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Feedback on an idea for a service | nreece: Most ideas take a different shape as they are gradually implemented. So your concept may actually morph into a different application/platform as you start working on it. I'd say start working on a prototype of what you have in mind, and then plan the course of direction. |
Does Depakote fuck you up? | noodle: i think that all 99% of the people here could tell you, you could find in a quick google search.all drugs have side effects. if you're worried about it, talk to the person who prescribed it to you, imo. |
How do you get new freelance jobs/contracts? | lux: For me, it's a combination of these things:* word of mouth/referrals from happy clients* people finding my site online, which is so horribly outdated that I've had people ask if I'm still in business, yet people still hire me through it (I am updating it in the next 2-3 months, but I'm kind of scared I won't be able to handle the increase in workload)* networking* running an open source projectI've been incredibly lucky though, I never thought to ask for referrals since I was young and thought that was a no-no or something, but they came in anyway (which is a good sign :).I also haven't really had time to do much online promotion, but having an open source project to show quality of work and to drive people to use my project and (just often enough) my services probably helps make up for my lack of online promo efforts.As for networking, I never really tried to sell, I just go out and meet people. I often forget to bring cards or to even mention what I do (even though I do talk too much ;). I heard someone recently explain that networking isn't about marketing directly, but rather about getting your name out there and just being a real human being. The network of your network are who you'll sell to because the people who think you're alright will refer you naturally, or something like that.The above has kept me more than busy for years now, and since I'm also working on a startup I've had to limit what projects I can take on since otherwise I'd have no time for my own... |
When do you code? | coryrc: From about 8AM to 11PM with meal breaks on the Empire Builder between Chicago and Seattle. Unfortunately, that's only four days a year for me. The lack of Internet is both a curse and a blessing. I can only do certain types of work without the Internet.Normally, I work in the afternoon in my home office with no one around. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | qhoxie: * Ranking algorithm* Following users' submissions/comments* Filtering submissions* Ignoring users' submissions/comments |
Feedback on an idea for a service | siong1987: http://www.appvee.com/t/wikime
http://www.148apps.com/reviews/wikime/This is an iphone app that may have some similar features you are talking about. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | rw: * Spacing between items. Vertical screen real estate is important.* Show up and down votes. Provides information on contentious comments.* Ability to mix brand-new and front-page items on the same page. For better scanning of new content.* With the ability to show up and down votes comes the ability to quantify the contentiousness of entire threads. Show us the aggregate "variability" of voting in the title of a thread.* Get people to vote more.* Let us develop our own ranking metrics.* More stories per page. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | brlewis: I want feeds and an API in s-expression format. |
Feedback on an idea for a service | alain94040: Many apps are great when you assume that they will be universally used.I guess I fall in your second category: "not feasible, too large in scope". But you know that someone, someday, will come up with something that will kind of remind you of this idea. |
Feedback on an idea for a service | daveambrose: After reading this, it sounds like tonchidot from TC50 (to a certain degree). |
What do you think of self-promotion on HN? | sh1mmer: Actually point in case, it was Paul who submitted his story about "Communicating with code" which currently has about 120 upvotes. Paul is pretty well known in this community but no-one has a problem with him self-submitting. |
What do you think of self-promotion on HN? | froo: I wholeheartedly support the idea of people self promoting if the articles are of relevance to HN readers.If I find the article is interesting, I really couldn't care less who submitted it, I'll upvote it anyway. The only time I actually look at the usernames is in the comments anyway. |
When do you code? | froo: Through trial and error I've figured out what times of the day I'm 'switched on' - for example, I'm not a morning person so I leave all the mindless stuff for mornings (answering emails etc).My best time of day to code is around 2pm - 9pm actually, I find I get more done during those times. I find that I read better later in the evenings and that I'm more of a cheerful person from late mornings to early afternoon - which is when I do most of my phonecalls. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | sjs382: I always liked the slashdot-style friend/foe designations. Maybe automatically weigh friend's and foe's comments and submissions? |
