skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Does Agile Web Development with Rails have a section on learning Ruby? I'm wondering if I can kill two birds with one stone with this behemoth of a book
Apple now valued at over $100 billion
Not really, sorry. If you know Python or a similar language well, you can probably get by without a dedicated Ruby resource, because AWD does have lots of examples, and it has a 13-page ruby tutorial appendix. But I wouldn't recommend it.
Got a book. Read it. Installed it. Followed the demo app. Wrote a small sample app. Wrote a larger sample app. Applied for related jobs. Got a related job. Worked hard. The End?
Still does, but my submission has a different URL. Usually PG kills anything that makes it past the filter, but it looks like he hasn't seen this one yet.
mind mentioning what book it was?
Heck, I'd just love a description of what they are building. "take back the inbox"? What does THAT mean? :-) Are they replacing Outlook?

Email is certainly a pain point... So I'm rooting for 'em.
People seem to really dislike frameworks and I know they can be more trouble then they are worth at times but I really like TurboGears. It's python based, sits on top of CherryPy (webserver) and you can take as much or as little as you need. It has a great philosophy of pulling in all thats good from all over the python world and loosely coupling it together in to a framework. It's not perfect by an means but it's a lot better then inventing that wheel again!
Yes, you came off as morally smug. Most of the folks I know who start businesses (and I know a lot of them these days) aren't grading themselves on "number of fancy items owned". In fact, people who start businesses seem to be less impressed by the trappings of wealth than most. pg rolls in a Mazda 3, and I don't recall ever seeing any particularly expensive cars in the YC lot, even when Joe Kraus, Evan Williams, Ron Conway, etc. were there (though I may not have been paying attention).

When you run a business revenues are a measure of how much you're building something good, so you want high revenues because you want to know you're building something good. It has nothing to do with what you plan to buy with the money.
Jason Calacanis' Mahalo Launches
It's hard to learn Ruby on Rails from online tutorials - a downfall I discuss in a pretty popular post on my personal blog.

http://www.michaelwales.com/2006/12/ror-education-takes-wrong-approach/
Octopart - Order aggregation, take a cut (or sell company to highest bidder and move on...rumor has it this may have already happened).

And going back into previous YC groups:

Wufoo - upsells to larger accounts

TextPayMe - Something to do with Amazon, apparently. (But even if that's a misunderstanding, they can take a cut of all transfers.)

Inkling - Charge businesses

Loopt - Partnerships ("I know where you at!")

But there are a number of YC companies for whom ads will be a significant portion of revenue. Up-selling to premium services can be a challenging business. We (Virtualmin) basically are in the up-selling to premium services business, as well, because we have millions of users of our Open Source software and currently only hundreds of paying users. It's not as hard as I'd feared it might be, however...if there's a compelling value in the upgrade, it's a no-brainer for anyone that uses the product to make money. Anytime buying a product for a few bucks can make your job easier and your customers happier, it's a win, and most successful business people know that. Upselling individuals is much harder--they value their time differently.

So, I believe free-to-premium works great for business-oriented services and products, and not so much for consumer-oriented businesses. I'd be curious to know how much flickr was making on its premium service before the acquisition, as it's one of the "knock out" success stories for the free-to-premium model, but I wonder if they were actually making enough to make payroll and sustain growth.
"I don't want to sound like I am indorsing or rejecting anything I would just like to see more creative income models."

I don't know how many more creative models there can be. The list by sharpshoot above gives a pretty good picture of a wide array of business models. I'm sure there are other ways to make money...but most of the obvious ones (and a few non-obvious ones) are covered by the past YC companies. I don't know anything about the TechStars companies, so I can't speak to that.
Another tool in the "offline webapps" set: Google Gears
It looks minimalistic compared to things like Apollo or Slingshot, but maybe the minimalistic approach combined with the Google brand will be a winner.
Agile development with Ruby on Rails.

But I got it before the current edition came out, so I don't know how it's changed.
VentureBeat - Q&A with Evan Williams: Twitter raising venture capital
They didn't bother to ask you whether you already knew RoR? Or they're willing to pay you to learn it?

I want to know how you pulled this off.
I built something with it.
This sounds like a great idea - allowing the user to work offline with effectively the same application as the online version if I understand what they are doing correctly. Then syncing of the data once online again. The key downside of using online apps is: what do you do when you're offline and need to work. Could this be the beginning of the solution?
Evolution of Coms:  Email to Twitter & Beyond
MS Surface: Hits The Ground Running
Google acquires Panoramio
Google releases open source toolkit for offline web apps.
Big Media Snapping Up Web 2.0 Startups
What?

