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I suck at marketing, can you give feedback on my startup's homepage? | rmc: You should try doing some A/B testing |
developer resources for your favorite SAAS services ? | shafqat: The NewsCred Platform just launched our API, but all how-tos (including company supported wrappers) are on our own site. Feel free to link to them though if you want: http://developer.newscred.com. |
Who's hiring? | oliryan: Twitter is hiring all kinds of engineers at all levels, http://twitter.com/jobs and @jointheflock has info. Located downtown San Francisco, we're about 150 people now and growing pretty fast. Looking for everything from front-end engineers to infrastructure, performance, storage engineers and more. |
How does a hacker have maximum fun with 500 euros? | Kliment: Go to sparkfun. It won't last long. |
How does a hacker have maximum fun with 500 euros? | noodle: an arduino, an arduino book if necessary, and the rest on whatever parts you want to buy to build something. |
I've run out of webapp ideas. What to do? | rick_2047: Polish your older ones i guess? |
Looking for an internship this summer at a Boston-area tech startup | bgnm2000: You should definitely contact Techstars boston and apply to be a hackstar, I did it last year, and I'm doing it this year. Its a lot of fun, and great networking. |
Why is Dubai saving 'The World'? | yannis: The rationale is that the UAE and generally the Gulf States at a point decided to invest their money instead of investing them in funds in Europe of the Americas. They had a vision to create a 'Singapore' in the desert and they almost achieved it.The financial crisis that hit the world - and which did not originate - in that part of the World created most of the mess in Dubai as well as numerous other places. They also saw all our overseas investments devalued which caused problems in restructuring their debt.There is no comparison with 'Stiltsville'. Trying to save their Companies and investments and paying their creditors cannot be labeled a failure. |
Python's bidict - what's a good use case for this? | nfnaaron: When you have a set of 1-1 data pairs that you want to be able to look up both ways, and you don't want to maintain two dicts, as described in the article's HTMLEntities example. |
How to become friendly, communicative and talkative? | pg: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=carnegie... |
How to become friendly, communicative and talkative? | skmurphy: "A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something." Wilson MiznerFriendly - practice smiling by thinking about something you enjoy.Talkative - focus on asking good questions.Communicative - consider who you are talking to and what they are asking for. Real communication isn't what's said, it's what is understood, so you need to ask questions to make sure you were understood.Funny - "The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit." Somerset Maugham (It works for me). |
How to become friendly, communicative and talkative? | megamark16: Look people in the eye when you're talking to them. This helps me focus on the conversation and not get distracted, and it also helps to convey to other people that I'm focusing on them. |
How to become friendly, communicative and talkative? | adrianwaj: Alcohol, ecstasy and cocaine might be of help: only in terms of a mind-state reference point.People that have had cocaine try and remember what it's like to be in that cocky and confident state and relive it. Also the memories of being drunk: if you can trick your mind into behaving tipsy or loose. Or the openness of ecstasy.If only you could put yourself in these states without actually needing those substances. (btw, I am not suggesting you dabble in drugs at all) |
Why is Dubai saving 'The World'? | Mankhool: A colleague of mine's father was one of the engineers that designed the first Dubai "island" - the one that the Burj Al Arab was built on. Even more so than the subsequent Palms, The World was a colossal expense, but that is not the main reason for the Emiratis to save it. They will spend any amount to avoid loss of face in the international community. For an Emirati, title and appearances are far more important than wealth. This is just IMHO from living there for a number of years on 2 separate occassions. |
How to become friendly, communicative and talkative? | martin_valiente: Talkative:
* Make a question
* Hear the answer
* Repeat the answer with your own words
* Relate yourself with the answer: me too and... / not me, but I experienced something similar...
