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A simple CMS for non-tech users? | tonystubblebine: Would anyone be interested in a hosted web service along these lines? I took a stab at extracting a similar set of features from CrowdVine, but I'm not sure if it's worth pursuing.The site is: http://big.lyMy idea was that websites get set up originally by people who want to get under the hood. So I made all of the templates overridable using Ruby's Liquid templating engine.After the initial setup, they're run by complete Normals. So all of the editing is wysiwyg (through TinyMCE).Other features are a custom domain and tab/subnav management. I didn't get as far as a contact form, but that was on my list. |
What do you do with your iPad? | cmelbye: I'm using it to take notes in class and it's awesome. It fits really nicely on our desks (much more so than my 15" MacBook Pro). I haven't found a very good notetaking app either though. Currently, I'm just using Pages with headings and bulleted lists. It would be nice if Apple brought over Pages for Mac's outline functionality with gestures for changing the indention level. |
What do you do with your iPad? | Dellort: You mean the iWipe? I wipe my ass with it, just like Steve Jobs had intended. |
A simple CMS for non-tech users? | Rust: If you want, a plugin could be written to simplify WPs administration area. It would be easy enough to hide things that you don't want admins to see by default ("n00b" mode), useful stuff that won't break the site ("l33t" mode), and everything available ("hax0r" mode). A custom setting in the user profile would be enough to trigger it. |
A simple CMS for non-tech users? | brianto2010: I've found a cool wiki-like software that is fairly simple to use and might fill your CMS needs. It resides within one HTML file meaning good portability, and has a large community attached. However, I forgot the name and spent the past half-hour looking for it.http://www.tiddlywiki.com/ |
Could you help me improve my site? | Scott_MacGregor: It's comming up fine now on IE 7.0.5730.11 + FireFox 3.5.1 + Chrome 4.1.249.1045 all on XP Pro SP2 behind Zone-alarm with mobile code control off.For development, you can see what browsers are in general use right now with this link:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.aspHere is Evolt's browser archive for downloading older browser versions if you need any:
http://browsers.evolt.org/ |
What do you do with your iPad? | tlholaday: Reader (iBooks, Kindle, Stanza, Marvel, ComixOlogy, IDW)Browser (Safari)News (Bloomberg, NPR, NYTimes Editors Choice, Paris Match, BBC News)Doodle (Adobe Ideas)Video podcasts (TED talks, GOLD, Lawrence Lessig, White House Music & the Arts)Education (MIT Open Courseware)Big frost so far: Numbers |
What do you do with your iPad? | akadien: I preordered mine. Despite the first couple of days of unadulterated enthusiasm, I'm thinking about sending mine back this week. No killer app. Not a meaningful proxy or replacement for my iPhone or laptop. And, I get bad eyestrain if I use it to read for longer than 20-30 minutes. It certainly hasn't lived up to the marketing mantra of 'magical'. |
Posterous and existing sites? | minus1: It's pretty painless to point your Posterous site to a domain you own, or yoursite.com/blog.Check under Settings->"I already have a custom domain name (e.g. yourdomain.com)"I'm not sure about ads. |
Who's hiring? | bkudria: Younoodle is hiring: http://younoodle.com/static/jobs . The company and people are awesome, we're doing some cool stuff (we're like an iceberg - our front page is only 10% of what we do) and the perks are awesome. |
What do you do with your iPad? | stuntgoat: Sight Glass Coffee is using it as a POS.*http://www.flickr.com/photos/mager/4487454328/*I don't have one |
What was the chances the poland president die in a plane crash ? | CamperBob: That's a complex question. The answer depends on whether there were more Poles on the left side of the plane, or the right. |
A simple wiki which supports Markdown syntax? | erikpukinskis: http://gist.github.com/363190ruby lilwiki.rb |
What do you do with your iPad? | aeontech: Main uses so far... book reader, and watching video courses while being able to code/take notes on the laptop.I think we'll need to wait a few months for the real killer apps to show up. The really great ones take time to code, and it takes time for people to come up with brilliant new ideas. When the iPhone first came out it was not very interesting either - it became an indispensable device only 3-6 months down the road, as amazing apps started coming out. |
Moving balls to the wall on a fantastic idea? | Mankhool: I carried a web/mobile app idea around for a year, looking for seed funding before posting about it here on March 30th. The HN community were amazing in their support and motivated me to create a minimum viable product. But while I was out on oDesk trying to find a crew to do that, something amazing happened. I found not one, but two very talented, intelligent people, both of whom are busy with their careers, but interested enough in my project to particpate as co-founders. I encourage you to put your idea out into the world and see where that leads you. |