What do you want to be able to customize? | sqs: Ability to style the page so that it's readable on an iPhone (without zooming and panning) |
What do you want to be able to customize? | larrywright: I'd like to be able to filter submissions, in particular to be able to block specific sites. As in, no TechCrunch links (hypothetically speaking ;)). |
What do you want to be able to customize? | lallysingh: It'd be nice if stories we've read leave the HN front page. display: hidden's fine, just less visual parsing. |
How do you get new freelance jobs/contracts? | sachinag: Dawdle (http://www.dawdle.com) depends on freelance contractors for all non-essential tasks. It's all about that warm fuzzy feeling.So, OK, pay attention. I'm going to tell you how to get jobs.1) IT'S NOT ABOUT PRICE. Seriously. If it was about price, I'd go to eLance.2) Tell me your rates up front. Period. If http://www.flingmedia.com can, you can too. If you don't, I won't trust you. You have no idea how many prospects you lose by not doing this. If you don't do this, you depend on referrals. REFERRALS WHO WILL TELL THE CLIENT WHAT YOU COST.3) Please, for the love of God, have your portfolio up on your site, and make the links be target=_blank.4) Blog. Twitter. I will judge you by the quality of your posts and the number of followers. Deal with it. It's like SAT scores; you can be smart and get a shitty score, but you can't be dumb and get a high one.5) Contribute to FOSS projects. It shows an ability to work with others under others' terms. Guess what? You work for my company and you're supplementing my employees' work. If you can't get along with others, you're useless to me. |
How do you get new freelance jobs/contracts? | brandnewlow: Make friends. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | naish: I'd like to be able to flag/mark a particular post so that I can continue to follow the comments that are being generated after it falls off of the front page. This would also help to parse "important" posts from those that have simply been visited. Along with this, it would be nice to be able to then unflag/unmark the post once I've followed it long enough. The unflagging could also be done automatically, after some period of time defined in my profile or per post. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | pwim: Nothing |
What do you want to be able to customize? | naish: Provide a notification, within the site or using the email address in my profile, when someone has replied to one of my comments. This could be turned on/off on a per comment basis by providing a checkbox along with the comment form or handled globally in my profile. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | sachinag: Automatically downmod people who don't have websites and e-mail addresses in their profiles. I subscribe to the greater internet fuckwad theory. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | vaksel: ability to show comments for a specific time period(10-20-30-60 minutes).Right now in long threads when you go there a second time you pretty much have to read the whole thing over again. Granted you can use ctrl f and search for minutes to find the stuff made in the last hour, but its kinda ghetto |
What do you want to be able to customize? | vaksel: When submitting a new story, automatically add it to the "threads" tab.I usually just click on threads to see if there was anything new since I last logged in, and this way everything will be in one place. Instead of having to search for the thing in the username > submissions |
What do you want to be able to customize? | froo: I think it might be interesting to see some sort of user-voted category system so that people who aren't interested in certain topics can filter them.Conversely, if someone was more interested in one topic at any particular time (eg, depending on mood) they can instantly grab all topics in that category without having to trawl through the whole site.But that's not really a personalised customisation thing.Another thing might be the ability to grab someone's "about" box just by hovering the mouse over their username (when reading the comments on an article) - so you can get some more perspective on their point of view without necessarily leaving the page. That would be something I'd personally like to see. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | tsally: I know what I _don't_ want to be able to customize. What I can and can't see. Similar sites give the ability to block submissions or comments from a particular user. I think this is a horrible idea given the special nature of this community. The most defining aspect about Hacker News is its high quality. Any type of ignore feature is just going to take away from that. Just because you can't see the garbage doesn't mean it's not there. The flag feature is already sufficient; ignore functionality would be a huge mistake.EDIT: I just had another thought. I also believe that any type of functionality that allows the categorization or filtering of topics would be bad, for the reason outlined above. If there are too many high quality stories that people need to filter or categorize them, the rate at which stories fall off the front page should be increased. Having too many high quality stories is a fantastic problem, but it should be solved by being more selective, not by filtering. |
