skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: What to expect and how to launch a non-gaming iPhone app?
Hi HN,

I'm about to launch my productivity/utility based iPhone app - JustRemindIt (http://justremindit.com) in just few weeks. It's a voice call based reminder app. Simply type message and reminder details, and it will remind a receiver via a voice call. I've demoed it to many people during development phase and everyone thought it's a really cool app. But I've this feeling that, however cool it is, it's not cool as playing games. App store, which is predominantly dominated by Gaming app success stories, I was wondering how can a productivity/utility based app make success? I've read few posts on HN about iPhone app launch marketing, but many were targeted for gaming apps. So what steps shall I take to launch productivity/utility app successfully to generate initial buzz?

Also, in the long-term, what shall I expect (revenue, download wise) from a productivity/utility based apps? Can anyone share their experience in launching non-gaming apps, and seeing successful results?

PS: This is my first iPhone app launch. The app will be FREE to download, but users will have to buy reminder credits via in-app purchasing to send reminders. There are different packages based on number of credits that you can buy.

All suggestions and comments will be very helpful.

Thanks!
Aditya
Investire a Genova
Some Computer Security Prezi's
This came up in a comment to another post and i figured others might appreciate it as it's own post. (some recent prezi's related to infosec)

Recently it has been used at NYU poly in their reverse engineering classes: http://prezi.com/a5tm-lf0879-/reverse-engineering-101-nyupol... http://prezi.com/e5a2tumdqocj/reverse-engineering-102-nyupol...
and has been used by the immunitysec guys quite a bit too: http://prezi.com/kmyvgiobsl1d/pyretic-rich-smith-blackhatdef...
This year i used it to demo a timeline of memory corruption bugs over the ages too: http://prezi.com/iemlmzvpnk_d/the-almost-complete-history-of... (you can download mines from my blog: http://blog.thinkst.com/2010/08/blackhat-2010-slides-paper-rest.html)

Prezi rocks..
Mac OS X App Store Poses Problems for Open Source Software
That's because I have no plans to share the 30x500 income with anyone yet. Alex isn't charging me for he material he contributed to the last version since I'm doing all the upkeep. :) He may or may not be joining me in a guest teacher role but we haven't decided yet!
Reading his resignation letter it's clear he's not even attempting to refute climate change. He's just attacking the methods and motivations used to prove it.

Frankly I find a stunning correlation between the popularity of scientific opinions, and their supposed 'truth'. Go back in time and I bet 99/100 scientists could prove the existence of God during the inquisition.
Here is a clickable link in case you want to see the preview and earn some free credits before launch - http://justremindit.com
It Gets Better: Google Employees
I'll argue this.

my grandfather worked on AT&T System UNIX with what was basically an 8th grade education.

if you read "Secrets of Consulting" there's a few rules that my grandfather laid out; one of them is "If you're doing math above elementary level, you're doing it wrong".

I've done many very powerful things with that rule.
Dalton Caldwell’s  Talk On The Challenges Facing Music Startups
The Disruptor In The Valley
The 2.6.36 kernel has been released
It does seem that brain training doesn't directly improve anything but what was trained for.

I buy that. Taken from a more computational standpoint, that'd be the holy grail: we'd have to be nigh perfectly abstracted to allow improvement in any one area to improve another area. We're generalists, but we're not that good of generalists.

Training does encourage you to learn ways to learn what you're being trained on, and those ways of learning things may very well translate to learning other things. Direct cause-effect? No, thus no guarantee, which is what science wants very much. But I'd argue some gain is indeed, uh, gained.
I concur. There's also another factor that I think will make this a non-issue. For whatever reason, iPad apps are pretty consistently 3-5x their iPhone equivalent price. I doubt users will balk when OS X apps are 3-5 times that.
That income is from about 20 days total of teaching. The main course we developed on 2009. There is some time to market and update, but you've got to admit, that's a ludicrously good ROI.

