vertical resize.- Why drag and drop to add the object when I have already selected it?- Let me chose a selected tab (you selected the first one)- I can zoom, that's good, but why doesn't it display percentages, how can I know the real size?- Why shall I purchase the software, if when I click done (when exporting images for examples), it does export it? I mean your trial version is broken, hackers don't need to pirate your software!Overall it's not bad, but why pay $60 for it, while I can get a 100 time better software from Microsoft (design + web + encoder : expression suite) for $150??prices here http://www.microsoft.com/Expression/products/Purchase.aspx#P...and product here http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/SketchFlow_Over...Considering the features and comparing it to sketch Flow: $9 or $12 are good. |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | pistoriusp: I'm on a Mac, so I can't review your application. Most of the developers that I know are on *nix/ OS X. We're in different circles; I'm sure you'll have clients.I don't really see why a person would want to use a desktop application instead of a web based application like Balsamiq. I honestly believe that the next step to improving Balsamiq would be to stop using Flash.(Edited to provide more clarification than just: "I'm on a mac.") |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | rksprst: Balsamiq seems to have more features that are important + being a native app is not an advantage unless you are equal on all other fronts.Besides for that it looks like a nice "copy" of balsamiq. Because your products are so similar, I think the best way to drive customers is to make your product significantly cheaper than balsamiq. |
Reccomend essays to a young, inquiring mind | trevelyan: The Apology by Plato talks of the trial of Socrates and the Phaedo of his subsequent death:http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.htmlhttp://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | DanBlake: What advantages does it have over mockflow.com ( collaborative web based balsamiq competitor ) or even over balsamiq itself? |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | revorad: 1. Love the fast native desktop app feel.2. You cannot just say "any similarities with Balsamiq are probably not intentional". Your mockups look identical. If you want to keep it that way, then as rksprst suggested, compete directly and make it cheaper. Show the comparison on your buy now page.But you also say "As for pricing, I think it's the last differentiator companies should think of...". Your software doesn't show that. What differentiates you from your competitors? For your specific market i.e. mockups, the look and feel is important. You can't afford to be a copycat there. I'd say, go the opposite route to Balsamiq. Make it funky, make it stand out. Charge more.3. Feature requests: Rotate objects. Export as PDF. Unlimited undo.4. Get rid of those annoying popups asking me to buy. If you want to sell, then sell properly. Make a video, buy ads, market your product. Don't make the user's life painful.Your target market is developers. And the one word you don't want them to be thinking when using your app is "SHAREWARE". |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | maxklein: I like it. Nice website, native apps are fast. A suggestion: Allow different widgets to be importable, so that I can do windows styles apps, mac style apps, etc. |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | markkanof: One little nitpick...is the screenshot on the main page supposed to be a joke. "Launch at mario's" as opposed to "Lunch at mario's". Sorry if I'm just being one of those guys that ruins the joke. |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | Sukotto: Looks nice. However, it looks exactly like balsamiq. That being the case, why should I buy the challenger (you) over the incumbent (them... with a track record)?I think it would be a good idea to make your app look different in an interesting way.nitpick: You spell "lunch" as "launch" in your screenshot. |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | cwilson: I've got a few issues:1. It's Windows only. I do not personally use Windows nor do I have a single peer developer, designer, or project manager (the ones who would primarily be using this for mockups) who uses Windows. It's all Mac in the web dev world these days. A web app or a native Mac app would have been very nice here. As it is I will never use your product.2. From what I do see, it looks exactly like a number of competitors.3. You're not doing anything to make this the mockup tool I would use over other established mockup tools out there. Is your niche here that it's Windows? If so... I don't really know what to say.I'm really curious as to why there is this current trend of mockup tools being created. Do we really need a dozen clones of each other out there? Why is no one innovating in this space and just releasing just another carbon copy every single time? |