How do you get new freelance jobs/contracts? | symptic: I haven't had to market my services since January 7th (I started just a few weeks ago back on Dec 26 when realized I needed a better way to pay the bills than try and get a student loan), and I'm still booked solid. It's all been word of mouth since. Before then I posted on industry forums and hung out in the same IRC chats they did. You'd be amazed how many people hang out in IRC still these days. The real beauty is most gigs are rather small, and most clients understand my reputation as a great serviceman so they usually send me a payment and then tell me what needs to be done.I've been a freelancer off and on for the past few years. I'm 22, in university, and have a start-up habit, so I need a way to fund myself. I found a great niche for myself in the past month that allows me to focus on delivering great work at breakneck speeds.My main focuses are to be fast ("wicked fast", "what do you mean you're done already?", etc. from some clients since), to deliver great quality, and to deliver more than I promise, and act beyond professional--yet not quite too friendly--to clients.The result is amazing. I'm already at a stage where I need to decline work and were I to be doing this full time I easily bring in enough requests to amount to what I've totaled as $525~ worth of work a day, which I could complete were it a full-time gig.It's very easy: Make a dead simple portfolio that lets your work speak volumes where most people use gimmicky words (mine's at http://sicret.net ). Make your clients proud of your work (a lot of my clients love showing off their new designs, even though it's an industry that typically keeps things very private for competition's sake). I'm brutally honest with a client as well. If I am running behind because of some other mix up or I am not satisfied with a design, I will tell them, and offer them a discount or to redo.Customer satisfaction is more important than customer acquisition. So is being truthful.Don't be afraid to drop ineffective clients. You're in it for business, not to make everyone happy. your happiness comes first.The most important thing I've learned: constantly charge more. Eventually you'll plateau, but until then or until your own project takes off, keep learning and keep getting better; then keep charging more. You'll be worth every penny if you give half a damn. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | thomasswift: I'd like to be able to change the gray text on the article itself as well as the visited link color. For some reason, when trying to read it I find myself highlighting it, to give a little contrast.If this occurs after breaking a karmic threshold, I am sorry I did not know about it and disregard my request. |
Please review our Startup - ThreeFeeds | dc2k08: nice idea and very clean. I have a site that gives out an RSS feed. how do I get three feeds to see it? |
Why hasn't anyone launched a Feedburner competitor since their collapse? | simonk: Google as your competition with a product used by almost everyone is probably a little scary. And really a bunch of people have tried it and have yet to find a way to make money. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | gleb: * user customizable keyboard shortcuts. I currently use GM script: http://www.acunote.com/files/acunote-shortcuts.user.js but something natively supported and configurable would be good |
Why hasn't anyone launched a Feedburner competitor since their collapse? | wesley: The problem is, unless you're using MyBrand, switching to another competitor means loosing all your existing subscribers.Well, it doesn't if you leave the feedburner account alive. But it would be great if google somehow allowed us to redirect the feedburner account elsewehere via a 301 redirect. Ofcourse, that will never happen. |
Why hasn't anyone launched a Feedburner competitor since their collapse? | TomOfTTB: I think the money issue is the most pressing. The way I see it there’s a couple problems.1. Even though feeds are fairly small and easy to serve there’s got to come a point where you have so many users that even their small feeds begin to cost significant money. Feedburner not only has to check the host feed often but serve all the subscribers who poll as often as every 5 minutes. That’s a lot of bandwidth and a lot of server power.2. With free analytics services all over the place it’s very unlikely you’ll be able to make money on a subscriber model which leaves ads as the only viable revenue stream. But for that to work you need a decent ad network behind you and you can’t very well use adsenseWith that said, I'd think it a fairly easy service to duplicate. All Feedburner really does is read your feed and then repackage it while logging the pertinent data from the subscriber http transactions and sticking it in a database. Since every modern language I can think of has free libraries for reading RSS/Atom feeds and logging transaction data the whole thing could probably be duplicated in a couple days. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | albahk: Some sort of geography bias setting. I know a lot of people here come from around the world, for example, I am in Hong Kong so anything remotely related to this region or startups in China I would like it to be more prominent for me.This is probably only useful for posts that can be tied to a location and not general hacking posts. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | anuraggoel: I am probably just rephrasing your question. It looks like a lot of the suggested customizations (except things like ranking algorithms) can be coded on a site-wide basis and enabled/disabled on a per-user-basis by just selecting drop-down values or entering text in a box, without users putting a single line of code in their profiles. Just like noprocrast, topcolor etc. Additionally, a user code fragment that provides useful customization may also be useful to others (like a greasemonkey script). So, what exactly do you see a code fragment doing that would be unique to a user? |
What do you want to be able to customize? | daleharvey: I would like to be able to put avatars on the comments, probably through gravatar, which would also have the advantage of being able to recognise users through githubI mentioned it in another comment but to be able to access a users site without having to go through the profile would be nicer, in fact the ability to view the whole profile without opening a new tab / following a link |
What do you want to be able to customize? | snprbob86: Curious: Arc? Javascript? CSS?What are the design and security implications?Us hackers need to know these things :-) |
What do you want to be able to customize? | nailer: A reddit-style mail notification icon in the top left when somebody has replied to me.Oh, and requiring hex numbers for color selection is a bit naff, but I suspect most people know where a decent color->hex tool lives. |
How do you get new freelance jobs/contracts? | oscardelben: Call 100 business websites owner in your area, and ask them how they heard the first time about the agency that made their website, and if you are smart enough, publish them in your blog to build more reputation as an internet expert. |
When do you code? | oscardelben: I feel more productive in the morning and I use headphones to isolate myself from external world. I also turn off skype and other IM. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | wenbert: I want the option to choose between Serif and Sans-serif |
When do you code? | known: pj, how old are you? |
review our startup - jobbountyhunter.com | smysore: the site looks great! i think the hardest part will be to convince bloggers that jobbountyhunter widgets will make more money than the ads they may already be showing and that any money they do make will be rewarded enough to justify cluttering their site more than necessary... |
What do you want to be able to customize? | ScottWhigham: * The ability to "hide" a story so that I don't see it on my page anymore.* The option to auto-hide stories that I've upvoted |
What do you think of self-promotion on HN? | known: Unless you submit you will not 'unlearn'. Unlearning is very difficult process altogether. |
review our startup - jobbountyhunter.com | motoko: http://www.jobbountyhunter.com/howItWorks.html
This should be HTML text... and lose the chintzy stock photos. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | sfk: I would like an option to hide the scores of comments, since I find them distracting. |
How do you get new freelance jobs/contracts? | brianmckenzie: There are some really good comment here already, but my $.02:My main gig these days was a client at an agency I used to work for. I was the obvious choice for them because I built their software in the first place.Otherwise, I've gotten contracts through friends, craigslist, and various mailing lists.Don't underestimate the value of tech-related mailing lists. In the past, when I've been looking really hard, I've been able to get several leads/interviews for contract jobs per week, just from mailing lists.Also, help other hackers find jobs/contracts. It will come back to you. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | bayareaguy: Gosh.. I know I posted a comment pertaining to this very question years back... If only I could find it now without doing a linear search backwards. |
What is the impact of Twitter's API Limit? | riklomas: From the API docs:"If authentication credentials are provided, the rate limit status for the authenticating user is returned. Otherwise, the rate limit status for the requester's IP address is returned."http://apiwiki.twitter.com/REST+API+Documentation#ratelimits...Remember that the 20,000 calls are for GET requests. POST requests don't count towards that number. |
When do you code? | reg4c: When I'm alive. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | narag: I would like to save stories without upvoting them. It'd be even nicer to be able to bookmark individual comments. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | yan: I want to "follow" people. Color user names a different color of those I care about.Also, potentially add a bit of text next to those usernames (their startup/locale) |
