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What can't you do in Excel? | misterbwong: Excel's core functionality is great, but many of its extended functions are hard to use and/or limited. In addition to adding functionality, you could revamp some of the functions that excel currently doesn't do well. My list would be:1. Multi-user experience - Better workbook sharing and editing.2. Better scripting (already mentioned above)3. More than 65536 rows!4. Queries/Lookups - It may be that I'm not proficient enough, but it seems like VLOOKUP and pivot tables can be done A LOT better.FYI our old company was considering buying a product to extend excel functionality. Probably a possible competitor. Check it out: http://www.businessobjects.com/product/catalog/xcelsius/ |
What to do with a spare computer? | pclark: Boxee. |
What to do with a spare computer? | ericb: Make it a mythtv box?http://www.mythtv.org/ |
What to do with a spare computer? | old-gregg: Ohhh... I've done a lot of interesting things with old computers, including just shooting one with a shotgun, that particular bastard well deserved it though...The coolest project I've done with an old box involved playing with power-on over ethernet. The box I've had was configured (using BIOS) to power up in the middle of the night, send "wake up" packets to other machines (they were turned off), wait for them to power on, incrementally backup up their entire hard drives and power off everything including itself. I would wake up in the morning with all computers powered off. That was fun to watch multiple machines waking up, buzzing their drives and turning off by themselves.These days I never turn anything off though... |
E-mail invites to our closed alpha. How to gather? How to send? | shuleatt: Wufoo is great for this |
Review my startup, colaab - A Silverlight 2 RIA for rich, real-time collaboration | pstatho: Great job! I've only looked at the video though. Your user experience looks quite intuitive which is important. I would continue to work on that. For example, those that say to use Flash for video, well you can detect what the browsers capabilities are.Don't worry too much about the Silverlight installation. If the product is good, that won't be a barrier.I also believe RIA apps are much better than AJAX based apps. |
What to do with a spare computer? | cstejerean: I would buy an LCD monitor and mount it to a wall somewhere in your house. Hook up the computer to it and use it to display photos, show the weather or other useful information. Over time you can add enhancements to it to better suit your needs, for example by turning the display into a touch screen, adding an IR remote, adding a mic+speakers and using skype to turn it into a video phone, etc. |
What to do with a spare computer? | kogir: Storage server. I use Windows Home Server, but OpenSolaris with ZFS would be just as good if you don't need Windows system backups. |
What to do with a spare computer? | trickjarrett: I'd set it up in the guest room as a machine for the guests to use while they're over. They usually just need the Internet and access to a printer. |
What to do with a spare computer? | martian: Electric Sheep makes an amazing screen-saver -- could be a great piece of wall art? Other benefits would be that you'd be contributing to a massive art project and it'd make a great conversation piece: "what's that?", "oh, that's just Harrison Ford dreaming..." |
What to do with a spare computer? | khafra: I have an old box lying around, meself. At first I used it as a file server/experiment (installed FreeBSD and Samba). Now, the drive is getting a little small for that. I'm thinking about- HostAPD and experimenting with different wifi configurations, like one open/one closed network, maybe incorporate RADIUS or something cool.- Try another OS that's intrigued me, like Haiku or Plan 9- Set up a virtual honeynet, maybe connected to a graphic representation like in that one xkcd comic, and watch the malware go |
What to do with a spare computer? | krishnakanthc: I donate the computing power by running BOINC on mine. http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ |
What to do with a spare computer? | ssharp: I turned my old one into a bit of an entertainment machine. My HDTV has a VGA input, so I just hooked it up to the TV. I use it to play old Nintendo games, watch DVDs, iTunes movies, and TV shows off of Hulu. |
What to do with a spare computer? | jbrun: Donate it to a third world country school. microrecycoop.org for example. |
Has Anyone Used SCORE | blurry: I've visited SCORE in New York a few years ago... didn't find them too useful. They did not offer much beyond vague common sense advice, even on those issues where they could have easily been more prepared and specific (incorporating vs. LLC, finding a good accountant, health insurance, etc).It was kind of like visiting a retirement home and talking to some nice folks, pleasant but nothing more. |
What to do with a spare computer? | m0shen: Maybe a pfsense firewall: http://www.pfsense.org/
Handiest feature: VPN servers (OpenVPN and PPTP) |
What to do with a spare computer? | steveplace: Load up boxee on it and connect it to your tv |