Reccomend essays to a young, inquiring mind | elidourado: The Use of Knowledge in Society by Friedrich Hayekhttp://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html |
Review our iPhone App - quiQR | mtholking: link: http://bit.ly/quiQR |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | Sukotto: It's nice to see some competition in this space. Good luck guys. |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | NEPatriot: I would try to market this at the "idea" guys in order for them to make their product more than a crazy idea.The angle I see is: make it something they can put in front of developers who they want to recruit as founders or design firms for estimate purposes. Plus you can save money because the designer doesn't have to wireframe your stuff from scratch. |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | petervandijck: Awesome. I am an information architect and I've used almost every tool out there. It's simple, and that's awesome. Needs some serious thought about what NOT to include (as you'll get 1000s of feature requests). Love that it's fast and installs fast. IF you can create an efficient way to share/discuss pages, you are adding value that no other app in this market has nailed (afaik). Feel free to ping me to discuss :) |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | petervandijck: Here's a thought: make the download free, add an online (simple!) sharing service (to share with teams and annotate/comment, behind a simple password), and charge a small subscription fee for that. Say 9$/month per team (unlimited users), or a graded pricing (9$/m for up to 6 users, 49$/m unlimited team/users) will get you the same price as the app in 7 months or less, and more after that (depending on churn of course). Keep the download app free. Then improve the app a little, but don't add lots of features. (DO add iPhone stencils, and small UI improvements like editing inline instead of in a popup box). |
Review my new e-commerce model: self-serve group discounts | csbartus: This idea is very useful for shop owners too.
We have realised not the customers are coming to your shop anymore but you'll have to go to their space (like Facebook)Future is about customer driven shops: they define what they want at what price they want.
Shops will be the clients of these groups serving them with lower margins at highest quality.So the question of the business model shifts to shop owners how they can afford to operate in such (hostile) environment |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | hakan: Somewhat off-topic question: what are you guys using for your forums? Did you build it yourself or are you using a packaged solution? They're very nice. |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | dpcan: I purchased this program way back when you did the promotion post to the Business of Software forum and I've been using it regularly ever since. It's so much more responsive than Balsamiq and I absolutely LOVE it.EDIT: I just read your blog post, and it looks like you took over this product from the original creator of whom I purchased it from. I hope you allow us to upgrade if you'll be maintaining it better. |
Reccomend essays to a young, inquiring mind | danblick: Both inspiring:Doug Engelbart's 1962 "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework"http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/engelbart/62_paper_top.ht...Herbert Simon's "The Sciences of the Artificial"http://www.amazon.com/Sciences-Artificial-Herbert-Simon/dp/0... |
Best way to establish a US company for foreigners | hga: LLC and corporate law is state by state, so you almost certainly can find a suitable state where you can be a partner in an LLC (which is probably the best form to start with). Good luck! |
Best way to establish a US company for foreigners | hga: NOTE: you should probably prepend "Ask HN: " to your topic. |
Review our UI mockup tool, ScreenSketcher | guiseppecalzone: I'm a big fan of demo videos. I like to see something in action before I download anything. That in the works? |
Legal Hacks. | mbrubeck: The Mozilla Corporation (which employs many developers and has revenue deals with partners like Google) is a for-profit company, owned entirely by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.This lets Mozilla have a taxable, revenue-generating entity that is not subject to various restrictions on activity of non-profits. But because the sole owner is a charitable non-profit, the corporation can act in altruistic (i.e. non-profit-maximizing) ways without compromising its "shareholder" interests.I thought this was a neat legal hack because it uses existing legal structures in an unusual way, and lets Mozilla use the best parts of the non-profit and for-profit structures as needed. |
Review my eBay/Google maps mashup inspired by HN | geoffc: The idea for this site came from a comment from yannis on my prior HN submission for townflier.com. Sadly eBay sent me a form letter rejection for the affiliate network but I like the way the site turned out so I'm launching it anyway to see if anyone else finds it useful. |
