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Any Hackers in Middle America? | raheemm: Why did you move to Indy?On a separate note, I think hackers who make it big should try to go back to their small towns or non-silicon valley places, especially if it has a good university and try to sow the seeds so that that these other places become hacker friendly. I really admire that Italian guy behind Balsalmiq for going back to Italy and doing his thing. He is not that big yet, but hackers there have a reason to stick around and try to make it. |
Good OS X data modeling software? | omahajoe: I'm not a techy but www.thebrain.com is the coolest visualization tool i've found and its free...but may not apply for what you're looking fore |
Any Hackers in Middle America? | niels_olson: Ignoring the first 14 years of life, I've lived in1) Kansas City for high school2) Annapolis for college3) Rhode Island for six months4) San Diego for four years5) Annapolis for two and a half years6) New Orleans for 5 weeks to start medical school7a) Lived with my parents for one year in College Station, Texas after Katrina7b) Attended classes in Houston for that year8) Back to New Orleans with trips to San Antonio, Houston, College Station, Washington, DC, Norfolk, Virginia, and New Haven, Connecticut.If I were going to move to one of those places for the purpose of starting a start up, first, I wouldn't. Second, I'd prioritize the list like so1) College Station (couldn't study for all the people talking about setting up this or that, whether they had set up their S corp, when the fiber would be laid down, etc). These people are definitely still engineers.2) San Diego3) Washington, DC, including Annapolis (home of Wonkette)4) New Haven (mainly due to proximity to both Boston and NY)5) Norfolk, VA (lots of military contracts)6) San Antonio7) Rhode Island8) Houston9) Kansas City10) New OrleansWhy is New Orleans last? I mean, I'm here, and clearly I've learned more about programming and system admin here than anywhere. I can't believe I'm saying it, but there really is an element of old world culture down here that I will miss when I leave. And it's sort of a city within a city: you meet the people you know all over the place. And really, I've learned more from the programmers I've met here than from anyone (except my brother, who lives in San Antonio). But there are two overwhelming factors working against ever trying to do a start up here: 1) Who would ever put a server in New Orleans? 2) Tulane dismissed their entire engineering college after the storm. No hacker I know is here because it's a good place for hacking. In some ways, it awesome. But there's virtually no one here. I think I've identified all the XOs in the city, and it adds up to about 6 (it was 5 until someone in Texas mailed me a spare).Why would I rank Houston below San Antonio? Houston is much larger, 4th largest city in the US. Surely there is a greater absolute number of hackers in Houston. But having lived in Houston, you would be hard-pressed to get me to move back. It's so huge and spread out and the public transit system is so non-existent that you end up spending your life in a car. And I get the sense that most people would rather live in Austin or, if they want to stay close to the engineering, they go to College Station. |
Any Hackers in Middle America? | paul9290: There are hackers by the ton here and no worries about where you live. You could find someone here and do a quick project together to see how it goes and take it from there!It's cheaper to live out there then in San Fran, NYC or Boston.Don't let location and the old adage of having to be in the valley stop you from innovating! IF you make something interesting or that has perceived value your work will get noticed! |
Any Hackers in Middle America? | herdrick: I'm in Spokane, WA for a while and would like to meet up and talk startups. Anybody else here here? |
Anyone have experience with FLEX + HaXe development? | kqr2: Check out:http://www.amazon.com/Professional-haXe-Neko-Programmer/dp/0... |
Any Hackers in Middle America? | centuren: I went to school at Rose Hulman in Terre Haute, IN, where an impressive concentration of hackers attend. They've even got Rose Ventures (http://www.rhventures.org/), a start up friendly organization (using appropriately educated students as cheap labor for small companies). |
Any Hackers in Middle America? | avcetim: Bought a company out of Purdue. Worked one year with it in West Lafayette. Moved to Palo Alto for 2.5 years. Moved back to Lafayette, IN. Opened office in Buenos Aires. Commuted there quarterly. Consulted for a venture firm in Ann Arbor. And in August I moved to Indianapolis. Why?Because it is not about starting it or where you start it. Its about finishing. What do you need to finish? Does Indy have the resources available and accessible for budding entrepreneurs to close the loop on an idea and create a business?I'm looking for help. Yes, I miss the hustle and bustle and wondering if every person at Starbucks in Palo Alto or Mt View just bagged $1 million from VC. But at the same time I know where I want to raise my family, where I want to vacation and where my access to top notch stable talen is - and that is Indianapolis.I've built one company. Sold it. Working on another. Have a 9 to 5 that pays bills and pays health insurance, but my "idle" mind perpetuates. I need help - did I mention that?Not sure where the next finish line is, but I'm willing to run the race with you.ideas: manufacturing kanban software, logistically distribution AI, virtual pharmaceutical testing, quick hit web apps, SEO consulting, beer brewing (just seeing if you are still reading). |
What Rails IDE do you use? | gtani: http://woss.name/2008/03/04/ruby-on-rails-ides/ |
What Rails IDE do you use? | jdg: TextMate user #719. |
What Rails IDE do you use? | Spyckie: RadRails works well for me. Its really about how familiar you get with the program, and how much you customize it to suit your coding habits (and how much you prefer the mouse).Customizations that I use/advocate:1) Get or make a good color scheme for syntax highlighting.2) bind arrow keys to ctrl+i|j|k|l.