That said, like Kyle said, and my article said, it's not where I want to be forever. But training is still a product.
I don't really think so. When you are selling products it's specifically different than a salary.

If I sold 10k widgets for $10 a piece and said my business made a 100k last year, ignoring rent, cost of widget and labor, that would definitely be misleading.

Besides, there are still taxes paid on top of whatever they did bring in, so it really doesn't fit your cute analogy. They paid free lancers, etc.

I mean I don't care, but "How much do you make" has built into the question the idea that everyone who gets a salary pays taxes, etc. When you are talking about a business 'making money' it is built into the question that there are costs associated with it.
Sadly, even if they get this ironed out for their purposes, I doubt it'll translate to increased freedom for consumers. The LoC isn't a person, so any legislation will probably be special-cased for them.

Nice to see them recognizing and admitting some problems around the super-locked-down world of audio / media, however.
Hacker beer names
Of all the ways to make money with a time machine, registering a handful of generic keyword domains would have been the easiest.
Maybe. There have been attacks after 9/11 in other countries and I see no signs of great fear in those countries.
Incredible article Amy.

And to those saying workshops aren't "products" well I'd argue they straddle the product/service line. Since you're creating a content package and then presenting it. Lots of the material from workshops can be re-sold or re-presented over and over. Vs pure services which you are creating on demand each time.
To elaborate -- mainstream computer UIs have been mostly stagnant for years, with small innovations here and there. 10.7 seems like a bold step in a new direction. I dislike the idea that the iPad is some kind of magical UX unicorn that they want to spread all over their devices, but at least it's something new.
Sounds like a really interesting book.
It's actually time pilots + crew, security community experts, the airline industry, passengers and even the TSA themselves called out the current security procedures for the ineffective theater that they are.

Aside from the missrepresentation of how effective they are and the cost to resource, the current system is preventing real and meaningful security procedures to be adopted (things like behavior screening, etc).

To show how much of a 'theater' it all is, take some of these examples:

TSA have never noticed/asked me about the Swiss Tech Utili Key swiss-army knife type thing I carry on my key-chain.

I can take an Epipen on board a flight because I have a prescription (I have severe allergies but I'm sure it's easy for anyone to get one) - but if you inject it into the blood stream, esp at the neck, it will kill you (or someone else).

Print-at-home boarding passes mean that people who are on watch-lists can buy tickets in a false name and then edit the HTML of the ticket before they print it out to match their state ID. When you enter security the TSA agent never validates your paper-based tickets and ID with the passenger records database so security is by-passed.

If bottles of water can't be taken on board because they might be liquid explosive, then why are they tossed into the trash next to the scanner? If they show you on board the plane how to put on a life-vest in the safety demo because they have to assume the worst, then by the same logic they should assume the worst for each bottle and dispose of it accordingly.

The very security measures in place create massively dense lines of people at security check-points. These become greater vectors for suicide bombers then the planes themselves.

And even these new body scanners create new vectors. People are scanned with them instead of the metal detector which means a terrorist can hold a metal item inside an orifice or body cavity and it not be detected.

I support the pilot because I support the need for security at airports and borders - it just needs to be meaningful security that actually catches, and more importantly prevents/discourages, the bad guys.
Ask HN: Thoughts/feelings about Alex Grey's art?
Just wondering. He is without question one of the most important visual artists of this era.

and...please don't post your hate for the guy if you don't understand his art. I don't think anyone cares.
The correct title is "I've made $xx,xxx in sales". That'll be clearer and more straightforward.
And yet, for all that they've been writing for years most people still don't realize it's theater.

Real security is not really possible anyway - not without profiling, which people won't accept and not without spending far more resources on security - and if you are disturbed now, imagine if spending goes up tenfold.

I agree the "threat level" is a joke though.
How I use Git
Awesome, but what's with the domain name? Might want to pick something easier to remember / type.
What's the difference between an authenticated and non-authenticated multiplayer server?
How To Succeed In Business: Really Try
That was very fun to read~!
True, but people are flying, so they can't be that worried of being strip-searched.