* Repeat |
Contract Forms: Give away Word doc, sell annotated PDF? Or vice versa? | underdesign: You're getting into a market rife with competitors, and they're all offering the same product for free, or more value for less money.Plus, no one like NDA's and they've very hard to defend legally. That product is designed for big business, who already have lawyers drafting NDA's. Not regular consumers.Selling legal opinion (and it's _opinion_, not fact) is a valid business model, but there's no real accountability. How can one defend a contract when you never met the writer?My 2¢: Start a blog, give away (free!) a template contract a month, along with regular postings of explanations of the legal areas your covering along with further research. Start a dialog with the public about what they need and tailor your products to the market.Get subscribers to your legal opinion, be the expert, and find new legal business by simply being the best at what you do.Also, your domain name sucks. |
Startups in Switzerland | daveying99: The Newscred guys are based in Geneva and are active participants on HN. There was also cocomment but I don't know what's their status now... |
Contract Forms: Give away Word doc, sell annotated PDF? Or vice versa? | apowell: Until recently, I worked for a major retailer of online legal forms. You can get in touch with me if you'd like to learn more about the landscape. To answer the questions:1) I'd expect my attorney to react like my doctor would if I brought him a kidney in an icebox and asked him for a transplant. The kidney might be good, but how does he know?2) If you're giving away a usable product, don't plan to sell much of it -- even if the full version is better in some significant way. If the freebie is good enough, why buy?Overall, I think you're going to find that you have tough competitors -- huge document libraries, low prices, and solid marketing. Have you surveyed the competitive landscape? |
Startups in Switzerland | shafqat: That's right- we're (NewsCred) here in Geneva! The scene is small but I love it. Drop me an email and I'll be happy to share details and help. |
Do you have any interest in this? | vyrotek: Hmm, I find calling the phone more useful. When I receive a text it only plays the alert sound for a second. |
Tokyo, Japan meetup in late March / early April | rgrieselhuber: I'm interested. Please include me on any emails: ray@firewatchingmedia.com |
I've run out of webapp ideas. What to do? | proexploit: I've got a dead simple, amazingly awesome idea. Email me if you're interested in hearing more and we can talk. Don't mean to be so secretive, I just want to be a part of this one, not make it after someone else :) |
What's wrong with procedural programming? | noonespecial: Try this:So what's wrong with assembly? Is C really better than assembly?Each has its place for certain task. Languages let you abstract away different things and therefor think different kinds of thoughts while programming. Procedures add a whole new dimension to subroutines. OO adds a whole new dimension to procedures. Closures and functional programming add a whole new way to structure thought and code.Would it be a good idea to use C to write a timing routine for a micro controller? Or to use assembly to write a gui?You use the right level of abstraction (through the use of the right language) to think the right thoughts for the task at hand. Experience teaches you when to use what.If you stubbornly stick to a non-object oriented approach when you should have used one, you'll likely end up reinventing a subset of object orientation anyway, probably badly. |
What's wrong with procedural programming? | scorpioxy: Nothing wrong with it.I am not sure you're asking the right question. If you need a language that is close to the machine(but not assembly), then you go with C. If you need the OO concepts, you go with C++. Mind you, whenever you start using abstractions such as OO, you start to get away from the machine.You can still use C++ to do procedural programming. So that's not the problem. Just that for some projects, using OO concepts to model the problem domain makes more sense.Use whatever is right for the problem at hand. |
What's wrong with procedural programming? | chanux: You need to read this http://web.mac.com/jimbokun/iWeb/Site/Blog/AB35C167-7755-411... |
What's your philosophy on page scraping? | _delirium: I guess it depends on what they're doing with it. I'm not particularly against scraping per se, but I would look askance at some of the more sleazy uses, like just republishing (slightly modified versions of) blog posts on some AdSense-laden blog as if it were their own post. The key issues to me are: 1) transformativity, i.e. it produces something genuinely new and different from the content it scraped; and 2) proper credit to the source of the original content. |
What's your philosophy on page scraping? | benologist: Depends what it's being scraped for. MFA spam blogs stealing content, or some valid use that could further your own interests. |
How to become friendly, communicative and talkative? | roundsquare: Lots of good ideas here. One thing, its probably easiest if you start with people with very similar interests (development or otherwise) so you know the topic well. |