I bind j&l to next and previous words and ctrl+; to end of line, and it works so well I did that to Word and notepad++ too (you really don't need ctrl+i for italics...). The only problem is that I tend to open up my downloads tab (ctrl+j) when I'm composing emails in firefox.3) Edit -> Open resource
Open resource is the MAIN reason why I use RadRails. I map it to ctrl+shift+o, and it makes switching between files extremely fast, which is important in rails since you have so many files all over the place.4) Other notable key bindings that are useful:
- maximize window
- close all but current file
- Search (through all the files)
- Duplicate fileFor me, having a clean workspace is crucial as well as getting to places quickly. My customizations reflect this, but I'm sure you can do that to many other IDEs. The exception is NetBeans - their open resource is using a bubble sort or something incredibly slow and they're not caching it either... |
Best debugging war stories? | antigravity: http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html |
Best place to learn about Mobile Development | petercooper: If possible, could you edit your post title to include "Windows" before "Mobile"? People might think to post iPhone related resources here (which is what I was going to do) and you seem to make it clear that's not what you want ;-) |
Best place to learn about Mobile Development | hwijaya: There are so many ways of doing development for Windows Mobile. My own experience was developing it in Compact Framework. It's basically is a .NET Framework in slim version. It would be helpful if you know at least C# or VB.NET and some ideas on how the framework works.
Have a look on this site below for some examples of apps develop using the framework.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa145791.aspxAnother route, I have met some people who do mobile development in C++ or wxWidgets. I think it's much steeper learning curve to jump from scripting language to there. Besides, I can't see any real benefit of going through that route UNLESS the apps that you want to develop requires an absolute level of performance. Otherwise, IMHO, the development time is not worth it.Here are some URLs that might be helpful.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb158619.aspx
http://www.wxwidgets.org/Hope that helps. :) |
When should we bother incorporating? | run4yourlives: You should really get advice from a local lawyer or someone familiar with your own jurisdiction but I would almost guarantee that regardless of what you do (Incorporate, Partner, etc) you should do it prior to selling a single item. The reason for this, at best, is to stay on the good side of the tax law.The second question varies based on type of business registered and your location. Google would probably be of good use here. |
When should we bother incorporating? | noodle: once your app/group/whatever is incurring potential liabilities, at least form an LLC. it might not be the best corporate entity for funding, but its cheap and easy, and will prevent you from getting your pants sued off.if you pursue funding further, you can convert. it isn't the ideal situation, but things rarely are. |
What's the status of Heroku? (and other Rails hosting questions) | qhoxie: You should really consider EngineYard (http://www.engineyard.com/). They are run by a group of really bright and genuinely nice people.The founder, Ezra, is around HN as ezmobius. |
What's the status of Heroku? (and other Rails hosting questions) | ph0rque: Your concerns with heroku are non-issues. The banner is a semitransparent one that adds an edit button to take you to the online editor for your app. You can configure it to not show (http://groups.google.com/group/heroku/web/heroku-toolbar-set...). Also, they are very much active in their development: check the google group postings to see what I mean. |
What's the status of Heroku? (and other Rails hosting questions) | echair: 99.9% uptime is not that great, actually, if you do the math. That's a 44 minute outage every month. |
What's the status of Heroku? (and other Rails hosting questions) | drcode: My experiences with heroku has been very positive so far: The online IDE and tools are very robust and they've been responsive to me when I needed to ask questions.I don't think you'll be disappointed. |
What's the status of Heroku? (and other Rails hosting questions) | sc: I do as much browsing in WebKit as possible. Heroku does not support WebKit and till it does I cannot spend too much time with it. |
What's the status of Heroku? (and other Rails hosting questions) | matt1: Judging from the first few comments, it seems like I'll give Heroku a go. As always, thanks for the tips. |
When should we bother incorporating? | cjoh: The cost for registering your business isn't too significant and you can do it online at something like bizfilings.com. Setting up the business isn't particularly the difficult task. When you set up an LLC (which is probably what you want to do), you need to draft an operating agreement that goes alongside your filing that defines how you will work with your members or shareholders. That's the expensive part that you'll need a lawyer for.Most small companies end up being an LLC or an S-corp. Both have about the same tax advantages (pass through income to the members, so you're basically getting taxed once, not twice).Before bringing your service to market, it is advisable to incorporate, so you can at least make clear, at the start, the real terms of your relationship with the rest of your group. That's something you really can't do on your own, and you're going to need a lawyer to help you think through, especially if you expect revenue to come soon. |
Ideas for my startup (www.prosepoint.org) | mdolon: I played around with it for a bit, seems like an interesting mod to Drupal. I did find the interface a bit convoluted though, as the options presented in the menu may be a bit complex and overwhelming for a typical newspaper/magazine editor trying to add and place content on the site.I'd advise sticking closely with KISS for your target audience. A drag-and-drop feature for the front page layout would be sweet as well. I could really use something like this for a project I'm working on right now (I'm leaning towards WP at the moment). |
