instruction stringlengths 4 105 | output stringlengths 8 56.7k |
|---|---|
Using alternative keyboard layouts? | Eliezer: Dvorak. It's not faster but your fingers get a lot less tired. Cured my carpal tunnel syndrome. |
How to write a business plan for an Internet startup? | Stalemelon9: Business Plan Pro is AMAZING :-) |
Have you seen any open source HN clones? | yan: HN is open source itself. Are you looking for a clone specifically? |
Have you seen any open source HN clones? | mixmax: Reddit is open source.http://code.reddit.com/ |
How to write a business plan for an Internet startup? | hamgav: To clarify, I work for a software consulting company. The potential investors would be the directors of this company. They themselves, have sold a startup for millions... What would u do? |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | ctingom: Wow, this looks great. Just signed up. |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | alex_c: I know the guys who made this, they've been working hard on it for over a year. I'm curious what news.yc thinks. |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | imp: Looks really cool. I don't travel much, but next time I do I'll give it a try. |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | siong1987: You definitely need a tagline on what the site is doing straight below the TOP LEFT corner. No many people will click into the "what is zipalong" link.If I didn't get to the site from YC news, I will think that it is just another photo site rather than a travel site.It's clever that you put the logo at the top right corner. But, it may hurt the usability because users tend to think that logo should be at the top left corner of the site. It is good to innovate but sometimes it is even better to follow the norm since most of the sites put the logo at the top left corner.Anyway, I have no time to review the site now. I have to leave my office now. Will let you know once I get back to my home. |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | tc7: Looks cool. I signed up. Going to have an API?I like the icons/graphics. |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | soundsop: Allow people to use your site before signing up. This is a recording. |
Using alternative keyboard layouts? | sctb: I could possibly be inclined to be interested in an alternate keyboard layout, but the prospect of adapting my Emacs keybindings makes me curl into the fetal position. |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | akronim: Those photos on the home page map get all the attention, buy aren't clickable? (not that I didn't try...) |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | timcederman: I have no idea what this does better than TripIt/TripAdvisor/<insert travel site here> or why I would want to use it. |
How do you read? (And Yellowstone is a supervolcano) | raamdev: I find remembering the images that the text created helps me recall the smaller details. For example, using the size of Rhode Island and the height of cirrus clouds easily painted a vivid image in my head. I'll remember that image in the future and the context it was used, but not necessarily the smaller details like "125 miles down in the Earth", or "forty-five miles across".However, if I want to remember those smaller details, then consciously linking them to the vivid image makes recalling them a lot easier whenever I recall the image.I believe this is the same reason why learning new languages is much easier when we're surrounded by people who speak them. When we can link pieces of the language to various interactions in the real world, our brain then has visual stimuli to connect various bits of the language with in our brain. Of course everyone is unique and what works for one person may not be optimal for the other. |
Creative TLD Use? | brk: I'm not a big fan of "trite" urls making use of .us, .me, .foo extensions unless it's for a trivial application (ie: non commercial). Trying to tell someone "Have you used delicious?... No, DEL dot icio dot US. No, it's in the .us tld, with del. instead of www. Here, I'll write it down for you. Fuck it..."For the education market, which IME, is not exactly at the forefront of technology understanding in a lot of cases, I wouldn't get too creative there :) |
Creative TLD Use? | jm4: I think it's kind of lame to have a site about education with some made up variation of the word 'education' as the name. It's fine to use a made up word with no meaning. It's fine to use a play on words. It's also ok to use some completely unrelated word (like delicious or Amazon). This is a variation of a real word that carries with it the meaning of the root word, but it's the kind of word a stupid person might use while thinking it makes him sound intelligent. I don't think it's a great fit and probably doesn't convey the type of image you're going for. That's just my opinion so take it with a grain of salt. |
Creative TLD Use? | yan: If you got the .com, I don't see a reason for having the .us. It might have been cool a few years ago, but there's no substitute for you.com. I mean, keep it around as an alias just in case, but I would definitely use the .com as the primary page. |
Creative TLD Use? | aaroneous: It has always been confusing, but now is considered gimmicky and tired. |
Incorporate before launch? | aaroneous: You don't need to, but you've already stated that you want to - so go for it. It'll cost you though (time//money), and that might be prohibitive for a hobby company. |