What's your philosophy on page scraping? | nostrademons: I'm happy to page scrape other sites and not happy to have mine scraped. ;-)More seriously, if there're bots that you don't want scraping, just robots.txt them away. If they ignore that, then they're being rather rude and you can figure out some way to auto-block them. |
What's your philosophy on page scraping? | rmanocha: I think that if you're generally respectful of the target websites - scraping them is ok. For example, I scrape various government websites for my website. I use a random delay between requests and am generally very careful about not requesting the same page multiple times (this is hard 'cause a lot of the pagination happening on these pages is via JS calls).I am ok if someone decides to scrape my websites in a similar fashion - although if I do see that starting to happen, I'd rather just go ahead and build an API. |
What's your philosophy on page scraping? | DanielBMarkham: On the consumer side, I'm happy with the following rules.I'm happy writing a program to let individual users scrape from their computers. After all, they have a right to visit the site and retrieve their data in whatever format suits them.I'm not so keen on setting up a server to scrape data, or having a server scrape a huge pile of data for a list of users. After all, whoever is running the service is keeping stuff for all of the users. My taking it all is just stealing.On the provider side, I think my feelings are about the same. I think you have to be careful that you leverage scraping -- let scrapers come in and get enough stuff that it makes people want to visit, but not so much that they have everything. If executed effectively, you can use scraping to great benefit. |
What's wrong with procedural programming? | pmccool: It's not just C. A lot of procedural code is written in perl, for example. It's true that languages that force you to write procedural code are relatively rare, but languages that force you to write OO are by no means the rule.IME, OO sometimes works, sometimes not. It's not necessarily about getting close to the hardware, either. |
What's wrong with procedural programming? | DanielBMarkham: Instead of going down this same road yet again, I've got a better question for you:I can pull out my C++ compiler and write straight C (mostly)What do you call that? C? C++? If I don't use classes in my C++, is it C? Or, conversely, if I develop a complicated module structure in C, does that make it C++? |
Good usability service? | scorchin: Why not have a go yourself?If you have a Mac laptop, you've got yourself a mobile usability station. Just get a copy of Silverback App ( http://silverbackapp.com/ ) and start usability testing!Following on from that, if you'd like to make the most of your usability tests I'd recommend getting "Rocket Surgery Made Easy" by Steve Krug which will run you through the general process: http://www.sensible.com/rocketsurgery/index.html |
Startups in Switzerland | c1sc0: I'm in Switzerland most of my time & even though it's a lovely country, it's a bit sleepy startup-wise. |
Who's hiring? | egb: Anybody in Chicago? I only see a few on here - there's gotta be more! :-) |
How to become friendly, communicative and talkative? | revorad: http://sivers.org/book/Influence |
How much does it cost to live in London? | davidw: My guess is that London is not at all cheaper than the Veneto, just that you can earn more money there, and, likely, more money in proportion to your expenses. |
Advice on features and when to ship an iPad app | c1sc0: I'd release it just to find out if Apple approves it. Could save you a lot of wasted effort. Cool app, IF Apple allows it! |
How much does it cost to live in London? | blahpro: There are plenty of wonderful places in the UK outside of London that are considerably cheaper. If you’re a freelancer, there might not be any need for you to live in The City. |
How much does it cost to live in London? | yetanotherlogin: For a fairly but not horribly austere lifestyle, you're looking at ~£20k GBP to get by.By this I mean you have a place to live somewhere in a fairly unfashionable/average zone 2 or 3 area, a place which is not that big or plush, but not a rat-infested crack den either. You share it with at least one, perhaps a few other people. You can afford all the basics of food, heating etc, plus a small amount of "luxuries" (go out for a few drinks here and there, keep yourself in clothes that arent falling apart, a few books/cds/dvds, that sort of thing) but you'll be taking the bus rather than a taxi, you'll be drinking £5 wines rather than £50 wines, you'll entertain yourself with a free museum visit rather than a pricy theatre ticket, etc. You won't starve but you will find yourself turning down social invitations due to lack of cash.If you want to live in zone 1 and/or an upmarket part of town and/or on your own, eat out / go drinking / go to the cinema / whatever regularly (eg more than once weekly), go on foreign holidays, buy shiny new tech gadgets, dress in designer label clothing, etc, then obviously more, and more, and more income is required... With no limit!It seems that 2600USD pcm (I assume you mean USD) is not so far away from what I earn. I find myself living a lifestyle I would consider comfortable; however I naturally lean more towards the former paragraph than the latter. My current lifestyle is certainly more free-spending than the first paragraph (for example, I can afford taxis and going out often without ever seeming skint) - but it is still nowhere near the second paragraph - however I have little to no interest in world travel, designer fashion, plasma tvs and the like and therefore I do not miss them. So it depends on your lifestyle desires.I do not know anything about costs of companies. As for health insurance -- I cannot vouch for this point 100% but I'm fairly sure this should be a non-issue: as an EU citizen I believe once you have paid the normal income tax and National Insurance the same as I do, you would be entitled to NHS healthcare.I hope this helps. Feel free to follow up with any further questions about London life you may have. |
