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Title: I've heard many of you love to create side projects for fun, but I also heard that few of them actually took off and grow into a profitable business. So feel free to list if you have any. Statistics will be welcomed as well!
Upvote: | 229 |
Title: As eps pointed out in the previous thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772224) about side projects gone big, there were also an enormous amount of side projects that just went dead. I am sure many of HNers are curious to hear and learn from them.<p>So feel free to list what the project is, how did you come up with the idea, and of course, when and how did it go deadpooled.
Upvote: | 66 |
Title: I really wanted a project that I could use map reduce on and this idea came up amongst a group of friends as a joke.<p>Unfortunately the link graph was really stale when I ran it so it is not always correct. Also dates make it boring sometimes.
Upvote: | 179 |
Title: The past week or so has seen a number of inspirational HN threads on single founder/small group/side/part-time projects that have become successful and in some cases are supporting those people (and some have gone on to become huge).<p>So, with that in mind, I'm suggesting we all take the month of November and work on that side project or idea or whatever it is, with the goal of having a working application out in the wild by the end of the month.<p>Personally I am going through a transition right now (independent to full-time), but have 3-4 ideas that I want to implement. I'm going to pick ONE project and pledge to finish it by the end of November in whatever hours I can find. Who's with me?<p>Update: Some have suggested that you also get at least one Paying customer by the end of the month. I think its a great point if your goal is to have an app that helps support you. I am updating my pledge to include it.
Upvote: | 187 |
Title: Hi Guys,
I am long time HN follower. I always been benefited from HN community.<p>I am a full time developer and can code in ASP.NET (both web form and MVC), PHP (also i am beginner in ruby).<p>I want to build web app from which i can earn $200 - $400 per month.<p>Its not a big amount but it gives me following benefit which is more valuable for me.<p>1. Motivation for bigger move.
2. Getting experience in running SaaS based apps.
3. Side income.
4. Good learning about business, marketing and other non programming things.<p>I know i can make these kind of money though some freelancing but that option i am not looking for now.<p>I can invest my time 2-3 hours on weekdays and 5-6 hours on weekends (around 20 hours in week).
Also i can invest up too $300 if i have to do buy some sort of services/hardware etc.<p>Problem is I am not been able to think about any web app idea which solves some problem.
Please give me some idea about any web app which I should build.<p>I am not from US or Europa.<p>I am having high hopes from HN community.<p>Thanks in advance.
Upvote: | 85 |
Title: HN users,<p>Technology has made it possible for us to become truly mobile and I think that gives us a tremendous opportunity to travel, explore new places, and meet new people. Relevant data on purchasing power parity is very sketchy, however.<p>I think it would be interesting to compare the cost and quality of living as well as earning potential in various cities/countries for programmers/designers. Instead of the Big Mac index, we could have our own Ramen Purchasing Power Parity Index. :)<p>Reply with the following:<p>Place(City and Country)<p>Monthly expenses (details will help a lot)<p>Typical monthly wage for a programmer / designer
Upvote: | 126 |
Title: We created our SaaS app (pacpacs.com) and initially released it as a kind of preview/trial to a select few people. We found it very hard to follow the "release early" mantra since the MVP for our service was not really that minimal, so drumming up any hype for the unfinished product was tricky.<p>A few days ago we opened our doors to the public and I'm now trying to get the word around.<p>I've started emailing relevant blogs and have put together a more formal 'press release' type page that I am linking to in my emails (https://www.pacpacs.com/press/20101007). But I'm not getting much of a response.<p>Is this the method most other people use in more niche industries?
Should we consider paying a newswire service to run the release too?<p>And a longshot: are there any physical therapists on HN that might be interested in giving any feedback :)<p>Any feedback on the site/service/biz much appreciated!
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: For a long time now, I've been pondering over whether I should dive into Linux from Scratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org).<p>I've been a Linux user (Ubuntu) for over three years now, and the stuff I've learned is only by trying/troubleshooting and so on.. I've never really read a book about UNIX (even though we had the course in college).<p>So, have any of you HNers tried out the LFS project from start to finish? Is it something that'll teach me more about how the Linux operating system works (of which I have a pretty decent idea), or is it something that help me towards my goal of becoming a Linux power user ?<p>Any opinions or help would be awesome!
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: I'm interested in hearing from the community about what tools you are using for building web applications in Python.<p>This was last asked about half a year ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357925) and
2 years before that (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=153487), but things are changing fast, especially with the recent popularity of NoSQL, so I think it's worth bringing up again.<p>So, what tools, databases, web servers and frameworks are you using for your latest Python web application projects? Or, if you've abandoned Python, what language have you moved to, and why?
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: I love travelling and use Wotif.com a lot to find great hotel deals. The things is, Wotif has horrible user interface. For example, if you go to its homepage, you need to do multiple scrolling to select your destination on a country list with the size of 1 inch. Another example is airline websites, but thankfully this has been solved with Hipmunk (yay!).<p>So I'm asking you guys here if you share any frustrations with me on the websites that have really bad UI but we need to use it anyway. I hope this post will inspire these companies to either fix their UI, or more likely, somebody starts something better to replace them.<p>Thank you.
Upvote: | 55 |
Title: I am a senior in college and am applying for many positions that interest me so that I can get a job when I graduate. Now, I know there are plenty of resources online about how to write a cover letter, but I was wondering if the community here at Hacker News could give me insight on things that recruiters/companies look for in a cover letter when they are hiring software developers. Thanks!
Upvote: | 116 |
Title: Note: I'm not affiliated with booking.com - they mentioned these offers at the open-source developer conference in paris/france this week-end, so I'm forwarding the information.<p>Booking.com is looking for more than 40 perl programmers (either seasoned or beginners willing to learn).<p>They are based in Amsterdam, provide a "competitive salary + relocation package".<p>They use Perl, Apache, mod_perl, MySql, Memcache, Mason, JavaScript, Git etc.<p>They are facing a huge growth, which definitely results in interesting scaling challenges :)<p>You can contact Sheila Sijtsema at [email protected] or have a look at http://www.booking.com/jobs
Upvote: | 116 |
Title: I work dev for a newspaper-dot-com that gets ~5M monthly uniques. If you were at a (local) newspaper-dot-com, and you had that built-in audience, I'm curious: What would you do with it?
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: <i>I took this directly from a newspost on what.cd, and I have no association with anything written here. Just thought HN would find it interesting.</i><p>What.CD is a private tracker. Thus, the entire site, staff, and community all revolve around a common piece of software - the tracker backend. Complementing the site frontend, which you're looking at now, the tracker itself handles connections between peers.<p>With over five million peers, our tracker receives an average of 3,500 hits per second, although after a period of tracker downtime, load can spike up to past 12,000 hits per second. This means that, when your client announces, the tracker has 80 microseconds to search through its database of over 900,000 torrents and 5,000,000 peers, compute a response, and send it back to you. That's a lot of stress on a piece of software!<p>We anticipated this problem, of course, back before the site even started. That's why we elected to use what was then the fastest private tracker backend in the world - XBTT.<p>Lauded for its speed, XBTT handled the peers very well for the first few months of the site's existence. We brought on a developer - asm - whose job was to tune it and modify it as needed, and he was able to do that just fine - for a few months. However, asm was reluctant to make any major changes. When we asked why, his response was that XBTT's code was too weird, and that he was afraid he'd break something.<p>A bit surprised, we lead site developers peered into the bowels of XBTT for the first time, and we found that he was correct. XBTT's internal code worked fine in practice, but strange/outdated design decisions and the inclusion of thousands of lines of unnecessary code gave us worries about how well it would scale to a swarm of the size we had planned, as well as whether we'd be able to continue modifying it to our needs.<p>So a plan was formed. We would create a tracker of our own.<p><i>Late winter 2007</i><p>It made perfect sense. We were already replacing the outdated TBDev source with our own new Gazelle source, so why not replace XBTT with another piece of software as well? Make it fast, make the code pretty, give it a cool-sounding exotic animal name, and we'd be set. It couldn't possibly take very long - trackers are very simple pieces of software, after all. The only problem was that XBTT had scared asm into hiding, the other developers were all php developers (php is a language that is fast to write and slow to run) and we wanted the tracker coded in C++ (slow to write, fast to run). The solution was thus to outsource.<p><i>January 2008</i><p>Our first developer choice was a young developer called rootkit. Immensely intelligent, but perhaps not the greatest people person in the world, rootkit decided that he wanted to write the tracker in haskell instead. We weren't too excited to have the tracker written in a weird language that no one understood, but he promised that it'd be fast so we let him go at it. We don't think he ever wrote more than a hundred lines of it before he gave up and stepped down.<p>While we searched for a new developer, WhatMan decided to try an experiment - to see if a php tracker could outperform XBTT. He hacked away for a weekend and created Lioness - a beautiful little tracker, no doubt one of the fastest php trackers ever made. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite fast enough for our needs - upon testing, the swarm crushed our poor webserver, and we were forced to go back to XBTT.<p>By this time, XBTT was barely able to keep up with the load. The timeouts had already started, and we did whatever we could, but in the end, the only thing that really helped was when we moved to our new (then) ridiculously oversized server in Canada.<p><i>March - May 2008</i><p>Another developer had been found! The guy was smart, mature, well educated, fluent in C++, and seemingly very able. We told him what we needed, and he started coding. A month later, the new dev - lenrek - had created the first tracker to call itself Ocelot.<p>lenrek's ocelot looked promising. It was new, shiny, and multithreaded. We figured that our problems were solved, but when we tried it out, it exploded. It is still unclear exactly why, just that it happened. That ocelot was tweaked and some more tests were run, but we eventually gave up. lenrek's ocelot was basically shelved, and attention turned, for the next year, back to making XBTT handle its load properly.