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Review my side project - Reel Roulette | mkyc: You should track at what times the people click next.Your like button is too far away from the next button, and neither has keyboard shortcuts. |
Confused: Stay in my comfort zone / work very hard for someone else ? | sidmitra: Like everything else in life. The answer is "It depends".There is nothing stopping you from learning more with your current job. Regular working hours still leave you with free time on the weekends, and maybe an hour or two every day to read up on stuff you like.Lots of people here, bootstrap a company along with their day jobs. If one's really motivated to learn new things, then status quo is always unsatisfactory.I personally would advise, that you might try working on your own ideas rather than for someone else. You're bound to learn more. |
Setting Goals | pedalpete: I assume you are referring to this post http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1689-link-ready-aimfail-why-s... ??As I understand it, it does not recommending you don't set goals, it is just recommending that goals be something more than a to-do list or group of numbers.Let's take a goal such as 'fix a bug within two days'. What 37 Signals is saying is that that isn't a good goal if by fixing that bug, you introduce two others.Or 'add two new paying customers a day', doesn't help if you lose 3 per day. So you'd be better off with a goal like 'grow revenue 3% each month'.How you word your goals is very important, and makes sure you are focusing on the right things.That's my take on it. |
Review WinkVid, my "ChatRoulette for dating" startup | jordanf: WinkVid was started as part of SocialDevCamp Chicago's Hackathon, where we built a prototype in 36 hours. We've had a few months to polish it up and we just launched WinkVid today.We're a team of two bootstrapped guys in Chicago. Would appreciate any comments, suggestions or questions. |
Confused: Stay in my comfort zone / work very hard for someone else ? | SwellJoe: I say this to pretty much everyone with these kinds of questions: It will never be less risky than it is today. You will never have fewer responsibilities than you have today. As you get older, you collect responsibilities and obligations and expenses that can't be dramatically reduced (like children and medical bills). If you are single, don't have kids, don't have a mortgage, you are stupid for avoiding economic risk that presents high opportunity for gain. Now is the only time you have to take on extremely high risk opportunities.Sure, you can get promotions as you age, and get cost-of-living wage increases, and you can do it all very safely and without ever having taken a chance on being out of work or having to cancel your cable and stop eating out. But, you'll never have another time when it will be less painful to make mistakes.So, there's no question here. If you don't have responsibilities that prevent you from taking chances, why are you even asking? Get off your ass and make something of yourself. (And if you do have responsibilities, like a wife and kids, you shouldn't be asking us. You should be asking them, because only you and they can make those decisions.)Don't be a coward. Your scary decisions are nothing compared to the risks our ancestors had to take to make it this far, so do something worthwhile. |
Interesting (Non software) books? | abhiyerra: The History of Sexuality - Michel Foucault
Discipline and Punish - Michel Foucault
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America - Daniel J. Boorstin
These books make you look at society in a much more critical manner. The first two are difficult reads, but none the less good and referenced quite a bit in the humanities. The Perennial Philosophy - Aldous Huxley
Huxley ties up all the different religious views quite nicely into a core set which is common to all of them. I'd advise reading Huxley and God before reading this though. |
Confused: Stay in my comfort zone / work very hard for someone else ? | thaumaturgy: Develop a comfortable cushion of savings -- 3 months' salary wouldn't be too bad to start with -- and then try the other job out, if you can.Have you ever watched people get older?Some people, as they get older, stay really dynamic. Their minds are sharp, they're active, they "age well". Other people just get old, their minds get dull and narrow, they begin to define themselves in terms of all the things they can't do.The only difference between the two is that members of the first group go out and challenge themselves all the time, trying new hobbies (or staying active in current ones), working on the house, in the yard, etc. -- even when it's hard.I think that's probably important for young people, too.So don't stay too comfortable for too long. |
Setting Goals | imp: An oldie but goodie is from Think and Grow Rich:http://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Napoleon-Hill/dp/04492...Develop one Definitive Chief Aim. It's a very specific medium to long-term goal (1 - 20 years or so) with a specific deadline. Repeat it to yourself every day. Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.Don't bother with intermediate goals that you aren't fully passionate about. Spend the time to determine what is truly important to you and focus on that. It worked for Bruce Lee:My Chief Personal Aim In Life:I, Bruce Lee, will be the highest paid Oriental superstar in the United States. In return I will give the most exciting performances and render the best of quality in the capacity of an actor. Starting in 1970, I will achieve world fame and from then onward till the end of 1980 I will have in my possession the sum of $10,000,000—then I will live the way I please and achieve inner harmony and happiness.Bruce Lee