Creative TLD Use? | makecheck: Considering most people think in terms of .com, and browsers let you type "xyz" to guess "xyz.com", you're really better off choosing a word that users can type without remembering where the dots go. |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | paul7986: Loaded the page saw a pretty cool photo continent collage, but was unable to interact with such and there was no text to tell me briefly what zipalong does.As stated above, it's best to allow use of your site without requiring sign up or have facebook/open social sign in if it requires sign up.good luck! |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | bemmu: I feel like the site isn't really selling its benefits to me. I do organize some trips, but I wouldn't use this now because I don't want to bother everyone by telling them to sign up to this service, when I don't really know what the benefit would be.Travel is such an interesting area, mostly because it is seeing so little new innovation that I feel there must be something big lurking just around the corner. There are few well known types of sites, such as review / listing aggregator sites, flight price comparison engines, these organize-your-own-trip sites (that seem to be quite niche) but it is so rare to see any new ideas. The only really new thing I've found is SeatGuru, which lets you find the best seats, which really provides useful information for the travel planning process. Those Facebook applications where you can show your travels on a map in your profile were a nice idea too.Anything I'm missing? |
Creative TLD Use? | arockwell: Creative tlds are really confusing, don't do it. For the longest time I didn't use del.icio.us because I couldn't remember how the domain name was broken up.I'm on the fence for the name educatious itself. Can you provide any details on what type of service is the website?
I tend to prefer names that are two spelled out words or a completely made up word. |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | snprbob86: Seems like a cool site so far :-)The itinerary "Summary" on this sample trip <http://zipalong.com/zip/Trip.page?tripId=42626548> was quite long. The map neatly fits the browser window, but I have to scroll down past it to see all of the summary. Also, the content of the summary seems quite verbose. Many of the entries in this list could be represented more compactly while still managing to improve comprehension.I think that this itinierary view has more than a few things in common with Google Maps' public transportation directions. Plan a bus trip around your favorite supported US city and see if that inspires you to improve this view. |
Would you solve programming puzzles to apply for jobs? | jleyank: Strikes me as pretty easy to game, as Google's MY friend... Might have some use for hiring fresh-from-school, but anything more senior's best done by reputation rather than brain teasers. True rockstars would not stoop to proving it - imagine asking Linus to play such a game. |
How do you read? (And Yellowstone is a supervolcano) | MaysonL: Yellowstone has seen a lot of quake activity lately, btw.:
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2009/01/05/yell... |
Would you solve programming puzzles to apply for jobs? | cardmagic: But assuming I figured out a way to make it hard to game |
Is this a DMCA takedown? | answerly: I have dealt with these type of folks before and DMCA threats mean very little to them. What hurts them is getting de-listed/penalized in search engines, particularly Google. I would suggest reporting to Google's web spam team. You can access the Google web spam form through Google webmaster tools. |
Is this a DMCA takedown? | calbers: IANAL, this is simply a case of copy write infringement, not a violation of the DMCA - which prevents the dissemination of information with circumvents an owner's copyright. They stole your content, plain and simple. |
Do you criticize? | 11ren: > it's like a drugI think criticizing is enticing because it gives a feeling of superiority, without the hard work and risk of mistakes... and risk of criticism. Even more insidiously drug-like is that habitual criticizing makes one more reluctant to take those risks oneself, because one is more self-critical, and one expects criticism."It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | kirpekar: Very nice UI. Unfortunately very commonplace idea. |
Would you solve programming puzzles to apply for jobs? | Jebdm: It'd be cool, but there are a few things to worry about:- Bugs in the system are dangerous; for instance, if I did my quiz in an hour but it got submitted as two, my job opportunity could be lost- People will get around your anti-cheating methods- People will practice or memorize solutions to your quiz
(while there's no problem with practicing, this allows people who are good at solving your quiz but bad at programming in general to get through)- Code comparison may not be useful, especially since a lot of tasks will lend themselves to being expressed in just a few ways which most code will use- Defining a useful metric for "how good your code is" is tricky, possibly impossibleIt'd be especially good if your quizzes asked for things that needed to be implemented anyways. It'd be a nice, cheap way to build up an open-source code repository.Honestly, I'd probably do the quizzes just for fun. Now that I think about it, something similar already exists which I do play for fun: http://projecteuler.net/Altogether, it sounds like a good idea if you can get the details right. |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | pmjordan: I'm getting this after a long wait: The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request GET /proxy/FrontPage.page.