<p>Fortunately for us, lenrek stayed on as a developer - although his ocelot didn't succeed, he's responsible in a large part for making the site work as well as it does today.<p><i>June 2009 - February 2010</i><p>In the next year of stagnation, ocelot was never quite forgotten, but working on it was never very motivating - especially with only one tracker dev. So we raised the XBTT announce interval from 30 minutes to 35, then to 40, then to 45. In the meantime, the idea of ocelot waited until we found someone to revitalize it. In June 2009, FZeroX found such a person - rconan.<p>rconan was incredibly intelligent, and came up with a plan for what everyone was pretty sure was going to be the most awesome tracker ever. High performance event queues, hashmaps, all that cool stuff. We outsourced the project to him, he started coding, and initial progress was very rapid.<p>Two hundred changes and additions to rconan's new ocelot were made between the months of August and October. Before we knew it, the new ocelot was all but finished - 4,000 lines of divine C++ code, with just "a few" bugs and features left to code. And then, rconan's real life started to get busier.<p>A couple of changes were made in November, a couple in December, one in January, and a final flurry of activity took place in February. When we asked for progress updates, ocelot was still a few bugfixes and features away from being ready for production, but no changes were ever made after February. As none of our in-house developers had been closely following the development of the new ocelot, we were unable to take over, and simply hoped that rconan's real-life obligations would clear up and he'd have the time to finish it.<p>In the meantime, we had raised XBTT's announce interval to the highest point we could justify - 47 minutes - and it was still timing out so often it became a joke. In April 2010, we gave it its own server and started load balancing multiple instances of it - starting out with 2 XBTTs, and then 3, and then 4. This gave us some breathing room, but not for long.<p><i>April - May 2010</i><p>At on point, A9 and oorza were arguing about java performance. A9 had the brilliant idea of daring oorza to write a high performance tracker in java, and work began on shadowolf. oorza proclaimed shadowolf "almost completely done" on May 12th, save a few outstanding bugs. We checked in on his progress at the end of August, and he was rewriting the entire plugin architecture, and considering using hadoop to store peers. We're unsure about shadowolf's current status.<p><i>August-September 2010</i><p>No updates had been made to ocelot in eight months, and rconan was nowhere to be found. The future of shadowolf was unclear. When a thread came up about ocelot in the forums, the staff were forced to admit that development on it had ceased, and that no update was liable to take place in the near future. It was a hard post to write, considering how the timeouts had become so bad that the joke wasn't funny anymore. Users would sometimes have to wait hours for the tracker to let them download things, stats were being lost left and right, and we were out of hardware to throw at the problem. Something had to be done.<p>Enter WhatMan. Having previously stayed out of the C++ tracker development arena due to a lack of confidence with his high-performance C++ coding skills, WhatMan was confused with as to why everyone was creating 4000+ line of code behemoths when trackers are, in reality, extremely simple pieces of software. So he lifted some key design choices from rconan's ocelot, created the rest of the design himself, and spent the last week of August hacking away at a brand new ocelot.<p>On September 1st, ocelot was ready for performance testing. We replaced one xbtt instance with it, and it scaled. So we replaced two, and it scaled. We tweaked it a bit, and then replaced the third and fourth instances, tweaked it a bit more, and replaced the load balancer. What four XBTT instances and a load balancer were failing to handle before, was now being handled by one, singlethreaded instance of the latest ocelot.<p>Then we pushed it harder - we lowered the announce interval to 40 minutes, and then to 30, and it scaled. Then we lowered it to 20 minutes, and linux broke before ocelot did. It was beautiful.<p>The dev team rejoiced, and banded together to add the remaining features and fix the remaining bugs. By September 3rd, ocelot was considered feature complete, and we let it run the entire swarm - one tracker for five million peers, at a 30 minute announce interval.<p><i>September 2010 - Now</i><p>Since then, ocelot's been purring along. It uses up 20%-30% of one CPU core, and 3GB of RAM - for comparison, our four XBTT instances used the same amount of RAM in total, and 50%-100% of a core each. It's 1547 lines of code long in total, which will be open-sourced at some point. The dev team has added the occasional bugfix, and there may be some bugs yet to be discovered, but our tracker is now more stable than it's been since we started. After over two and a half years, ocelot's journey to creation is finally finished.
Upvote: | 119 |
Title: From back in the day when Wasabe was their biggest competitor. Includes financials.
Upvote: | 87 |
Title: Longtime HNer on a throwaway account. I've just started work on a startup making a web app for a particular type of business. (Sorry about the intentional vagueness.) There's something like 5000 businesses of this type in the U.S. With subscription billing, if the average customer is paying $25/month, I'm looking at a <i>total</i> market size of $1.5 million/year. Granted, maybe there are additional apps I could build in the same domain, and other unknown sources of revenue, but I'm starting to worry about potential for growth.<p>Am I overthinking this? Have any of you launched companies into markets of similar (or smaller) apparent size? What problems am I going to run into, and what's the best way around them?
Upvote: | 58 |
Title: Link to blog: http://ealouse.wordpress.com/
Upvote: | 206 |
Title: After a short discussion with HN user wheels (Hi Scott!) about pitches last week I came up with a pretty obvious idea:<p>PitchPower: The Elevator Pitch Phone Service : (209) 215-2160
http://pitchpower.appspot.com<p>Call the number, pitch your idea in 20 seconds, the service records it & publishes it online for you to share with the HN community. Tip: if you're not in the US you can use Google Voice to make international calls for free.<p>You'll have to prove that you are a HN user by adding the string 'pitchpower' to the 'about' field in your profile when you claim a pitch, you can safely remove it afterwards.<p>There's more to the idea (turn it into a chatroulette for pitches?) but I decided to throw my half-baked half-day effort on AppEngine & see what the HN community thinks.<p>Call now to check it out, because my free Twilio credit <i>will</i> run out at some point. (Hi, Twilio!)<p>So tell me: what should be the next feature for PitchPower?
Upvote: | 51 |
Title: What's a good laptop to install Linux (Ubuntu) on? I'm looking to buy a new machine for work. System76 seems to make good laptops. Does anyone have experience with them? Is there anything else you would recommend?<p>People seem to rave about their MacBook Pros. Is it easy to make the switch from Ubuntu? Do I easily get all the software I'll need (svn, git, django, python, vim)?<p>Essentially I think, my question is, is the experience on a MBP so much better, that it's worth having to learn the MacOS platform?
Upvote: | 111 |
Title: I can't stop hitting reload on this thing!
Upvote: | 61 |
Title: After a year in stealth, we finally launched our company today. CarWoo! is an online new car buying market place, where buyers can come and say what they want and get dealers to compete for their business. Essentially this is a reverse auction for car buying. We waited over a year to launch so we could build our dealer network to over 3000 dealers nationwide.<p>Let us know what you think... lots of posts coming about our YC experience and how we stayed under the radar for over a year, how we raised money, all the good stuff.
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: It was three months ago to the day that we announced our private beta. We were thrilled to see thousands of people sign up for the beta. We've worked hard to improve the product over the last three months based on their feedback and we're now ready to come out of beta and launch to the public!<p>Our goal is to make it as easy as humanly possible for you to create and run A/B tests on your site. All you need to do is enter your website URL and point and click on what you want to change. Absolutely no coding or engineering required. You don't even need to create an account to get started.<p>We're working hard to improve the product every day based on your feedback-- just reply to this comment or shoot us an email at [email protected] and let us know what you think!
Upvote: | 249 |
Title: How many times have you been asked this by friends, colleagues, and referrals. The person generally continues to say...<p>"I really don't need anything too advanced. Just a simple ecommerce/wiki/forum/community website. With a blog. It shouldn't take you more than a few hours. I actually could even do it myself no problem, but its just not worth my time. You know, I used to be the #1 COBOL programmer in the 70s."<p>At this point, I sarcastically interrupt "Would you like me to program your website in COBOL so you can maintain it?" They never get the satire...<p>"Oh, and really important. I like this website (shows random crappy website) that my friend has. Can you make it like this? You know, but different? We're ready to launch, all we need is the website, and we need it done ASAP. If you say its going to take 8 hours, I expect that you could get it done by tomorrow."<p>I usually respond to this with "Sure thing, if you pay in full now, I'll have it ready tomorrow morning." I'm never serious, but no one ever pulls out their checkbook either. Usually this ends the conversation, as if the website were so trivial, it doesn't warrant compensation.<p>My Analysis:<p>This happens to me almost weekly. I never accept these jobs obviously, but I find the apparent, almost desperate, need fascinating. Despite the plethora of "do-it-yourself" website builders (weebly, SquareSpace, Clover, heck even WordPress.com) these "small business" minded people aren't having their needs met. In fact, they are generally so technology inept (despite their COBOL tenure) that they wouldn't be able to navigate the "3 easy steps of building a website" on any hosted CMS if their lives depending on it.<p>I think this is where the hosted CMS market is failing. These companies are trying to make a CMS so easy, it's like making a Facebook fan page. The problem is, these small business people can't even make those! They usually hire a student to do that as well. What they really need is someone to hold their hand through the entire process. They demand the service of a $10k+ project budget with a top design firm, but have a $200 "I can do it myself if I wanted to" budget.<p>If someone could figure this out, they'd be siphoning up a billion dollar market easily. I don't think technology is the sole answer. I think it's a combination of extremely lean business processes with technology. Get cheap labor to do the hand holding while using the 3rd party CMS solutions. The small business wants to send an email describing what they want the homepage to say. They don't want to use a website builder to edit text. They don't want to do anything but talk to someone. The cheap labor can do the transition, and margins can be high.<p>I'd REALLY love to hear your thoughts on this. I never leave a problem as big as this just complaining. I always race to come up with a solution, and this one is a toughy.
Upvote: | 45 |
Title: I have several php applications for various projects and the code is deployed in production using either rsync or subversion. But I want all apps to be deployed with scripts using one method for consistency. Which methods have been successful for you?