Ideas for my startup (www.prosepoint.org) | auston: Seems fine to me. Fairly clear.As far as monetization goes:1. Charge for it?2. Offer 3rd party services (like copywriting/editing services) and use affiliate links3. Split advertising with publishers ? |
Ideas for my startup (www.prosepoint.org) | versesane: Ha you can def offer premium newspaper themes for which you can charge. |
Ideas for my startup (www.prosepoint.org) | mattmaroon: Interesting. Can I assume that since you're targeting a small niche, you're planning on charging a decent price for it? You seem to be offering people their chance to run their own Huffington Post or something. |
Ideas for my startup (www.prosepoint.org) | unalone: Huh! I'd always hoped Drupal would make something like this. Best of luck.I don't have many ideas regarding the newspaper world. NowPublic has that all nailed. Find whatever niche you can that they haven't taken.Oh, and welcome to Hacker News. Do we do welcomes here? I'm not sure. Welcome anyway. |
Ideas for my startup (www.prosepoint.org) | petercooper: 1. I want to be seeing a screenshot(s) on the front page.2. I want you to make it clear why I shouldn't use Wordpress.3. The pages on the site are all samey. The general layout and theme are quite nice, but you need to make it flow better. Screenshots, etc.On the monetization front.. skip all the technical jargon and sell your services as a company that can bring a newspaper on to the Web (or allow a newspaper stuck with antiquated Web software - and there are lots around - to enter the 21st century). There could be quite a few lucrative consultancy gigs in getting newspapers online or migrating their existing sites into working with your system. |
Ideas for my startup (www.prosepoint.org) | abijlani: Your site administration is very confusing.What makes Wordpress so popular today is their intuitive admin interface. You can right away manage the content. I think they have it right, the people managing the content vs the people managing the design / layout are two entirely different sets of people.There are tons of Wordpress themes that offer the Magazine/Newspaper layout. So what is your differentiation factor? |
Ideas for my startup (www.prosepoint.org) | lyime: Radiant CMS 0.6.9 + plugins. |
Ideas for my startup (www.prosepoint.org) | streety: I would more loudly broadcast the fact that it is based on drupal. If a user has a lot of success they would want to know that there is a large group from which they could hire developers for customisation. Drupal offers that.The idea of editions seems like a quaint throwback to the world of print media. Does it make sense for online? |
Ideas for my startup (www.prosepoint.org) | asmosoinio: Typo: "If you find a theme you like, you don't even a web designer."Missing a "need" after "don't even"? |
How to monetize a play for fun poker site? | Russelldb: Hi Joel, Don't want to sound like a stalker or sound too fulsome so don't get the wrong idea but I follow you in twitter and read your posts on the erlang list and find you inspirational.My opinion on this is:-1. Forget the subs. Let people play for fun for free and if they want to bet take a cut of the ante or pot or something (IE you only make money when people spend money and even then only make a little). Make it very, very easy to bet (Paypal, google checkout easy). But let people play for Kudos too.2. Also let people play on Facebook. Do Facebook Connect (or other social networks) so peeps joining your site can bring all their friends (their whole social graph). Make it so people can play away from your site basically (iPhone etc)3. Bring in non-players IE have tutorials, novice tables, private game rooms stuff like that. There is a huge untapped market of women who love to gamble (witness the power of Bingo in the UK) if it is fun and social.Personally I'd back you whatever as your drive and commitment are evident. Whether you follow my advice or not I expect you to succeed with this or another idea and if I had a few 10s of thousands of pounds I'd be in like Flynn. Sorry if that embarrasses you. |
How to monetize a play for fun poker site? | ashleyw: I think you've got it spot on — ads for free members; and no ads, the option to customize things, use extra features, and some extra virtual cash every month for the "Pro" members.Plus you could sell exta virtual currency, with Pro members getting a discount.Whats your URL? :) |
How to monetize a play for fun poker site? | apsurd: I don't like the idea.
There is god awfully too much competition. Nearly every single for-money poker site is actually masked/marketed as a play for free site. There is already poker apps on the major SNS like facebook (and probably myspace).You are outmarketed, outreached, and out muscled in almost every conceivable way.Also, as much as people DON'T admit it - people play poker to win money. If you think your niche is those "friendly college games" well why in gods name would your "college friends" play poker online when they can kick back some beers, invite friends over and have a REAL game?Lastly, if your angle is "social networking around poker" well thats called "every other poker site out there". I can not see anyone who is legitimately interested in poker, signing up for a social networking site about poker, that does not let you play poker "seriously" (read for money).
I just can not see any possible legitimate angle to go forward with this.Please someone show me the light. |
How to monetize a play for fun poker site? | Tichy: There is a lot of competition, but I haven't found a place where I could just play poker for fun, no download or payment necessary. If you want to charge a monthly fee, unfortunately your site won't qualify, either. Otherwise, your position would not even be so bad, I think.Wouldn't ads be sufficient? I think there is a lot of money in ads for Online Poker. Of course that would be ads for other poker sites, so I am not sure if it would be good for you to have them on your site. |
Ideas for my startup (www.prosepoint.org) | SingAlong: When I've got Drupal or Joomla why would I choose yours?