1969http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/think-grow-rich-or-di...I just read the book last fall so I obviously haven't achieved my goal yet, but I have until December 31st, 2014 to get there.Also, for another method, Randy Pausch in his Time Management lecture (a really good lecture) said that he always knew what needed to get done that day, that week, and that semester. So that might be a good way to set incremental goals. |
Confused: Stay in my comfort zone / work very hard for someone else ? | f2ender: Thanks for the advice, guys. It has made things a lot more clear. |
Review my side project - Reel Roulette | BrianHammond: Suggestion: temporarily disable the "next reel" button for a duration of time proportional to the frequency of my clicks thereupon. Make me watch the reels instead of trying to satisfy my urge to see "what's next?" |
Who's hiring? | jseifer: To anyone on here who is hiring: I just launched a job board that specifically targets the HN niche. You can use the coupon code "HN" (in caps) for a free full time job posting. That coupon is good for the first 100 posts (I don't think that will be an issue). The site is Genius Pool: http://geniuspool.com/?s=hn (I'd love any feedback but that's a separate thread). |
Where do you buy your health care? | portman: Don't let healthcare stop you from starting your own company. You can get COBRA continuation coverage for 18 months.I'm currently using COBRA continuation coverage; this is the second time I've done so in 10 years, and it's a great way to keep your same health plan while starting up a new venture. With any luck, within 18 months your new company will have the critical mass to get your own small business plan. |
Interesting (Non software) books? | ryanwanger: Walden 2, by B.F. Skinner.It's like an instruction manual for a utopian society, in novel form. This book set my mind on fire with crazy and inspiring ideas about how society could be... |
Feedback on my site | benologist: Since I first posted here about 5 or 6 weeks ago I've been mostly focused on other sides of my startup, but I added a blog a few weeks ago, and then this week I finally got back to the homepage and added the new counter, the feature list on the homepage and the shoutouts to hivelocity and fgd.What do you think? |
Interesting (Non software) books? | renkeyes: With NUMMI closing down any day now, "The Machine that Changed the World" by Womack, et al (1990) is almost as relevant now as it was then. The book describes the management and product development techniques used in the Japanese-owned auto industry and how they contrast(ed) with those employed by US-owned auto companies. Many of the ideas have been employed in healthcare and software development in the intervening two decades.I can't speak to the relevance of any specific work of fiction to any HN'er but the one writing this comment, but "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison and "Tender is the Night" by F. Scott Fitzgerald are two novels that stand out to me as being particularly good. |
Business Model Hall of Fame | jakarta: Rockfeller saw the benefits of consolidation. At the time, he witnessed the oil business (refineries) being terribly unprofitable. They often went bankrupt and failed. But he figured out that by reducing competition through consolidation, he would be able to gain market share and expand margins. One of the ways he did this was by cutting a deal with the railroad companies, that way his oil could be transported at costs lower than the competition.Other interesting things he did -
Horizontal integration: buying up refineries in every state
Vertical integration: acquiring pipelines, home delivery systems, etc
Free: in some cases Rockefeller gave away things for free or below cost. In China they had never used kerosene lamps, so Rockefeller gave away the lamps for free in order to get the Chinese to start using them and eventually buy Standard Oil's kerosene
-He also would undercut competitors in the refinery biz (sometimes below cost) in order to drive them out of business and force them to sell their refineries to him.How is any of this useful?Some people argue that Bill Gates is an iteration of Rockefeller's monopolist approach to business. By creating standards (Windows as the go to OS for PCs) he would be able to get consumers to use MSFT's related products - Office, Internet Explorer, etc.There is a great book called Titan by Ron Chernow where you can read an excellent account of how Rockefeller rose from being a lowly accountant to founding and operating Standard Oil. |
Confused: Stay in my comfort zone / work very hard for someone else ? | adrianscott: You should question your assumptions. You are assuming you would have to put in longer hours at a new job. This assumption is limiting you analysis of the problem (and is a flawed assumption). Start with what you want and then develop a path to it.Hope this helps. |