How much does it cost to live in London? | revorad: Registering a company only costs £25. I'm not entirely sure about the taxes yet as I'm just in the process of setting up mine.If you are sharing a flat with one or two people, you can get a good place starting from around £600 (inc of all bills) in zone 2, which is say 10-20 minutes bus/train ride to the city centre. As you go outwards, you get more for your money.Eating and going out once in a while may cost you another £300-£500 depending on what options you go for. But in this respect, London provides a lot of options to go bankrupt in no time.I'm currently living in a pretty good area in south London, sharing with one friend, not going out much and living on well within £1000 a month. I'm looking to move to a cheaper place in May and hope to save another couple hundred pounds.Drop me an email (see profile) if you need any more help or want to meet up when you are in town.Good luck! |
I'm way too shy, please help | missizii: You might find the book "The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You" by Elaine Aron helpful. Shyness isn't the same as being highly sensitive, but sensitive people are often considered shy. |
what document management tools to use? | faramarz: box.net seems like a good fit for your friend, except it's cloud based.Do test drive the service with a free account. I'm pretty happy with the service |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | vital101: I generally try to step away from the problem for awhile. Even if it's only for 10 minutes. I come back with a fresh perspective that usually helps me get through it. |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | thecombjelly: I try to attack the problem persistently and creatively. Often I will walk around and just ask random people what they think. Sometimes even describing the problem in non technical terms for the non techies to understand. People usually have some ideas that you haven't thought of. I've found that any idea can set you off on a path to solve the problem. |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | kmak: The part I don't understand is, for this particular problem, it is well-known enough that a simple visit to Wikipedia would've been enlightening.I remember reading up on it awhile ago, and it seems like the Wikipedia entry already had the dancing links algorithm by then. |
Naïve startup idea? | maxdemarzi: The challenge content producers face is not so much on the technical side, but rather on finding an audience.I'm sure you've seen this:
http://www.learnivore.comSomething like that where I could upload my videos and have a (tag based or provider based) e-mail go out to an audience would be the real selling point.With content publisher upgrades available for "featured video", or featured video within a tag. Something like that. |
what document management tools to use? | pierrefar: Would a wiki work? If you can find one that has page-level authorisation based on the username, then you can host it and give individual clients' usernames access to specific pages.Not sure if Mediawiki allows that. |
How much does it cost to live in London? | ig1: That would be around £1700/month, if you setup a company for the money to go through your takehome pay will probably be around 70-80% of your company's income (so around 1200-1360). That'll be fine if you get a flatshare, if you want to get a one bed flat to yourself it'll be tight.Also see if you can find a business reason to be in london (i.e. that's where clients are, etc.), because if you have a legit business reason for it then you can claim the cost of your rent as a business expense and pay for it out of pre-tax income for upto two years. |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | ntoshev: I have a programming problem, and I'm pretty sure I'm aware of the basic components of the solution... it's just that I get swamped in complexity pretty quickly when I try out different combinations.I know this is a very meta question but this is not the only case. I'll solve it eventually but I'd like to ask for common strategies.Edit: Some of my strategies are: to absorb more information about similar stuff while I put solving it on back burner, to try to describe the problem clearly, to bounce the problem off other people.-------------------------Okay, here is the specific question: I have a map of categories of things (a few words) and descriptions what these categories mean (longer text). I also have another list of category names that sometimes uses different words or abbreviations, and I need to match the second list to the first one precisely.I know all about tf-idf, vector space similarity between a document and a term, wordnet as a source of semantic relations between words, and it's ok to have a human map some of these. The problem is I don't know when a matching score is good enough and when I need to fall back to a human. |