Reason: Error reading from remote server |
Would you solve programming puzzles to apply for jobs? | babyshake: It sounds like a good idea, but it probably would only work well for junior programmers. I'm working on something similar in a couple ways, but not related to programming. |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | jwilliams: I signed up:+ve: very slick and liked the design a lot.-ve: whilst the UI was slick I found it a bit clunky. It took too many clicks to achieve things, particularly adding an Itinerary - I think being able to blast a bunch of cities into a text box would be the way I'd like to start. |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | scott_s: As others have mentioned, you desperately need to explain what you do on the front page. Once I understood what your site is, my first thought was "Facebook for traveling."Now the hard part. What do you provide that people can't already do on Facebook? This is what you need to stress. |
Creative TLD Use? | pclark: Educatious isn't easily spelt, I'm not really keen.. |
Would you solve programming puzzles to apply for jobs? | barbie17: Something like this already exists: TopCoder. They are pretty well known and have a good reputation, so they will be hard to compete against. With that said, however, there are a lot of things that can be improved: (like what you hinted at) you can have each company submit their own problem and make it more open, etc. If you are going to run with this idea, good luck! |
Is this a DMCA takedown? | wmf: http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2008/05/15/takedown-faq/I've seen a DMCA takedown template somewhere, but I can't find it right now. |
Is this a DMCA takedown? | jreposa: It seems that it's a scraper site with all content stolen from around the web. If you go to the vevz site, there are a ton of blog posts copied verbatim (links intact on most of them).Also, I just realized... Who uses a four letter domain name for this type of stuff? |
Creative TLD Use? | babyshake: Are you in the bay area? There's a few education startups around here you may want to know about. |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | sam_in_nyc: I took the tour and from what I saw it seems like an amazing service with loads of features. I also love the design (from what I saw in the thumbnails). Agreed that you should switch the logo and courtesy nav... logo on top left, nav on top right.This is a no brainer: Make the whole continental thing, as well as the logo (only on the front page) link to the tour. I got to the site and didn't know what to do. As a travel site, guess what's the last thing you want your users to feel when using your site? Lost.As per the tour (I have no need to sign up for this service right now), it looks incredible. All the thumbnails look beautiful and the site looks loaded with really awesome features. Unfortunately, the stupid slideshow kept moving forward even when I explicitly clicked on a number. Not a big deal because only a small percentage of people will care enough to view a picture in the slideshow anyway, but it wouldn't hurt to fix.If you really want to impress users, there's no substitute for a live demo. Lead users to the tour, and on each page of the tour, link them to the demo account: "see it live in a demo" If you're worried about crap in the demo, just have the demo reset itself every hour.If it were up to me, I'd keep the continental thing, but only as a background. I'd put a nice faded box on top of it with the following:1 sentence telling me what you do: "[logo]zipalong[/logo] lets you organize and share your trips" and two buttons: "live demo" and "tour of features". |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | gommm: Wow, looks slick and nice
Just curious, how many people have been working on this?One small thing is that you should maybe allow people to view a sample trip from your main page (maybe also a link to something like http://zipalong.com/zip/TripAnimation.page?tripId=42887183)
When I arrived on the main page, I tried clicking on the map and it didn't work and I would have closed the page if I wasn't coming from here to give feedback. I almost didn't click on the What is Zipalong? link.