Review my side project - Reel Roulette | tapostrophemo: I noticed you're asking your users to enter a vimeo URL by hand. I know that during signup it's impractical to bounce the user over to vimeo to authenticate, but once the user is signed up do you give them the option of picking the video from their albums instead of entering a URL? |
Forums with quality discourse | rakim: Dude, internet forums will never be places of quality discourse so long as any random person off the street can post a comment. |
Feedback on my site | raptrex: The counter is annoying. Maybe choose a better gradient for the button, it looks weird to me. The bright blue title like "Analytics for flash games" is too bright to me. Make the text on the white background bigger. Make the thumbnails clickable to full size images would make this a lot better. |
Review my side project - Reel Roulette | coreyrecvlohe: This is a really good idea. It just so happens that I'm in the market for a motion designer or animator for a TV commercial I want to run.I didn't know exactly where to search for any talented designers, and eLance, along with some of the job boards, really don't give you much material to review. But I like this setup at first glance, and the quality so far seems to be pretty good.I might actually find who I'm looking for through this service. |
Feedback on my site | TedBlosser: i think the design overall looks pretty solid. agree somewhat on the counter, cool at first, but annoying if you are reading the text on the page. small note, home page link (logo) is broken if you navigate to the register tab and want to go back home (unless you were doing that on purpose). Like the underlying concept as well. good job |
closed million+ monthly forum coz of spammers, now what? | AdeN: Peter, as a daily user of your site, (PBH), for over 5 years, I cannot understand this unannounced decision. The site is an unexplained winner, a freak, or in other words; you struck lucky.The whole thing has been a glorious mix of debate, idiocy, playground banter, wit and solid information for a long time. In my view, you could have solved the obvious problems by simply having delayed registration, anonymous moderation, deleting rogue users' IP addresses, offensive comments and threads without explanation. But I know nothing of these things and I pretty much stopped posting some time ago because I realised I ended up much happier not doing so.Many saw the site as a democracy when that should/was not the case.You have allowed this to become personal, and the trolls fed on that and in a way, (many ways), made it a success; the whole host of satellite sites you allude to was sparked by your suggestion. I agree, they are nasty, dysfunctional, needy people the likes of whom you should have never bothered yourself. Their efforts will now flourish, (briefly), an essential tool and meeting-place for many will disappear. You will have gained nothing and the response from the peanut gallery on going back would be terrible, I suppose ;-)I fail to see how just throwing it all away solves things, or is it a posture? I would gladly buy it off you if I knew how to run it, technically.Tambien estoy en Colombia y te mando un abrazo, amigo...graciasAlma del Norte |
Interesting (Non software) books? | roundsquare: God's Debris. Available in pdf here:http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/godsdebris/Its written by Scott Adams, the guy who does Dilbert, but its completely different from Dilbert. Its basically an exploration of one theory about where the universe comes from, the nature of god, etc... A thought experiment in conversation form, if you will.I like it because it brings up some neat ideas that may not be obvious.Side Note: He gets some of the science wrong in the book, so if you do read it, make sure you fact check any science before you believe it. |
Business Model Hall of Fame | known: I think http://isbn.nu/aisbn/auletta%20ken
books provide insights to 800 pound gorilla businesses |
Feedback on my site | mdolon: The most important information I found on your site was the comparison chart between your service, MochiMedia and HeyZap! - is there any way you can put more focus on that, or mention the comparisons on the homepage?Otherwise, looks good and I wish you the best of luck. It seems like it will be hard getting traction against the giants but even a small slice of the pie could/should be worthwhile. |
Business Model Hall of Fame | thaumaturgy: The excellent book by Guy Kawasaki, "Rules for Revolutionaries", has examples from lots of industries over various periods of time.I'm confused by what you mean about "business models", here. I doubt that you could say that Henry Ford had a "business model" when he went into business; what he had was a mechanical knack, and the idea that cars should be manufactured the way that guns were at the time. That turned out to be a great idea -- and one that pretty much all automotive manufacturers today have completely forgotten -- but I would hesitate to call it a "business model".Business strategies, however, are pretty damn useful, and Guy Kawasaki's book is about nothing but. It was the first book I read, years ago, that turned me on to the idea of having a business. |
Feedback on my site | dannyr: It's weird. I have seen so many posts here that says "Review my startup" even though it's only an app/site.Here you are calling it "my site". I would actually call it a startup. |
Setting Goals | cianestro: Rules I live by to get things done (that work for everyone):