What to do with a spare computer? | RobGR: If you don't already have a redundant computer as a backup, consider making the spare share it's disk and using one of the rsync snapshot scripts out there to backup your important stuff regularly. Putting a comprehensive script on it that will get all your email out of your webmail accounts, download any other stuff like pics in your flickr account that you care about, and etc would be a good idea.Put a kill-a-watt on it and see how much power it draws, to consider whether you should leave it on all the time. Booting it up once a week and running the backups might be smarter. As a rough back-of-the-envelope figure, at 11 cents a kilowatt-hour running one watt for a year costs a dollar -- so if it sucks 80 watts sitting their with no monitor (a reasonable figure) that's $80 bucks a year, if you are paying more than 11 cents it is correspondingly more.You can never have too many backups, and in my experience having the data on a complete separate machine is more reliable and easier to recover from than USB disks or other schemes. If everything else dies, just flip on the backup machine and start working from there, presuming it has the necessary software installed. |
What to do with a spare computer? | compay: Aquarium?http://www.unlikelymoose.com/more/macquarium/macquarium_gene... |
What to do with a spare computer? | travisjeffery: If you do any web development build your own server or build one just to store your files. |
What can't you do in Excel? | mattmcknight: I think something that mixes structured and tabular data together would be great. If you had a worksheet style
"dynamically typed" structure that was supplemented by some structured tables of data that could be easily referenced and updated by Excel style formulas, it would be very useful. In this way the spreadsheet sits as a layer on top of several database tables that can be shared between users. I sort of imagine the ultra-flexible spreadsheet on one monitor and this floating collection of data tables on the other one. It's a hybrid. |
What can't you do in Excel? | code_devil: 1. create a Table and then have an option to create the corresponding mySQL. (Relation DB Design)2. create a mySQL Dump from the Table Data.3. Other cool MySQL Optimizations. |
What to do with a spare computer? | matthewking: Set it up as a media center with XBMC (http://xbmc.org/) its miles ahead of MythTV or any others that I've come across. |
Review my startup, colaab - A Silverlight 2 RIA for rich, real-time collaboration | johns: I think the intro video is too long. For the intro, skip the sign up part, just get right into it. Try to get it under 5 minutes. And invest in a good microphone. It sounds like you're talking into a tin can. |
What can't you do in Excel? | jherdman: I want access to whatever data is inside the spreadsheet. Currently Excel locks away your data unless you use a library of some sort that may not necessarily be 100% accurate, or capable of a specific feature.Likewise, generating spreadsheets should be easy for 3rd parties. |
What can't you do in Excel? | kul: Excel on the Mac really sucks and I don't really want to install Windows just for that. |
If you were to build a doomsday device, what'd it be? | knieveltech: Stockpile thermite. When sufficient mass is achieved, ignite the lot and burn a hole through the earth's crust. The resulting supervolcanic eruption should end civilization. |
What can't you do in Excel? | knectar: I worked in a consulting firm that had built its entire business on Excel "apps", heavy, clever VBA-driven rich GUI interface spreadsheets applications that were replicated time the number of people in the client organization. While a bit wonky, and web-naive in way, these app's proved to be surprisingly resilient and flexible for "lowly" Excel (lowly only in the hierarchy of "legit" programming environments). From this experience, I would say that what would have been a profoundly useful tool, would be a software conversion tool, that could capture some of the logic, or UI of such "apps" and webify them, or at least convert some of the syntax into better object oriented code. This is of course a tall order, if not impossible. The dream of automating quality code may be nigh impossible, but it would be a huge business value even if executed only in part. |
If you were to build a doomsday device, what'd it be? | brk: Simple. A basic worm that infects IOS-based (Cisco) devices and renders them all inoperable at a coordinated time.No Intarwebs would either equal doomsday, or massive social liberation. |
What to do with a spare computer? | jaytee_clone: Donate it to a kid in need. |
What to do with a spare computer? | johngunderman: http://xkcd.com/350/ |
If you were to build a doomsday device, what'd it be? | johngunderman: Ha, my cousin plans to build a huge fleet of zepplins that play Breathe by Prodigy as he nukes the cities of the world. I'm just hoping he's not serious. (Though that song would be fitting for nuking cities :-) ) |
What to do with a spare computer? | PKeeble: I installed lots of disks in Raid 5 into my spare machine, stuck it in a cupboard and use it as a file/backup and UPNP server.All my other machines use the drives on their for storage and backup and use small and fast drives such as the WD Raptor instead of something like the Spinpoint 1TB drive.Improves the performance of my real desktop and puts my data under linux rather than windows making remote access possible if I want to take the risk, |