review our startup - jobbountyhunter.com | sdfx: "how it works" is a bit convoluted. Perhaps distinguish between advertiser, publisher and job seeker and explain how your service helps them. The design in general is not as clean as it could be, and the font-sizes on the first page seems random. Maybe you could emphasize important parts and leave out less important ones.The links in your widgets seem to be broken "post a job" and the image-link end up on the start page, not shure this is intentional.Apart from design, I think the idea is neat. I am not shure how your payout compares to regular advertisement, but the posibility of a large profit might convince a lot of people to put your widgets on their page. |
What is the impact of Twitter's API Limit? | eisokant: I think it's Twitter's first step to monetization of their API. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | markessien: How about allowing arbitrary javascript on the users profile page, such that each profile can be made as geeky as possible? |
What do you want to be able to customize? | igorhvr: Specifically, I would like to be able to filter out TechCrunch, CodingHorror and ArsTechnica articles. I never learn anything from them. (the comments, on the other hand, are sometimes interesting - but I still would rather not have anything from those sites appearing for me).More generally, the ability to filter out stuff I don't want to read about using a Regexp or a Scsh-style SRE in the Website URL would be great. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | jjs: It would be nice to be able to view stories submitted within a given date-range (and possibly insert a false date into the decay algorithm), to generate an approximation of what was on the front page n days ago. |
review our startup - jobbountyhunter.com | thinkzig: Congratulations on your launch. The concept sounds like a good one. Here are a few comments...1.) Tighten up your USP on the home page - It's not obvious what you're doing at first glance of the home page. The big blue block of text in the middle is too wordy and hard to read. Try to distill what you're doing down to a pithy tagline.2.) Emphasize benefits more on home page - I like how you've split up the home page to cater to your two audiences, publishers and recruiters, but the text underneath seems to be more of a feature list or a "how it works" list than a benefits list.Try to focus more on the "What's in it for me?" question your core audience is asking. "Get access to the smartest and most engaged people" is probably the only sentence there that really speaks to that question.3.) Emphasize sign-up more - My guess is that your main goal right now is to get account sign-ups. The hand pointing to the button is clever, but I think you could do more to make this stand out. Also the big green "place a job now" image under the recruiter section seems like it would be a button, but it's not. I'd turn it into one.4.) Building trust - I think my first question as a blogger/publisher would be "What keeps JBH.com and the recruiter honest? How will I really know that my referral was the winner or not?" I'm not sure how you overcome this, but that was my first question/objection and I didn't really see anything on the "how it works" page that helped allay that fear.Overall I think this is a good concept and I wish you well. It's a tough market right now but there's no time to start like the present, right? Hopefully we all have nowhere to go but up from here.Best of luck to you. |
Feedback on an idea for a service | medianama: Conceptually, Its great...executing this might be difficult though...Why don't you reduce the scope and implement it for a city... It'll reduce the effort required to bring it to a level where you could show its value to others... |
Why hasn't anyone launched a Feedburner competitor since their collapse? | apgwoz: My question is, why did Technorati.com not ever get into this market? It seems to me that they could provide more blogosphere tracking and hot spots if they knew which articles people were actually reading, not just linking to. |
Why hasn't anyone launched a Feedburner competitor since their collapse? | mtw: postrank/aiderss could offer this service in a snap. they already do the polling. and they also do more analytics than feedburner by looking at other services like digg/delicious/stumbleupon. however, this is not probably ilya's vision |
What is the impact of Twitter's API Limit? | cstejerean: There are a ton of apps out there riding essentially for free on the Twitter infrastructure. This kind of rate limiting is hopefully a step towards Twitter charging money for applications that need to go beyond 20k/hour. While they're at it, it would be nice if they allowed users to buy higher API limits as well. If I forget and leave Tweetdeck running on two machines (home and work) I go through my API limit really quick. |
review our startup - jobbountyhunter.com | PoweredByWill: The front page was very busy in my opinion for a stealth-mode startup.