What makes your stuff different from Drupal(+ a custom plugin and theme) or Joomla(+ a custom plugin or theme)?Mention those on the front page. That should serve as an ad :)
And make your site colorful. Pure black-grey-white shades are boring IMO. |
How to monetize a play for fun poker site? | dazzawazza: Before I comment let me qualify this with the fact that I worked on one of the big poker websites as lead engineer.There is a big difference between free and raked poker. The betting patterns in free poker are erratic and make the game MUCH less fun. Because no one buys in to the hand (literally and figuratively) no one cares if they win or loose. So there is always some idiot who just goes all in on every hand clicking the 'more free chips' button when it goes wrong. They ruin ALL the free tables on all the poker sites.To make games more fun you could consider:private tables: people pay for the right to create private tables that they invite friends/family to play on (eliminating the free play whores). Maybe with a subscription you can create a private table for 10, without it's limited to 6.limited chips: people can only get new chips once a day (or what ever period suits your traffic). You can get very clever with this allowing bad beat loosers to get more chips buy reckless players get penalized.I wish you luck but it's an industry flush with cash and corruption so you'll need to be very canny. There are sections of the community (such as students) who are looking for a good time on the cheap. They are also prime candidates for beer advertisers so there is an angle there. You might want to consider splitting your site in to students.domain.com and family.domain.com so you can target the respective audiences more accurately. |
How to monetize a play for fun poker site? | bhandras: Joel I think you should think about your idea a lot first. I follow you on your blog and you happen to jump from project to project and your mind just can't settle with one on the long run. How about planning the business first with all the legal things (which everybody hates and leaves the last). After that you may see if it will be a success or not. Read back your ideas and look at why they change every day :) If you have one for more than 5 days than that will be the winner!But that's just my 2 cents. |
How to monetize a play for fun poker site? | charlesju: Did you really write your whole server code in Erlang? Your intelligence scares me a little bit.First off, can you elaborate on what these "social network" features are? There is a really popular poker FB application already, that seems to me to have "social network" features.I think that there are a number of questions you should answer before you embark on this journey.1. Why will your poker program be unique?2. How will you achieve critical mass (what's your distribution channel/marketing)?3. How will you stop your competitors from stealing your idea and implementing them with their existing user base?------------------------------------As for how I think you can make money? I think that you are a very intelligent person, much more than me, and you should leverage that to your advantage.Here are two ways I think you can make a lot more money than just simply running a consumer product:1. There are plenty of people trying to solve the multiplayer problem (my company for example) and we would love to buy some sort of license to custom code written to handle generic server requests. Then you can package your Poker software on top of that as a "demo". But if you go this route, you really need to redo your server in a more traditional language, Erlang is fun for show and tell, but not very practical for the masses.2. If you are adamant on doing a poker related site with your stuff. I would recommend making a Ning for Poker Sites. There are so many poker sites out there right now that it doesn't make sense to try and compete with all of them. It does make sense to setup the backbone to run poker sites, take a cut of the money processing, and then let everyone else figure out how to market and distribute your stuff. There is currently no free poker software that is easy to skin and market, you can be the first, you can undercut everyone and be a millionaire by this time next year. |
How to monetize a play for fun poker site? | icey: This might be a good fit for the guys at Plura: http://www.pluraprocessing.com/Poker apps would be a perfect situation since it takes much more time than most games. |
How to monetize a play for fun poker site? | icey: Can I recommend labeling the bots? I think you'll have trust issues if people think that there is some super-genius robot playing next to them. Poker players know that it's not that huge a deal, but I think amateur players may be turned off by that.Either that, or have bot-friendly tables and human-only tables. |
How to monetize a play for fun poker site? | socksandsandals: Joel, this will be an attempt to prove out your OpenPoker infrastructure to either a) sell licences to OpenPoker, or b) sell the rights to it outright, correct? Given that, the site does not need to be super-popular in and of itself. You will probably only need about 100,000 active players to prove how much more efficient and scalable your software is. My thoughts on making money are MochiAds and private tables; they seem about as good as any. But if the goal is to sell OpenPoker, then you just need a proofpoint, not a successful site in and of itself (in fact, a popular site would make it harder to sell off the rights to OpenPoker altogether, as it would raise the cost to a potential acquirer). |
How to monetize a play for fun poker site? | mpc: How about digital goods/gifts? Similar to what facebook and other gaming sites have done...virtual trophies, awards, etc. that users can display in a 'giftbox' within their profiles.If your site has enough traffic and is socially 'interactive' you could monetize the interactions with virtual gift micropayments instead of trying to monetize the users themselves. |
How to monetize a play for fun poker site? | trevelyan: wagerlabs - you should look at dominategame.comA subscription based Risk-style game with free play options. I've subscribed in the past and considered it worth it.A serious and well-designed points system can provide social standing and other sorts of incentives to help compensate for the lack of betting. |
PHP Tricks and Best Practices? | grotesk: If PHP is your choice and not the result of prior mismanagement, then I would immediately schedule a two-week vacation. Rent a suite at a hotel with no internet service. Bring your laptop. Pick a language: Scheme, Groovy, Python, Ruby, Clojure, scala, Haskell... and implement something fun for twelve days. Do nothing but immerse yourself in the language. Take a couple days of rest. Then return to work freed of the huge mistake that is PHP. |
How to monetize a play for fun poker site? | jasonwatkinspdx: I'm unaware of the legality, but there might be an opportunity to combine a web of trust with online poker. Track play money bankrolls but provide some feedback mechanisms players could use to settle outside the site. Pay for the site via ads. Being purely ad supported would be a nice feather for your software licensing business demonstrating hosting cost advantages. |
How to monetize a play for fun poker site? | cjenkins: Hi Joel,One thought I had might be to use some of your ad revenue as a prize pool each week/month/etc. That way people could play with the potential to earn some real money. Hopefully it snowballs so that you can offer bigger prize pools attracting more traffic in a happy money making circle.I think this could be a really nice niche to be in as you could end up as the "default" free poker site to play at. Why play somewhere else when you could potentially earn real money playing free poker? |