1. Figure out what you have done.
2. Decide what task demands your immediate attention NOW.
3. Stop debating and devote yourself fully to doing #2* and disregard time* completely while doing so.
4. Repeat.#'s 2-3 constitute a task or procedure but can scale to either smaller or larger scales.This could be anywhere from taking your next breath to factoring a complex polynomial.Always live within the lowest common denominator (subroutine) within any given procedure.Use your internal clock. Work accumulators (internal clocks) are better measures of elapsed work whereas clocks just measure elapsed time. (How many times have you stopped to look at the clock and say, "Wow, I've been working for 2 hours! Better take a quick break." This is how you lose your mojo juice and start looking for crap like SMART goals or self-reflections as a cure for laziness. Work is the only known cure for laziness--and goal-setting is a symptom.)Never waste energy thinking beyond the next task. This is because the distant future is uncertain whereas reevaluating the past per iteration of a task provides a clearer picture of where you're heading. However, this model works best in an environment where your work is predetermined like in school or a day job. In a startup you would have to devote a small fraction, say no more than 10% of your time, to developing a mental "big picture" and the rest to the model presented here. As we all know, while ideas change, work stays constant. |
Review my side project - Reel Roulette | revorad: Wow, how did you get those designers on board? There's some real good stuff on there. I hope this takes off. Good luck. |
Review my side project - Reel Roulette | coffee: I don't know about the whole "Roulette" theme to it, but the content is gold, that's what makes this site... Good stuff! |
Feedback on my site | callmeed: Why the focus on games? Our company designs, sells, and hosts Flash sites (several thousand) but they aren't games. This is something we need and I imagine it would be very marketable to design agencies and companies that are building non-game microsites for products, movies, bands, etc.A tool like this would actually be really great for us ... it's hard to track events like when a user brings up a form (but doesn't complete it) or how deep a user goes into an image gallery.I'm excited to look at the beta ... looks promising. |
What do you think of this business idea? PDF printing & delivery | bluesmoon: about 10/11 years ago, this company called homeindia.com used to do this. The idea was that a whole bunch of Indians work in the US/Europe and use email every day, but their families back in India have no internet access. They provided a service where you'd email stuff to them, and they'd print it out and snail-mail it to the destination for a small fee. I have no idea if they survived the dot-com crash of 2001.They still exist today, but looks very different from what they were back then. |
Interesting (Non software) books? | tommorris: Elsewhere in the thread, I posted some recommendations on books on philosophy of religion from a non-theistic perspective. I guess I should probably list some books on philosophy generally.1. Bertrand Russell - The Problems of PhilosophyA good introduction to the basic things which philosophers in the Anglo-American/analytic tradition worry about in logic, metaphysics and epistemology (primarily epistemology): induction, a priori knowledge, anti-sceptical arguments, and universals.2. Hans-Georg Gadamer - Truth and MethodYou know about the 'Continental' philosophers, right? All those wacky guys like Derrida. They are all a bit suspicious, right? Like, Heidegger was a Nazi, and Foucault spreads HIV. Yeah, gossip is great. A lot of this type of philosophy seems like bunkum - Alan Sokal showed that, right? Lots of waffly French dudes talking out of their ass, abusing science to basically support their political ideology. Gadamer isn't like that. He sets out to try and answer the question "how do we understand texts?" and rather than saying something goofy like "we just make up what we understand about texts" or that we deconstruct them by subjecting them to our ideological whims, ripping the book apart to suit whatever the passing fancy is. No, Gadamer tries to explicate how the reading of a book is more of a process that starts with pre-judgement - 'prejudice' in Gadamer's words. Such prejudice is natural and actually quite desirable. You do judge a book by the cover. To understand a book as a whole, you need to understand all the components which make it up. But to understand any bit of the book, you need to understand how it fits into the wider contest of the book. This 'hermeneutic cycle' is daunting, but the only thing you can do is jump on board.3. Saul Kripke - Naming and NecessityKripke's book is on a slightly strange topic: how we use names. But how he deals with this is an interesting problem is a model of clarity and philosophical excellence. It has also been very influential - the way Kripke solves the problem with names led to other philosophers producing many so-called causal accounts of all sorts of things.I'd post some more, but I've got to get the hell out of my hotel room and go to a philosophy conference... |
What do you think of this business idea? PDF printing & delivery | revorad: I'm struggling to think of a genuine use case. The problem is the waiting time.It might work if your target user was someone who didn't need the printout immediately. Otherwise, you'd have to deliver the printouts pretty damn fast. Faster than Amazon to deliver a printer. But then, you'd have to charge loads, so there may not be a viable business there.You might want to look for people in some specific profession who have printing problems. Otherwise this might be a solution looking for a problem. |
Review my side project - Reel Roulette | milkshakes: i love the colors and clean minimalism.