That is a VERY simple assertion relating to something that is a bit more complicated. I think most people here should brush up on the idea of attachment networks, or organizational ecology. I'll give you the short version, the top two companies win where preferential attachment is what determines whether a user stays with you.

Of course there are exceptions. For instance, one could be providing information on a web site that would be a challenge to get elsewhere. The Wall Street Journal comes to mind. With these companies, attachment is irrelevant, if a user has a great need for the information s/he MUST go to the Wall Street Journal.

Most of the web 2.0 startups I have reviewed, and there have been many, are NECESSARILY based around preferential attachment. I understand this tendency. After all, if startup Y can implement the idea of startup X in less than 3 months time, then startup X will have an issue to deal with. So it is in the interest of startup X to make sure that users prefer them. Add to that the fact that most are banking on providing the user convenient access to his OWN data, and you have the makings of a good number of also rans.

I always ask, what happens if the user takes his data elsewhere?

"It'll never happen", is usually the answer.

I inquire as to the possibility of a recession and a concomitant slow down in internet advertising. Like all of the 25 year old mortgage brokers 4 years ago, most of the founders look at me like I just came from Mars. There is a new economy, get on board or get out of the way.

So I walk a little ways off...

And wait for the wreck, maybe I can get a good deal on parts.
Same as awt - I built something with it (http://www.charitycheckout.com). It's amazing how building something really helps you focus on the parts of the framework and core language you need to learn.
I should add I also got the Agile Web development book by Dave Thomas to support my learning.
Parent has important questions that should be addressed, or is this is just a django vs the world flamewar?
Too bad it's a desktop app (it's probably windows only as well which automatically makes it useless to me)... Personally, I haven't used a desktop email client since early 2001 (after losing my laptop and after failing to restore my backup). I prefer to have email online since it's accessible from everywhere and it's backed up (one would hope anyway).

But I think what they're building is cool and I hope some of their ideas end up in online email clients.
internet memorials
Consulting is mostly a relationship business, and I have an excellent relationship with these guys. I did however have to guarantee my work.
Ignite Boston - all the cool kids will be there!
Consult a real lawyer ASAP. Probably none of us here are lawyers and we might inadvertently give you some bad advice. Don't just write off your options... you might get them to give you an early cliff or might allow you to vest a large portion of your shares. Certainly, they don't have to do that and firing you is their right and they owe you nothing but maybe a threat of a lawsuit will change their mind. No startup wants to have a lawsuit on their hands since it drains time & money from productive things and it looks really bad during the due diligence phase since it introduces uncertainty.

Talk to them first... see if you can get your options or a prorated portion of them before contacting lawyers. But make sure that you notify them that you will pursue this matter through courts if you can't settle amicably.
You are legally entitled to shit. This happened to me and you really don't get anything. It does depend on the state because California is at will, other states may vary. I guess most of us young folks have to realize that we are entitled to nothing. I guess that is the good thinking about creating our own businesses.
Apple Should Do a Foleo (But On Steroids)
I think it's because they like the anti-framework way of doing things (eg. calling a bunch of libraries instead of letting the framework generate code in your app directory). Both TBNL in Lisp and Web.py in Python seem to do a great job in keep your footprint small.
Google to release Google Gears on Thursday - take applications beyond the web and challenge Microsoft on desktop
While we might have reasons to limit our immediate scope, please don't constrain us that much :)

Rest assured, we are also users of other platforms and the web.
Managing the Present while Focusing on the Future
Here is the main site: http://gears.google.com/

and here is the dev site with full list of APIs!

http://code.google.com/apis/gears/
Programming: How to build a Firefox extension - Lifehacker
Adsense as a biz model is doomed
I recently did an experiment with one of my sites (don't ask what site it is).

This is what I did.
For 3 days, i spammed some forums with irrelevant headlines that only dumb people would fall for. such as "I made $XXXXX in 1 day. See how i do it." and then a link to my side. On those days, the adsense takings were record highs. They were clicking like mad.

Thereafter, for another 3 days, i spammed the same forums with RELEVANT headlines with content that is relevant to the topic being discussed. I just shove the link to my site at the end of the content. Based on the traffic records, the number of new visitors visiting is the same as the prior 3 days. BUT the adsense takings tumble to 1/3 of the previous 3 days. This means that these people are clicking on less ads.

Of course, this empirical observation might not be statistical significant but if this is of any indication, adsense would only work for content site targeting dumb people who reach their site via search engines. Using Adsense for Digg or Reddit just wouldn't work.