Do you trust Mint.com, or have a preferred finance system? | aresant: Mint's uses standardized Apis that allow for balance inquries, transaction overviews, etc but NOT to transfer money. They encrypt login details so even if their db gets hacked your exposure is minimal.In other words I feel comfortable with recommending the platform. |
Do you trust Mint.com, or have a preferred finance system? | cydork: I don't and won't trust anyone with my credentials. Also there is wesabe.com which allows user to upload the transaction data using a desktop application or Firefox extension. Thought it is still in beta. |
A simple CMS for non-tech users? | onceuponkauai: i think concrete5 is all right. It uses a mysql back-end but might be overkill. I know the click to edit stuff works pretty well.I have noticed that benchmarks are slower as they don't really have a full page cache mechanism, but overall it does a pretty nice job for that niche. |
Do you trust Mint.com, or have a preferred finance system? | mbrubeck: I use Gnucash (http://gnucash.org/) for personal and business accounting. It's a "serious" double-entry accounting system with a nice UI and good documentation. |
Do you trust Mint.com, or have a preferred finance system? | projectileboy: I love buxfer.com. One of the things I love about it is that you can choose to keep your credentials local if you choose to. |
Do you trust Mint.com, or have a preferred finance system? | siegler: Yodlee is highly regarded and has been around longer than Mint. Their primary business is running back end services for banks and financial institutions (Bank of America, Scottrade, E*trade) while offering the personal service for free. They have forums to get more info http://forum.yodlee.com
https://moneycenter.yodlee.com |
Do you trust Mint.com, or have a preferred finance system? | eklitzke: I personally use mint, and love it. This is for a few reasons:* the product is really good; it's really easy to use, it connects to just about everything, and the alerts/trends system is great
* I really like the alerts system; they've given me tax tips and warned me about upcoming payments that I might have otherwise missed
* they seem pretty competent from the security side; they have a fair amount of material on their site covering this (e.g. http://www.mint.com/privacy/security-tech/)Obviously mint has a huge incentive to have really strong security; since they have so much of your data they have to comply with stringent security regulations in order to just operate their business, and if mint were to be compromised it would be a huge blow to them. If you think about it, they have a lot more riding on their security than your bank does!I can understand why other people don't want to give their credentials to mint, but the quality of the product and the fact that they seem pretty clueful makes me not really worry about it. |
How much does it cost to outsource iPhone app development? | pkrishnak: Hi,I am the CEO of Chaitu Systems. We focus on developing iPhone and iPad applications only, with a team in India that has already delivered some projects. Please connect with me at krishna.kumar@chaitusystems.com if you want to discuss your outsourcing requirements.Regards,Krishna Kumar |
How much does it cost to outsource iPhone app development? | pkrishnak: I am sorry, I forgot to mention I live in the Bay Area, and am contactable locally. Please send an email, and we can connect.Regards,
Krishna Kumar
CEO, Chaitu Systems |
A simple CMS for non-tech users? | stevederico: Check out http://www.cushycms.com/ free and simple CMS. |
mother of all todo managers in Lisp | nysv: Presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/smartrevolution/how-a-clojure-pet-...And the todo manager itself: https://the-deadline.appspot.com/ |
What's the best way to setup an always on video conference? | ippisl: What's the upload/download speed of your parents connection? |
CA Taxes for a DE C corporation? | nudge: I don't know for sure, but I would guess that you pay corporate taxes where the company is incorporated, and the location of your employees (i.e. you) doesn't matter. That said, it may be that CA law prohibits residents from incorporating as sole-person companies in other states.Are you going to take HN responses as authoritative? I really wouldn't. Go see a professional tax adviser. |
CA Taxes for a DE C corporation? | _delirium: As always you should probably seek more authoritative advice, but my understanding is that you'd only pay CA corporate taxes, and not DE corporate taxes. Most states tax corporations on the business they do in the state, and it sounds like you do all your business in CA, so you have to pay CA taxes. But you don't have to pay DE taxes, because DE has a special exemption for DE-registered corporations that do all their business out of the state. |