What's the status of Heroku? (and other Rails hosting questions) | sunkencity: It's not that hard to host a rails app yourself with apache + mysql + mod_rails.Just rent linux server and install apache, mysql and ruby, then "gem install passenger" and follow the instructions. |
How do you drive traffic to a new niche blog? | mcormier: Blogs generally are on a niche subject. Digg and reddit are aggregators not blogs. If something is a niche then it is a niche. Why are you expecting lots of traffic? |
How do you drive traffic to a new niche blog? | trickjarrett: SEO, blog carnivals, finding other blogs on similar topics and doing comments. Most of the standard advice for building traffic. |
How do you drive traffic to a new niche blog? | lethain: The most effective way to drive traffic to a new blog is to write consistent, targeted and high quality content (keep your posts on-topic, especially early on), and to get to know the other people in the niche (they're not competition, but fellow members of a community). I really don't believe there are any other ways to attract high quality traffic.That said, I'd really recommend that you step back and figure out an agenda for your blog. Are you trying to educate readers? Learn by writing? Develop a reputation as a competent programmer or as a member of a community? If you go into blogging aiming at pageviews, you run the risk of writing junk simply because it appeals to readers from Reddit or Digg, but doesn't accomplish anything positive for your personal brand. |
How do you drive traffic to a new niche blog? | kleneway: Start slow, and take advantage of your time without readers to find your voice and figure out what works and what doesn't. Once you get that figured out, just do all the standard stuff. Here's a good list: http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2008/10/how-to-launc... |
How do you drive traffic to a new niche blog? | rrhyne: Have great content, comment on other blogs, and link to other blogs, so they will link to you. |
How do you drive traffic to a new niche blog? | thenetprophet: add porn, good porn at that. Everybody loves sex, if you've got a good blog about lets say Knitting, throw some good porn in there because lets face it, who doesn't love browsing their favorite knitting blog with a little porn on the side! Exactly! |
How do you drive traffic to a new niche blog? | igexome: Shameless plug, but why not go the widget route? Widgetbox.com has channels that are used to link different blogs together, but that may not fit your niche requirement. People love to see relevant content, so extending your reach by creating a widget and allowing those that are interested in it to grab and spread your voice is by far the best way.Look around for other energetic web users that think like you (you're just in a niche and not something completely unqiue, correct?) and network yourselves together. Also, driving traffic to each other increases SEO and overall awareness on the web with minimal effort. |
So, how did the recent PR advice work for you? | petercooper: There's no way that advice given within the last week can be delivering big wins already. I would be very keen, however, to hear people who have been using the ideas outlined in the long-term. There are no quick wins in promotion, because you have thousands of other people against you, and getting people's attention is hard.One downside to your particular situation is that your app is both soccer related and relating to reasonably competitive matches (that is, not just a kick around, but actually "organizing players" and the like). In this case, I'd say your app is so specific to a certain demographic that you need to narrow in on that demographic very tightly and focus on it alone. You're less likely to find your ideal market in general areas online and on highly specific forums, Facebook groups, real life, etc. |
How do you drive traffic to a new niche blog? | pkaler: Tag, label, and categories your posts well. Check Google Analytics to see which keywords drive traffic to your site. Use these keywords as topics for future posts. |
How do you drive traffic to a new niche blog? | petercooper: In terms of general Web strategies:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=341138http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=351709But here are some tips specific to niche blogs. I run a niche blog that has 17,000 subscribers and am in the process of building up others, so I have a few tips (but I am by no means an authority on this!):- TWITTER! Use search.twitter.com to find people talking about your topic and talk to them. Follow them, get them to your site. Twitter about your topic. Use TwitterFeed to stream the titles / links to your blog posts into your Twitter feed.- Sometimes niches are interesting to broader audiences. On HN you see stories relating to the Ruby programming language (or Rails) all the time - these are pretty niche topics but with some general appeal to hackers / programmers.- Find the other blogs. Comment on them wisely and try to build up relationships. Find areas where you can complement what others are doing rather than just copying them. For example, let's say your blog is specifically about flash photography. You could get interest to your articles from general digital photography sites! If you're going to be niche, find the blogs that are one thicker branch further down the tree.- Blog carnivals ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog_Carnival )- Get "outsiders" interested in your niche! I wasn't really all that interested in typography or logo design, but ILoveTypography ( http://ilovetypography.com/ ) and Logo Design Love ( http://www.logodesignlove.com/ ) hooked me with their awesome designs and modern, friendly approaches.- Advertise with Google Adwords. You can target very precisely this way.- Advertise on complementary blogs.- Look for Facebook groups on your niche. If you find some (and there are millions), you have a whole index of people who might want to subscribe to your blog.- Try to get included on to "planet" sites for your general topic area (e.g. for the Ruby world - http://www.planetrubyonrails.com/ ) and on to sites like Alltop.com.- Guest post on complementary blogs.- Engage with whatever audience you build up over time. These people need to be your advocates! If they blog, they should be mentioning you from time to time, assuming your content is good.- Editorial mentions in magazines relating to your niche. Many smaller magazines like to mention Web sites that could be useful to their readers. You will probably need a bit of a track record first though unless you're really unique.- Start your own Digg / Reddit-a-like on your topic area if one doesn't exist. If one does, use it!- Start a podcast on your niche. Interview people. Start with lesser known people and work your way up until you have a good track record. Heck, even just interviewing people by e-mail and putting it on your site is a start. It's all about adding a human element.- Have a Google Alert on keywords relating to your niche. Make sure you know all the news and make sure you get commenting on any blog that even mentions your niche in some way. You need to become known.- Subscribe to both ProBlogger ( http://problogger.net/ ) and CopyBlogger ( http://www.copyblogger.com/ ). If you haven't visited them before, exhaustively read their archives. They are PACKED with tips on how to promote niche blogs.It is important to remember that the techniques you use should be based upon your target demographic. If it's bridge playing retirees, then Twitter and Facebook probably aren't going to cut it.. whereupon I'd look at editorial mentions in magazines, etc.Added: Check this out too: http://jessicaknows.com/2008/11/15-days-of-marketing-day-one... |