FYI, i have stopped spamming. So don't berate me for doing so. These 6 days were the only days i spammed.
Steve Jobs live from D 2007 (video highlights + transcript)
this one will fail so badly so fast you would start to wonder why the VCs fund them
Google gears up offline access for Web apps
FYI, i have not stopped spamming.

Er... :)
iPhone to get third party apps - start your Xcode folks!
Yeah, wake me when part 2 is up.
Assuming your test was performed ethically, I'm very curious to hear more about your result. For example, I'd like to see an example of the messages (relevant and irrelevant), I'd like the address to your web site (I understand why you didn't post it, but it would be useful, perhaps private email?) and I'd like to see the numbers.

I do not understand how you make the connection between the data, and your conclusion. Never-the-less, there is an interesting thesis in your measurements.
Thanks to them for being so transparent. I'm definitely interested in seeing what they create and I'm rooting for them. I feel like they're borderline on about 6 of "18 mistakes" though, so I'm a bit skeptical. Upgraded office, slow launch, hiring lots of people pre-launch, devs with a C#/Java background, QA people, product managers, desktop software? Perhaps they'll handle it all well, but those are some red flags to me.
Mass deletion sparks LiveJournal revolt
Calacanis launches Mahalo - crappy site, big SEO play
Suggestions for Google Reader
You forgot: Step 3) Significantly overestimate what you've learned.
oops :) corrected
The first 3 days were just irrelevant braindead posts such as "Here is how you earn $XXXXXX in 1 day", "I just found the secret to getting rich" etc. These posts have absolute no relevance to the forums or my site. But nevertheless, people still click to my site and start clicking on my ads.

The later 3 days were relevant posts. For eg. if it was a topic about bastketball, i post about basketball and then add a link to my site as my forum signature.

No. it wasn't performed ethically. I mean, come on, look at the first 3 days. Those posts are totally irrelevant.
evhead: You have to decide what game you're playing
For real. If only the world really worked this way. Even programming languages take a bit longer than a week to really learn. I find I go through at least two levels with a programming language: the first at which I know the syntax and can code small projects comfortably (this takes about a week), the next at which I have developed a personal coding style that works well with language and allows me to handle large projects (this takes at least 6 months or so of regular coding).
Buy pick axe book. Buy agile web development on rails book. Ruby cookbook is good as well. Build something. Subscribe to rails/ruby blogs.
Do you force your new users to verify their email addresses?
I just went and built something with it - http://alltimetop5.com
I'm shocking at busy work for no good reason so I had to wait until a good enough idea came along to motivate me. The first version I just threw out, there were too many artefacts left from me stumbling wildly around.

I think that might be the point where you can call yourself proficient at ror, when you finally get how ugly the first code you wrote was :)
Pros: You are able to send email updates to users.

Cons: Duplicate users.
Misdemeanor: Imagine if someone uses the whitehouse or fbi email addresses. Then he keeps on clicking on "Retrieve password" and you would start spamming the whitehouse and fbi.
freemium models ain't that great.
i read somewhere, i think it was that vitaminxxx site by the dropsend founder, that the average % of premium subscribers is a pathetic 2%.
So how much effort is it to duplicate much of your database functionality on the client-side? How easy is it to maintain afterwards along with the main db code?
wow! great!

But I wonder if they will run into the problems Java Web Start has.
A great solution is to give them an incentive to give you their real email address, like you're going to send them an important report or something else that is of high value so the visitors have no problem giving up their email address.
That's what came into my mind, why not just use Wikipedia content.
Do you get events when you go online/offline? I don't see that in the docs but it is a key piece of what Firefox 3 promises for offline support.

This seems to work a little differently than Firefox. Am I right in thinking that you are supposed to always go at the local cache and then just synch that as needed?
Man. I wish I could build hype like these guys can.
Why are these "red flags"

Devs with C#/Java background a red flag? Why is that? Should they use Ruby or Python for the desktop app that supports Outlook as a plugin instead of C#?

If they haven't launched and they got financial backing (huge), that means they have a solid business model that's important
Well, this is an argument for requiring verification if you plan to use email for password resets. Alternatively, you can allow only a small number of password reset attempts per email address per day/hour/whatever. One thing that you shouldn't do is reset someone's password immediately when you send out the reset email. Instead, reset it only when they arrive back at the reset page, else you're opening a DOS attack for anyone whose email address is known.
Financial backing means that they have a solid business model? Urm, I don't think that's true. All it really means is that some VCs think it has huge growth potential.
Rimer's Rules for Open Source
Yes. You you can either automate IE http://support.microsoft.com/kb/167658 (or Firefox http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/mozilla.htm ) from your code and make a bot that way.