How should I get started with Ruby & Rails? | vital101: I followed http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html with moderate success. I'm a PHP programmer by trade, and that guide was easy enough for me to understand. As far as 2.3 vs 3.0, I don't know enough about RoR to weigh in. |
How should I get started with Ruby & Rails? | mbrubeck: Enable Passenger (mod_rails) on your Dreamhost account, then you can just upload Rails applications (or other Rack apps like Sinatra) to a directory and they will run:http://wiki.dreamhost.com/PassengerI would skip CGI if your goal is to learn a framework like Rails. If you want to write a simple one-file web app in Ruby, check out Sinatra. But if you have some existing CGI scripts that you want to run, you can add the +ExecCGI option as described in http://wiki.dreamhost.com/CGI |
How should I get started with Ruby & Rails? | billturner: You're starting at a tricky time. Rails 2.3 is still a great, stable platform and should be sticking around for quite some time.Rails 3 does have many improvements, but it's still a "beta" in every sense of the word as many of the plugins don't work yet, or require many modifications to work.I still think just about the best book/introduction to Rails is the Pragmatic Programmer book: http://pragprog.com/titles/rails3/agile-web-development-with... - They don't yet cover Rails 3 yet, but in the meantime you could fill in the gaps with weblog posts and the like. If you get a solid grip on 2.3, you should have no problem adjusting to 3.0 once it becomes final. |
Transitioning to Linux | benedwards: I'd recommend Ubuntu. Good software, good community. |
Transitioning to Linux | revorad: Just go with Ubuntu, don't even think about it. Most things work right out of the box, there's a ton of help out there and the package management is ace. Installing anything pretty much only takes: sudo apt-get install anything.(Confession: As far as the desktop experience is concerned, I do miss XP. Ubuntu has come a long way but there are just these little things in the UI...) |
Transitioning to Linux | motters: For a first timer, probably Ubuntu or Linux Mint. |
Is short-term value creation ever justifiable over long-term? | mkeblx: See Any Rand, plus criticisms of. |
What questions couldn't you answer when browing my new website? | JacobAldridge: Inspired by this post from earlier in the week about FAQs - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465521. Visit our site
2. Provide us with 2-4 questions you had and could not answer while browsing our siteThis is my website in the sense that I produced a lot of the planning and content. I figure any questions the HN community has about business, Shirlaws, or business coaching would be relevant, so if they're not answered I need to improve the site. |
Review my WoW guild management app | scotje: If you want to play around without actually creating an account you can log in with: demo@srsguild.com / demo. |
Transitioning to Linux | pbhjpbhj: When I got my new computer I tried Gnome, the desktop environment (DE) that is default in UBunutu, for a few weeks. I had been using KDE3 prior and KDE4 had just surfaced and was practically unusable.I tried really hard to like Gnome but I just couldn't get anything done with it. I find it very easy to switch between XP/Vista and KDE4 (which I went to instead of Gnome). YMMV.What app are you using for your PHP development? I've tried about a dozen different ones (Kate, Eclipse, jEdit, Notepad++, Dreamweaver, ...) and am happy at the moment with Quanta. Unfortunately it's now going through the transition to KDE4 and is under resourced with devs so I'm considering moving to KDevelop. |
What questions couldn't you answer when browing my new website? | pedalpete: I think you're coming at this from the wrong approach (though I could be wrong).
I don't go to a website to 'browse', or to get questions answered, and particularly, 'what questions couldn't get answered'.I think what you are looking for is what does the website do for the business. Does the website attract clients, explain what the company does, and why shirlaws is the best choice?So, to start 'love business'. What is that? You love business? we should love business? what does loving a business get a person? How is it beneficial? Same thing with the taglines on your slider. They are like a bunch of taglines, but they are somewhat out of context, and what's with all the children?
If you are a business site, why would you fill your site with childish playful images? Do you specialize in business that cater to children? if so, then it might make sense, but I'm not getting that context form what you have.
'Increase turnover'? Shouldn't that be 'decrease turnover'? or I guess it depends on what 'turnover' is referring to. You want to limit staff turnover, not increase it. 'Impove their bottom line'. Who are they? I want to improve my bottom line.