Problems/Limitations With Online Shopping? | ericwaller: There are two major things I want from online shopping:Real time stock data. I don't care so much about quantities, just whether or not my size/color is in stock -- though a "low quantity" warning would be nice.Ship my order within 24 hours, and with "free" overnight shipping. If I order a pair of pants tonight (1 am on Thursday morning), I should have them Friday. Now I know nothing's really free, but build it into your prices; don't make me think. Pull this off, and you're 80% of the way to matching brick and mortar retail -- it takes a day or two to build a shopping trip into my schedule anyway. |
Problems/Limitations With Online Shopping? | petercooper: My biggest problem is with stores that try too hard to be innovative and end up making the process harder. But then, they don't frustrate me too much as I just won't use them.Other frustrations:- Gauging availability- Having easy access to shipping cost info- Offers or product names that aren't links. If something says "T-shirt sale, $10 each" I want to be able to click on that to see that sale!- Lack of a categorized view. I want to easily see OTHER products that are very similar to the current one. If I'm looking at a blue shirt, I want to easily find a yellow one (say).- High shipping costs. I gotta admit, "free shipping" gives me an instant shopping boner, even if it makes no sense. It just makes me more likely to buy.- Lack of details. If electronics equipment, I want access to the full specs, including dimensions, etc. If clothes, I want to know the sizes and what scale was used (e.g. US size, UK size, or what?)- Ridiculous registration requirements. I don't want to fill out a 30 field form to become a "member" of your shop. Ask for the absolute minimum to start and then get the other info over time as I become faithful to your brand.- Lack of any review functionality. Sometimes it doesn't matter, but on many items it does. Even if you're just getting reviews from elsewhere, I wanna see them.- Sites that don't fully use HTTPS through the whole checkout process.Things I would like:- Better search.- Support for tagging. I like browsing by tag.- "Random" product link. Not for every store but on some it would be awesome. I like browsing!- Make it easier for me to browse when I don't know what I want. (I think I've made the point now, lol)- Offer a clean but powerful advanced search. If I want to buy something for $5-$10, I should be able to limit searches to that.- "Similar items" when looking at an item. Even if it's just a few with similar names, it helps.- Easy access to high resolution imagery of the product. Let me click on the thumbnail / smaller image to get more awesome shots. It's a big deal when you're looking at the positioning of ports on a notebook, for example.- Cheaper and more expensive alternatives to the current product. This is a touchy area for the actual store providers but as a customer I want to quickly work with my budget. Sometimes I want to spend more on something better, or sometimes less.- Products on the front page of the site. I don't want to have to dig just to reach a single product.Things I don't care about:- Comparison tools. Most are useless. If I really want to compare something, I'll load them up in separate tabs and just figure it out after looking at them both. Very few products come down to a spec by spec comparison.- Splash pages.- Overuse of "theme" imagery. A common problem with clothing sites. I understand building a brand, etc, but in the store section, give me product. |
Problems/Limitations With Online Shopping? | petercooper: Something else I realized I always do..If I see a "promo code" box when buying, I always Google for a promo code for that store, or try retailmenot.com to see if they have one.Sometime I get one, sometimes I not, and I feel a teeny-weeny pissed off when I don't find one that works as I feel someone else is "beating" me. So.. perhaps seeding a very, very tiny discount promo code out there for people like me would make me remember your store more because you let me "win" for my ingenuity :) |
Problems/Limitations With Online Shopping? | ieatpaste: (Slightly off topic) I know there are a lot of startups doing a physical-internet crossover similar to QRCode, but they read bar codes instead. The only issue I see with this is that not every item has a bar code (i.e. clothes) and it requires the cooperation of both online and brick-and-mortar stores.Augmented reality for physical shopping anyone? Stick RFID/bluetooth emitters in the security-ink devices, stick the security devices to the clothes, and then pull out your phone to get relevant information. |
Problems/Limitations With Online Shopping? | oldgregg: I get this feeling that clothing is THE consumer product but nobody buys clothes online because:1) sizing is screwy2) it's impossibly kludgy to browse clothing, textures, etc.3) a painful return processSO, I'm waiting for a department store with:1) ONE pair of each item2) ZERO inventory,3) With all that additional space, a MASSIVE selection3) Everything gets shipped straight to your home.When you walk into the store they measure you, scan your credit card, and hand you a barcode scanner. Scan what you want and the perfectly sized clothing shows up on your doorstep in a day or two.Nice side effects:1) No more fear because it's easy to take back to the store if you don't like it.2) For all the people that don't live in NYC or LA there would finally be a store with a decent selection...3) Few clothing stores actually track purchases-- finally, you could now have a killer recommendation system that people would actually trust.Solves so many problems (and probably creates a few). It kind of reminds me of Service Merchandise back in the day where they only had one item out front and everything else in the warehouse-- except now the warehouse is in "the cloud" so to speak....I already do this at Barnes & Noble-- browse for what I want and I've already Amazon Prime'd the book before I walk out the door...Beyond the obvious technical challenges to me the biggest question is whether the economics of it works when you individually ship everything from a central location. |
Problems/Limitations With Online Shopping? | listic: They don't ship worldwide. Sometimes they do, but not for every item. And they don't make it clear from the start.This is the biggest single limitation that I encounter constantly. |
Anyone running a US-based non-resident LLC? | pmjordan: If I hire myself as a contractor in my home country, do I have to pay taxes on these incomes to US gov?For personal income, your country will typically have a reciprocal agreement with the US so that you don't get double-taxed. Check with your local tax body for the exact details.(Sorry, I know nothing about the other questions.) |
Anyone running a US-based non-resident LLC? | boris: If I hire myself as a contractor in my home country, do I have to pay taxes on these incomes to US gov?If I get paid from US-based company personally (not through company), do I have to pay taxes to US gov on these incomes?You don't pay taxes to US gov unless any of the following two things are true: (1) you are a US resident (2) your income is produced in the US.There is a precise definition of being a US resident for tax purposes but it basically boils down to you staying in the US for the majority of the time.The production of income is a bit more tricky. It basically says that if you use US "infrastructure" to produce your income then you have to pay taxes. The common example of this situation would be rental income from a property in the US.