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: This is a long standing question of mine reignited by bignoggins post at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772224 where he described the success of http://www.fantasymonsterapp.com.<p>I've often thought of building sports related apps (esp. pertaining to fantasy sports) but I've always struggled with how to legally obtain the necessary data (scheduling, statistics, player images, team logos, etc.) such that I can pursue it as a commercial venture. An obvious solution is to simply scrape the info but I'd assume you'd get shut down or blocked rather quickly. Yahoo offers a Fantasy Sports API but it's to be used for non-commercial purposes only.<p>Can anyone shed light on where/how to obtain current and past sports data that is available for commercial use? (I'm most interested in NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL data)<p>Thanks!
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: I'm in the planning phase for the redesign of my SaaS application as it launches out of private beta and into the wild. Part of that is writing the sales and marketing copy including explaining what the product is, it's benefits, calls to action etc.<p>Writing decent web copy isn't a strong suit of mine but I would like to get a better grounding in some of the basic principles. Do any of you have any tips or pointers to good source material I can read up on? I don't expect to turn into Don Draper overnight, but I'd like to be able to avoid common pitfalls.<p>Failing that, do any of you have any experience with decent copywriters and, given that I'm a bootstrapped single founder who has finite runway (i.e. I don't have tons of cash to throw at this problem), any personal recommendations for individuals you've worked with?<p>EDIT: Spelling, grammar and, er, general copy :/
Upvote: | 71 |
Title: I registered a domain for a project a year ago and lost interest after about six months. Still I think it is a decent domain name and I don't want to release it in the void. I'd much prefer if a HNer would get it from me and build it into something great.<p>If you are similarly sitting on cool domain names from abandoned projects or weekend hacks, here is a google spreadsheet for you to share them:<p>https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Aue8w7GPjATXdF9jSW1IV3BlWE1TYjM3R0JMV1hYUHc&hl=en
Upvote: | 78 |
Title: Please review my startup:
<a href="http://hypernumbers.com" rel="nofollow">http://hypernumbers.com</a><p>We finally have a ‘quantum of utility’ - a product like a spreadsheet but better at doing some things...<p>I would love to get your thoughts and opinions on what a native-web spreadsheet should be like - and in which ways hypernumbers meets (or fails to meet) your expectations.<p>BACK STORY<p>When I started writing this submission I googled for Paul Graham’s 'Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund' No 22 - web spreadsheet (<a href="http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html" rel="nofollow">http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html</a>) from 2008 – so I could point out we started full time work on it in 2007. Through the miracle of Google I found this article of Paul’s from 2005 (<a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html</a>) which predates us. I have no idea if I read that article at the time :(<p>That got me thinking. Reading Paul’s articles today it all seems so simple and obvious, but it took 6 years for me to come to think that thought – and it has taken another 4 years to execute it.<p>In Web 1.0, I was Chief Technical Architect at if.com – a bank on the internet. There was an anti-pattern around called ‘how come it takes me a day to do this on a spreadsheet, but it takes 10 developers 4 months in Java?’ to which the answer was just a shrug. We had a pile of innovative product designs prototyped in Excel a mile high which we actually just could not implement.<p>One day I stumbled across the Functional Programming FAQ which used spreadsheets as an example of a Functional Language: Eureka! We left to start our own bank with an offer engine written in an (initially undecided - later Erlang) Functional Language on the 4th September 2001 – turned out not so good...<p>‘spreadsheetieness of Erlang’ to ‘spreadsheet in Erlang’ took another 5 years...<p>3 hours sleep, filthy hangover, rural airport in Sweden, yet another failed (Erlang) start-up, depressed, I knocked up the first prototype of hypernumbers in sort of migranetic/hungover ecstasy of coding just to cheer myself up.<p>Another 4 years later – here we are...
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: My wife and I recently kicked off http://wickhamhousebrand.com to sell men's accessories. Throughout the setup, business development, and so on I've used tons of stuff I've learned from HN in one way or another: culled marketing and business tips from the popular blogs here, developed software for running it using stuff I found out about from HN users, etc.<p>I'm always interested in people's software startup stories, but I can't help but wonder: is anyone else doing something similar?<p>Have other resources to share? Interested in some sort of "Getting Real in Other Markets" group or something? I know there have to be others who aren't necessarily doing "The Next Big Social Network 4.0™" but still hang around here for advice and ideas. :)
Upvote: | 68 |
Title: Dear HN,<p>My co-founder (who is a close friend) and I have been working on a startup for about 1 year now. My co-founder had the "idea" for a startup. He needed a programmer, so we joined forces. His role is supposed to be design (though currently the application uses my design) and sales/business development/marketing.<p>The product is 99% complete and could be launched in a week. Unfortunately, we can't agree on partnership terms and ownership of the company. My co-founder wants 60% of the company and refuses to split the equity equally with me. My attempts at discussing/negotiating this with my co-founder only stir hostile, belittling responses from him.<p>I've often felt bullied and mistreated by this person, who treats me like a "resource" and bosses me around like a child. Though in certain stages of the project my co-founder has contributed significantly to mocking up the user-interface, we've gone through many iterations and, currently, 100% of the design AND code was created by me.<p>It's looking like we are about to go our separate ways, and my he is threatening legal action and asking me to sign an NDA.<p><i>He is not trying to take my work. He wants to start from scratch again by finding a co-founder or hiring a developer to build his idea.</i> The thing is, I'm still invested in my product. I don't want to ditch it.<p>I haven't signed anything up until now. I think my co-founder registered an LLC, but we've never agreed and signed any sort of partnership/ownership/nda agreement. What power do I have in this situation? Could I find a new non-technical co-founder and launch my product? As a last resort, I would even launch my product for free so my co-founder does not find another poor technical co-founder to abuse. I feel very cornered right now.<p>I've spent over 1200 hours designing and developing and have a very strong vision for the product.<p>What can I do?<p>Thanks in advance, HN. You guys are the best.<p><i></i>* ONE SUPER-IMPORTANT FACT I FORGOT TO MENTION <i></i>*
My co-founder does not have access to my code. I've suspected a partnership breakdown for awhile now, and since I haven't signed anything legal, I decided to make sure all of my work stayed out of my co-founders hands. I've never signed any agreement. I haven't been paid a penny.
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: So, inspired by jacquesm's giveaway of subdomains a few minutes ago, I'd like to start a HN book exchange/give away. I currently have a few recent CS classics that I no longer need and would be up for shipping them to someone in the continental US for just the cost of shipping. (Media mail is just a few dollars. If you really need the book and can't transfer money, I'll just cover the cost).<p>I encourage others to post books others might want that they no longer need and would be willing to either give them away, or trade for others.<p>edit: if contacting anyone in this thread by email, please prepend "HN Books: " to your subject. Also, please consider upvoting this thread if you think it's a good idea. The more eyeballs see this, the better it works.
Upvote: | 65 |
Title: Hey There, I've been asked for subdomains of ww.com and if I would give them out.<p>So, one time HN offer, if you want a subdomain of ww.com, you can have one for exactly $0.<p>The conditions:<p><pre><code> - first come first served
- subdomains 3 letters or longer (and yes, 'www' is taken ;) )
- the subdomain is not currently in use by a ww.com user
(you can see that by going to subdomain.ww.com,
if it redirects to the homepage then you're good)
- you have a HN account with 20 karma or more
- you post your domain name in this thread with the IP to go with it
- no warez / copyright violations or other nonsense
- do not harm my business
- no spam, illegal content or otherwise bad behaviour,
first 'mistake' or headache for me and you lose
the subdomain
- never pretend that you represent ww.com
- send me an email to confirm this so I can contact you
- no guarantees, if ww.com gets sold or I have
a bad hairday you may lose it so don't use
it for anything critical
</code></pre>
That's not to scare you, I just don't want to make promises that I can't keep in the longer term.<p>Offer valid for the next 24 hours.<p>if you liked this check http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1796266 Yan's book gift/exchange posting!<p>update: I'll make the DNS entries when this thread is 1 day old.
Upvote: | 104 |
Title: In response to the domain-swap thread today (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1794289), I created this simple app in a few hours' time:<p>http://hntrades.com/<p>You can list domain names that you have for sale/trade, and send messages within the site to other users. I'll be adding email notifications and some other basic functionality shortly.<p>I kept the domain name generic thinking it might be nice to list books or computer equipment available for trade as well.
Upvote: | 63 |
Title: I have zero programming experience, since I work mostly on the nontechnical side of start-ups. Ruby and other languages are extremely interesting to me and I am definitely interested in learning how to use them, but I want to have a basic idea of the time involved. Was it weeks/months/years until you felt comfortable writing an entire Web app with basic functionality?<p>The problem I have is that I have at least one idea that I'm really interested in fleshing out, and I'm wondering whether I'm going to have to sit on it for a year if I want to code the web app myself. Like I said, I'm usually on the non-technical end of start-ups.
Upvote: | 55 |
Title: With services like Lulu taking a cut of almost 50% for what is basically a hosted shop with decent SEO that sends e-books upon purchase, there must be services where I can upload a .pdf, .epub and similar documents for a (much) better price.<p>Additionally, it would be preferable with a means of applying an ID and/or purchaser's name to one of the book's first or last pages to discourage people from throwing up the e-book on a sharing service - while maintaining the incentive to share with people whom you trust.<p>I recall 37signals hosting one of their e-books themselves and selling it on Lulu, so maybe there is something to be learnt for setting up the service yourself.<p>With such a burgeoning self-publishing revolution, there must be someone who offers this service.
Upvote: | 68 |
Title: I'd really like to say thank you to PG, the folks at YC, the speakers and everyone that put time and effort into making startup school what I think was an amazing event this year.<p>All the speakers shared invaluable insights into what we all love best - building things. In fact, I've already started hounding people who weren't able to attend to watch the videos. From Brian Chesky's lessons on perseverance to Andrew Mason's comments on forgetting your grand artistic vision and just building a tool that people can use, I feel like I've gotten some wonderful tips and tricks to help out my own ventures.<p>Perhaps even more important than the speakers though, at least for me, was the people. There really isn't any way to describe how invigorating it is to be around so many excited about technology, building things and their great ideas of how to change the world. I feel like the projects and ideas I've been procrastinating are now achievable and need to be done right away.<p>So, thank you again, everyone involved, for putting on such a singular event that helps us all out so much.