Of course, if you spend a bit more time on the site, you see the 'coaching' stuff, but that isn't what first strikes the visitor, and you'll likely loose a lot of people before they even see that stuff.Focus on the coaching first. Shirlaws is a coaching company which ..., we help your business..., |
Review my WoW guild management app | atourgates: The panda seems quite serious. |
What should I build to support my web app? | marcamillion: Btw, these are the types of links I am looking for:http://particletree.com/notebook/the-underbelly-of-a-web-app...http://particletree.com/notebook/the-underbelly-of-a-web-app... |
What should I build to support my web app? | patio11: What you need on day one:1) Something which solves problems for people. I assume you've got this covered.2) Some way to charge people money for solving their problems. I like Paypal with e-junkie -- total integration time under 2 hours. Your mileage may vary if you do subscriptions rather than one-time payments. Subscriptions scare me. Look into Spreedly.What you may eventually want to build, buy, adapt from OSS code, etc (I have all of these in production and run a very small business):1) Analytics software. Google Analytics is an easy snap-in for 1.0.2) Conversion tracking. Again, GA for easy snap-in.3) Funnel tracking. I like Mixpanel as opposed to GA. You can find out why later.4) A CMS to publish content (for any definition of content) in a fashion which scales out of proportion to your personal time invested.5) Blogging software because every small business should have a blog. Wordpress is an easy snap-in.6) Mailing lists. I did this 3 years after starting my business. Knowing what I know now makes me sad I waited that long. MailChimp is an easy snap-in.7) A/B testing. There are three acceptable options for Rails developers: A/Bingo, Vanity (http://vanity.labnotes.org), or write your own. Friends don't let friends use Google Website Optimizer. (I wrote A/Bingo, take this recommendation with a grain of salt.)8) Application health monitoring. At the simplest level, you want to make sure that when somebody comes to your front page it returns HTTP 200. For that, mon.itor.us is an easy snap-in. You can make this arbitrarily complex. For example, I test every "moving part" on my site in an automated manner so that I hear about stuff breaking before my users do. You can read about a recent failure of this system (and all my other QC systems) on my blog. When it works nobody hears about it. :)9) Anti-spam stuff. Possibly applicable depending on what your application lets people do.10) An admin interface optimized for performing common customer service tasks. I don't know what those are for your business. As you find out what they are, automate or eliminate as many as possible.11) An admin dashboard collecting in a single place the stats/graphs/etc that drive your decisionmaking. I have an article about this somewhere. http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/02/09/dashboard-design-for-met...12) Optional but recommended: you presumably have some sort of bookkeeping or accounting practices because eventually you'll need to file taxes. This process presumably requires some sort of input from your business. Automate the creation of that input.13) Widgets for distributing your content on other people's website are a low-investment way to get exposure which scales out of proportion to time invested.14) Database. Backups. Do you use MySQL? automysqlbackup is a script created by the hands of God Himself and then planted into the minds of some programmer. (Nota bene this assumes you have one SQL server with modest demands on it. Works for me, not for Facebook.)15) Backups for all that stuff that isn't on the database. I let Slicehost handle that.16) Every app will eventually re-implement email. So will yours.17) User satisfaction surveys. Easy, low-friction way to communicate with users and receive their verbalized expressions of how you can better support their needs. (Users are much more willing to offer comments if you say "survey" and give them a survey-looking form than if you ask for comments via email. Who knew?) Wufoo all the way here. Tip: give them something for participating.18) You may find it useful to publicly expose a portion of statistics about your application as a strategy for gaining attention. If so, you need to have the stats and have a visualization for them. Totally up to you on this one.19) Your application may need to perform longer running tasks outside the confines of the HTTP request/response cycle. Look into Delayed::Job.20) If you accept user input and then crunch on it you may find that users are more creative than you are at producing input which results in output that is undesirable. This might suggest to you that you should periodically run something roughly approximating a unit test or integration test on actual user input, in a scalable fashion, for example for identifying whether a bug reported by one user can be reproduced across other users.That's all I can think of at the moment. Good luck! (It might sound daunting. It isn't. You only need two things today: solve problems, charge money for problems. Everything else can be bolted on one piece at a time as you go along.) |