are you planning on feeding the likes to something like directededge to make it smarter?along that vein, why are you using likes instead of ratings? |
Feedback on my site | ErrantX: Nice idea. I can't comment on the product as I wouldn't personally use it - but in terms of the site.- the rate counter is distracting. Also the cynic in me checked the source code (and refreshed a couple of times) and I see it's static. That puts me off slightly. EDIT: I would make it static and just say "Tracking XXXXX events - and counting!"- the slideshow layout at the top is, I think, broken on Chrome (Linux). For example games, levels, reports seem to appear randomly on the left behind the buttons and some of the slide pages drop over the counter.Otherwise nice design :) |
Do you want to learn Hindi? | scorchin: I'm of Indian descent, but rarely speak my "mother tongue" (Gujurati). I'm most fluent in English and wouldn't mind giving this a shot.How are you planning on teaching it? Using videos? A book?I'd probably like to learn the basics of keeping a conversation, counting/measuring and asking for directions. After that most things can be learnt pretty easily. |
What do you think of this business idea? PDF printing & delivery | papaf: I don't have access to a printer this week and this would have definitely been useful for me. When sending to third parties, its not just the effort of printing that's being saved but also buying the stamps, having enough envelopes and going to the postbox.If this was also available internationally it would also cut delivery times down if the printing was done in the local country. |
Do you want to learn Hindi? | atlantic: I´m Indian on my father's side, and I never had a chance to learn the language. I would definitely be interested. |
How do you feel about affiliate links in comments? | ScottWhigham: Personally I'm probably just going to circumvent the link and find it myself. I think it's probably a waste of time by the OP really - like delirium said, they get probably 4-6% of the sale, right? If it's a $12 book (a popular amount for business books), they earn $0.60 per sale. If they cause 10 sales, they earn $6. I would think that it is rare that there are more than 10 sales via an affiliate link on HN but I could be way off. But really - even 100 sales is "just" $60.Waste of time if you ask me. |
What do you think of this business idea? PDF printing & delivery | cjg: This could come in useful for large documents or many copies of a document. It could be significantly cheaper to print 1000 copies of a ten page document on dedicated hardware (and have those copies delivered) rather than try to print that sort of volume locally. |
What do you think of this business idea? PDF printing & delivery | cjg: From the suggestions made so far, it sounds like there are a variety of niches where this might be suitable. Tailor your offer to each niche - for example, you could offer a high speed courier (i.e. motorbike) option for those who are speed (but not price) sensitive.Perhaps offer a range of quality vs. cost. |
App to receive streamed music from computer. | milkshakes: i'm working on that :) shoot me an email narf@(my username).org if you want a copy to play with |
I break the chain every day starting form 3rd day what to do? | Tomer: Hi,
It's with reference to this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1033433
and to this web site: dontbreakthechain.com |
What do you think of this business idea? PDF printing & delivery | paulsingh: Actually, I do this: www.mailfinch.comIt started out as a joke -- partly inspired by Dustin Curtis' Snail project and the fact that my dad (and a bunch of his friends) sent a lot of flyers for their small businesses. |
Do you want to learn Hindi? | pramit: One way to teach people Hindi would be to create a video (maybe a series) on 100 most used Hindi words and phrases, with context, pronunciation and transliteration.Another way may be cheatsheets. For example, this Hindi cheatsheet. http://www.gng.org/currents/india/ind_lang.html |
Is Rails really MVC? | Hates_: Controllers pass models to the view. |
Aussies, put your hands up | froo: Perth here, contact details in my profile if you want to chat about whatever |
What do you think of this business idea? PDF printing & delivery | ahoyhere: I just bought an expensive course on writing articles faster & more effectively, and it was from a dude in NZ - he had it printed, bound and shipped to me by: mimeo.com.They offered great, very fast service and excellent customer service (had a problem with deliverability in Austria & they dealt with it right away).So the idea of routing around printing is good, but I'd say you should tweak your use case. |