Upvote: | 171 |
Title: My friend Saeed disappeared 2 years ago while he visited Iran. He is now facing false charges with deadly consequences. The court and government responsible for making this decision are actively hostile towards the internet. I know our HN community values freedom and technology, and if you can share the links below with your friends, or do anything to support Saeed.<p>"While working as developer in Canada, Saeed designed a program that would allow his clients to upload pictures, and as is a common courtesy in programming, included his name and info in the file.
This program, Saeed’s wife – Dr. Fatimeh Eftekhari – explains, was used in an adult content website WITHOUT Saeed’s knowledge or approval. “The only recognizable name in the program was Saeed’s,” she continued, “which led to his arrest” and to the accusations claiming that Saeed was responsible for the development and administration of the website." from http://united4iran.org/2010/10/the-case-of-saeed-malekpour-web-developer-jailed-since-2008/<p>Please send letters of support for Saeed: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6160/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4449<p>Thank-you
Upvote: | 158 |
Title: It seems like there's been a noticeable increase of downvoting neutral, non-inflammatory comments lately. Here's some screenshots of examples from the Android thread:<p>http://awesomescreenshot.com/0622hpufe<p>http://awesomescreenshot.com/0042hpvac<p>http://awesomescreenshot.com/0d92hpw67<p>The first one is an okay, not great comment in the beginning, but then has an interesting note at the end. The second comment is gracious and friendly with some disagreement and stating his experience. The third is slightly stupid, but downvoted into oblivion stupid? I don't think so.<p>There was also a professor of computer science commenting that he was going to show this article to his students as part of why he thinks Android is going to be a big deal, and he was getting downvoted too.<p>I mean, these are unemotional comments about technology. This isn't politics or regulation or anything that makes people want to kick dirt around. I've noticed a couple of my civil, sourced, uncontroversial comments on normal topics sometimes get a quick down to 0 lately too before coming back up. I don't know what's prompting the change in behavior, but it seems different that this is happening in threads that are not really controversial at all. The screenshots I posted don't seem like the kind of thing that'd get hit in the past. Changing demographics of some sort?
Upvote: | 70 |
Title: Where is the best place to incorporate a startup when thinking about taxes?<p>Given how a tech startup isn't really tied to a physical location, (Servers are rented, there is no brick store, founders can work from anywhere), where should one officially register the company?
Upvote: | 59 |
Title: This is quite a hard topic for me. As a programmer I feel bad about piracy. I wouldn't like to steal somebody's work. I know how hard it is to make smth nice and that cost of software/music/book/whatever is not just it's physical format.<p>I heard about Tony Hsieh's "Delivering happiness" quite a few times. Today I decided that I want to read it. I live in Lithuania (aKa ex-ussr), so naturally book shop next door doesn't have english books in stock. But I've got Kindle! Let's try amazon... Whoops, "books is not available in your region". F*ck! Next stop - book's website.. They don't sell directly at all. BN sells to US-adresses only as well. I checked amazon.co.uk as well - no digital version available, paperback can't be shipped to my address.<p>What shall eastern-european-to-the-bone do? Let's google "delivering happiness download". Long story short: I got it on my kindle in 15 minutes. For free.<p>For Americans and most of westerners piracy may be about morale and choice. But for many piracy is not a choice. And not because of price. That's the only way to access information.<p>What's your take? Is it OK to "steal" stuff that is very hard to obtain in legal ways?
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: I saw a link marked [dead] earlier today and decided to click through and check it out. The submitter had a simple post describing where the idea originated and then broke down the development into a nice timeline of events. He threw this little project together in a few hours with his buddy, working through the night. That sounds like it would be something HN members would support.<p>At this point, I wasn't sure why it was marked dead, so I visited the site and found some pretty disgusting submissions from what I can only assume are HN members. Comments along the lines of "keep this crappy site off HN" and one submission even telling him to die. These submissions have since been removed.<p>In any case, the response from HN made me angry and I've been thinking about it all afternoon. Who cares if it's not the prettiest site, or if it's not something you'll ever use. This guy built his project and shared his experience with us. The least we could do is give him some constructive feedback so he can improve it and maybe learn a thing or two.<p>Here's the link to his original post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800925
Upvote: | 246 |
Title: I remember listening to a great podcast a couple of years ago that Stanford was producing, but other than that I haven't had great success finding educational podcasts about the startup world. Since I have an hour-long commute and am a recent owner of an iPod FM transmitter, I'm looking for programs like this that might be interesting.
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: My startup is in the finance space and we're wondering what information is important to individual investors.<p>We have identified the first three aspects our tool will analyze: the quality of a stock's balance sheet, its history of generating cash and the amount of cash it generates compared to the amount it invests. We use proven value investing standards to grade each aspect.<p>What other information do you consider before investing in a stock?
Upvote: | 51 |
Title: It seems that a lot of old school Lispers switching to Python (for example: Peter Norvig). What do you think on Lisp vs Python today?
Upvote: | 232 |
Title: This is a few weeks old, but I was inspired by Jacques.. Fellow HNers really should be very, very wary about using PayPal for anything other than splitting the cost of dinner amongst friends.<p>I've had my PayPal account since 2002, and have been using it to send and receive thousands of dollars since then. Last month, PayPal froze my account. I try to keep it as close to empty as possible, but since they purposely make it hard to get money out (i.e. you can't schedule withdrawls) there were some 2500 USD in donations when they froze it.<p>I write free software. My free software has a "donate" link that goes to the PayPal donation page. The idiots at PayPal froze my account since I couldn't prove 501(c) exemption (which I don't have - and more to the point, never claimed to!) and insist that it's "illegal" to receive donations unless you're a registered non-profit with 501(c) IRS clearance. All this happened when I changed the name of the account from my name to the name of my website (because I didn't want my name on the payment page), bringing to their attention my site and PayPal account.<p>I tried to reason with them (showed the definition of "donation") and explained that I'm just getting paid at the whim of the user for services rendered, and that it isn't a "non-profit donation" in the IRS sense. No luck there. I asked to go back "to the way things were" - back to a normal premier account in my own name, and not in the name of the non-501(c) organization that I run the site under, but they (of course) wouldn't listen.<p>In the end, they stopped responding to my emails and told me to get the papers I need to be able to pull the money out. I cannot transfer the money I have to my bank account. I cannot close my account, withdraw any money, use my PayPal debit card or anything other than (you guessed it) put more money into the PayPal balance. The money frozen is enough to hurt, but not enough to make it worth it for me to get a lawyer or waste too much time on it.<p>So just a word of warning to the wise: don't use PayPal. You'll thank yourself forever.<p>(I ended up switching to Amazon Simple Pay, which is _incredible_ except no phone support and customer service response times for _merchant accounts_ is 3 days+. Then I tried my hand at Google checkout, except my conversions went down, waaay down; and have come to the conclusion that it's stupid to accept money through any of these 3rd party services. Time to check out real payment processing providers like BrainTree & co.)
Upvote: | 76 |
Title: Two days ago I had the pleasure of speaking at Startup School. Never before have I see such a high concentration of smart ambitious people in one place.<p>I've posted a followup on my blog at http://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/10/18/optimize-for-happiness.html that covers some of the ideas I introduced in more detail.<p>Since I only had about 25 minutes for the talk and 5 minutes for questions, I wanted to make myself available for additional questions. So today I'll be answering any questions you have here on Hacker News.<p>Ask away!
Upvote: | 144 |
Title: Over the last few days I've seen people post their lists of failed startups. What is not clear, however, is how many man-hours (or man-months or man-years), that were spent on these failed startups: were they working full-time on them, burning their own finances, or were these side-projects while working in full-time employment?<p>So I was wondering: how many man-hours (man-months, man-years etc) have you spent on your "failed" projects? And do you have any regrets?<p>(NB: I use the terms "wasted" and "failed" loosely).
Upvote: | 63 |
Title: Clarification: This is not me, I stumbled upon this site.
Upvote: | 518 |
Title: Seems like everyone I talked to or post I read loves it. Is there no negative experience? If there is, please share.
Upvote: | 60 |
Title: 6 days ago I submitted the following story:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1785497<p>It's a blog entry of an iPhone developer, sharing an interesting story on his marketing attempts of his app. He shared actual sale number, amount of effort, and a tactic he used which actually got him featured on the app store. This story got even more interesting after I submitted it, because he became so successful to hit #1 best seller in the US app store for a moment, and now he is #5.<p>When I submitted the story, it didn't get noticed, and quickly went past the first page of new submission without a single up vote. This is of course natural. As there are many stories being submitted.<p>The problem is - you will notice it has 6 up votes now - this means that 5 additional people has tried to submit this story to share with everybody in the past 6 days. But the system completely ignore this fact, and the story doesn't even have a chance to hit the front page again - just because it missed the chance once...<p>There are many possible solutions, I can offer at least 2:<p>1 When a story that didn't hit the front page get resubmitted, it hit the new submission page again, as it was just submitted.<p>2 A small part of the front page will be dedicated for the 5 latest submission, this way new stories will have thousands of views, and will have more chance to not get ignored.
Upvote: | 136 |
Title: Whats the best way to start web development on lisp?
Upvote: | 48 |
Title: What are you working on right now?<p>I'll start... I am working for as a contractor for a company that sends messages (phone calls, text messages, and emails) for schools and businesses. Currently I'm working on an android app that is a front end for they system.<p>in my spare time i work on a side project... search engine with integrated social bookmarking
http://www.searchstream.co
Upvote: | 78 |
Title: I have a really comfortable web development job, albeit not very exciting, at a medium sized software company. That's why, like most people who probably read this and similar sites, I try to evolve professionally in my free time - read technical books, blogs, pick up languages, etc. I consider myself good at my job, and average compared to the industry. I constantly run into articles where people praise their co-workers, regale on how exciting their job is and how much they learn every day...