Keep it REAL simple and lead people to more information.Also the color, layout and stock photos on the 'how it works' page made me think of one of those pyramid scheme sites.What is the validation model for the Job Seeker eclipsing 3 months?Widgets look good. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | ars: On my threads page, I'd like it if threads with recent comments floated up. Right now it sorts strictly by the date I posted something. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | ars: This isn't directly what you asked, but I'd like to be able to make a list in a comment.Use the existing code (blank line, indented 2 spaces) and add: 1 space with a # does ordered list, and 1 space with a * does unordered list.And please add white-space: pre-wrap; to the code blocks. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | imgabe: I'd like to be able to save a story without voting it up. Sometimes I just want to read it later and I don't know if it's something I would actually vote up.I'd also like to be able to collapse comment threads. (i.e. hide all of a comment's children) |
How does one prototype a physical product? | qaexl: My girlfriend got a degree in Industrial Design, and that is the kind of things they do all the time. Sometimes the degree program is called "Product Design". With Auburn University, it is part of the College of Design. They generally have a studio class, design products and make prototypes out of them. This includes poster displays. There is also a big shop, like a collegiate version of Industrial Arts or shop class at high school.You may be able to find such a program at a local university and ask a college student to make it for you. Whether or not you are planning to patent it, you will want to have them assign all rights to you, making this a work-for-hire, and be careful about the co-invetor stuff. Alternatively, you can get in with a local high school and borrow the shop class. Back in high school, I remember those old custodial staff messing around in shop class for their personal project (while the teacher spent time playing Quake with my friends and I).Lastly, I highly recommend checking out Stephen Key's articles, such as this interview: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/11/26/a-beginners-...It includes a video where Key shows how he prototyped one of the ideas he had. There are other information in there too about licensing strategies. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | briancooley: Though it might be too computationally intensive, I would like to be change the ranking algorithm by adding a factor to increase or decrease the weight of votes from particular users. |
Does clicking voting arrows *sometimes* take you to a blank page? | noodle: doesn't happen to me, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. |
Kiwi programmer keen to work in the U.S. for 1-2 years. Bad idea? Any advice? | ObieJazz: I haven't been job hunting recently but from everything I hear the tech employment sector is doing fine. (I'm in the US) |
Does clicking voting arrows *sometimes* take you to a blank page? | pclark: nope (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120121 Firefox/3.0.5) |
What do you want to be able to customize? | tocomment: I'd like to change the background color on the pages, maybe the text and font too.Maybe figure out a way to be able to comment on older articles and have them still be seen. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | DanielBMarkham: Pick any of these you like:1) Ordering of articles by comment activity instead of votes2) Ordering of articles by hits on a RegEx expression (which would persist between sessions for each user)3) Listing of who's online now (reads/comments in the last 15 minutes or so)4) Photos in the profiles5) E-mail alerts when somebody responds to a comment I've made (for extra-cool points: allow email replies to auto-post) |
What do you want to be able to customize? | tocomment: The ability to put in your own ranking algorithm would be really neat. |
Feedback on an idea for a service | vinalk: I think this idea will work. You can get people to update content for a specific location and act as an SME. Take it to the micro level like fare for taxi between locations. Downloadable pages of maps and hot spots to visit. |
Does clicking voting arrows *sometimes* take you to a blank page? | josefresco: If you can't replicate, there is no bug.Nothing to see here, move on please. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | pclark: I'd quite like to be able to quote people via " > quote txt" please don't make it a clever "quote this post" button though, as then we'll just have everyone quoting entire posts.flag/save a post? isn't that what bookmarks are for?I would like to be able to hilight "friends" -- I made a greasemonkey script that people are welcome to use if they desire - http://is.gd/gXyh |
What do you want to be able to customize? | pclark: also, maybe a "review my project" button for users over n karma? Clicking that allows them to submit a url and a description, and it gets submitted to a page similar to the jobs page. |