Do you want to learn Hindi? | roundsquare: I'm of Indian decent but only speak English. I would like to.Also, as a side note:Even though you can totally get by speaking EnglishI'm living in Chennai now and make a few trips to Mumbai for work. In Chennai, I've had few problems with English, but in Mumbai, it can be quite a bit harder. If you stick to touristy things English is fine. But if you want to try traveling by auto-rickshaw or talking to locals, you will run into difficulties without Hindi. |
Is Rails really MVC? | spooneybarger: No web framework is going to be classical MVC but, it can be inspired by it. |
Aussies, put your hands up | dp79: Hi! Brisbane here |
Best tools for standing coding | robert_mygengo: IKEA Fredrik is probably the cheapest way to get a good, sturdy standing desk. Adjusting the height is a bit fiddly (so no changing from sitting to standing on the fly), but it's way cheaper than the specialist alternatives.http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60111123 |
Best tools for standing coding | pmiller2: >the Art of Computer Programming to prop up my keyboardBlasphemy! :) |
Aussies, put your hands up | nailer: London here. |
Aussies, put your hands up | hungrybeast: Melbourne here! |
Feedback on a "weekend project" - funny Amazon reviews | crayz: I whipped up a site to collect all the best funny/parody Amazon reviews. There seems to be something of an ad hoc community who've been posting parody, facetious or just plain caustic reviews on Amazon for years, and it seemed worth gathering them up in one place (with some basic voting/commenting/etc). And of course, hopefully make a few bucks off referral linksI'd be happy to hear some feedback, positive and negative, from HN people. Thanks |
Aussies, put your hands up | intranation: Hello, London (originally Sydney) here. |
Someplace cheap to live and study | medianama: Banaras Hindu University, India. |
Aussies, put your hands up | candeira: Melbourne (originally Madrid) here. |
Aussies, put your hands up | niko1: Just moved to Brisbane to start a startup. |
Feedback on a "weekend project" - funny Amazon reviews | brk: Your site brought something to my attention in that these reviews can be humorous when you stumble across them unexpectedly, but when they are all gathered up at once they become sort of "meh" overall.This has nothing to do with your site specifically, but when reading the first dozen or so, I became very bored with the content and not really compelled to return. A lot of them seemed to be trying too hard to be funny. Perhaps your concept of a voting system to bring the very best ones to the top would alleviate this somewhat. |
Aussies, put your hands up | inevaexisted: Sydney!! Hi... looking for an internship/grad position(final year). |
Good programming language for kids | Russelldb: Big Trak, Lego Mindstorms, any programmable robot type toy. |
Aussies, put your hands up | zacspitzer: melbourne! |
Aussies, put your hands up | joshd: London (by way of Brisbane). |
Aussies, put your hands up | codemoran: * codemoran puts his hand up
<codemoran> sydney here. |
Aussies, put your hands up | Evgeny: Melbourne. No plans on startups though. |
How do you test your web applications? | vital101: There are many types of testing, almost all of which are useful. From a client perspective, usability testing is probably the most important. Having a testing group come in, use your app, and then give you immediate feedback is invaluable.There is also penetration testing to check you web apps security. Could you maybe be more specific? I think it would help you get some great answers from the community. |
Do you want to learn Hindi? | revorad: Here are some things I'm planning to teach:1. How to greet people and make new friends (hello, what's your name, where are you from, where do you live etc.)2. Numbers and quantities, especially money.3. How to talk to locals to get around in India (e.g. auto-rickshaw drivers).4. Bootstrap Hindi - learn more Hindi by learning to ask useful questions in Hindi: "What do you call this in Hindi?", "How do you say this in Hindi?" and "What does this word mean in Hindi?".5. Hindi vocabulary one Bollywood song at a time.6. How to order food in various types of Indian restaurants.7. Describing objects by shape, size, colour, weight.8. Talk about the weather (you've got to, especially if you're English!).I'd love to hear your thoughts. So please leave a comment here or email me (see profile). |
Aussies, put your hands up | pedrogrande: Hi! I'm a lurker from Bondi. Chasing the dream. |
Aussies, put your hands up | samh: Canberra here. (I'm not Julia Gillard, but sometimes on Call of Duty servers I pretend to be). |
Aussies, put your hands up | Kreels: Sydney North West.