I find that almost everyone I work with (company of +50 people) just comes to work to punch a ticket, go home, repeat. This is not an "old" company (avg. age <35), yet people are satisfied with what they picked up so far, and don't feel the need to grow as a professional. When I mention things like github, Erlang or HN, for example, I get vague stares - nobody's heard of them. I understand people have families and non-work related hobbies (I do too - a lot), but for me coming to work just to pass 8-10 daily hours in closing bugs, adding features and resolving tickets is just dull. Yeah, I get it, that's what work is all about.
Don't get me wrong - these guys are good in what they do (mostly C/C++ Devs), but I've got nothing to learn from them, nothing interesting to chat about (I don't consider diaper changing talks exciting) and I keep fighting through the day to make work interesting by coming up with new solutions to old problems (a cliché, I know, but this is really what I do). Even my team members/boss who do web-development aren't different than the rest (a bit worse, actually).
On the plus side, the salary and benefits where I work are great. I have a baby on the way and an unemployed wife, so I can't really afford to be cavalier on job search at the moment. Maybe I'm just selling out, and this is definitely a vent post, but does anyone here feels the same at their current job, and if so - what do you do?
Also, I live and work outside the US, if it makes a difference.
Upvote: | 81 |
Title: So I setup a simple, yet functional node.js chat room, for YC Winter 2011 applicants to meet other applicants, and chat about their ideas and businesses. Nothing official,
I'm not associated with YC at all.<p>We had some great discussions last night, but I'm am setting up a more definite time for tonight at 8:30pm [Pacific].<p>The url is: http://www.nodejscloud.com:8001/<p>I am a Winter 2011 YC applicant, and my username in chat is Justin.<p>I will keep the chat room up 24/7, probably through the November 1st announcement for others to pop their head into and chat.<p>See you there.
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: I am a programmer who has good knowledge of C++, Java, Python and even some Common Lisp and looking to learning a bit of HTML, CSS and Javascript. What resources will you recommend for learning these to a developer who is experienced in other languages?
Upvote: | 60 |
Title: ok, so here's the rub;<p>I am technically minded, I did my first degree in Elec. Eng, which I finished in 2000, and was exposed to some programming.<p>I spent 5 unfulfilling years in tech support at a big global company, then went travelling for a few years, then came back and did a software degree in 8 months at the age of 30 (due to the fact that I already had exposure, they allowed me to skip some credits). I came out with a high 2nd class honours from this, which I felt was pretty good considering the amount I had to learn.<p>Since I graduated in 2008, I opted not to jump into the first job that came my way, and instead started studying Ruby on Rails, jQuery, and more recently BDD with Rspec and Cucumber, as well as working on some projects and building wordpress sites in between for a little extra cash. The idea was that this time around I would get work that interested me instead of going through the motions.<p>Recently I've been looking for employment, and haven't been successful, although feel as though I have come close once or twice.<p>Still, I'm starting to get a sinking feeling. I don't have enough experience to get started, and I can't get started without experience. It's starting to get me down a bit. I'm 33 now, and I need to start my career already.<p>I would love to know what insight you guys have for me in this situation.<p>cheers<p>Paul
Upvote: | 88 |
Title: I created a throwaway account to vent a little and, to be honest, to seek support of sorts from fellow entrepreneurial hackers who lurk here. I'm facing the lowest low of my journey at this point and there is no better venue to express my frustration.<p>I'll spellcheck this, but it won't be smooth - English isn't my native tongue.<p>Here's my story:<p>4 years ago I quit my good paying programming job, teamed up with a friend and started working on our new venture. New languages, lots of fun, a few excited beta customers - nothing could be better. The idea was big, it definitely needed funding to succeed, so after about a year of coding we still managed to pull off a nice and usable MVP which we "launched", i.e. just stopped tweaking the server. We applied to YC (rejected by email), studied "how to pitch to TC" and spent a week crafting our email to them (no response), submitted our product to HN and got rave reviews - it sat at #1 for almost the entire day in 08 and then... Silence. We never, ever got any press. We spent a couple of months trying to get some coverage but never received a single reply. We studied the blogsphere, followed people's advice, but nobody cared, so customers didn't know about us. The only way to get customers was Adwords which was prohibitively expensive, so after wasting a year and $20K of my savings I moved on. Meanwhile a mediocre competitor launched in LA, raised $12M, got their mandatory TC announcement, and another one, and another... basically a TC article for every little feature they would add. That was absolutely devastating...<p>For about a year I was consulting. Moved to another city to make it easier to cope with failure, gradually increased my consulting earnings to maybe 80% of my "pre-startup" levels and learned how to spend weekends with my family again.<p>It didn't last though - on January 2010 I got an idea which wasn't quite as huge and expensive to implement, hence I wouldn't need to send cold emails to various angle groups and VCs, so I was quite excited to trying again. I also took a sizable chunk of my savings ($60K) and hired a developer to work with me on this venture. We've been coding like mad.. I've never been so productive. In just 8 months without any funding we went from zero to a beautiful system, signed up a couple of early customers by attending local meetups and events, and prepared for a Big Day.<p>...And now the same thing is happening: no response from our carefully crafted TC email (yeah, yeah, with "story" and something for TC readers, I've been reading PR-related blog posts religiously) and this time I can't even get on CrunchBase! Our company profile got stuck in "pending" mode while I'm seeing tens of new companies show up every day. Did YC again. My application is out there but I don't even entertain myself with the thought of being accepted: I'm a solo founder, didn't go to Stanford, in my mid 30s, etc. Haven't seen much of those in TC announcements. I can't even announce my product on HN and Reddit (my two only chances of <i>any</i> PR) because that would mean that TC loses exclusivity and won't cover me tomorrow or on Monday. What a great feeling!<p>So here is what I want to say to anyone who's considering jumping into the cold waters of launching your own company:<p><i></i> Have a fucking great idea <i></i><p>We all know what they say about execution. That's true. But that doesn't apply to you. You can't afford to be "average idea, but great execution" company, because you're alone. Or just too small. Average-idea-great-execution companies know people, have capital and the luxury of having <i>every feature</i> of their average idea covered on TechCrunch and other blogs. They can sponsor conferences, print t-shirts, host parties and announce contests - all those things ARE execution. That's the value a program like YCombinator provides, you just won't be able to do it - you're not in the Valley, you don't have 20 hours of week to network, blog, tweet, drink, etc. And coding won't get you there, therefore...<p><i></i> Have a fucking great idea <i></i><p>You'll also hear how cheap PR is these days, just start a blog. Nope, that's also not for you. Because blogging is a nearly full-time occupation, so don't expect to gain readership with that little precious time you have left from coding your product and working your day job. Successful blogs are written by well-funded competitors who don't have to code 18 hours a day and have capital to keep staff on payroll to blog/tweet/whatever and make as much attention-grabbing noise as possible. Writing pieces like "Why Scala?" twice a month won't do it for you, I've tried. So...<p><i></i> Have a fucking great idea <i></i><p>Your only chance, really, is to build something which can spread like a virus after being announced on a col-de-sac party. Something utterly addictive, unusual and truly amazing. A great self-selling, self-propagating viral-on-steroids idea (assuming you can code) is your only chance to succeed.<p>Ughh, I already feel a little better. My wife's expecting me home in half an hour, so I need to come up with a cheerful answer to her inevitable "how was your Big Launch Day?", that answer needs to be awesome and funny, to help take my mind off my empty inbox and server logs.<p>Oh, about scalas, clojures and rubies - they really, really don't matter.
Upvote: | 379 |
Title: I just got a response from Steve Jobs re: Java and OS X. Here it is.
Upvote: | 197 |
Title: http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/ewww-you-use-php/
Upvote: | 276 |
Title: Will be updating with prior art but please post if you have anything<p>Here is basically what they want to patent:<p>Purchasing virtual currency with real currency where the virtual currency cannot be returned to real currency into a gamgling game.
Using the virtual currency in the gamble and deducting/awarding the user appropriately.
2 claims that say the same thing: associating a virtual item to 2 users (implying that a virtual item can change hands, wow what an innovation zynga, thanks) and purchasing a virtual item with virtual currency
Transfering virtual currency and in the process verifying a social connection, between 2 users and placing a limit on how much they can do this.<p>Software patents need to be invalidated but we'll get into that later<p>I will be doing a live stream or a local recording of me trying to implement this "innovation" to be "defended" for ~20 years in the interests of the progression of science and arts in the shortest ammount of time<p>Also started http://stopsocialgamepatents.org
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: I'm normally OK at this, but I'm struggling here! Anyone got any original ideas?<p>I deliver empty boxes to people's homes, they fill them up with their unwanted goods (small electricals etc.), I then collect, list and sell everything on eBay and pay them the proceeds (less commission) straight into their Paypal.<p>I'd eventually like to be able to sell direct on my own site, avoiding ebay.<p>It ideally needs to be a common TLD as the customers are unlikely to be tech-savvy.<p><i>Update</i>: I didn't expect much attention from this so I kept it brief. Here's some more info since people seem interested in the business itself.<p>I'm not started yet - I just used the present tense for brevity above. I'm going to test the market over the next couple of weeks with a sample dropoff to 100 houses. I founded a student storage business [www.thebigspace.co.uk] 7 years ago and so I've got a good grasp of the logistics of collecting and moving boxes. I also have lots of empty boxes and storage space. Any thoughts on the viability of the business are also welcome...