Your tour is slick, well made and made me want to sign up though but I usually prefer seeing a real use case rather than a tour usually. |
Using alternative keyboard layouts? | awfabian: I switched to Dvorak about 10 years ago. I never regained my full QWERTY speed (which was 100+ WPM--from what I hear, the faster you type, the harder it is to regain your full speed. I type fast enough that I don't care that much, but it's still annoying), and always find it annoying when I have to use a QWERTY keyboard. I found no particular demonstrable benefit (more ergonomic, better speed), except that it's more aesthetically pleasing... your fingers don't fly around as much. If you type QWERTY after typing Dvorak, you feel like you're trying to make your fingers fly around some computer for a 1950s science fiction movie (exaggerated, pointless).Overall, I don't really regret it or think it was a good decision. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't bother, but I'll be using Dvorak for life. |
How to write a business plan for an Internet startup? | anamax: > I've been approached by some investors who want to invest in my startup. They've asked me to put together a business plan - listing costs/revenue etc.Are said investors paying enough for what they want? Or, would you be better off doing something else?I'm assuming that you have enough of a plan to run your biz and enough accounting to know what's happened in the past.If that information is not what they want (and "not what they want" includes "we need it in a different format") or they don't understand what you've got (assuming that you're willing to share a redacted version), why do you want them as investors? |
What would you want (or Not want) on a dead-simple free niche jobs site | medianama: "Things I see on the pay sites that should be left out: - letting job seekers post their resumes"Not sure about this one. Recruiters will pay a lot of money for access to resume bank, for a niche that isn't available anywhere else... and you don't need to do much to implement this feature - just a form with file upload. |
Freelancing | nazgulnarsil: don't rely on the internet for finding clients. the good jobs are either never advertised through the regular channels or don't stay up for long if they are. |
Review my holiday side-project (clipclipsave.com) | pclark: I love the logoI got an SSL error when I signed up, looks extra scary in Firefox.It wasn't obvious how to make a coupon in the admin area, maybe it should be a tab as well as a link?The themes are awesome, but make the preview open in a new windowIf you simply made the currency logo user selectable you'd instantly increase your possible audience from USA to everywhere. I'm UK based.Clicking "edit" on themes does nada. When creating a new theme add some advice for the user - not too distracting, remember there is text overlay, what size? what image type?Maybe allow me to change the colour/font of the text?overall - this is awesome. I'd use it (if above tweaks were made and GBP currency) # my mother runs an online/in store retail biz. |
Freelancing | danw: Best place to find clients is through friends, referrals and people you meet in the real world. Time to get networking. |
feedback on my trip and travel planner site | AlexeyMK: Show, don't tell. Show me a diary that somebody wrote recently so that I can imagine myself using this.I do like the integrated-ness of the diaries + photos functionality. Deep Facebook integration would be great (either add to my Facebook photos + notes or at least post as shared items to my profile).What do your competitors look like?I'm thinking of using this for a trip I'm taking in the summer (http://str8.to/around-the-world-at-twice-the-speed-of-fogg) |
An acceptable cross-platform GUI toolkit? | anthony_barker: wxWidgets or QT either in python or c++ are fine.