Do you trust Mint.com, or have a preferred finance system? | minalecs: I tried mint and cancelled, and have moved back to Quickbooks.1. People say mint is easy to use, the only easy part is importing all your information, after that I felt your information got lost in all the ads, yes those recommendations for new credit cards, savings accounts, checking accounts are all ads.2. I hated the alert system, and really didn't appreciate they would log on to all my accounts daily, it should of been something they did only when I allowed or controllable. Why .. I have an email alert through one of my bank accounts, and could tell every time mint.com logged in and checked my records (which is daily). Which overall reduced security because it could of been someone else and I thought it was just Mint.3. Allowing a third party logging into any of your personal accounts, without approval every time, just didn't sit well with me. |
Could you help me improve my site? | mediarosh: I could help you out with the design of your website if you want. My portfolio is at www.mediarosh.comEmail me at mediarosh@gmail.com |
Posterous and existing sites? | revorad: You can autopost from posterous to a lot of different blogs, including wordpress, tumblr, blogger etc., all of which will allow you to have ads. |
Review my Startup: Pitch - stop re-writing the same emails | Tawheed: Link: http://pitchapp.com |
Review my copyright protection webapp datetimesign.com | mootothemax: Link: http://datetimesign.com |
Any Successful Startups using Microsoft Dotnet Stack? | byoung2: The costs of Windows hosting has come down a lot over the years, so it's not the hosting costs that will kill you. More likely, it will be the expense of hiring additional .NET developers. The company I work for runs 200+ sites (most through acquisition), and when we inherit a new site that's not LAMP, it's not long before we migrate it to LAMP, just because it's cheaper to maintain. We have a handful of .NET sites, and a few Ruby sites, and I'd bet that the salary of the 4 or 5 guys who work on those sites is more than the combined salary of the other 50 PHP devs.That said, if you can get the project profitable enough on your own, maybe you can afford to hire additional .NET devs. |
Review my project, The Bus Ride | garbowza: Here's a clickable link: http://thebusride.com |
Any Successful Startups using Microsoft Dotnet Stack? | GotToStartup: This seems like a great opportunity to learn a new language, framework and IDE. Visual Studio is an awesome IDE but it's always valuable to learn something different and be able to integrate that in your day job. To answer your question, a successful site that keeps popping up that uses asp .Net MVC and the Microsoft stack would be StackOverflow.com |
Review my copyright protection webapp datetimesign.com | bgnm2000: after reading through the site, the idea itself is cool - but I have 0 trust. 3 reasons, the first being the company is located in poland. The second being #4 of your FAQ,"4. Has your service ever been challenged in court?Trusted timestamps will never be challenged in court. Lawyers' organisations from around the world have previously agreed that it would be a waste of time and money to debate them in court. If you have a trusted timestamp as your proof, it will not be challenged."To say something would never be challenged in court is simply ridiculous.And the third, nothing about it proves to me its actually going to work if I were to buy it. |
Review my project, The Bus Ride | bgnm2000: This is a great idea, very cool/fun implementation |
Any Successful Startups using Microsoft Dotnet Stack? | samratjp: A better question would be whether if .NET is the right tool set for the scope of your project not if a YC startup is using it?If you are looking to explore and are open to learning further, by all means, jump into Django. On the other hand, if .NET access is no problem to you and your collaborators and that it fits your problem scope, go forth. |
Any Successful Startups using Microsoft Dotnet Stack? | primemod3: http://www.ubernote.com uses ASP.NET, although it doesn't use MVC. |
Review my project, The Bus Ride | cjkundin: My first comment is "I get it" which is great. Simple and not overly engineered. Seems like a great method for tutorials and how tos created from content experts.I think the problem will be to engage people in creating the routes. What incentives are there to create routes? I see you get a "stamp" but is that enough? It isn't for me.Also, is being dependent on Facebook for create routes going to hurt you? I get it that it will help this spread virally (almost required these days) but I would be interested in seeing if this prevents people from creating routes, especially since Facebook is blocked in some businesses and schools. |