An example when this does not apply would be sitting in front of a computer in another country and writing a web app. |
Anyone running a US-based non-resident LLC? | ovi256: Glad to see the tax income questions have been answered. I would like to know more about the others though. Especially :>Is it hard to run a US-based LLC from abroad in general? Paperwork etc.Anyone? |
Anyone running a US-based non-resident LLC? | mindaugas: I wonder why do you need US based LLC?If your business is web based you can run it from anywhere... :)Just curious... |
Problems/Limitations With Online Shopping? | mstefff: thanks for the comments everyone |
Anyone running a US-based non-resident LLC? | blurry: You've touched upon a large and complicated subject but here are couple things to get you started.First off, you need to be very clear in your own mind about your venture vs. your consulting work.Consulting is simple. There are three main reasons to form an LLC as a consultant: you can isolate yourself from liability; you can snag more work as some companies prefer to work corp-to-corp rather than with individuals; and finally, you can utilize various legal mechanisms (such as managing vs. passive partners for example) to minimize your tax liability.It sounds like none of the above applies to you very much. It's too much hassle to sue someone in a foreign country, companies prefer corp-to-corp for reasons largely irrelevant to outsourced consultants (who for example cannot claim US unemployment benefits), there is not much legal maneuvering you can do with a one-person partnership, etc.Your venture is a whole other beast. First, keep in mind that you need to foreign-qualify your LLC in every state where you do business. It's hard to know whether you will need to foreign-qualify since you did not provide much information as to the nature of your venture, but for example accepting orders in New York means you do business there and to foreign-qualify in NY will run you over $1,000 (and if you are transacting 100% virtually, I have a hard time understanding why you need a US-based LLC). Second, if you plan to raise capital or incentivize your talent via equity, it is much easier to do so with a corporation than with an LLC. Third, there are tax implications pertaining to drawing partner distributions vs. shareholder equity, etc.As you can see, there are no quick answers and you need to provide much more detail about your plans. In any event, I really recommend that you get a preliminary 1-hour consult with a lawyer and an accountant. If you feel that you don't need to go that far at this stage, then you probably don't need an LLC either.To your other questions, LLC paperwork could not be easier. Book keeping is easy too, you can use quickbooks online ($17/month) or clearcheckbook.com (donation). Have an accountant show you how to reconcile your bank account once per month, and you are all set. |
work samples to show in interview? | nostrademons: Any sort of code is useful. You can tell a lot just from reading a code sample: you get a sense of the candidate's attention to detail, coding habits, desire for simplicity, preferred coding standard, technology background, API design skills, knowledge of standard library functions, and knowledge of design patterns and idioms.Try to keep things short & well-written. An interviewer is not going to want to pore over a 20 KLOC project looking for something cool. A small, well-defined library that does something useful is best. Like a useful utility class or small project that does something cool. |
Obama likes tech. What ideas can we generate for him? | bprater: So blessed this guy is in favor of net neutrality. |
work samples to show in interview? | cperciva: The best way to answer this question is "go look at my website; I've published a bunch of open source code there". |
Anyone running a US-based non-resident LLC? | 22ndcombinator: Which country are you based in?
Its very important to know because local goverment might creat problem for you. |
What other business's revenue model do you resemble | ram1024: I'd stick with Freemium as the category of your revenue model, it sounds better than cripplewarefor us, business 1 is ad-driven (ad-sense will be fine until we grow beyond it). business 2 will be monthly subscription with maybe some branded schwag revenue. |
Please Help Us Find Someone | noodle: you're just not located in a high tech area (few local candidates), or one that is particularly appealing to hackers (few want to relocate there), in my opinion.i mean, just as an example, i, myself, am looking to relocate and your opening is something i would be interested in applying for. but moving to boca is a turn-off for me, and nothing in your post makes me want to overcome that. you don't mention the pay or perks, etc..edit: also, if you're not finding success, you might want to consider a remote employee (which i would definitely be interested in applying for, btw).
edit2: or a mostly remote employee who spends some time in the office, or something like that |
Please Help Us Find Someone | adriannyc777: Supporting the fam any way I can... |
Please Help Us Find Someone | babyshake: I'd strongly consider going with some working remotely. If you can find someone who is a self-starter, it shouldn't be much of a problem.If you manage to survive (get revenue??) for the next few months, then you can figure out the next step. |
Please Help Us Find Someone | mcdowall: Why not advertise the post on Elance / Guru, if anything at least if you put the project on there you will get a host of companies (mainly India based) that can work remotely. Might be worthwhile outsourcing some so at least you are gathering some momentum for someone to take over. |
Please Help Us Find Someone | Brushfire: Let me preface this by saying I've had similar problems in other parts of the country when hiring developers. Below is just a loose collection of thoughts/ideas on the topic.Your job post is probably only halfway there in attracting totally awesome people. You dont make the job sound AWESOME.1 - There are no specifics mentioned regarding compensation. Although this is the standard elsewhere in the world, and for non-hacking jobs, we had much more success just being completely upfront with people about what we were offering and why, including stock/healthcare/benefits. Hackers are generally pretty no-nonsense people when it comes to $$, and in your area (like ours) your best chance of getting someone is stealing them from another software job.Generally people don't list exact salary because either (A) they dont want to tell so that they can feel you out (what was your salary at your last job bullshit) or (B) its actually under market pay. If you are SURE you are over market average, say so with actual numbers. If you aren't, then don't expect to find someone quickly.2 - The remote worker is a good idea if your team can handle it and your requirements don't change rapidly. Regardless, to everyone saying 'remote is the way to go' this is very hard to find and hard to make work for most teams. It shouldn't be, but it is.3 - Pictures actually do a lot of good in attracting good talent. Is your office neat? or boring. Are the desks awesome? or crappy. Are the monitors big? Chairs Comfortable? People Friendly looking? Pictures answer all of these questions, hopefully to your benefit!4 - You might start by trying to find someone who wants to do part-time or contract work, but who is local. They may already have a job, but want some extra cash. You wont get to place the same time or job constraints on them, but you may get better work. And if you really like them, you'll be in a better place after 2-3 months to really make them an offer they cant resist.5 - Startups are tricky in other parts of the country than CA and MA. If someone quits their job to work for you, they may have to find another in 6 months. This means you wont get many people to move to your job from a national job circuit. In addition, it also makes it hard to steal someone from a bigger/existing software job. This is something you will either have to overcome by showing them how well funded you are (VC?), or that you are already making $$ (are you?).Anyways, hope this helps, good luck. At one point we waited 9 months to find the right developer, and it really paid off, but the waiting sucks balls. |