SWT with jython
Flash? |
VC are calling later today, how much should I reveal? | opticksversi: We need to research VC's before we talk to them. Try researching your VC's by talking to the people who have been funded by them..There is no NDA at this point.You are thinking of asking a VC to sign an NDA?.http://robertplattbell.blogspot.com/2007/10/to-nda-or-not-to...Simply put, when you sign an NDA, you are signing a CONTRACT, and any contract may obligate you to perform certain acts. More importantly, for each contract you sign, you are exposing yourself to potential litigation liability for breach of contract.Thus, as a large company, if you sign hundreds or thousands of NDA contracts, you are incrementally exposing yourself to more and more liability. In a country where you can get sued for serving hot coffee, the odds of getting sued for signing all those NDA’s is pretty high.So there is no point in a large corporation agreeing to sign an NDA with a solo inventor, unless the NDA is one of those bogus “disclosure agreements” referred to above.If you think about it, it makes sense. And if you were to advise a company, you’d advise them NOT to sign an NDA. For example, suppose you represent a carmaker. Most of the ideas submitted will relate to cars. If your client signs all these NDA’s with potential inventors, chances are, one of them will submit an idea similar or identical to an idea already under development in your client’s lab. You’ll end up getting sued, as the inventor will claim you “stole” the idea. Better off to advise your client NOT to sign any NDA’s.Venture Capitalists (VC’s) historically have refused to sign an NDA, and in fact, to ask them to do so is considered an insult and a sure way to put an end to your “elevator pitch”. Again, since VC’s listen to hundreds, if not thousands of invention pitches over the years, the chance that they will hear the same idea more than once (or a similar idea) is pretty great. If they sign NDA after NDA, they slowly paint themselves into a corner, to the point where they cannot back any new idea without the chance of some previous inventor claiming a breach of an NDA.Frankly, the proposition of an NDA is a bit absurd. Someone comes to you and says they want to tell you a secret. BUT, before they will, they want you to sign a contract agreeing to draconian consequences if you tell the secret to anyone else. Suppose the secret is not all that great? Suppose everyone already knows about it, or more to the point, someone in your company does? It really is a risk not worth taking.So, there are various good reasons why people will refuse to sign an NDA. If you think about it, chances are, you’d refuse to sign one, too! |
Once you open source, can you take it back? | makecheck: I am not a lawyer.But my understanding is that the copyright holders have the right to change the license.Once people contribute to the project, they, too, are copyright holders. If a contributor does not approve of the change to the license, he or she should have the ability to remove his contributions from the product (or otherwise relinquish copyright) before it is forked.In addition, anyone is free to fork from the last "free" version, which could cause its own problems for you. The free software community could decide that they much prefer the free version, significantly enhance that fork, and leave your commercial product looking dull and not worth the money. |
VC are calling later today, how much should I reveal? | jwesley: Don't reveal that you wouldn't mind the investment. Act like you have no want/need for it. |
Once you open source, can you take it back? | bayes: If you own the copyright to the whole project (because all the other contributors assigned copyright in their contributions to you) you can presumably distribute it under any licence you want. But you can't prevent other people continuing to distribute it under the GPL.If (as seems more likely) the other contributors still hold the copyright to their own contributions, your only rights to their code are those granted under the GPL, so you couldn't distribute it under any other terms.At any rate, those are my thoughts, but IANAL. |
Once you open source, can you take it back? | noodle: you would have to fork it, or build something on top of it the OS version.there are a lot of companies that have an OS version of something, and then a premium version, which consists basically of proprietary scripts and upgrades that hook into the OS version and improve it. they're not touching the actual OS package itself, but selling something on top of it. |
VC are calling later today, how much should I reveal? | rishi: enough to get investment |
Once you open source, can you take it back? | cperciva: At first I thought that it's his project, if he wants to un-open-source it, I guess he can. But then I considered the contributions that others have made to the project. Can he un-open-source those?No, but many companies (and the FSF) demand that contributors assign copyright to any open source contributions they make. Sometimes they make excuses about how owning copyright in all the code makes it easier for them to go after license infringers, but that's just an excuse; what they really want is the ability to relicense contributors' work in the future. |
VC are calling later today, how much should I reveal? | cperciva: Be very careful. It sounds to me like the VC is considering investing in one of your competitors and they want to use you as 'due diligence' to verify whether there's enough of a market for them to invest in.If I were you, I'd go into the conversation with the working assumption that everything you say is going to be passed on to your competitors. |
VC are calling later today, how much should I reveal? | walesmd: Don't reveal the fact that they are calling today and you have no idea what you are going to tell them. |
VC are calling later today, how much should I reveal? | pumper: 1. go to the funded.com and do some research on them.