Review my project, The Bus Ride | RayVace: I like the idea of guided tours through the web. |
Best resources to give to someone who needs to learn HTML+CSS? | Rust: You don't need to hit quirks mode for cross-browser CSS. Stick to standards mode wherever possible. |
Does anyone here watch offline TV anymore? | byoung2: If cable weren't already included in my HOA payment, I wouldn't subscribe. I never watch live TV. I usually watch shows on Hulu or download a torrent of the episode with the commercials removed. Since I'm in California, I can usually watch the show at the same time it comes on live because someone on the east coast has already encoded and uploaded it during the 3 hour time difference. |
Does anyone here watch offline TV anymore? | patrickk: Yes for live sports. Streaming quality is too crap online generally for me.Apart from that, no. I have a big screen LCD TV in my room, and it acts as a media centre monitor for my XBMC setup. It isn't hooked up to anything other than my PC. |
Any Successful Startups using Microsoft Dotnet Stack? | mailarchis: plentyoffish comes to mind..but am not sure if they use any MVC framework |
Does anyone here watch offline TV anymore? | ascuttlefish: I've never had cable. Well, honestly, I've never paid for it. I've had roomies who just had to have it, but I never wanted it or had a TV until a few years ago. In the past couple years I've been watching TV series like Battlestar Galactica on DVD, but otherwise my TV is for watching movies. |
Any Successful Startups using Microsoft Dotnet Stack? | samuel: What means "personal"? Do you do it mainly for the fun or for the money? If it's the second, it's a no brainer. Use the tools you know and focus on you problem domain.If its an experiment or an exploratory project, well, use whatever appeals to you. |
WTF ever happened to FingerPrint Logins? | there: most thinkpads have integrated fingerprint readers and are able to log you in to windows using only your fingerprint.fprint (http://reactivated.net/fprint/wiki/Main_Page) supports many readers on unix that can be integrated into the login process with pam/bsd auth. |
Any Successful Startups using Microsoft Dotnet Stack? | vaidhy: FWIW, the reason I choose Django for my latest project is the admin. For a lot of internal facing stuff, I am running it off the admin framework and it has saved me a lot of time from writing html and JS template/code. I do not know much about .NET.. but if there is such a functionality, I would suggest got for it. What you know is going to make you more productive. |
Review my project, The Bus Ride | Mc_Big_G: I like the idea and the design is great. Any plans to monetize it or is it just something fun? |
Any forums/blogs where advertisers hang out? | jacquesm: As a rule advertisers use agencies if they are slightly larger, the smaller ones you might find on the adwords forum.http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdWords?hl=en |
Tips for publishing an Ebook | pierrefar: Short version: never published but built two PhD PDFs directly and helped friends do so. Use LaTeX.Long answer: I've researched this for my own publishing dreams a while back. When you have a PDF you're happy with (again, LaTeX is your friend), you can use any one of several digital sales routes. If you're planning (hoping) to publish in print, use a service that also generates the ISBN for you. From memory, Amazon does this automatically and LuLu provides it as an extra for-pay function.Also consider self-hosting the download. Briefly: set up a secure area on a website that people are granted access to after they pay. The download is protected that way, plus you can use this to provide errata and build a private community around the book (e.g. using a forum).One thing that will annoy you and may become a serious cost: people pay, download the PDF, and then reverse the charge under your money back policy (and yes you're likely to need one). From reports I read, this is a bigger problem for expensive ebooks (like $100) not your price point. Still...Build a blog dedicated to the book. Post interesting relevant articles so you get links and establish yourself as an authority. It's also one heck of a lead gen channel.Good luck! |
Should I move to the valley? | api: I don't live in The Valley (tm), but I do live in a tech center (Boston area).My impression:The positives: lots of people doing tech entrepreneurial things, lots of talent, other startups to work with and learn from, entrepreneurial culture.The negatives: I could fill an auditorium with phonies, con artists, and impostors... I suspect that The Valley is even worse. There are lots of "me-too!" ideas, lots of people with enormous egos who don't really know what they're doing, and lots of people who will BS you to try to get you to follow them or do work for them. Being jaded and skeptical is a requirement.Edit: come to think of it, I have been to conferences and pitch-fest type things in The Valley, and the smell of fast talkers and such was palpable.So there's lots of good stuff but also lots of noise. |