I am reading more pushback on the X-ray devices so that may be the point where people draw the line.

And - there's your proof. People want the appearance of security, but when you give them a real security improvement it's too much.
Great article Amy! An inspiring and encouraging story to show people it can be done. Hard work and persistence pays off.
You may be technically correct, but if I rolled all the money back into salaries & dev, and profited zero, people would still want to know the $216k number - because anyone could make $0 in profit :)

That said, I have $60k just sitting in my bank account right now - and it feels goooood.
Aol Mail Goes Down. No One Notices.
Show HN: HireForge is an applicant tracking system made for startups. (http://www.hireforge.com)
• Seven inches is pretty small.
• RIM doesn't stand a chance competing with Apple's UI.
What the typical victim thinks is probably something along the lines of "I'm already in trouble, I better just do what the authorities tell me to do before I make it any worse."

Most people (still!) don't question authority and there is a picture of a policeman right on the page, for gosh sakes!

The problem with making users afraid is that attackers will find a way to use that fear against them. You can't scare people into thinking critically.
Cease and desist: Cal State threatens students who sell their class notes
Agreed, but you would only improve at sit-ups or push-ups, and there is a point where you will plateau. Doing push-ups 3 times a week for 10 min. won't make you good at pull-ups, which it seems is what people are expecting with these brain 'training' games. If you want to improve your mind, you do have to work it, but the work needs to be varied and consistent: work on your memory, read, learn to play a musical instrument, learn new physical skills, do math problems, etc. You have to do it all and keep doing it (unless you want to specialize, in which case you do one thing over and over as has already been said in the comments).
Proof that The Internet does indeed hate you, and wants everyone to remember it forever, even if you don't.
As always, greater security equals greater annoyance.
You might consider listing it on flippa.com. Flippa is a popular place to sell web properties, but typically focuses on smaller sales (most are in the tens of thousands of dollars, at best). I've heard anecdotally that most sellers can expect to get 1-3x yearly revenue.
it's sad that even though the domain is worth so much, people simply still just put advertising on it.

C'mon, give us a decent sex site at least. Just sayin.
Just for fun here's the reverse to turn a sequence of booleans into a sequence of integer types (byte,int,long,etc). Note that the length of sequence s must be a multiple of sizeof<'T> times 8

let bitsToBitContainer (s:seq<bool>) : seq<'T> =
let sz = sizeof<'T>*8
s
|> Seq.scan (fun (i,n) x -> (i++,(n<<<1)|||(x&&&1)) (0,0)
|> Seq.filter (fun (i,n) -> i = sz)
|> Seq.map (fun (i,n) -> n)
Java WebServices JSR overview
Or because they're finding that typical companies actually suck to work in, and they're not happy to make do with that?
more and more developers seem to be really unhappy with the new app store.. probably not the best model
I kept telling my parents back in '99 that they should buy domain names.
Maybe you haven't noticed how reddit treats the users who espouse ideas they don't like. /r/atheism redditors have launched invasions on /r/christianity multiple times now, and go in and totally destroy threads that contained nothing especially provocative; they've downvoted all the Christian viewpoints and upvoted all the mocking viewpoints. I expect most other religious subreddits have encountered similar intimidation.

Even isolated within subreddits, it's hard to get someone who is at odds with the ideas of most of reddit's userbase to visit a friendly subreddit when they visit the main page and see a bunch of f-bombs, nsfw links, militant atheist and liberal content, etc. My parents, for instance, would be offended by something on the main page at almost any time you captured it. Things are better now that /r/atheism is off the front page, but it's still not good.