Advice on features and when to ship an iPad app | mcav: Your app looks very cool. I'd buy it. One minor thing that you've probably already noticed: Make sure that the draggable edge of the apps are big enough to move with a finger (as opposed to the mouse in the simulator).I'd put it out right away and improve incrementally. |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | NEPatriot: I look for inspiration from the world around me and focus on trying to always find the simplest solution with the least resistance. |
How much does it cost to live in London? | hcho: Choose a cheaper place on the commuter belt and your income will go a longer way. For instance Woking is 30 mins to London by train, but is a lot cheaper than London. You can get a flat for around about £700 pcm bills and council tax included and without sharing with someone else. This will leave you with a grand to play with, which is not bad. |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | dwwoelfel: Use Poyla's methods of problem solving described in his book: How to Solve It (http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0691023565)He deals specifically with mathematical problems, but the same ideas apply to computer science.For an outline of the method see this Wikipedia article:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_It |
Naïve startup idea? | Rust: Considering the small number of players in this market (zoomwebvideo.com, wistia.com, jitrinc.com, tikilive.org, veevu.com, etc.), you might actually find a market for this service. The competition is quite varied in focus (example: JITR likes subject matter experts, Wistia likes enterprises), so finding a niche in there and doing it great is, IMHO, worth doing. |
We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do? | jellisjapan: How is their current marketing and recognition? It might be worth it to start up an early marketing strategy and at least out-market them before you actually can launch. I don't know about the retailers, but some of them may be willing to wait on purchasing a product if they knew something better was coming along later. |
We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do? | bobbywilson0: "we can't really cut scope now"Why not? |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | josh33: This is very high level, but: take a step back and remember who it is you are trying to serve/help with the problem you are solving. If it is a particular market/industry, often the answer can be found by trying to focus on how to help them than by trying to solve a problem. I think there is something about focusing on a problem that makes it bigger, whereas focusing on a solution can make the solution more evident. |
We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do? | Roridge: Keep at it. If your product is better, you will win.Try not to give those "coming soon" promises, you don't want to be under even more pressure.Good luck |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | gfodor: There are multiple meanings of incremental progress. Just fleshing out a test suite is only one means of defining progress. |
We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do? | pinksoda: What's your competitors site? |
What's your philosophy on page scraping? | evancureton: hey can put you on my page |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | Goladus: Avoid stress and distractions. Do not multitask. Take breaks to eat (healthy foods), exercise, and sleep. Feel free to discuss the problem with friends and colleagues but minimize emotional investment with other people. Read books and articles on the subject. Study existing tools and study similar problems. If you can't make incremental progress on a solution you can incrementally increase your chance to solve it all at once by getting smarter and getting better tools.No facebook, television, hacker news, video games, twitter, dating, drinking.I would not say this is a particularly healthy lifestyle in the long run. When possible incremental progress will make it easier to live a happy fulfilling life. But if you really need to solve something... |
We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do? | bgnm2000: Go sell your product now. Get some evangelists. The worst thing to do is wait, because unless your product is going to save someone time/money - there won't be a real value in switching for some nicer features if they've already put the effort into registering with your competition. |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | myth_drannon: TRIZ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ
-"TRIZ is a methodology, tool set, knowledge base, and model-based technology for generating innovative ideas and solutions for problem solving."Generations of Soviet engineers were educated on that methodology. Many western companies use it as well. |
Advice on features and when to ship an iPad app | vishaldpatel: Looks like a great app. I'd spend a few hours to pretty it up... but I say go ahead and submit it! |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | smallhands: Why not pay somebody to solve it!!!!. |