2. find out if you are talking to an associate or a partner. I wouldnt reveal much to an associate as they are almost definetly doing research. Either way, ask them up front what their intentions are
3. Decide ahead of time what you want to tell them. I would think about a couple of interesting tidbits that might hook them into taking a meeting with you.Good luck! |
VC are calling later today, how much should I reveal? | invisible: I would only tell them your business model plans and that you're planning to make X amount this year (or that you made X last year). Don't go too far into your plans for 2009 unless they're public knowledge. New customers can be explained by $ amounts, not names. Only discuss your technology if it's common knowledge again (or if it doesn't matter to you that your competitors know). Be frank you'd love to go down the possibilities of an investment but you're not giving them an open door into your company until after there is a signed contract for the investment. |
VC are calling later today, how much should I reveal? | sachinag: Seriously, if you don't think they want to fund you, then cancel the call. |
VC are calling later today, how much should I reveal? | jfarmer: I was going to type a long list of things to do, but it really boiled down to this: what can this call get you?Who is calling? Is it someone who can put a term sheet in your hand next week? Or is it an associate out to impress the higher-ups at the firm? How good is the firm itself? World-class? Mid-level? etc.Know who you're talking to and what they can possibly give you. If you're giving them something, get something in return.And keep in mind you don't have to take this call if you don't want to. Ask them what the call is about and if it doesn't sound sincere just back out gracefully. |
Once you open source, can you take it back? | mdasen: Yes and no.Let's say I put something under the GPL and you download the source. Later, I regret that and don't allow more people to download the source. You (as someone who has downloaded it) can still forever use, transmit, etc. it under the GPL. So, people that want a copy of the source can get it from you even if they can't get it from me - and there is absolutely nothing that mandates I continue to give out the source if it's mine. I then add to it and make a cool Project 2.0 that's closed only and based off that old GPL code. That's perfectly fine.However, let's say that I took some GPL code, modified it and distributed it. Now the codebase isn't all my code - it's also partly one or many other people's code. I can stop distributing it all together, but I can't distribute it and not the source code. BUT, what if part of my 2.0 closed source version development was eliminating all the GPL code from it! Then I can make it closed.Basically, if the copyright is your copyright, you have free range. You can't take away the rights of someone who already has the code under the GPL, but you can stop the GPL thing from going forward (unless the community builds a better fork off your old GPL code). However, if you're using other people's code in your program, you're stuck with the GPL unless you can get the authors of the other code to exempt you.So, he can't un-open-source the contributions of the other people, but he could replace them. One of the flaws in the GPL is that you have to wait for one of the author's whose copyright is infringed to sue. Courts have sometimes held that intended third party beneficiaries have standing, but that's a lot more murky since you're then claiming that the original author created something for your benefit that an intermediary is stopping you from using. |
SEO for web apps | qhoxie: http://www.seomoz.org/ is the best resource I know of. Lot's of good articles and discussion. |
Who do you follow on Twitter? | yan: I follow a few people from the security industry (ahem tptacek), a few people from #hn and some cocoa devs out of interest (gemmell and others)I really should follow more, but don't have much time to seek out yet. |
SEO for web apps | akronim: I'll take a quick stab at it:
1) hopefully that's landing pages. You don't have to worry about SEO on the internal pages that google can't see.