Review my project, The Bus Ride | newobj: Neat, easy to understand instantly, and I like that you've already added social/viral features (stamps).My question is, how do you plan on gaining traction for the site? Are you going to pay for content/routes, or... ? |
Review my Startup: Pitch - stop re-writing the same emails | jarsj: I fail to understand the need.GMail has a lab feature called "Canned response", it does exactly what you do and its integrated into Gmail.Also, search-and-forward would work just fine. |
What is the product that lets you u/l directly from camera to browser? | buster: What's u/l? What camera? i don't even understand that question.
But did you think about asking on superuser.com? |
Review my project, The Bus Ride | gwood: I like it, it is an easy way to organize a set of links for others. I think it could possibly be used in How To sites when multiple sites are needed (e.g. getting a webserver up and running) or replacement for other sites who have top sites of the day (wouldn't have to click back page(s) when you want to go to the next link... like an extension for digg or something)? |
What is the product that lets you u/l directly from camera to browser? | chronomex: Do you mean the Eye-Fi? |
Can we finish with the Apple 3.3.1 Policy submissions? | asimjalis: Is the fixation on this topic a bug in the HN software or in the people reading HN? |
What is the product that lets you u/l directly from camera to browser? | jasonlbaptiste: no no, it's a YC company. You can upload from your camera directly using the web browser to the site. |
Review my service (track your computer, remotely wipe browsing data) | cfinke: Clickable links: https://www.firefound.com/ and https://www.firefound.com/premium/ |
Do you trust Mint.com, or have a preferred finance system? | scorchin: I've been using http://www.wesabe.com for a lot longer than I've known about mint.comThe main reason being that it supported UK banks, while mint.com was turning me away! |
Should I move to the valley? | philwelch: I don't want you to take this personally, so I'm just going to dispense the standard advice for people with great ideas but without someone capable of building them: great ideas are a dime a dozen, and anyone with the ability and inclination to be a "tech cofounder" probably has their own ideas. Building your skills and making sure you have something to contribute other than a "great idea" is the best way to get something accomplished. |
Find Partners or Learn more? | kylebragger: Nothing wrong with being able to take an idea to (at least) the prototype stage. It's very fulfilling. Once you have something living and breathing, then perhaps you'll be able to evaluate whether it's got legs, whether you need to bring in a developer co-founder, etc. |
How can I get this working? | Tichy: Not sure if I correctly understand your problem, but you might want to look into JSONP. |
Can we finish with the Apple 3.3.1 Policy submissions? | stse: This is how a news site like this works. If somethings get popular a lot of people will get interested in the topic and post stories about it. Then more people get interested in the topic and so on. It's also a reflection what other sites write about. I don't think somehow limiting how long a topic can be discussed will be good, as a lot of insightful stories will be posted some time after an event occurred. It will fade naturally with time as it becomes less topical.There's always going to be people that don't find a certain topic interesting, but if something is upvoted it means that other people are. So just read the other stories that you feel interested in and when something you are interested in comes up, others can return the favor.Also, I do think there are some "less than optimal conditions" at HN, especially for new stories. But I don't think something becoming "overly" popular is because of those conditions. |
Is investment taxed? | simon_: Proceeds from investors (debt or equity) are not profits, and the company receiving the investment will not pay taxes on the amount.The investor will have to pay taxes on any capital gains / dividends / interest she receives. |
Is investment taxed? | dfranke: The profit you make on investment is taxed as capital gains. The law makes a distinction between short-term and long-term gains: if there's less than a year between when you invest and when you cash out, you pay the same tax rate as for ordinary income. If there's a year or longer, then you pay the more favorable tax rate of 15%. If you lose money investing, you can claim the loses on your tax return and use them to offset gains in future years. |
Is investment taxed? | aristus: In California the assets of a corporation are taxed I believe, so the stuff you buy with the investment has a liability. |