We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do? | dskhatri: What about your trusted customers? Do you have any customers you are working with to develop your product? If they still believe in your product, keep working hard on it. Release a version - with fewer features than you planned on - sooner. What do people think about this suggestion? It sounds reasonable to me but I'm basing it on others' advice (Steve Blank on customer development) and not on experience. |
What's wrong with procedural programming? | subud: C is probably better for writing cross-platform (Win, Mac, Linux) code than C++. See Linus Torvalds comments:http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linusOn the other hand, large corporations probably prefer OO programming. Paul Graham has some good quotes:"Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches. Large organizations always tend to develop software this way"http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html"At big companies, software tends to be written by large (and frequently changing) teams of mediocre programmers. Object-oriented programming imposes a discipline on these programmers that prevents any one of them from doing too much damage."http://www.paulgraham.com/noop.html |
What's wrong with procedural programming? | humbledrone: The fact that C is the most popular programming language is not a good argument for procedural programming, because it is quite common to use OO techniques with C. In fact, most of the C projects that I have worked with use OO techniques in some form. For instance, look at the Linux kernel. There are plenty of structures that include function pointers, which in practice is very similar to inheritance. Also, consider the UNIX concept of a "file"; that's OO design, pure and simple.I wouldn't say that C++ is "better" than C, but for certain tasks I think it is easier to use. Consider the C++ inheritance model; sure, you can do the same thing in C, but unless you choose a common convention, each new developer will have to learn your way of doing it. With C++, inheritance works in a uniform way, so a new developer doesn't have to guess at how you did it.With that said, I think that there is something to be said for the simplicity of C, versus more complicated languages like C++. It is a bitch to learn C++, and some of the most unreadable messes I've seen were written in C++. So I think there's certainly an argument for C, but it doesn't have anything to do with whether it is OO or not. |
Who's hiring? | RobM: SideReel is looking for an experienced Agile Java guru (beard optional) to join our team as a web software engineer.Check out our full posting here: http://www.sidereel.com/_us/jobsSideReel is a great place to work. We are a small well-established start-up located on the top floor of an old brick office building south of Market Street in San Francisco. We offer competitive salaries, great vacation time, significant equity and paid benefits. Come join a fast-growing web site with millions of users that aims to be the center of the online TV world! |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | oomkiller: I'm not sure if I'm unique in this regard, but I seem to have the ability to fully visualize complex systems and problems. The key for me is understanding the problem fully, as I have to pull all of the pieces together. I find it difficult sometimes because other people aren't used to working this way, so they try to feed you bite-sized pieces, where what I really want is the entire problem. |
We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do? | joeld42: Learn from their mistakes. Look at the reactions from their customers, and make sure that you ship with their #1 wishlist feature and make sure that feature is emphasized.Also ... "They do not have all the pieces we have so our platform is far better" This is dangerous thinking. People generally prefer the most minimal product that actually solves their problem -- only established users want more features.If you can't cut (or postpone) features, can you ship an early closed beta to some "early adopters"? If people anywhere are using your software it will give the impression that it's right around the corner and people may delay purchasing. If you just say "coming soon" people will not believe that unless you have a track record. |
Running a contest/competition | brk: (disclosure: it's been ~10 years since I last had direct first-hand knowledge of this).Giving away something for free in a "no purchase required to win" sort of promo is generally not a problem. The giveaway should generally be cheap (less than $600, or maybe it's $2000 now)... anyway, less than the amount that would be required to file a tax form in conjunction with the giveaway. Prize winnings are supposed to be considered taxable income, but at a low threshold point it is not an issue. In your case, I believe you're not going to be able to afford a big enough prize for this to matter :)The contests where you have more issues are the lottery-ticket type systems where people pay to have a shot at winning a prize. The two big issues there (again, see disclosure above) are that you generally have to have some sort of non-profit status, and you have to have ownership/control of the physical