What to do with a spare computer? | abdulhaq: The big problem is power consumption - do you really want that ~200W power draw, 24hrs a day, burning up the environment?Giving it to someone who needs it for their main PC is the best bet. |
5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? | racyrick: Damn. You must have been making a ton of dough to save that much money. Kudos to you. I think I've got about a 1 month buffer, maybe 2.You can survive on Lentils and rice, toss in a little Quinoa and a lime and you could go a few years on pennies. Of course, what you are outlining is that you have a life to attend to.Well, then get a job that pays or demand pay from your current job. |
Review my startup, colaab - A Silverlight 2 RIA for rich, real-time collaboration | Angostura: I've had a quick play and set up an account.There's a few usability quirks that immediately sprung to mind;I didn't find it particularly intuitive to actually dive in use:1. When you first set up account and start a workspace, the first thing it asks you to do is choose the people you want to share it with. This seems "wrong" to me. I would expect to be able to set up a workplace, add documents and wotnot and only then be bothered about who I wanted to invite in.2. I then tried to work out how to add an item to a workspace... there were buttons on mouse over for Manage, Share and Delete - so I sat there trying to find 'Add document'. It wasn't until I eventually clicked on the workspace that I 'entered' it. I wasn't really expecting that 'enter to do something' metaphor. How about a mouse-over 'click to enter message'.3. Add video resource - how about some clue as to the formats you accept. None that I tried. that's for sure. It's a bit distracting to see the Web page URL input go scrolling by on the way to the file chooser.4. Thumbnails of the documents would be good.5. The Black pallette really isn't to my taste.6. The big one... without the ability to actually edit Word or Excel files (as opposed to annotate), it isn't really a collaborative tool in my opinion, I'll probably keep using Google Docs or Drop Box and I suspect others will too. Sorry, it's a lovely idea apart from that. I'm not sure I can even see myself using it with the free account. |
What to do with a spare computer? | epi0Bauqu: The people we bought our house from left an old P-333 GW2000. I turned it into a smoothwall (http://www.smoothwall.org/). The routers the ISPs have drawbacks like not supporting enough simultaneous connections (usually do to RAM constraints). So I dropped their router, put the smoothwall in its place, and never looked back. |
What to do with a spare computer? | mixmax: I have an old IBM X21 that served me well for many years, and is now enjoying its retirement in a drawer. I'm thinking about bringing it back and putting it on the steering console of my boat (Live on a boat) where it should perform the following operations:- control lighting, I'm looking into installing RGB LED's and so it would be ultracool to be able to have a program that can actually control the LED's, with different shades of colors, turning down the light when the sun goes up, etc.- monitor engine vitals. A friend of mine has done some really cool small wireless data recorders that can be used (http://dzl.dk/projects/electronics/102logger/102logger.html)- power usage. When I'm sailing everything runs on batteries, so I really want to monitor how much power I'm using and how much I've got left.- Charts. I'. thinlking about a webbased application that shows the boat in the middle of Google maps, so I know what's around me when I'm out sailing. There's usually 3G wireless when you're close to land.- Music. Last.fm when I'm on the net, mp3's when I'm out to sea. |
What to do with a spare computer? | lallysingh: If you don't want to give it away, make it a storage machine. Keep it off & safe most of the time, boot it up once a week, let it save your important data, and then shut it off.Pretty hard to hack a computer with no power. Pretty hard to accidentally delete a file from one, too.But, old computer buildup is why I'm looking into getting a local rack, possibly a bladecenter for home use. I can usually use some more power for long-running/heavy-load programs, but I don't want to have that many desktop boxes under my desk. I'd rather just accumulate a local grid. |
If you were to build a doomsday device, what'd it be? | fbbwsa: high fructose corn syrup.obesity becomes the new norm. everyone gets so fat they can't walk around, global production grinds to a halt. Nobody can remember how to hunt or farm since its so long since our sedentary society has engaged in such primitive practices.the irony is that we all die of starvation in the aftermath of our obesity. slow acting doomsday. |
What to do with a spare computer? | mcandre: I've always wanted to turn an old PC into a networked jukebox. Usually, I leave the current OS on it and use it for development testing. A firewall would be good, but don't forget physical security. Many web cams come with activity monitor software... |
Review my startup, colaab - A Silverlight 2 RIA for rich, real-time collaboration | marketer: Looks great! I tried uploading a pptx and it worked flawlessly. This is probably the most impressive demo I've ever seen on HN. |
What to do with a spare computer? | aliasaria: Use LCARS 24 to turn an older computer into an awesome alarm clock / calendar with a startrek theme. (Geeky, yes, but still pretty cool)http://lcars24.sourceforge.net/ |