Lisp Hacker. Lurking. |
How do you test your web applications? | mdg: click, click, click, mouseover, click. So tedious. |
How do you test your web applications? | Shamiq: I've used Selenium to run unit test along with various flavors of Watir. Watir requires much less overhead and is programmable in Ruby. Selenium has libraries in all your favorite libraries, but requires running a Java proxy server. However, you can automate tasks by having Selenium record your actions on a page, which is super nice. |
Aussies, put your hands up | GVRV: Melbourne. Student at Monash University. From India. |
Aussies, put your hands up | thejay: Sydney lower north shore. Recharging for another startup. |
How do you test your web applications? | CoryMathews: One of the many web apps I have worked on do something similar to the following:before any feature rolls out each feature (from a list) is tested with different (but not every possible) set of inputs. This catches 90% of problems.The other 10% that get past our testing are either sent in by the user through a feedback from, or by the system sending messages (errors warnings etc) |
Aussies, put your hands up | jgoosdh: Hi! Just north of Sydney.I love AbstractServiceLoaderBasedFactoryBean's (aka a Java hacker) |
How do you test your web applications? | tbgvi: Selenium is what I'm using, Selenium IDE (firefox plugin) makes it easy to set up tests. http://www.seleniumhq.orgUserTesting.com is great for usability testing, they have people follow some of your instructions and record their screen/voice as they go through it. Feedback from this has lead to a lot of critical improvements.Another article you might be interested in is about how software is developed for the space shuttle (they test like crazy). Someone posted the link on HN last night and it's fascinating: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html |
Interesting (Non software) books? | Paddy3118: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_BachGödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.Not only did I by it, but I read it, and enjoyed it too!- Paddy. |
How do you test your web applications? | nandemo: I've been in a few web projects and all had a testing phase just as any other projects: creating test plans based on the requirements and specification, doing functional testing, integration testing, load testing, and so on.For what is worth, most of these applications were internal apps for large companies (users are the employees, not customers) and might as well have been developed as desktop or client-server apps. I see no reason why the choice of architecture/deployment would affect the QA policies. It might affect the particular way of testing (tools, etc) but not whether to test or not.I can't see quite see why is this even a question. Perhaps your colleagues are assuming that all web apps are like the typical apps they might use: B2C, free or "freemium", etc. Other things being equal, these are more likely to be released without careful testing. |
How do you test your web applications? | MicahWedemeyer: Rails comes with automated testing baked in, and it's one of the best unit/automated testing packages I've ever seen.Then...people went and made it better with things like RSpec, Shoulda, Factory Girl, and other enhancement packages.I've given up trying to convince others to do automated testing, but for me and my projects, there's really nothing that beats what Rails and the Ruby community provides. |
review our startup - Tweetsworth | adriand: Tweetsworth is the world's first guaranteed accurate Twitter account valuator. Unlike the other Twitter valuation sites which talk a big game but never put up the dough, we'll actually purchase your Twitter account for 90% of the calculated value on the spot.In other words, we're the first Twitter account valuator with a business model!Please try it out and let me know what you think. |
Best tools for standing coding | imp: I've got a makeshift standing desk like that also. My plan is to replace the boxes and books with small shelves made of plywood. Shouldn't be to hard and will only cost a few bucks. |
Aussies, put your hands up | zengyro: do expats count? Melbournian living in Scotland. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | vital101: My dream is for my existence to make a positive change in the world. Be it by starting a company that helps people in some way, or by simply helping that old lady cross the road.I haven't figured out how to do this on a large scale yet, but I will someday. I challenge all of HN to do the same. |