prize before collecting money (you can't use a portion of the ticket sales to purchase the prize and then keep the difference).For what you're describing, I think it's a good idea and easy to implement with no complex overhead or liability. |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | diN0bot: norvig actually does make incremental progress in understanding the problem/solution space in terms of constraints, bounds and correctness. |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | michael_dorfman: Many (perhaps most) hard problems don't need to be solved from scratch; rather, it is a matter of applying a well-known solution that somebody has already found.The example in the article is a good one: there's absolutely no need to attempt to design a Sudoku-solving-algorithm from scratch (except as an exercise), and it is pitiful to see Ron Jeffries flailing around aimlessly in TDD-land when a simple trip to Google would have done the trick.The difficult part, the part that comes with experience, is recognizing which class of problems the specific problem you are grappling with resembles. In the case of Sudoku, it's an "exact cover problem", and once you realize this, all kinds of solutions present themselves.In this way, the "incremental progress" is not made on attempting to solve the problem incrementally, but by incrementally sifting through probably solution-spaces for known algorithms. |
We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do? | sganesh: Things learned from building a best of class enterprise product and trying to beat out the competitors. We were the last entrant in the market.(i) List all completed features. - Guarantee these will work now & compare & contrast with your current competitors. Preferably give them a testing environment after the demo.(ii) List all features currently being developed. - Estimate when they will become available. Make sure you fudge enough, so that you don't shoot yourself in the foot.Share this road map during the sales cycle.(iii) Request your clients for any features that are important to their business, that you have overlooked.(iv) Make a list all future features including the ones from the above list - Request your clients to prioritize these and give them a date by which you'll have the estimates done and have built a product roadmap. Share the roadmap.(v) Be in constant communication with the clients. Keep them aware of any changes that is happening to the roadmap.With all this we got beaten up on pricing as the clients were comparing apples to oranges.So we hired sales people with expensive hobbies, and watched them work the magic. |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | msie: The link mentions a Norvig-Jeffries showdown on writing a Sudoku solver. Kinda unfair since Norvig pretty much wrote the book on it. :P |
We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do? | danudey: It's rarely about being first to market. Apple didn't make the first MP3 player, Microsoft didn't make the first GUI, Google didn't make the first search engine. Stick with what you're doing; you can't be first, but you can be the best.Personally, I would also keep in mind the 'competitor card'. 'Well, your competitor bought our competitor's version, and it's good, but if you go with us, you'll get these extra awesome features that'll help you get ahead of them' or whatever. Then again, that's a job for sales, not for development, and good sales people will know when to play it. |
Why don't more open-source projects charge for support/features/bugs? | lsc: many of the projects with less-technical users do just that. The guy who wrote the billing system i use, http://freeside.biz is a good example. He charges for features and if you want it installation and other support. |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | kvs: How about solving related or similar problems? The way one may approach those problems may give insight into incremental steps necessary to solve the hard problem. |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | Tichy: Isn't the Norvig solution completely straightforward? Just the basic back propagation algorithm?So maybe in some cases it just helps to read the literature a little bit...For example at the Google Code Competition (forgot the proper name), I am not very good, but I learned some things from reading solutions of older competitions. I think there even is a book dedicated to solving that kind of problem. It would probably help a lot with writing a Sudoku solver, too.Edit: not to take away from the Norvig solution, it is probably beautifully crafted. But come on - it IS the straightforward solution? Or what am I missing? |
Running a contest/competition | dctoedt: Contests that don't have a sweepstakes component are generally simpler from a legal perspective -- many states regulate contests in which prizes are awarded at random.Contest losers sometimes sue on grounds that the contest sponsor supposedly changed rules after the fact. (Such suits are often brought for breach of a "unilateral contract" (see generally http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract#Bilateral_v._unilatera...). With that in mind, it's usually better for contest rules to be as detailed as practicable, especially as to how winners will be selected.(This isn't legal advice, we don't have an attorney-client relationship, etc., etc.) |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | jacquesm: Explain the problem to someone that doesn't know anything about it.Usually that 'clicks' at some point and I realize what I'd been missing all along. The less the person knows about computers/programming (my usual subject matter) the better it seems to work. |