Review my startup, colaab - A Silverlight 2 RIA for rich, real-time collaboration | toodlestech: I tried signing up and have Silverlight installed. But it just hung at the sign up stage wanting me to install siverlight even though I already had it installed. I even reinstalled it silverlight to no avail. |
What to do with a spare computer? | GrandMasterBirt: When I read the title I immediately knew the answer: bonfire! There is nothing more sattisfying than seeing all that metal/wood/rubber light up on fire the wood will burn, the aluminum will melt, and the rubber will stink to high heaven. Just don't think about how much that computer costs. |
If you were to build a doomsday device, what'd it be? | mindviews: An acoustic device that produces high-amplitude waves at the resonant frequency of the human cranial cavity: head goes pop! |
Review my startup, colaab - A Silverlight 2 RIA for rich, real-time collaboration | geuis: Yeah, Silverlight. No thanks. |
Review my startup, colaab - A Silverlight 2 RIA for rich, real-time collaboration | dantheman: I would like to be able to select the text in the intro boxes, and pretty much anywhere else that isn't a button.Also, I uploaded a pdf -- when looking at documents it's hard to read I'm running @ 1900X1200 and it's difficult to read; I'd work on the interface -- also, I assume you convert the pdf to an image? Why can't I select the pdf's text?Other than that it looks like a good start, and silverlight seems like a good choice.. I recently chose flex for a project, but almost chose silverlight. |
What to do with a spare computer? | pg: Only use the web on that, so you can work without distraction on your current computer. |
What to do with a spare computer? | pierrefar: Some excellent replies here, thank you all!General replies:1. I will not donate this computer as it's the only spare one I have. I do promise though to donate the next spare one I get.2. It's a laptop, so turning it into an aquarium is not going to work. Poor fish.3. The reaon that it's spare and not donatable is that the screen connection is very very loose and so the Force of Duct Tape is what's keeping it alive.What I've decided to do based on the replies:1. Install Linux (of course) and set up a central backup server, attach the house's printer to it, and attach the current external backup drive.2. Turn it into a media server. I'll be trying both MythTV and XBMC and will report later.3. I will donate the spare CPU cycles to Folding@Home, at least initially. BOINC and other distributed computing projects will get time. Maybe I'll cycle once a month.Thank you again :) |
What can't you do in Excel? | GHFigs: An alternative question might be: what are you doing in Excel today for which Excel was not intended?I remember Wil Shipley (of Omni, Delicious Monster) talking about how they originally developed OmniOutliner after noticing that most people were using Excel to make simple lists rather than complex spreadsheets, so there was a market for something less expensive than Excel and more tailored to the things people were actually doing with it. With a product as broadly installed as Excel I'm sure there's still under-served niches. |
Any DIY/installable alternatives to Dropbox? | p_alexander: I used Novell iFolder for a while (running on Ubuntu, though it was a pain to install). I think it worked pretty well on SuSE out of the box. Anyway, it uses a client on individual machines with a server hosting the files. Pretty much like Dropbox, though I think Dropbox is a little prettier and easier to use.http://www.novell.com/products/ifolder/overview.htmlhttps://help.ubuntu.com/community/iFolderClient |
entry point | mechanical_fish: Molecular Biology Made Simple and Fun:http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Made-Simple-Third/dp... |
If you were to build a doomsday device, what'd it be? | MaysonL: Dust Silicon Valley, Cambridge, Manhattan, Pasadena, Austin, and Chapel Hill with prions. |
How to package this algorithm? | RobGR: I don't know if this would make money as a web service, but I think you are right to try it -- it could work.Personally, as a developer, I would be more interested in licensing the algorithm or code from you. In my case the potential use would be for a desktop application, that is closed source. Essentially it would be a filter for a local file search engine, which is part of a larger product. Would you be interested in this ? It would not be an exclusive arrangement, so you could continue to persue other revenue methods.Also, I suggest that you test the algorithm to see if the amount of content stripped and tossed is a good identifier of spam emails, if the algorithm is fast enough it may have use for that. |
Parallel Programming Languages | yan: I used cilk in college to code some throw-away examples. I liked it for what it's worth. I also tried learning Erlang for a week, and really dug its execution model and the way the language felt in general. I was using Armstrong's book for that. |
Is this plagiarism or competition? | mixmax: Just do it.You haven't plagiarized anthing, you only became aware of it after having thought up your own idea.In fact don't even feel bad about it - good artists borrow, great artists steal - Steve Jobs. |
Is this plagiarism or competition? | cperciva: Plagiarizing is copying without credit. You're not copying -- you came up with the same ideas independently.Go for it. |