Does clicking voting arrows *sometimes* take you to a blank page? | timf: Yes, this has happened to me many times. The only correlation I ever had a hunch at was perhaps a long delay before hitting the arrow (like where I had opened a new tab and gotten to it later).Reloading the page (which at that point is the previous page) gets rid of the problem.Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2009010220 Gentoo Firefox/3.0.5 |
Kiwi programmer keen to work in the U.S. for 1-2 years. Bad idea? Any advice? | brk: Being in a position to say "no" always helps with your negotiations. I would start looking for something about 12 months early. Scout around online, talk to people doing things you're interested in, etc.I personally think that if you're skilled and flexible you could find something without too much effort. One thing that comes to mind is looking for some startup companies in a very early stage, where you could work from NZ for a bit before actually relocating. Then everyone knows it's a good fit and worth the hassle.Downturn economies are often a good time for motivated people to do well, but it takes a lot of effort. |
How do you get new freelance jobs/contracts? | hotshothenry: Thanks for the awesome responses guys, for those of you using craigslist, where do you post? |
What do you want to be able to customize? | edw519: I would like to be able to provide my customers and prospects a link to the threads where I have made a comment about their specific problem. They could see what I have had to say as well as the ensuing discussion of other competent people.This could provide incredible value for all of us.Very little I tell them would have as much impact as our discussions of their problems. I would love to use our "investment" here as an easy sales tool. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | fiaz: Each domain name next to each article headline should be a link that allows you to view all of the articles from that domain. |
Does clicking voting arrows *sometimes* take you to a blank page? | maryrosecook: I get this. It's to do with logging in:1. Make sure you're logged out.
2. Open two HN pages.
3. Log in on one of them.
4. Click an up arrow on the other page (the one where you're not logged in).
5. The vote will get counted, but you'll be sent to a blank page.I always figured it was a failure of the AJAX to check login status. |
Does clicking voting arrows *sometimes* take you to a blank page? | pmjordan: It's not happened to me (Opera 9.63 x86_64 Linux) but I have a suspicion for the possible cause: The up/down arrows are anchor tags to the vote URL, so if you had JavaScript disabled, the behaviour you describe would be expected. (it probably should redirect back to the page you were looking at, from a usability POV...) The async version uses the onclick event attribute to call the vote() JS function, which returns false to cancel the anchor click navigation after dynamically generating a new image with the vote URL as src attribute. If anything in vote() throws an exception, vote won't return false to cancel the navigation, so you get taken to the (blank) non-JS vote page.I can't see anything at first glance that would throw an exception, however. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | pasbesoin: Have the "comments" link text color, or something else, change to show that I've followed that "comments" link. I sometimes only look at the comments, and would like a reminder that I've done so.Be able to "save" an item without upvoting it. Upon occasion, I want to do the former for personal interest but am not sure that upvoting serves the interests of the community. On the other hand, I can see where the current design may lessen fragmentation of interests and community focus. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | gommm: I'd love to have a page only listing the Ask HN submissions... |
Why hasn't anyone launched a Feedburner competitor since their collapse? | johns: I think a FeedBurner replacement could be a nice byproduct of another service. I'm thinking something like Bloglines+Technorati(was)+FeedBurner. Those are all just churning feeds in some way. Add analytics to it all, track trends (offer a service for business to pay), mine data and then you might have something. |
When do you code? | chanux: When I'm in the mood & have the boost. |
What is the impact of Twitter's API Limit? | lacker: 20,000 calls per hour = 5 calls per second. Remember this is either per IP address or per username. Is that really a low number? |
Why hasn't anyone launched a Feedburner competitor since their collapse? | pstinnett: Just saw this posted on ReadWriteWeb: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_were_desperately_aw...Looks like someone is launching a competitor: Feedsqueezer, http://www.feedsqueezer.com/ |
What do you want to be able to customize? | mooism2: I don't particularly want to customise.I would like wide comments (e.g. containing <pre> text) to not force the whole page to be that wide.I would like to be able to hide sub-threads if I do not find them interesting. (Whether this should be considered as voting down each individual comment I don't know.)Actually, I wouldn't mind being able to choose between writing comments in markdown/textile/etc. |