Upvote: | 43 |
Title: A few months ago I took the journey into startup land. I quit my job and decided to finish the project I had been thinking about finishing for a long time. A penny auction app where users are linked to facebook identities.<p>One major worry right from the start with this project was that it required a real time accurately synchronized countdown across multiple browsers. I was using ajax to call back to the server for an update every 1 second to accomplish this. I knew it was going to get interesting if a lot of users joined up because they would all be calling the server once every second.<p>Initially I thought we would run into trouble with bandwidth, but I was wrong. After 4 days we had about 150 users up and bidding when the server decided to crash (right in the middle of an ipad auction just because my luck is that good). Being on slicehost they had us upgraded within 20 minutes, but still we were working the server hard. The timer was skipping, we were getting all kinds of strange errors in the logs and things were looking pretty bad. It wasn't bandwidth, but memory and processor usage that were the problem.<p>I knew from reading articles on HN regularly that PHP is terrible, but I build the app in PHP anyways along with the 1 second callback. It was the fastest way to get things up and running for me.<p>That night I had an idea, if I built the 1 second call back portion of the app in C the server wouldn't have to load apache with all its extensions every 1 second. So I built a very simple fork server to send updates back for the real time update.<p>Result: Processor 99% idle even during heavy use and memory usage basically stays exactly the same whether or not more people are watching the auctions.<p>We now have a few thousand users and things have not changed at all, still running great. Of course this system will have its limits but so far we have not even dented it.<p>If you want to see it in action you can go to http://apps.facebook.com/bucktobid<p>Edit: For those who want a little more detail I have a lighttpd server listening on port 80 that redirects to apache for php calls. If the call comes in for .btb (a made up extension) lighttpd redirects to the C app which listens on another port locally and serves the needed info to the browser. The updater is 100% C/C++ not an apache module.
Upvote: | 61 |
Title: Release early, release often.
Don't worry, be crappy.
Fail fast.
Iterate.<p>Show us your half baked, not really ready for prime time projects, HN. Is it ugly but interesting?
I'll start with mine: http://smsul8r.com - a SMS message scheduler. Ugly, buggy, but it works.
Come on... let's see your worst work!
Upvote: | 126 |
Title: Paul Graham recently mentioned that one of the characteristics Y Combinator looks for is "naughtiness" -- an intolerance for bureaucratic rules, a history of beating the system. Go read about it here: (http://paulgraham.com/founders.html)<p>So what are your stories?
Upvote: | 192 |
Title: I have an app that uses Django Python and Postgresql.<p>Right now is running under Linux/Apache/mod_wsgi, how ever have read about Nginx and Gunicorn (also uwsgi and others) as a better option...<p>I would like to read your recommendations (advantages and disadvantages) about deploying django.<p>PS: I am mainly developer so I lack a lot of knowledge about sysadmin.
Upvote: | 109 |
Title: What tools do you use to monitor your web server(s)? More specifically, server uptime, resource usage (CPU, RAM, bandwidth, etc.), Apache, MySQL and PHP/Ruby/Python.
Upvote: | 55 |
Title: I thinking on moving there next year. I really want to jump in the tech action right away.<p>Where is the best place to move? How expensive could cost every month of living on average?<p>Thanks
Upvote: | 90 |
Title: A top-of-the-line Air has a 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo and a 256GB SSD. Anyone taken the plunge and made this your primary development box?
Upvote: | 75 |
Title: Ethanol optional. My favorite beverage in the world is a two-shot long espresso with a bit of sugar. It's like a super-rich, more intense coffee. Hackers seem to have interesting tastes, so let's hear them.
Upvote: | 63 |
Title: I play on http://www.gokgs.com/ sometimes, with the same name.<p>I'm not super incredible (maybe 2 dan). At my peak, when I was studying in Japan, I was close to 5 dan. A week before leaving Kyoto, I hooked up with a buddy (who was also visiting) to challenge the locals at a smoke-filled Go club. He was perhaps 2 dan at the time. We walked in and slaughtered the room. They could not match us. Ah, but they insisted we return the following evening.<p>We did.<p>Waiting for us were some of their strongest players. I was seated in front of Kyoto's most ruthless amateur player, who must have been a scrappy 7 dan. He was a squat old man with grizzly eyes and a staunch, "I'm gonna' mess you up" attitude. The desire for revenge in his gaze was unmistakable.<p>The knives came out, we threw down dragon after dragon, chase after chase, launching attack and counter-attack, the board was intense. Eyes of groups were abandoned, trades were made, and the shrewdness of his plays were like his gaze. In the end he won four out of five games, and I learned a lesson in humility. It was a great experience, would do it again in an eye-blink.<p>Go is such an amazing game, with a rich history, pervasive through Asia, and unsuspecting in its simplicity. It's also a great way to make friends around the world, and meet some truly remarkable people.<p>Any dan players care for a game?
Upvote: | 136 |
Title: I love the story of how the AirBnB guys sold cereal boxes just to survive. Does anyone know any more similar stories about successful startups.
Upvote: | 67 |
Title: Looks pretty succinct and expressive. Good IDE (VS) and nice framework (.net). Easy async programming, units of measure, quotations (as far as I understand it's similar to lisp macros). Though running on linux is pretty painful, it still can be done using mono.<p>So what do you think?
Upvote: | 69 |
Title: Hi,<p>HN has always been there for me when I needed advice, and for a long time I have pondered about a way to give back to this wonderful community. Today, I've finally figured out how to do that.<p>One thing that I've consistently noticed is that most hackers struggle a great deal to write/refine pitches, blog posts, documentation, support emails and their ilk. Further, I really do think that the founders should worry more about their code and customers than figuring out the site content.<p>At the same time compelling insights into the product are important. If the writer doesn't get your vision, then it really doesn't matter which side of greatness they fall into. After all how can you communicate, when you don't know what you're communicating about?<p>So, I'm willing to do this for you. I'm willing to write whatever you throw at me and I am desperate to give you hard feedback. Moreover, I don't want money for it. Good karma in ever sense of the word will do.<p>Thank you for reading this.<p>P.S. - I'm perfectly willing to do stuff even if it doesn't involve writing. Just email me at [email protected] and let me know.
Upvote: | 220 |
Title: We recently sold a total of 22% share of our established company to an investor that also wanted to work for us as director of Sales. The person had a large rolodex in a segment of our market that we had not been able to tap and felt they could bring a lot to the table as an employee. So we put together some additional vesting based on rev targets all tied to being employed. The investment granted preferred shares and a seat on the board, voting is with ownership % and it takes 67% to pass.<p>So here we are 8 weeks after the deal, and things could not have gone worse. From day 1 the employee made it clear they did not intend to do sales, but instead had a "vision" for the company and wanted to run it. They first tried to buy out the CEO and president to do so, but we refused. After that they refused to work the sales plan we had developed, refused to be accountable to any touches/sales goals, hired staff without budget approval, purchased equipment/services without approval (sometimes express disapproval), took 20% vacation days, worked 10-4, and walked out of 3 meetings. The person basically would take no direction or training from the CEO (their agreed upon boss) and eventually moved out of the office to setup an office in another location. When called out on this behavior the person threatened to suit for all sorts of things, hostile work environment being #1 - they also threatened to pull their investment 3 times, including 3 working days in!<p>So here we are now, we have made it very clear that the employment will not continue like this, and have started the process of removing the job with cause. Seeing that coming they have requested to reverse the deal and demand we return the full investment in 1 week, or they can "do it the hard way". They would like to reverse everything so that it is like it never happened. There is nothing in our agreement that covers this, besides them selling their shares, the employment is not guaranteed on paper. We too would like them out of the company for obvious reasons but there are issues with this demand:<p>1. 7 days it a short amount of time to come up with 400k
2. a lot of the investment has been committed (in good faith) to salaries and equipment, included the salary paid to the investor for "working" in the sales role (which yielded 0 sales, 1 presentation, and 0 estimates)
3. Some of the investment bought personal stock from one of the owners. So that money is taxed, been used to delete debt, and not in the company.
4. They know all our IP from having access to literally everything from basecamp to 3yrs of client sales data, our staff and to how we do what we do. They have made it very clear they want to turn around and open a directly competing company as soon as they leave.<p>Anytime we push back on these issues they again threaten to suit, and they remind us they have a huge pile of cash for that and we don't.<p>We have offered to buy back 185K of their stock immediately, and the rest by the end of the year from accounts receivable. We think this would be more realistic, doing the buy back much faster would starve the company of cash, and very well put us negative on cash-flow. We are also asking that the existing non-compete, non-disparagement, and NDA they signed still stand. I also feel like the 30K spent on their salaries should be deducted from the buyback.<p>Of course we think this is all total BS, and the "right" thing to do is to suit them, but that is not our DNA, and would jeopardize the company we have now (growing revenues at 125% a year for the past 3 years).<p>I know what we did wrong, trust me, but what do you think we should do now to finish this?
Upvote: | 75 |
Title: We know the number of women accepted to YC is pretty low, so I assume the number of women simply applying is pretty low as well. Being that Startup School was 99% guys, I wanted to see how many women are on here and who've applied (if only to say hello and rock on. :P). Or even, women who read HN regularly and haven't applied, and why.<p>Personally, I've applied this round with http://weddingtype.com.<p>EDIT: Also, any guys who've applied with a woman on their team, speak up. :)
Upvote: | 48 |
Title: Time is a valuable asset and we have a limited amount to spend on our project, considering that we have also to live a good life to avoid stress and burnout. How do you tune your life and manage your time to be able to waste as less as possible?<p>I will begin with what I do. I have a full time job and I work on a personal project on my spare time. Of course with all this work the risk of burnout is big, as I already experienced in the past: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1545774<p>I can tell you how I manage right now. I'm 20 minutes biking from work, and usually 15 minutes from anywhere else. Biking saves me a lot of commuting time, because I don't have to rely on public transportation. Here in Amsterdam I can bike where I want and it's much faster than taking a tram. Moreover it's healthy, so I can keep fit during the week too.<p>I start working at 9, but I wake up at 6, so each morning I get a couple of hours to work on my project. This implies of course that I have to go to sleep early in the evening, so I usually go to bed at 10 to have the sufficient amount of sleep, which is crucial to stay productive.<p>I'm now in the proceeds to buy a house. The main reasons to buy a house still apply, but I have some more: living in my own house will mean I will not have to deal with a landlord, which is making me lose a lot of time right now. Moreover when I will be living alone, I will pay someone to clean the house instead of doing it myself. I value my time more than the money cleaners ask and I'm willing to spend money to get back time. Washing machine for clothes, dishwasher for dishes and I don't iron clothes at all (if you learn how to hang them it's almost useless).<p>To avoid the burnout, I made up some rules: no work in the evenings, so when I go home from work and I'm tired I don't have the pressure of doing something on myself and I can spend those 2 spare hours after dinner relaxing (reading a book or some hobby). On friday I dance tango, on weekends I usually work on my project but still I go to parties or out with friends. Sometimes I go on a trip somewhere. I go running for one hour every weekend, to keep fit, release stress and clear my mind. This all helps to avoid burnout and stress.<p>How do you tune your life?