How do you test your web applications? | felideon: Here's a guide on penetration testing you might find useful. I would assume some frameworks handle some/most issues "out of the box" but it's still a good guide to follow.http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Testing_Projec...Other than that, testing a web app is just like testing any other software. Look for edge cases, try different combination of things, etc. to say the least. But here are a few things to look out for off the top of my head:* Don't be too restrictive on validation on fields like names, addresses/zip codes (if there are international customers), e-mails, etc. However, make sure people can't enter numbers in an SSN field or letters in a date field either.* Make sure weird characters in different fields don't break anything. For example, entering O'Hara as the last name should be stored correctly in the DB and then rendered correctly to the user whenever you need to show it.* Make sure your text box max lengths are not greater than the DB's column definitions. You don't want someone to enter a 50 letter name and have the field in the DB defined as varchar(20).* Make sure the web app handles session time outs gracefully. You don't want a user filling out a registration form to get a phone call and then come back to complete the form, only to be redirected to the starting page when he clicks Submit.There are also automated frameworks you can use to script automated tests, such as Watir/WatiN. (Please don't ever waste money on QTP.)And as others have mentioned there's always load testing and stress testing you need to do at a certain point. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | antirez: My dream is not caring about things I don't want to care, to have friends and family around me, to live with the woman I love, to eat well, to sleep as I want, to have good sex, to live near the sea, to be in health, to die satisfied of life. |
How do you test your web applications? | UmYeah: Jmeter for load testing. Selenium for regression testing. Penetration testing is also a pretty vital aspect if there web application has access to sensitive data. Web applications should be tested like any other applications.Graduate students stating that "no one tests web apps" are showing why they are still called students. |
Aussies, put your hands up | pmccool: Hi! Brisbane here. |
Best tools for standing coding | cpr: I love the variable-height desks from Biomorph, but they're rather expensive new, so I buy them used.E.g., I've got a few of these various places:http://biomorph.com/1-888-302-DESK/personal/overview.htmlwith the maple plywood material, for around $500-ish. Excellent quality, though hard to find used. |
review our startup - Tweetsworth | sucuri2: It loads and loads and loads and I never get a response back when I submit a twitter username to be evaluated. Too much traffic now? |
App to receive streamed music from computer. | cpr: Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba does that for Mac and Windows, and can play on your iPhone (or Airport Express or Apple TV), or Mac or Windows machine. |
How do you test your web applications? | imgabe: I've just started using Django testing framework to do unit tests for my app. So far it helps catch a lot of errors that would have required more tedious manual testing, which is what I did previously. It sounds like Selenium would be a good way to test the javascript aspect. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | ytinas: To become financially independent so I have time to change the world for the better. |
What do you think of this business idea? PDF printing & delivery | pbhjpbhj: Looks great to me. I don't personally have need of it, though if I found I had need to send letters in the US it would be cheaper than airmail it seems (from the UK).If you want international trade you should probably list paper sizes in cm and as standard measures (A4?, US Letter?) and give paper weights in gsm.Do you only handle PDF?Are you planning on using something like TinyMCE, http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/, in your "type in your letter" box?If you need someone in the UK then I'd be interested... |
Review my proof of concept for a translation website | chinmi: url of website: http://www.translapolis.orgdirect link to the tour: http://www.translapolis.org/tour |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | Shamiq: Hi Kirsten,Two recommendations. 1. Use https://www.dropbox.com/ to share the files. 2. Put some contact information in your profile :)My dreams are pretty small for the time being. I want to build most, if not all, of the furniture in my new house. I want to explore the American wilderness before it ceases to exist. |
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