Is investment taxed? | faramarz: I'm not sure what the rates are in US, but I suspect here in Canada we would pay more tax per capital gains.In Ontario All capital gains and Canadian dividends are taxed at lower rates than other income.Interest income and dividend income are received or accrued each year, and are taxable in the year you receive or accrue the income. You have no control over which year the income is paid. You are not taxed on capital gains until your investment is sold, so you have some control over which year you receive the income, because you can choose when to sell your investments.The tax paid on capital gains is low, because only 50% of capital gains is taxed, and the gains are not taxed until the investments are sold, except in situations where there is a deemed disposition |
How can I get this working? | byoung2: You can use JavaScript, PHP (or any other server side language), and JSON.Each website in the network gets a unique ID and includes a script tag in their HTML with the src set to http://www.example.com/code/?id=12345 where 12345 is the unique ID.You have your server side script look up that ID and pull the relevant ad data from your database and return JavaScript that writes this data in a JSON object and includes functions to write it to the browser.When the visitor goes to the site, the browser renders the page with the JavaScript customized for that site, which displays the appropriate ad. Your server side code should track the number of impressions for each add and integrate with your billing/payment system. |
Should I move to the valley? | samratjp: Well, valley or not, your idea needs to survive in the "real" world i.e. built and wanted by people. Do some homework on that and get crackin'. Be so good that they can't ignore you :-)As about tech cofounders, that's a tricky one - it helps to have an intelligent tech friend who can perhaps help you find a good one. Like philwelch said, tech cofounders will have their own ideas and idiosyncrasies, but you have to clear from day one about what you bring to table. What can you offer them? Are you a sales genius? A kickass designer? Whatever it is, make sure your personal secret sauce is compelling enough."Should i move to the Valley for a while"
Unless you have a decent cushion to blow for a while or are going to work to support yourself (where you can potentially find co-founders), don't sweat it. |
What's the best way to setup an always on video conference? | samratjp: Why not use www.Justin.tv (A YC company)?
It will cost you an always on internet connection, a web browser and a webcam (video subjects nor included :-) |
Can we finish with the Apple 3.3.1 Policy submissions? | slowpoison: Apple setting a bad precedent with this was my hope. I'm now 50% closer to my eventual wish - Apple exerting too much control and screwing up. The control part is done. The screw up... fingers crossed. That will discourage other companies (at least in this space) from doing it. Developers FTW... I'm hoping. |
Any Successful Startups using Microsoft Dotnet Stack? | dotBen: To answer your original question, look at Microsoft BizSpark which is a program from MS to encourage startups to use the .NET stack. Plenty of companies that have been successful with it.But I wouldn't pick it unless there is a large pool of .net talent you can pick into - as startups I have worked with here in the US who have been .net based have found it hard to hire top-quality folk into a .net stack. |
Javascript / Ruby Refactoring Tools | bstar: JetBrains has refactoring tools for ruby:
http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/documentation/index.htmlThere's a video about half way down the page. |
Is investment taxed? | jacquesm: How it works 'elsewhere' depends greatly on where elsewhere is. In some countries you can write off your investments when they tank, but in those places you can expect to pay a healthy tax if they appreciate. In others both the losses and the gains are not part of your taxes.It also depends on what you qualify as an investment, for instance, investing in real estate or antiques can be tax free but a business investment might be taxed.You can't really answer this question in a general way without at least specifying locality and the specific kind of investment.So the 'how it works elsewhere' portion of your question is not easy to answer without a long list of examples and localities. |
any white-label/SaaS virtual-currency/"MyPoints" services out there? | bdpatrick: BigDoor Media offers exactly this type of solution. www.bigdoor.com. |