Upvote: | 99 |
Title: Following on from the FireSheep post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1827928) how do HNers secure their InterWebs usage whilst on Public WiFi ?<p>It seems like VPN is a good way to go - I'm particularly interested to hear whether anyone can recommend any good VPN providers ?<p>The following were mentioned in the FireSheep post:<p><pre><code> WiTopia (http://www.witopia.net)
OpenVPN (http://openvpn.net/)
</code></pre>
Does anyone have any experience with them or others ?
Upvote: | 86 |
Title: For the past 5 years I've been a PHP developer. For the past 2 I've been using frameworks to make my life a lot easier. The thing is, I'm a bit bored with PHP. I'd like to expand my horizons and learn a new language + framework.<p>Currently I'm looking at Ruby + Rails and Python + Django. I already know a bit of Python (I write back-end scripts with it), but not enough to have it influence my decision. The criteria I'm looking at are:<p>* Adoption - Are a lot of people using this framework and does it look like it is still gaining followers?<p>* Community - Is there a strong support community around it? Are there good resources for learning?<p>* Jobs - What are the job prospects like for this language + framework?<p>* Scalability - Does the framework scale well? I imagine this is determine by application design too, but lets assume that it's designed well.<p>* Fun - Is it a fun language to code in? Does the framework make writing web applications enjoyable? CakePHP made PHP fun for me again. Does Django or Rails do the same thing for their respective languages?<p>I'm also open to other suggestions as well, but these two languages and frameworks are the ones I see floating around HN the most.
Upvote: | 48 |
Title: I bet many on HN will have the domain buying fetish. i.e) You think of a side project and immediately buy the domain for it. There is also the practice of simply buying a domain just because you thought it was cool. I am one of those people and my reasoning is that if i spend some money and buy the domain, i will have the motivation to get started on the project and it has worked at times.<p>On the other hand, i have accumulated many domains which seem pretty useless now! I do renew some domains hoping that i will work on it some day. How do you tackle this?
Upvote: | 49 |
Title: We hire C developers at OpenDNS. Most often, we hire them from some other company where they have been working for the better part of a decade.<p>They are computer scientists and they are very smart.<p>But we also like to hire students graduating from college. It's rare for us to find a CS graduate who knows C, let alone one who enjoys writing in C.<p>Apparently most CS is taught in Java and Python these days, with one or two courses in algorithms or operating systems. There seems to be only a few classes where C is involved.<p>Is this because teachers don't like teaching in C? Or because students prefer the speed of development of a language like Python or Java? Where are the students who do like C? Where can I find those guys (and girls)?
Upvote: | 72 |
Title: Inspired by http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1826828 I decided to see if HN would be open to the idea of a weekly "giveaway" for around 5 or so design hours [1]. And the idea seemed to go over well, so I've decided to do it.<p>The first one is today. Just comment with a link to your project/company. After around 24 hours I'll pick the post with the most upvotes and send them an email.<p>In return for the design hours, I'd love to write a blogpost with a before/after and about the overall process.<p>I think it'll be fun. :)<p>[1] - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1827654
Upvote: | 65 |
Title: My personal problem with HN, is that every time I dare to write a comment that is not positive about something, I get downvoted and in most cases the downvoter doesn't care much about explaining it, even when my comment spawned an interesting discussion.<p>It's very annoying that 100+ karma users could act as really good trolls, they could just go around and downvote everybody without ever loosing karma, but costing the commenter karma.<p>Don't get me wrong I really enjoy the HN community, there are a lot of bright people here and very good content and discussions, it's just that the system discourages you to have your own opinion on anything, because if you write something that a 100+ user doesn't like he can simply downvote you irresponsibly.<p>TL, DR: I don't know maybe it's me, maybe I have too radical opinions on stuff. But overall I feel that the downvoters should loose some karma too, and maybe force the downvoter to write a reason for it, to make sure that they downvote responsibly.<p>PS: I am not saying neither that I'm always right nor that I never deserved the downvote.
Upvote: | 69 |
Title: I recently married and moved to Japan. We live in a small city called Tokushima in about 70 square meter apartment. Currently we have a free room that we haven't yet decided what to do with. If you've been wanting to experience Japan, this could be your chance. You would fly to Osaka airport, meet me (I don't mind visiting Osaka every now and then), maybe see Osaka first and then take a bus to Tokushima. You could stay in the room for two or three days and then continue your trip on your own. You can take a boat to Tokyo, for example.<p>If this sounds like fun, see my email in my profile. I thought this might be an interesting way for me to meet other developers, too.
Upvote: | 77 |
Title: After 10 weeks of very hard work for 3 co-founders and after reading literally hundreds of posts on HN about launching a new idea (and how to do it right), our site Page99Test.com is [hopefully] ready for prime time. It launches in earnest today, October 26th, and I am very excited to first present it to this community.<p>It's a very simple (and we hear eye-catching) website that lets new and established writers get immediate, unbiased feedback from readers on their published books and unpublished manuscripts -- all based on a single page (99!).<p>Other websites you already know about or have likely used that offer a similar 'rate your first impression' experience in different industries include Dribbble.com for graphic design, FiveSecondTest.com for home pages, and HotOrNot.com for photos of people (not so much anymore, but you get the idea).<p>We've been debating whether or not to submit a YC application, mainly because we're not sure about whether the idea is truly 'big enough' -- and what our eventual revenue model will be. We're hoping to get some feedback here to settle our little internal debate.<p>Thanks in advance for checking out our labor of love. And thanks for sharing all your tips on how to make it as an entrepreneur.<p>Lance
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: A few days ago, I responded to a comment by bloggergirl offering to read anyone's web copy and help. I shot off an email hoping for a paragraph or two of feedback on my startup's copy.<p>Instead I received a professional, detailed deck of tons of invaluable well thought out feedback. It must have taken her an entire afternoon.<p>Here's a link to it: http://www.slideshare.net/shereefb/recommendations-for-bettermeans<p>To top it off, this isn't someone with a lot of free time on her hands, she's only days away from launching her own startup (page99test)<p>This community blows my mind!
Upvote: | 453 |
Title: I'd be happy to take some designs, convert to HTML/CSS/implement some JS for folks. Or Wordpress themes. Perhaps some PHP work as well :).
Upvote: | 121 |
Title: With everyone offering their services, I felt that I should put my hat into the ring too.<p>Background: I'm a tax accountant with years of experience in PwC and KPMG (Big 4: look them up and you'll quickly see they're like the google and microsoft of accounting firms.)<p>I've had experience in federal tax specializing in REITs and real estate tax at PwC. I specialized in state and local taxation at KPMG.<p>Federal work related to 1120, 1065 and Disregarded Single-Member LLCs<p>State and Local: Income/Franchise, Sales, Payroll, VAT and Unclaimed Property<p>I currently have my own firm where I work with small to midsize clients.<p>You can pretty much ask me anything you’d like about tax. I’ll be pretty honest with you and let you know if I’m out of my depth. If you have any questions you can check me out at www.thekenggroup.com and contact me at [email protected] or just reply.<p>Cheers
Upvote: | 97 |
Title: I'm an experienced technical recruiter based in the UK and due to the uprise in offers of assistance to this site I've decided to add my own two cents.<p>I'm willing to analyse your CV and offer constructive feedback on potential content alterations, layout, etc.<p>The logical critic in you will assume I'm offering to do this in order to generate leads or recruits and to counter-act that, I have no problem with you removing your personal details and even censoring company names.<p>As for me, I have a degree in Software Development & Web Design and my target market is London and the South East. I've been in recruitment for a few years now and I have a 1st class understanding of the market. My highest fee generating clients are insurance companies & financial institutions.<p>I will be doing this during my spare time and at the weekend so if the response is significant then be patient with me!<p>edit:
ATTENTION: DUE TO AN OVERWHELMING RESPONSE I CAN NO LONGER ACCEPT ANY FURTHER CV'S FOR NOW. I WILL RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO HAS GONE TO THE EFFORT OF EMAILING ME SO FAR.
Upvote: | 180 |
Title: Inspired by this comment:<p>http://stackoverflow.com/questions/448613/whats-happening-with-arc/586632#586632<p>So does having a baby give you inspiration and ability to do more?<p>Or maybe you change your life's priorities?<p>Or you are so exhausted that everything else seems uninteresting?<p>How does having a baby change your life?
Upvote: | 127 |
Title: Hi guys!<p>I've been lurking here for a while, and I feel like giving something to the community.<p>You all, who help out the entrepreneurs, are more valuable than you think.<p>I want to help your startup with SEO.
On-page optimization, keyword-usage, titles, descriptions, link building advice, even some Internet Marketing advice.<p>I've been working as an SEO consultant (on my own) in Sweden for almost two years.<p>In spite of me being in Sweden, most of my clients are from the US, and I've even held a couple of speaking gigs in LA, SF and NY for SMBs.<p>Some clients: IKEA, Scandinavian Airlines (through marketing firms I work with), as well as some niche clothing stores.<p>You could ask your questions here or email [email protected]<p>I need: The URL of the website; some keywords and what your site is about.<p>Have a great day, everyone!