Why don't more open-source projects charge for support/features/bugs? | coryl: So open source devs should offer premium support and paid options for better features...I think thats called running a business, right? |
opening a company in US (for non US citizen) | hga: It's a pity that Slovenia doesn't have a well established "brand" as a nation in the US; if so, you wouldn't necessarily have to set up an US subsidiarity (since those who know about Slovenia by and large think well of it).Anyway, however you get set up, I wish you luck! |
How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress? | simsam: i sometimes browse this site: asknature.orgit is often a very strange approach and cannot be replicated by humans, but i like the ideology. |
Good usability service? | yeti: Is there really nothing else? |
opening a company in US (for non US citizen) | algul: You don't have to be a U.S. citizen or resident to form a corporation in the United States. You could do so yourself, but it might be easier to use an attorney. Take form Articles of Incorporation, send with a check to the Secretary of State in most states along with 3 name choices (in case yours is taken by the time you send the paperwork in). You need to nominate a registered agent for service of process, there are companies that will do this. Your initial address can be a Regus ($200 per month or so, and they will forward mail). You can get a tax id number over the telephone. Whether you can open a bank account depends on your relationship with the bank. Normally, this will be very, very difficult unless the bank is a branch of a bank where you already have a relationship. For now, just use paypal. You want to file an election as a Subchapter S corporation, at least initially, so you don't get taxed twice. LLC and C are apples and oranges, the first is a type of corporation, the second is the tax treatment. An LLC can be a C or an S. I should post the forms, it's not rocket science. |
Which of these two designs should we use? | wakeupthedawn: The first one seems friendlier. The second seems a bit more professional.I think you need to make it so when the arrow opens the bubble it doesn't cover up other information on the page. |
Which of these two designs should we use? | cscotta: I like home2 much more. The contrast is nice, and the choice of gray gradient works well with the bright blue.The spacing and alignment is a bit odd (e.g., the placement of the [ Try It ] button relative to the open space to the right, but it's very simple and you have a well-defined call to action.Then again, maybe I'm just averse to the giant, bold, black capital letters in ?p=home.Either way, it would be good to have a designer tighten up the design you choose. Both are great work for people without a strong design background, so nice job! |
Which of these two designs should we use? | ashleyw: I much prefer the first, it's far friendlier. The second looks a bit unfinished and cheap if I'm honest - lens flare? Purple to gray gradient? Glossy icons? Eeek... |
Which of these two designs should we use? | hajrice: Your vote link doesnt work.I like #1 more. The green CTA button is really nice. |
Which of these two designs should we use? | appathy: I like the second better because the capitalization makes it easier to read."HELP BUBBLE CAN SAVE THE DAY"vs."Help Bubble can save the day"I didn't realize your product was called Help Bubble when I read the text on the first website and I was confused. I thought maybe there was a can of bubbles that needed help saving the day. |
Which of these two designs should we use? | fierarul: You guys did hear about A/B testing didn't you ? |
Which of these two designs should we use? | dmix: Your poll needs a neither + why field. |
Vesting? Really? | jacquesm: If you've been going for 4 years then vesting is not in the picture. At least, with a reputable VC it would not be.The VC should end up with a minority (<49%) block of shares, in that situation your biggest worry is a minority share holders lawsuit that you settle by giving them shares, they then control the company.Such tactics are great for movies (they do happen in real life but very rarely).Go with a VC with a good reputation and none of this should be your worry. The smaller the company you deal with and the shorter it's been in business the bigger the risk of trickery.Good luck!edit: if after the investment with the money from the investors you decide to bring on board more people that you want to become share holders in the long run vesting would be normal for the new hires. If they put money on the table to buy in then those shares (the ones being paid for) would not be vesting either. |
Which of these two designs should we use? | wdewind: http://www.helpbubble.com/?p=home
http://www.helpbubble.com/?p=home2home2 redirects me to / |
Which of these two designs should we use? | proexploit: Here you go: http://www.scribd.com/doc/29010574/Help-Bubble |
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