Tips for publishing an Ebook | pmiller2: I'm going to echo the "use LaTeX" advice, but add to it the following: use memoir (http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/memoir/). Not only is the manual for that package a great (but basic) tutorial on layout and page design for the total beginner, there are lots of example layouts included that you can more or less copy and paste into your .tex source and it will look good with minimal effort.As for hosting, I'd consider self-hosting in combination with one of the PDF -> POD sites. I don't have any specific experience with any of them, so I can't really recommend a particular one, but if I were publishing a book, I'd like the idea that people could get a physical copy of my book that actually looks and feels like a book. |
Is there a "dead" links page for HN? | jacquesm: Yes, it's http://news.ycombinator.com/killed but it is only visible to editors. |
How do you find a side job? | binarymax: I've never tried it but is this similar to what you are looking for? http://www.peopleperhour.com/ |
How do you find a side job? | cperciva: My current strategy for finding side jobs is to wait for them to come to me. I have it easy -- I have widely recognized expertise in several narrow fields.The biggest hurdle I've faced is US tax paperwork -- companies like to ask for W-8 forms. Fortunately I recently had a client with a tax lawyer on staff, and I now know that being a non-resident working outside of the country means that I'm not subject to US tax withholding and no paperwork is required.I've never bothered with escrow; if I'm sufficiently uncertain about a potential client that I would even consider escrow, it's a client I don't want. This is in part because of the nature of the work I do -- fly-by-night operations generally can't afford my rates and don't need my expertise anyway. |
Books on how to "influence" people? | jacquesm: If you get knowledge like this from books beware of coming across as a fake. If your knowledge is good and you're a genuine (as opposed to fake) person then over time you will gain influence, based on your track record and your personality.Fast tracking it by reading a book is not really a solution here.The classic book that literally is called 'how to win friends and influence people' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influenc... ), in spite of being an all time best seller is a book whose readers you can spot from about a mile away but it has a dedicated following.Excel at what you do and be genuine and nice to people and you'll go very far without needing any books that turn you in to just another glib talker. |
Books on how to "influence" people? | Mz: Work on yourself. Influence has to come from something genuine: real competence, real respect for other people, etc. All that other stuff is merely manipulation and manipulation tends to come back to bite you at some point.You might start with a book like "The 7 habits of highly effective people", which isn't at all about influencing others but is, instead, about getting things done.For negotiation skills, which is entirely different from "persuasion" but can give you real power to influence outcomes, the only two I know of which are research-based are "Getting to Yes" and "The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator". Both of these were required texts for my class on "Negotiation and Conflict Management". |
Books on how to "influence" people? | F_J_H: Robert Cialdini's "Influence: Science and Practice." is great. I heard him speak in person once and it was amazing material, and he presented it very well. Unfortunately, some find his book to be a bit dry and a bit of a tough slog, but again, the material is great.I can't emphasize enough how much his work has helped me. Here is a link to a quiz based on his material, which is very telling as to how good you are with respect to influencing others: http://www.influenceatwork.com/CialdiniQuiz.htmlI actually read his book and heard him speak before taking the quiz and so I did much better on it than I would have otherwise. |
Any Successful Startups using Microsoft Dotnet Stack? | nreece: We use ASP.NET at Feedity - http://feedity.comDrop me a message if you would like to know more about ASP.NET in the production environment, automated build/deployment, affordable hosting options etc. |
Where to focus my mind and concentration | Raphael: Program something you want to use. |
Books on how to "influence" people? | proexploit: Enthusiasm and honesty go a long way. The most important trait to exhibit would be confidence. Luckily, creating confidence is easy, you just fake it until it catches on. Sure, you can read more in-depth articles about "finding things you like about yourself" and "positive mantras", but if you just go out intending to appear confident, you will in fact become confident. I pay a lot of attention to the way that people speak. If you stutter and say "um" or "uh" a lot, you will sound unimpressive regardless of the topic.The other comments in this thread have the books nailed down. "How to win friends and influence people" and "Influence" are largely considered the best books on the topic. I'm very interested in body language which is very related. If you force yourself to stand confidently, you'll feel it as well the others around you. I found "What Every BODY is Saying" a lot of fun although it's not quite as full of information. |