What are you working on tonight? | pg: Improving HN's performance. Voting is horribly expensive. That wasn't a problem originally but it's starting to become one now that there are so many users. |
What are you working on tonight? | DanielBMarkham: Got an email from Microsoft -- I discovered a new bug in their F# compiler that breaks my startup app. I'm the first to find this fairly significant bug. I should be so proud.So now I'm deciding how best to hack up my code to get around the bug.Can't say I'm very happy about where I am, but I'll get it fixed soon enough.It's very cool being on the cutting edge, as long as you don't bleed too much! |
What are you working on tonight? | tdupree: Working on a new website for a client to help pay for the bootstrapping of my own startup. Getting to mess around with a custom mootools carousel with some nice UX stuff goin on. |
What are you working on tonight? | jsonscripter: I'm working on a Flash game using Flixel for a contest on Newgrounds. There haven't been many submissions so I'm basically just trying to get it done by the deadline :) |
We got an invite to TechStars for a day, should we go? | jasonlbaptiste: you should probably go. you'll certainly meet some new smart people, get to talk to other entrepreneurs, and have some sort of experience. It's good to put yourself out there and experience new things. your product will still get done, don't worry. |
What are you working on tonight? | plinkplonk: Reviewing the more esoteric Category Theory bits of Haskell.A (commercial) Haskell + C project kicks off on March 4th.I am looking forward to my first major project in Haskell but it will be hectic once it starts and I won't have too much time for lazing around or reading :-(.Enjoying the last few days of peace :-) |
What are you working on tonight? | ohwaitnvm: I finished up a lexical analyzer I was writing in Ruby for a pascal variant we're using throughout the semester in my Compilers class.
Now it's done and submitted, so time to relax and have a cup of tea before I start considering writing the parser. |
What are you working on tonight? | chrisa: Creating marketing brochures with html, so that I can use css to create a consistent feel across all of them. There's probably a much better way to do this, but I need them for next week.To do it, I'm using webkit2png to make a png from the html page, and prawn to automatically put the png into a pdf. The whole thing is 6 lines of ruby (which uses python, then prawn), and it's working well so far, but I've had to fuss with the scaling so that it prints without pixelating. |
What are you working on tonight? | mrfish: Trying to catch up on way too much Elance work while watching the Olympics... oh and watching Lost that I missed the other day. |
What are you working on tonight? | boyter: Right now... adding some features to an internal application at work in C# (im at work).Later tonight though, I should be preparing for my hiking trip tomorrow, and possibly working on some RSS indexing that someone I know wants for their website. |
What are you working on tonight? | shib71: A website for people to post latin texts, collaboratively annotate them with grammer information, and read both. |
What are you working on tonight? | MikeMacMan: Drinking... |
What are you working on tonight? | amackera: Studying for a Computer Architecture mid-term on Tuesday. I got to program a little bit of a RESTful API for a big school project earlier today though, so the day isn't a total loss. |
What are you working on tonight? | jdminhbg: Using CouchDB to set up various payment methods for a personal project. The schemaless stuff is great. |
What are you working on tonight? | hikari17: Trying to get the video done for our YC app. We're seriously bad at saying anything cool or interesting on camera... all we can do so far is laugh at each other. :) |
What are you working on tonight? | nfnaaron: I'm working on initialization scripts for my VPS: automatically taking it from newborn to installed infrastructure and security settings.And a glass of bourbon. |
What are you working on tonight? | njl: Putting the finishing touches on the app I wrote this week, a co-founder finder.I also got a Droid this afternoon, so I've been having a hard time avoiding the distracting shiny, shiny new toy. |
What are you working on tonight? | lotharbot: Playing Starcraft with my wife, exploring a new tactic, inspired by the discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1150669And taking care of my 2-month-old. |
What are you working on tonight? | alanthonyc: Deploying a tiny, tiny app onto a public server... |
What are you working on tonight? | kolosy: the same thing we do every night, pinky... plotting to take over the world... this time with a shivaplug. |
What are you working on tonight? | oomkiller: Trying to figure out how to query the UMLS metathesaurus's WebService (Soap 1.2) API using Ruby. Not having much luck :( |
What are you working on tonight? | thaumaturgy: Sleeping, I hope. I haven't slept a full night for a while.G'night. |
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