Is this plagiarism or competition? | tokenadult: My thought is that you haven't described the situation very specifically, but if you came up with an idea for a website with Feature Set {item1, item2, item3, . . . } and did all the coding yourself, you aren't plagiarizing anybody. You're just attempting to solve a problem someone else is attempting to solve too. The users will decide whom to do business with.Trademark and copyright are distinct issues, but you haven't mentioned anything that would raise a trademark or copyright issue. |
Is this plagiarism or competition? | dpifke: Rather than agonize over the similarity between the sites, is there a way to differentiate yours? Doing an exercise like the strategy maps in "Blue Ocean Strategy" comes to mind as something that might be worthwhile.Features != user experience. Two sites can have exactly the same feature set but their value and popularity can be determined by completely different factors.I should also note that you have a huge opportunity here: if his/your feature sets are that similar, you can observe how folks are using those features before even launching. You've essentially gotten some free market research with which to refine your product before you have a userbase to complain about changes. |
Is this plagiarism or competition? | callmeed: Go for it. As another commenter said, it's called "competition". Coke/Pepsi, Ford/Chevy, etc.Design your site to look better than hisIf it's a paid app, you can beat him on price–or charge more and beat him on quality of features and serviceConsider dropping one feature that he has, and adding one that he doesn't–even if it's trivial, it could help you differentiate. |
Is this plagiarism or competition? | ars: I would email him again saying: "I had exactly that idea myself, and I see that you did too. I really want to implement it. Are you sure we can not collaborate? Because I really want to do this and if we can't collaborate I will go it alone."Emailing him in the first place was a bad idea, because he has more ammunition to claim you copied him. But you did it already, so you might as well go all the way. |
Is this plagiarism or competition? | gommm: I have been in the same situation a few months ago and after much thinking and hand wringing, I decided to create the website but focus on markets in other languages.Since then, from developing my idea for the japanese market I got a completely new idea that is easy to develop using the same code and for which there is currently no competition.So, I think that you should try to develop your site and try to see if you can differentiate your site by either targeting another market (other countries) or create a spinoff for a different kind of field. |
What is the big deal with Virtualization? | giardini: Virtualization is sometimes considered important because it may provide OS features that certain operating systems have failed to provide in the past, e.g., separation of code/data areas, efficient utilization of resources, security, etc.And you _can_ run multiple OSs on one physical machine.See http://www.virtual-strategy.com/Features/Why-Virtualization-...and use Google for more.Honestly I would be happy to find an OS/hardware combination that did everything they _should_ do (short of an IBM mainframe). As it is, virtualization is a meta-OS layer that is just waiting to be hacked/cracked. |
What is the big deal with Virtualization? | gaius: I am a cynic (who has completed a few P2V projects) and I would say that many if not most people don't understand that virtualization is just one possible technique for consolidation. Consolidation matters because what is constraining datacentres right now is power, cooling and floor loading. Computational power per kilowatt and per square foot are the new metrics that matter (you assume that everything is 42U tall and work in 2 dimensions). Serious datacentre operators have long been happy to pay a premium for density. |
Ask HN:Want to Learn Objective C/Cocoa - No Previous Coding Knowledge | ethridge: There is a 'Learn Series' from APRESS 'Learn C on the Mac', 'Learn Objective-C on the Mac', 'Learn Cocoa on the Mac', and finally 'Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK'. Apple also has very good documentation on their developers site. |
What is the big deal with Virtualization? | lec: Virtualization has come to mean the running of a virtual machine in a physical one and on that virtual machine running your OS of choice. However vietualization should be thought of a much more than that. Think of storage virtualization for instance. Here we have the opportunity of creating an unending variety of storage options (Stripping, Mirroring, migration, automatic backups, etc) that can happen transparently. Imagine Never having to worry about your data stability because of virtual storage. How about virtual device access? Nothing says that USBs could not be front ended and encapsulated by an virtualization application that can then broker that information to and external host ( even a virtual one). The field is very wide, to me the promise is in creating an abstract device with transparent access to a myriad of services (both virtual an physical). |