Please Help Us Find Someone | vaksel: at your stage you gotta hit up local colleges. |
Please Help Us Find Someone | Dilpil: You may actually already have all of the talented hackers in Florida working for you.More likely, you have all the talented hackers who are willing to sacrifice job security for excitement and potential upside. |
Correctly pronouncing equations in CS papers | sundeep: well , you might want to watch an video(online) about Bigtable or Chubby. |
ASK HN: Git client for windows? | nostrademons: There's a MinGW port:http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/Never used it myself, but heard fairly good things about it. It's officially beta quality, which means that some of the corner cases don't work right, but I've heard that common usage is fairly stable. |
Please Help Us Find Someone | lacker: I would try to attract someone who thought the job itself sounded interesting. But I can't figure out what you want your new employee to do. What exactly is "lead management software"? Why is it cool, and why is your company likely to succeed? |
Please Help Us Find Someone | thorax: South Florida has a few companies with really good hackers, but they're pretty much not working on any web applications outside of major IT groups down there.It's an absolutely amazing place to live, so if you offered relocation, you might have more takers. |
What other business's revenue model do you resemble | wmeredith: We're an e-commerce solution and we charge a transaction fee. |
Please Help Us Find Someone | wensing: This is ominous, since The Palm Beach Post (my employer) just put out a job listing for a Python coder to join our group. |
How do you stop reading the internet when you need to work? | run4yourlives: I try to look at my rescue time dashboard everyday before I log off.The thought of seeing "fun" being in my top 2 or 3 has so far given me enough of a guilt trip that I keep working. |
How do you stop reading the internet when you need to work? | boris: Work on something more interesting than reading the net. |
How do you stop reading the internet when you need to work? | teej: I've been looking for something as well. I didn't know about LeechBlock previously, thanks for the recommendation. |
How do you stop reading the internet when you need to work? | gertburger: A simple plugin is not gonna stop me. I tend to just live with the fact that I'm going to get distracted. I have a tendency to get lost in work once I get going, but that doesn't happen often ;-> |
How do you stop reading the internet when you need to work? | bootload: "... How do you stop reading the internet when you need to work? ..."Hard problem this one.Some times you need to search the web for information. Other times you really need to turn access off to get work done. One suggestion would be to pre-search all you need to search for. But this is clumsy and sometimes unforeseen comes along. Then when it comes time to work, try working on a machine not connected to the Internet.But this practice doesn't scale. Is anyone working on an idea that lets an algorythm to work this out for lots of individuals? |
How do you stop reading the internet when you need to work? | ars: Try http://8aweek.com/ it's designed for doing that (keeping track of wasted time while browsing and blocking after a while) - but I have to admit I disabled it.I was also a little concerned about the privacy implications of sending them everything I do, and if you disable that (which you can), many things don't function as well.Edit: WAIT!What?? What happened to 8aweek!? Now it's socialbrowse, which so far as I can tell is designed to do exactly the opposite of what 8aweek was going to do (i.e. save your time - now they want to waste it).Edit2:8aweek was a ycombinator startup! What happened? |
How do you stop reading the internet when you need to work? | arien: It's really hard at times (I suffer the same thing), but the only thing you have to save yourself is your own will, so you have to learn to strengthen it somehow.Divide your day in small periods of time and set working goals for each of these. Let's say take 45 minutes to focus on work and finish some task. And then take 15 minutes to read feeds or social websites. And then back to focus on work. And so on.The smaller the goal the easier it is to achieve it and the less boring it seems compared to these juicy websites waiting for you.I recommend you read this on your first 15 min. break, it will help you to understand this method. It's a GTD thing:
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/how-to-accomplish-...I wrote that equation in a paper and have it right next to my screen at all times. That way I don't have the temptation to forget about it :)Good luck! |
How do you stop reading the internet when you need to work? | robhu: There's a way to stop? |
How do you stop reading the internet when you need to work? | ErrantX: Argh! This question is distracting me from my work.. see what you have done :DI agree with the others: find ways to enjoy what you do hr by hr.Part of my day job involves analysing up to 1,000,000 images at a time and categorising them (that many images takes around 3hrs with our software). That gets VERY boring: what I do is set myself targbets - so I say "at 40,000 I will read my mail". Only when I get there I say - oh just another 5,0000. I developed a very usfel OCD-like thing of not beign able to stop until the "done" number reaches a precisely round number (which nevert happens :D) like 10,000 etc. :)Try something similar: set short targets after which you will break - but then extend them. Set targets and what time you hope to reach them by; but make sure you will easily make it in the time you set. Then say "oh well in the time I have left I could do... xyz".Keep setting tiny targets till you can't face it anymore and then lose yourself in the net for a bit :) (until you realise you should be back at work).I have found that forcing work in this way for 2hrs then breakign for 20mins gets a lot more work done :D |
How do you stop reading the internet when you need to work? | csl: I have a simple rule for myself that works quite well:Every day, I have to do at least one productive thing before I can leave work.Usually I read email, programming stuff and news in the morning, then catch myself wasting time and then get to work. When I first get started, time usually passes by extremely fast (depending on my current assignment). |
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