What are the best free and pay web charting libraries? | pkc: I have used fusioncharts and found it to be pretty awesome. http://www.fusioncharts.com/ |
How do you find a side job? | zach: I would recommend networking within a local programming user group (Python, Ruby, Cocoa, etc). Introduce yourself at a meeting or on the mailing list letting people know just a little about your background and that you're looking for a side project and would be interested in getting in touch with anyone who knows of an opportunity. |
Where to find reputable legal advice for web startup? | urlwolf: I'd love to see this answered. Unfortunately, it'd need a different answer for every country (I'm in Germany). |
Books on how to "influence" people? | pramit: Some useful book summaries here:
The Persuader's Bible: 101 Ways to Get anyone to do what you want
http://bighow.com/news/the-persuaders-bible-101-ways-to-get-... |
Can we finish with the Apple 3.3.1 Policy submissions? | c1sc0: It's one of the hottest stories we've ever seen on HN and I tend to see 'quantity of stories on X' as one indicator of where X will be going in the near future. Simply scanning through the HN headlines without reading every individual post has value for me. |
Who is innovating business models for media content? | _delirium: This is sort of a meta-comment, but one thing I'd love to see is a good survey of how the current crop of innovation differs from previous ones, both in themselves and in relation to context. For example, micropayments were the big new thing in 1990s journalism, and micropayments are the big new thing today. What's changed, about the micropayments, the journalism, or the context? Presumably a lot, but I rarely see a good historical analysis.As for a specific suggestion, Indymedia and Wikinews are two other non-profit, crowd-sourced journalism attempts. Indymedia aims at a far-left/activist viewpoint, while Wikinews aims at a more neutral one. |
good desktop for developing? | petervandijck: ps: I won't build it, just want to order it. |
How do you find a side job? | jefurii: I've had a number of recruiters contact me through LinkedIn. There are also language/framework/technology-specific sites like http://djangopeople.net/. I've gotten a number of calls through that site, including the one that led to my current side job. |
How did you come up with your startup idea? | nudge: Reading widely (i.e. not just technology blogs/forums), being genuinely interested in what other people do and the problems they experience in doing such things, dissecting a problem to see whether it can be avoided or ameliorated, exploring existing attempts to do so, analysing their benefits and failings, developing an alternative approach to the problem, discussing this with people I trust who have different knowledge-bases (particularly if they have knowledge of this area), reflecting on whether it still seems like a good idea, doing some rough calculations about market size, pricing (or other monetization route), and feasibility given my own skills and network, concluding whether it is a good and implementable idea and, if so, getting to work and continuing to work long after the initial excitement wears off.tl;dr: Assuming until proven otherwise that everyone has something to teach me about the world. |
How did you come up with your startup idea? | jeandenis: I’ll start. Basic process: Applying solution from one domain to another + luck.When I was working as a corporate lawyer, I noticed that both our clients and we could be a lot better at capturing institutional memory. The problem wasn’t that we didn’t have systems in place (we had email search, a wiki, an up-to-date website, top-notch on-staff researchers, etc.), but that there were no incentives for those with knowledge to take half an hour out of their day to contribute this knowledge to the systems. With size, the non-processes that work for smaller firms (coffee break, knowing what everyone’s working on, etc.) were failing.From /. to StackOverflow via HN, Foursquare, etc. there are many examples and templates of how to use karma and game-elements (e.g. badges) to incentivize contributions. Moreover, many of these elements should be compatible with the work environment as they would permit management to identify contributors (high-karma and badges) and domain experts (subject-area of contribution versus job-title). The incentive-element should be very strong: if management is on board, employees are on board (e.g., if karma matters as part of one’s work-review).The second part in my process was to speak to future clients (management at mid-sized companies), users (lower-level employees who would use the system) and other entrepreneurs to gauge whether the problem was actually a need (i.e., would anyone be willing to pay for it). |
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