What are your criteria for hiring? | pj: I think 10 recommendations seems excessive. Good programmers wouldn't waste their time working for a company that required them to bother that many people, just so you could figure out if they were a good programmer.Think of it as a barrier to entry. Good programmers want good opportunities that don't make them bend over backwards to get. Path of least resistance.If you make it hard for them to work for you -- they won't.Seriously, who wants to call up 10 people and ask them if they mind if some random person calls them?It's a waste of time and any good programmer is going to know this and have plenty of better places to work that don't require 10 recommendations.Also, what a programmer works on doesn't say anything about how smart (s)he is. If you want to know how smart they are, ask them about as many random things as you can. How broad is their knowledge base? Smart programmers know a lot of stuff outside the world of programming.Ask her about philosophy, beer, or cards. Ask about poker, pizza and travel.Smart people have big minds that expand way beyond personal projects and portfolios. If they have a portfolio /at all/ then they are spending more time on marketing themselves than they are on programming and that's not such a good sign. I know you don't mean they have a binder with photos of work they did, or maybe you do, but either way, they should be spending more time on programming than marketing their programmer skills. If they harp on how awesome they are at programming, they probably don't know much about programming.I'd say irrelevant projects done for fun are almost a better sign of smartness than those that were only relevant.Ask the potential candidate about how the projects they have worked on could be improved. What went wrong, where were the bottlenecks, what kind of hardware was it, did they find any limitations with the software, programming languages, or environments they worked in?Ask them how to build world peace and solve the financial crisis. See how rational they are. See how honest they are.Introspection, Honesty and Rationality are probably the three most important characteristics I look for in programmers. If they can communicate with the "real world" around them as well, that's a plus.Most people in the real world can't handle the amount of thought, blunt truth, and rationality that programmers dish out, so it becomes the job of the programmer to figure out how to communicate with others, so that just brings me back to the 10 recommendations thing... Probably not a good idea. I hope that was hyperbole. |
Does clicking voting arrows *sometimes* take you to a blank page? | bprater: Another bug: expired links, with no link back to the homepage! |
What do you want to be able to customize? | utx00: my own bookmarking/tagging/searching facility. |
What do you want to be able to customize? | davi: I'd like the color of usernames to change depending on how many times I've up/down voted their comments & submissions. This way people I've liked a lot in the past will pop out at me as I scan through pages on the site.A lot of good suggestions on this page; thanks for soliciting our input. |
Is this idea any good? | noodle: i would be highly surprised if it didn't already exist |
Review my site - thefabulicious.com | sam_in_nyc: I'm writing it down as I go.Page loading... I see the title.. very nice and descriptive. Also seems very SEO friendly.I see no description on the landing page (which was a tad bit slow to load). What's this site do? I'm not sure what to expect. I see a menu like navigation with search in the center. Is the left different from the right? Sort of. Seems like it should be footer stuff.I don't like the search in the center... I'm not even sure what it's searching for, and don't want to waste time typing in something only to see no results.Ah, ok, here's the real menu. Beauty, design, fashion.. etc. What about it? Is it going to be articles, or products? I'm guessing products. Yeah, looks like they're just selling stuff on this website. I see prices and product pictures.I'm not really interested in shopping, and there doesn't seem to be any catch to this site other than: "here is stuff to buy" so at this point I'd leave.. but it's an HN reader so I'll dig a bit deeper.I click "Wing It" because of all the pictures I see, this one almost has cleavage in it...Related posts? Shouldn't it be related products? Weird having reviews on the left, I'd expect them on the right, where there's more space. No reviews.. I wonder which products have the best reviews? Doesn't seem to be a way to find out. Is there something that this site really thinks I should see? No... just that stuff on the frontpage that didn't really interest me.OK, this is clearly just some blog system that's been "hacked" to be browsing products. Blog posts = products, and comments = reviews. Got it. Not that interested...There you have it, that was my visit. |
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