Ask HN:Want to Learn Objective C/Cocoa - No Previous Coding Knowledge | inklesspen: I recommend the following books:Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780321562739Programming in Objective-C 2.0, Second Edition: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780321605559Ironically, while the first book has a more thorough discussion of Cocoa, the second book is the one with the iPhone section. Get both; they complement each other. |
Best Micro Payment provider? | somagrand: This is a great question. I assume PayPal is not the answer in this space even though Apple uses them on the iTunes store. |
Best Micro Payment provider? | jsdalton: I think the problem is there is no great answer to your question. Here are a few possibilities though:TipJoy (http://tipjoy.com/) is making a play as a micropayment platform I believe. I think they're a YC company as well.Amazon Flexible Payment Service (http://aws.amazon.com/fps/) is also one to scope out. |
Best Micro Payment provider? | noodle: well, depends on what you want to do. you could aggregate like tipjoy does, if that fits your model.there's also http://aws.amazon.com/fps/there's also one other good one out there, but i can't recall the name since i don't use it. will edit/reply later if i can remember or find it. |
Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text | wushupork: I'm a novice txtful user, but I see lots of potential for it. I've made short codes amazon price checking and netflix queue. I've found that I use the amazon price checking thing every now and then.Cool thing about this is anyone w/ a phone can use it, not just a smartphone - I don't have an iphone like everyone else. |
Looking for a student partner to get startup off the ground | loglaunch: Hey, Im a final year computer science student, I wouldnt mind getting involved. |
Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text | whalesalad: I have an iPhone so doing some of these things isn't has hard as it might be on a regular phone, but i've always loved intelligent services like this that let you take a simple thing like text messaging and turn it into a very powerful tool. Even with my iPhone, text messaging is a real fast way to send data. I'll be playing around with it :) |
Best Micro Payment provider? | cvinson: I have done a thorough analysis of this; I have a band website builder app that has a MP3 store.You should look primarily at the fees. Paypal's standard account has is around $0.30 per transaction + 3%. If you Google "PayPal Micropayment" they have an account that is not advertised publicly with lower fees for small transactions. The downside is you have to make a new account to use it, including a different bank account. I spoke to our PayPal account manager, and he said there is no internal plans to change this or promote the micropayments plan. |
Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text | wesley: Any way to see the source code for shortcuts that were made by txtful itself?I checked out the developer page and it's all pretty confusing."Formblock builder"?
"Create shortcut" and you have to upload some file?Docs please :) |
Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text | wesley: This service seems great, but there's one big catch. You'll need to enter your passwords in their system for netflix, gmail, and whatever else shortcuts you want to use.If you're willing to do that, great, but I'm not.Edit: Ofcourse, there are also shortcuts that don't need passwords. |
Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text | bprater: I like services like this, however, the problem I run into is remembering the "command-line-like shortcuts". Was Amazon "amazon book" or "amz book" or "book amzon.com". And "what was the syntax for getting the definition?". Or "Do they have a way to...?" Getting this info from a SMS-only phone might be tough. |
Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text | almost: Weird, I've just in the last few days been playing with SMS to web stuff. I was just today wondering about making a more general system but since in the UK it costs to send messages (i understand the cost is on the receiver in the US) I couldn't think how to make it work.The exception would seem to be for things that have the potential to make a return, if you're in the UK my amazon price checker will send you an amazon.co.uk price when you text PRICE and the product name to 07786200690. |
Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text | diN0bot: instead of emailing passwords to the user, send them a link to a confirmation page where they can enter their own password (twice) to complete the registration process and sign-in.security might be an issue otherwise when sending passwords around in the clear. do the same thing for password resets when a user forgets their password (or username, for that matter). |
Best Micro Payment provider? | midnightmonster: PayPal offers a micropayments fee model with $0.05 transaction fee + 5%. It beats their standard model on transaction amounts up through $11.90. |
Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text | rokhayakebe: Add voice capabilities to allow us to call. Then using speech to text, you can process that as well.On the home page rotate different texts within the cellphone screens. |
Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text | adityakothadiya: Here is a clickable link - http://www.txtful.com/ |