2) no, since I assume they just all redirect to the login page, and you want people to be able to find that i guess
3) pick one and 301 redirect to the other
4) Not if the pages can be found via links. Probably not that useful unless you have frequently updated content like a blog might. |
Once you open source, can you take it back? | tstegart: I don't believe un-open source is a concept that can exist under past versions of the GPL. If you read the GPL, it has no time limit on the license. And the contract also has no termination conditions except for one (which the people downloading/modifying the program control).Therefore, it appears an old version GPL license is a neverending license without a way for the original person to end it. So no, he cannot open-source any of it, even his own original work. He can stop distributing it, but since he gave a license to others to distribute it, they can just distribute the original. And unless they break the one term of the license, he cannot stop that.Clearly, this is where you run into the concept of the GPL. It was meant to ensure that original works of software would always be available to use and modify. "Always available" are the key words. He is out of luck.The new GPL (v.3) appears to grant a license for the term of copyright. Not sure what that means. But, it also gives a license to someone you distribute the work to from the orignal copyright holder. To me, this means if you try to distribute a project with someone else's modifications, the person receiving the project gets a GPL license on those modifications, not your expensive license. Since the original work can also be distributed, essentially this means the whole thing can't be un-open-sourced.Basically, the only thing I think he can do it make his own modifications, and release those for a fee. He cannot stop anyone from releasing the original or the original with others modifications. |
VC are calling later today, how much should I reveal? | swombat: "So, what can I help you with?""We're wondering how you've sized the market.""I'm afraid that's confidential information. I can't really tell you that until we get to know you better.""Umm, ok. How about your biggest name clients?""I obviously can't reveal that kind of information at this stage."(etc)Option 1) "Look, we really want to invest in you, that's why I'm doing this research. How can I make you more comfortable talking to me?"Option 2) "Ok... thanks. I need to go now, do you mind if I call you back later?" |
How-to Implement Machine Learning? | RiderOfGiraffes: Learn Python. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | run4yourlives: Not Bad.I wasn't sure what it was all about until I actually completed the quiz and started looking at "rooms". You may want to fix that somehow.Also, I found some issues with the way the room objects were displayed (after you have a style)... seemed a little mish-mashed.Looks like a good thing to present to Architecture digest or House and Home or one of those magazines... timing might not be the best with the recession though.Good luck to you! |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | daveambrose: Why did you choose a lightbox for sign-up/login? |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | pedalpete: I too wasn't sure what it was all about, but (and most sites should take a hint here) you made it very easy to figure it out. I clicked the button and off it went.I'm curios as to why you went with two different styles though. When I start I have radio buttons and a submit on the right of the picture, then you go to the voting blocks on the left of the picture.
Why the change?
It would maybe be better to go with the more familiar (Hot or Not) style of selections below the picture. |
VC are calling later today, how much should I reveal? | mooneater: Many thanks for the comments. The conversation was short and sweet, I heard them out, we didnt say too much, and they said to call them back if we want to pursue it further. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | rmason: Now I know it wouldn't occur to most of the people on here but when I tried to take the quiz with IE7 the site hung as soon as I answered the first question. So 80% of your visitors will never know what it's all about. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | biohacker42: I liked it a lot.But I did stop at entering my email address.Sites like HN have spoiled me with their fast and easy signup.
I'd make giving one's email optional.Remember signup is one of the biggest hurdles any website has.
The easier you make it the more people will do it.Especially if someone is just playing around and has not created dozens of rooms, the worst that could happen is they take the test again.And I must say the test is fast, short and fun, perfect.P.S.Browsed around some more and came back to add to my comment.If I'm going to be buying furniture over the internet I am going to need A LOT of technical information.And A LOT of pictures, not just different angles of nicely made bed, but the assembly process as well.P.P.S.Bug?: http://www.bobbyberkhome.com/product/bedroom/19393/modloft-w... |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | alex_c: Good implementation!I ran it past my gf (who watches a lot more home decoration shows than me), she didn't like the quiz results. She felt that they were all over the place and a bit contradictory.I felt that the quiz was too long :p I was also a bit confused about how many more questions there were - I didn't really understand the potential/eliminated stuff.I agree with run4yourlives, the objects in the room were really mish-mashed. Having it as a simple 2D representation of the furniture isn't very satisfying - the most jarring example being that the rug is just an upright rectangle...I'm not part of the target audience, but I think you have something pretty interesting. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | jollyjerry: I liked how I could immediately start using the StyleEngine. The navigation was great and I had no trouble using it. I thought the 'ruled out' could be a little more prominent so I could see my progress. Definitely a slick site though. Best of luck! |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | okeumeni: Nice implementation, good concept. My only suggestion you should not force people to take the quiz to get to the point of what is that the app does.One thing surprising is not the fact that the team met on HN, it is the fact that only David is a hacker. I didn’t know that HN was also a meeting spot for interior designers. Really good to know : - ) |
How-to Implement Machine Learning? | anuraggoel: http://pyml.sourceforge.net/ |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | mixmax: Looks nice. I'm into this sort of music, so I'll use it for a few days and tell you if I have any problems/changes/ideas:-) |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | sidsavara: I liked it - fun! Tweeted itIs there a way to tell my friends my results? Not via email, I want a direct link to tweet/IM etc |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | mixmax: In the style engine I would move the options (love it, like it, etc.) over to the right of the picture, or underneath it. And make it look more like clickable buttons.The placement and design makes it look like a menu. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | midnightmonster: This is clever, and I think it gets a pretty good read on me, but my real style (as judged by actual purchases) is cheap and/or used--so I'm probably not a target consumer here.In the room display (which is odd, but the problem is hard), my apache area rug showed up somewhat smaller than my great plains porcelain table lamp, and a throw pillow dwarfed a sofa. Giving some better sense of scale is the only definite improvement I can think of. That and don't let pictures almost completely overlap, as some candle holders do on a leaf bowl the second time I loaded the page.ETA: Clicking to buy a "Deep River Rectangle Cocktail" table went through the affiliate program link and to the retailer, but it dropped me on the front page. |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | omarish: I love this.A couple of things.1.1 The invite a friend form is broken.