Reddit changes its logo site-wide to celebrate same-sex marriage victories. Any time the Salvation Army is mentioned on reddit 100 redditors jump to write about how the Salvation Army opposes pornography so nobody should ever donate to them. And so on.
"apps that require optional installations (such as Java) will be rejected"

What additional installations do OS X apps usually need, though? Flash and Java are already included; the only additional thing I can think of is SIMBL, and that isn't usually used for normal apps.
"Besides, computers are way better at math than you are anyway." <- This is so wrong (at least until we have strong AI). He confuses math with doing calculations.
Five Zombie Economic Ideas That Refuse to Die
LaunchBar (ctrl+space): http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html
+1 for Cayman Islands, especially the 7 Mile Beach area of Grand Cayman. Definitely wired, and easy access to banking.

Also consider the Philippines, particularly Cebu. As an up and coming outsourcing powerhouse, Cebu is wired with highspeed internet connections, and it has nice beaches. My outsourcing team is located in Cebu City. Nearby Boracay is nice too, but the internet isn't as fast. A nice touch is that the main beach has WiFi if you want to work right on the beach.
Does business school teach people how to assert power before they're ready?
Of course Apple doesn't want beta software in the Mac App Store. I don't want it either. If I want to experiment with some Firefox nightlies, I'll go and get them from the dev site. The Mac App store is geared at people who want software installation and maintenance to be painless and worry free. They are 'curating' it to be that way. It's not a software directory listing service where everyone can list their offerings.
All good points. During an interview for a newspaper, Schneier also exposed another method of boarding a plane without a ticket or ID, just by saying he lost his wallet and supplying a name and flight destination/time. He got his ticket with a mark on it waiving the need to match his ID.

With all these vulnerabilities, and with all the new attack vectors that exist _because_ of these fake security measures as dotBen points out, I can't imagine a reasoned defense of the security theater in place. Anyone?
Well that article certainly wears its editorial slant on its sleeve.

I'm not really seeing the problem here; Apple isn't interested in selling, or giving away, in-progress beta apps or apps which exhibit obvious bugs because they want to maintain a certain quality of experience for people who use their store.

If Apple isn't interested in distributing your app, that's their prerogative. You're not entitled to it, and you certainly don't need it; Firefox has been doing just fine distributing their software through their own servers. They're free to continue doing so.

Nordstroms isn't interested in selling my janky, lumpy, hand-carved ash trays either, but that hardly makes them tyrants. They're just maintaining their store's brand.
I'd bet the likelihood of Apple finally finishing resolution independence is much higher now, considering how fine the resolutions of the new Macbook Airs are (which, as Jobs said, are probably going to become their most popular computer in the near future).
Best rational approximation
I'm on the third harddisk on my macbook.
MG is a sort of troll, himself. He invites comments like that. I don't mean this as a personal attack but his articles are sometimes inflammatory and a lot of times come across as simple Apple ass-kissing.
Apple to Build Their Own Telecom Infrastructure -Jason Calacanis prediction
On This Week in Startups, Jason Calacanis predicts Apple will buy a telecom operator and build their own infrastructure to combat the problem with current carriers technology and service capabilities.
Do you want to change the world or sip sugar water for the rest of your life?
Introducing Arcturus: The World's First and Only Developer Intelligence Tool
Assuming he wants to invest it but has little experience with money he should keep most of the money where it is, for now.

Maybe take $20,000 out and put it into a brokerage account and start learning to trade with it. IF and only if he's able to successfully trade that $20K and turn it into $40K or more, over a 2 year period then should he even attempt to trade with larger amounts. You need the discipline, and the experience of being wrong to truly understand money management.
New York City Sets Deal With Microsoft
Making Ignorance Chic
What exactly would you train them to do? It has to be comprehensible by laypeople and distilled down to a single mantra.