Upvote: | 123 |
Title: Inspired with latest topics on legal and design help.<p>I cant help you with some simple stuff for your RoR project. Maybe converting your mockups to HAML, working on backed, consulting on something, scalable deployments, adding couple nice features etc. Anything that can be done within 2-5 hours.<p>You must be not concerned with NDAs stuff.<p>Feel free to reply in this tread (If you are RoR developer willing to give back to community please comment as well!)<p>About me: I am doing this startup - Videolla.com and contracting on Rails to bootstrap it. Have over like 4 yrs full-time Rails contracting experience.
Upvote: | 41 |
Title: Twitter just announced their 300th employee [1]. I thought I would extend the question to people who might know. What is a company like Twitter doing with 300 employees? Of course this is all speculation, but I feel 300 is just too much.<p>I would love to hear what everyone here thinks!<p>[1] https://twitter.com/#!/twitter/status/28816319556
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: Inspired by the Ask HN thread "How does having a baby change your life". User grandalf brought up the idea of having a Google Group for parents on HN, so I pulled the trigger.
Upvote: | 52 |
Title: Ever since TC got acquired by AOL, they haven't posted anything on AngelGate.<p>Part of the deal? :P
Upvote: | 70 |
Title: I've been in the "build->launch->move to next project" loop for some time.<p>My projects are mostly based on features that are missing or misimplemented in
the existing products. Some of the finished projects gone live, tried to sell some,
some are rotting in the attic.<p>I lack visual design skills, but yet trying to do my best to provide a usable UI for
the products. One of my motives in building a product against my lack of visual skills
is knowing that "they started as crap too". For example reddit was just a very simple
listing full with porn links, stumbleupon was just a "what is this" page for a few years,
twitter was and still is damn slow, broken and overbloated and there are many more..
Other than reddit, others was most probably the first at doing what they do. There
were no similar products, but they got it up and running and people easily adopted.<p>When i ask about feedbacks about my products, mostly i get "i didn't understand which
problem you are solving". I even deployed a localized copy of cnprog as a forum on
women's issues, to see if it was me doing it wrong in designing. I got the following
feedback several times: "it's too complicated, there's no order, no title in threads,
other forums(phpbb style) are better ". WTF?
These people are on facebook 24/7, uploading gazillions of photos, messaging their friends
each second. They know what tagging is, and still a stackoverflow clone is too complicated?<p>Anyway, what i wonder is, what happened to people that got it the first time
when they saw reddit, stumbleupon and said "yeah i'll use it". Were internet users back
in late 90's , ealy 2000's much more sophisticated people? What has changed since then,
and people became website gourmets to say that "you should tell what this site is about
on the first page. i don't understand that your site is a listing site by just looking at the listing
on the goddamn first page. that's why i decided that i won't use it at the very first second
i stumbled onto your site"? Sigh..<p>Have "they" gone forever, and will never come back again?<p><i></i>Edit: Thanks for all the fantastic comments, i didn't expect to get many insightful ideas and suggestions. There are some points i guess i need to make myself clear:<p>- WTF -> these people can use the applications i can not even cope with, how can they find a 2-3 step forum complex ? details: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1838852<p>- I've tried opening jobs on amazon, asking communities for feedbacks, paying google ads, using stumbleupon ads, posting to startup listings. lastly using feedbackroulette :) by the way fr is just great.<p>- details about a few of the stuff i've done http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1838805
Upvote: | 77 |
Title: Take a look at the Rails Rumble 2010 entries: http://railsrumble.com/<p>There's a whole stack of apps there, developed within 48 hours by small groups of people. They're not all beautiful, but there is (to my eye) a pretty high standard of presentation for most of them.<p>I am sure I am not alone in feeling like there's this chunk of knowledge I'm missing - in terms of how, and when, to go about making something beautiful.<p>I'm fascinated by the concept of optimizing user experience - it certainly has the potential to make or break an application's popularity. If you can spend valuable time tweaking code to make it more appealing to the compiler, why can't it work in the other direction too? Though I don't think it's reasonable to expect myself to be incredible at both, I'd like to be able to put together a prototype that looks nice. After all, I wouldn't show people code that I knew was bad and ugly.<p>Part A - I would love to know - how does this aspect fit into the flow of the project? At what point do you start turning things from black-text-on-white-background into a beautiful and intelligent layout? I'm sure it's usually incremental, but is there a specific point at which you decide to shift focus over to implementing your UI? I know I usually go through many notebook pages of UI ideas even before I've written any code. Is it worthwhile doing mockups in photoshop at this stage? Showing different designs to people and asking for feedback? Or do you usually do this after your core functionality is built? And where do you draw the line, say 'this is ready enough for now!' and release the thing?<p>Part B - In terms of user interface and usability, there's a lot of information out there. Much of it, however, is from the early days of graphical computing and the web. There are still great things to learn from stuff like Joel on Software but I'd like some good information about user interactions and expectations in the AJAX era. There must have been some more wisdom accumulated in the last decade! I'm looking for some shoulders to stand on - 'our experience showed us that you should never do <xyz> because users find it confusing'.<p>Part C - I've always been curious about how small teams of people manage to cope with the graphical elements of web application building. Does a team of 2-3 people in an early days startup usually contain a designer/artist? Is that something you can reliably outsource? Is it ever a good idea to have your design done by someone else and then shoehorn your view code and javascript into it (for a prototype/beta), or should it always be a closely collaborative process?<p>Part D - Finally - I'm interested in any of you people who can see BOTH sides of the coin. If you started off as a programmer and then learned how to make stuff sexy and usable - what put you on that path? Where did you start learning? What were your major obstacles, and how did you overcome them?<p>Looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say.<p>Dan
Upvote: | 137 |
Title: I've learned so much from this community, I thought I would give back too.
I've spent the past three years doing affiliate marketing, buying traffic on pretty much every paid traffic source out there and driving it to various products.<p>I will help you properly architect, target, build, and scale a marketing campaign on paid search, adwords, Facebook, or media buys. Or I can help you optimize an existing campaign you are already running. I know a lot of tricks about specific traffic sources- I would welcome the opportunity to apply them for the benefit of a fellow HN member's startup.<p>My email is in my profile- I look forward to hearing from you.
Upvote: | 88 |
Title: I'm a former Princeton admissions officer. I did that job for two years from 2004-2006. During that time I read probably 2500 applications, spoke at about 80 high schools, and physically voted on whether or not to admit about 5,000 applicants.<p>I believe applying to elite schools is a total crapshoot unless you satisfy an instutional need of the university (minority, athlete, rich person, super elite academic/artist/entrepreneur). That said, it's incredibly important to make sure that there's nothing WRONG with your application before you send it off.<p>A good college application (like a good movie according to Siskel) has 2-3 good qualities and no bad ones.<p>That's where I can help.<p>Many applicants are deep-sixed simply because no one told them not to include X in their application. I suspect HNers would be a crowd that might have this problem.<p>In the spirit of this week's Offer HN spree, I will give 15-minute reviews to college applications from Hacker News members who reach out to me through my profile info.<p>I will not make edits or write anything on your app. I will look for red flags and inform you of any you find and my general impression of your strengths as an applicant.<p>Note: My experience is 100% in undergrad admissions. I have no experience with grad school applications and any advice I give on those must be taken with a grain of salt.
Upvote: | 164 |
Title: Do you have questions about machine learning, natural language processing, or data monetization in general?<p>In particular, I'll field questions on:<p>* recommender systems<p>* profit optimization in ecommerce sites<p>* autotagging<p>* creative ways that NLP + ML can add value to your product and give you a competitive advantage<p>* whatever else you like.<p>If you have a specific technical question about ML or NLP, please post it on the MetaOptimize Q+A site (http://metaoptimize.com/qa/) and post a link here as a comment. I'll give you the detailed answer over there, since the Q+A there is designed to be archival and is more searchable. Other sorts of questions (like "How do I turn this data into money?") can go in this thread directly. If it seems like a longer discussion, email me at joseph at metaoptimize dot com and we can talk about setting up a Skype chat.<p>p.s. I'm also hiring people for remote project work, if you are kick-ass at ML or NLP, or you simply can ship correct code really fast. Email me at joseph at metaoptimize dot com.<p><i>Who am I?</i><p>My name is Joseph Turian, and I head MetaOptimize LLC. I consult on NLP, ML, and data monetization. I also run the MetaOptimize Q&A site (http://metaoptimize.com/qa/), where ML and NLP experts share their knowledge. I recently demo'ed autotagging of hacker news to make it automagically browsable (http://metaoptimize.com/projects/autotag/hackernews/).<p>* I am a data expert, holding a Ph.D. in natural language processing and machine learning. I have a decade of experience in these topics. I specialize in large data sets.<p>* I’m business-minded, so I focus on business goals and the most direct path of execution to achieve these goals.<p>* I am also a technology generalist who has been hacking since age 10 and has programmed competitively at a world-class level.
Upvote: | 112 |
Title: This is not a sustainable model.<p>There are thousands of HN users, each with their own areas of expertise.<p>Often, a good test of whether something is worth doing is "what if everyone did the same?" If everyone was more polite, the world would be a better place. If everyone treated others better, the world would be a better place.<p>But if everyone posted "Offer HN" posts, even if they all did it just once and with a genuine desire to help, rather than a secret need to build their public profile and/or get some interesting serendipitous contacts, HN would become <i>much</i> less valuable.<p>To those who believe that this new "Offer HN" craze is something worth encouraging, if that's the case, please create a site that's better tailored to making those offers. Maybe you can even get pg to link to it if it's good. You'll certainly get feedback, and so on.<p>But please don't post any more "Offer HN". Despite the generous impulse behind them, they are basically just spam that's pushing out other more interesting stuff, at the moment.<p>Related: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840143
Upvote: | 406 |
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