1.2 Could I invite multiple friends using the same form?2.1 Why are you searching for music like this at Amazon.com? I think you would have much better luck using beatport.com.I just started using this right now; I'll keep you posted when I have more comments.Thanks for creating this. |
How-to Implement Machine Learning? | aneesh: Machine Learning is not a language-specific thing. Maybe Python makes it easy out-of-the box (I haven't used Python -- I don't know), but you do it in whatever language you want.Many languages have modules you can just use. And of course you could just write your native implementation of an algorithm in you language of choice.Actually, nowadays some of the databases come with data mining algorithms built-in -- I know Oracle and SQL Server have this functionality.So basically, lots of options. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | mikexstudios: Very nice. Excellent design. The quiz was fun and easy to complete.I would like to see a list of specific styles and their representative pictures though. That way, I can see the names of other styles that I might like or dislike.Like biohacker42, I stopped at the signup. |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | alex_c: Looks great, but... I can't seem to get any sound out of it? I click the Play button, and absolutely nothing happens.It's disappointing, since I actually want to use it :pTried it in Chrome and Firefox 3 so far.Small side note: log me in right after I register! Especially if you don't require email confirmation. It's a minor one-time irritation, but any friction you can remove, especially at the beginning of a user's experience, is worth it. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | Jasber: I thought it was confusing how the quiz controls changed after I answered the first question.You should make that consistent.Otherwise nice work. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | NoBSWebDesign: Wow, I really like this site. Some of the graphics leave a little to be desired (the logo and the greater than sign on the "see your results" page). But, I really liked the flow and interaction. It did take me a second though to figure out what was going on when I started the quiz, because the buttons jumped from the right of the image to the left and were replaced with a bunch of text on the right. I thought I had been taken away from the quiz and was a bit confused.Very sweet though. I'm going to pass it on definitely. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | andrewljohnson: Pretty great, it was spot on with me. |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | Tangurena: The blog page gave me a 406 error in internet explorer (ver number 7.0.6001.1800. vista). |
How-to Implement Machine Learning? | aschobel: Mahout looks like a really interesting project which has a bunch of Java machine learning algorithm implementations build on top of Hadoop.http://lucene.apache.org/mahout/You can glean some good idea from there. Hadoop has a bunch of python libraries if you want to go that route and write it yourself." In class we use MATLAB, but I'm slightly hesitant because I want to create some cool web applications."It shouldn't really mater, just write a Thrift Service and you can call MATLAB from whatever your favorite language is. |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | slig: Somehow, after I click to listen a track, it breaks the "back button".
ff3.05 osx |
Does this idea exist and who wants it? | rjprins: Ideas are not worthless! Good ideas can have potential, but as long as they're untested they're not worth money; they are worthy of pursuit. |
Review our webapp (Sproost); team met on HN | DJN: Lovely site.. well done |
Review our startup: Mugasha - A better way to listen to electronic dance music | rjprins: The title of the 'forogt password' page is misspelled :)I love this by the way. I always listen to long trance mixes while progging.. |
Does this idea exist and who wants it? | gsiener: Sounds good until Yahoo! integrates it into their site... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.