So many security related interactions have backfired already, like this one. Is there one simple, straightforward principle that users could follow that will always work, and will keep working long into the future? I doubt it.
The comments thread on that announcement is really quite funny: "Hit them with some Chicken Freestyle".
Something I don't understand is that the Library of Congress is in charge of writing the guidelines on copyright, do they not have any leeway to be able to stop or reduce enforcement of the law in this case?
At first I was surprised that the traffic has tanked so much for sex.com, because I figured every teenager would enter it into the browser because it's so easy to think of. But when I went to Google (even with safe search off) and type "sex", all of the matches are for Sex and the City. My guess is that it's probably pretty hard to get much SEO traction for the word "sex".
Why Developers Should Pay Attention to Node.js
Looks like my state has reduced requirements for single-shreholder corporations so I could start out with one of those this year and deal with complications when I add partners. It's just a choice of one day of formalities and pain today for a chance that I will want to sell it in five years.
Discovery tried this approach in their Project Earth show,
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/project-earth/lab-books/reforest...

Their attempt was not successful. If I recall correctly the main problem was that it takes more force to embed the new plant in the soil than the plant can survive.
My guess is that it uses some newer APIs which were introduced in 10.6. This may be because they wanted to use Grand Central Dispatch (better multi-core support), a later addition to Core Graphics or simply an API which gave their GUI the more iOS feel compared to the GUI elements in 10.5.
I wish I could say the same.
Bono Can't Save The World, Neither Can We.
There are more forms of invention now. So the maxim doesn't apply as much as it once did.
It might not be the best solution for geeks, but Apple is serious about smooth user experience. I might not mind a few bugs in the software I download, but it will confuse/frustrate the hell out of Mr Average Joe.
The interesting thing about this feature is it makes full screen applications first class citizens in a way I'm not sure we've seen before on a desktop OS. I'm thinking you're probably right that for existing applications it's a minor feature but it may drive more applications to offer a full screen mode which is a good thing in my opinion. Being able to quickly switch between full screen apps probably lends this feature to being used as a type of heavy duty widget. If you check Facebook constantly maybe you'd want to always have the Facebook app running a gesture away from your full screen Twitter app.
Correction: the App Store doesn't work with buggy, unfinished software that's in a constant state of beta.

The author sure has a low opinion of open source software quality, doesn't he?
As a hiring manager and startup founder, this is all excellent advice.
FBI computer system - "$100 million over budget and nowhere near finished"
I just wish there was a Facetime API.
I disagree. Training is a service.

A product (as defined by me) is something you build once and sell. That could be an ebook, an SaaS web app, or some kind of widget. It could even be access to workshops you've recorded. But training people in person or live online is not a product.

You might say it's simply a matter of semantics, but I think it's an important distinction. Services don't scale like products because you are limited by the amount of time you're available to perform said service.

Keep in mind I'm not trying to take away from your success. It's a good blog post–I simply find the title and use of the word "product" inaccurate.
But I assume this is the first time they've actually packed the OS on a USB drive, no?
What happens when Apple "curates" it such that apps of a political nature are no longer allowed? Or apps that compete with their own?

EDIT: (1) There is a risk that the vast majority of the population (non-geeks), will increasingly rely on the store to get apps, so smaller innovators/FOSS projects will not have the same exposure as others if rejected. (Think the Microsoft antitrust issue with the preinstallation of IE on Windows. People could still get Netscape elsewhere.) (2) This could also be a first step, much like the iPhone/iOS app store, in Apple being the arbiter of all apps that are allowed on Mac OS X.
This is an interesting issue. And I hope someone more knowledgeable can help me but students notes are almost always plain copies of the teachers notes for which the teacher and school probably hold copyright. I think that while it sucks for the students, the school might have a good reason of wanting to protect the work teacher have put in these notes.

On the other hand, the students buying these note are probably also in the class and if they had taken been to class they would have had the notes available to them.

I guess it boils down to the fact that money is exchange. Sharing notes with a friend for free probably can't be stopped.
Gaming Education
Basically this is a binary search on the Stern-Brocot tree. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern%E2%80%93Brocot_tree for more.
By your logic then every company that sells any kind of product is engaged in censorship because they don't carry every possible product ever made. Also, I didn't say Apple couldn't do monumentally stupid things, I said if they did they would know about it when it affects their bottom line.
Thanks brk, I'll email you tonight to discuss.