Is this plagiarism or competition? | pasbesoin: I had this happen, at the idea stage. Not that I necessarily would have proceeded, anyway, but it caused me further hesitation.A year+ later, the "competitor" site has not taken off.There is concept and design. Then there is also execution. If you believe you can exceed in execution, this, in my mind, is a valid reason to proceed. Just keep in mind that your target market is not yours alone, and that this may influence your chances of success. If you are still willing to proceed, I don't see an "ethical" issue here, as long as you're not simply viewing the competitor and ripping everything off.If you are concerned about perception, you might (I'm not sure about this, both from a marketing perspective and from a legal perspective) simply explain where your product comes from and why you are doing it. People will believe you or they won't, but being straight-forward and proactive in this might pre-emptively blunt some criticism.I wouldn't mention or would be cautious in describing your competitor's decline to cooperate; it might sound negative and/or reactionary on your part. Focus on what is motivating you and what you hope to achieve. |
Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text | dan_sim: I'm more interested in the IM side of things (working with XMPP a lot). I use a lot of XMPP tools daily and I like the fact that your service aggregates lots of tool in one bot.But I don't like the idea of going on the web site to "activate" shortcuts. I'd like to have something like I'm writing "amazon", it writes me back the options I can do (pricing, searching, buying). If the option needs a user/pass, it sends me a URL to a simple form where I can enter them (or ask them to me directly... you are TLS encrypted right?).If I'm using your service, it's because that I want to minimize the time I spend clicking throught a web site.But you had a great idea! Congrats! |
Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text | nihaar: I've been working on something very similar. As an excuse to pick up python, I've been working a more robust SMS interface with google calendar than the one provide as well as an interface with Yelp. I love using SMS on my phone (its my predominant form of communication) and I like what you guys have made. Looking forward to giving it a spin. |
good interview questions? | noodle: its really your call on what you value most and whats involved in the job. for what you say you value, your questions sound like they'd do the trick.you might want to throw in some critical thinking type of questions, just to see what happens. |
Best Micro Payment provider? | yelatia: check www.alertpay.com |
Best Micro Payment provider? | pageman: if you want to go to Asia and willing through an HK LTD. we can help you in asiapay.com (full disclosure: I'm a director) :) |
good interview questions? | alnayyir: Class hierarchy is vague, do you mean a class:object sort of thing or something else entirely? Specify, don't use meaningless words like hierarchy. It's academic fluff, and this is coming from a philosopher.Reapply what I've said here to everything else. It sounds like you know what you're doing, especially as regards, "talking about the language intelligently". That means you're way ahead of the curve in hiring already. |
Best Micro Payment provider? | hotshothenry: i wrote an article about this same subject, http://newsolareclipse.com/2008/12/micropayment-systems-the-... |
good interview questions? | tweaqslug: I find that I can quickly get a feel for a candidate's general reasoning ability through a game of 20 questions. |
Need A WSYIWYG Editor for Web Development Frameworks | code_devil: Bump.Any suggestion regarding how to cut down time in designing Forms and WebPage ? |
Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text | pageman: PM me if you want this in Manila :) |
Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text | dfalck: Very intuitive and easy to use. I'm going to use this a lot. |
Best Micro Payment provider? | tstegart: Both Paypal and Amazon do micropayments with fees of $0.05 + 5%. So basically, your fees for a $0.99 cent MP3 is around 10 cents. It definitely makes micropayments feasible. |
What do your require in your JS framework? | jncraton: Currently, I am fairly content with jQuery. I honestly don't do a huge amount of low level js work, but could you explain what makes this superior or different from jQuery?It looks good, I'm just not sure that the thing that we need for a "better web" is yet another js framework. |
good interview questions? | bprater: I really liked the post the other day where they handed the interviewee a chunk of code and asked them to "make it better". |
Why is there no "execution" rule for patents? | arockwell: This allows a lone inventor to patent a device and then license plans to a large company to manufacture and sell the product.I agree that this might help curtail patent trolls, but I am not sure this will help that much since the way patents are granted seems fundamentally broken. I think requiring someone to actually produce the invention is treating the symptom of patent trolls and not the cause. If the USPTO stopped granting patents when there is prior art or stopped granting patents that are "obvious" would help more. |
Why is there no "execution" rule for patents? | wmf: Most patents are never used in anger, so you should probably just ignore them. There are other existential business risks that are probably bigger than patents. |
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