Or use a "bot" like this which uses IE under the hood: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Win32-IE-Mechanize/lib/Win32/IE/Mechanize.pm or this one which uses Mozilla under the hood: http://search.cpan.org/~slanning/Mozilla-Mechanize-0.05/lib/Mozilla/Mechanize.pm
wtf? People from Boston eat at Boston Market?
I understand what you mean. I am writing my first application in Django without really understanding Python. The result is tragically awkward. But, I have high hopes for the next effort.

In any case, God help my first child.
Small FYI: Analysts' price targets are usually bullshit.
I followed through with a couple of online tutorials, then tried making my own app. I found it to be pretty difficult once I got past scaffolding and doing non-cookie-cutter things, seeing as how I didn't know much about the concept of MVC or where the line between Ruby ended and RoR began.

So, I picked up a copy of Agile Web Development with Rails and had at that for maybe a month, then I grabbed a copy of Programming Ruby (the pickaxe book).

I was also constantly asking questions and reading what was going on in IRC in the #rubyonrails room on freenode. Now I lurk around in there and answer the occasional question. Another great help was all of the RoR info being posted on reddit, but that site isn't even a shadow of its former glory now.

If you're more disciplined than I am, learn Ruby first, then learn RoR. Personally, I have a hard time doing that because my mind is always crawling with ideas, so I just dive right in to new things and figure out what I'm doing piece by piece.
Hard Negotiating a Business Sale -- Norm Brodsky
Most of the things in Ruby are objects, so you can try using plain english (ie. my_array.length, my_array.each {|element| puts element, ...).

If you get stuck, here's two links I use the most:
http://www.rubycentral.com/ref/
http://api.rubyonrails.org/
Upvote if you think teen social network TEEN-WAG sucks!!!
Steve and Bill Interview Video
Perhaps they do need to use C#/Java for their desktop software but that doesn't mean they need a "Software Engineer with a C#/Java background". Taken in the context of them hiring Product Managers and QA people it seems like a red flag to me.
Yes, but the article is specifically about what one could do with all that money. And his answer is, more or less: buy a Mercedes.

I'm not even arguing against that. I mean, most companies make money by providing a useful service to people, so more power to him if he is successful with that. And if the dream of owning a big car keeps him going, great. I just find, personally, that aiming to spend "only" a million per year is not at all the kind of target that I want to set in front of me.

I wanted to know if I'm not alone in that frame of mind. I said it awkwardly. Sorry.
Microsoft Surface - Gesture/Tocuhscreen Style Computing
Sure. My point was that the "worst case" might be worst than selling right now. Holding out for fuck you money is sometimes a bad decision.

I wish I had built Friendster, of course.
He's so used to Twitter he thinks his blog won't accept more than 140 characters of input. I wish he'd said more. What game is Twitter playing in? In what ways does knowing what game you're playing help?
It may fail but it won't be fast. Calacanis has success under his belt and friends with deep pockets. Apparently he already has funding enough to run for 4 years.
Most of the time you would have to ask your users to download Google Gears before using your offline version. That doesn't seem significantly better than asking them to download your own extension or desktop application.

Apollo is in a much better position given that Adobe has a backdoor to installing software on almost every computer in the world. They can make Apollo ubiquitous almost overnight.
Yes, but there is a positive feedback loop. Once someone downloads the thing for any reason, they have access to more applications.
Yea, like Youtube is the "de facto mentioned place" in video articles, Flickr is the "de facto mentioned place" in photo sharing articles, and so on. If it's a small and growing market (like video was back then), if journalists start to mention you, more journalists will do the same.
Help you discover new music you might like?
Books(In this order, if you know no Ruby):
1. Agile Web Development w Rails 2nd ed. It's available as a pdf direct from the Pragmatic Programmers

-. Skip the Pickaxe book for now, the 1st edition is online at http://www.rubycentral.com/book/

2. Black's Ruby for Rails (Manning). Read this not long after AWDwR. It provides much insight into the Ruby behind the Rails.

3 (tie). Either Orsini's Rails Cookbook (O'Reilly) (the testing chapter is particularly useful if it's new to you)

3 (tie). Fowler's Rails Recipes (Pragmatic Programmers). Both books are very good. If anything, 'Recipes' gets you movign faster, but you'll probably learn more from the Cookbook.

opt. Ajax on Rails by Raymond (O'Reilly). An in Depth Reference to Prototype, Scriptaculus and rjs. Useful since there is no really good reference on these for the noob.

opt. The Ruby Way by Fulton (Addison Wesley) An 'inside out' Ruby reference. Instead of going through classes and methods on by one, this book is organized by things one can do, with the classes and methods introduced in context. Not so much every day useful- but if you don't have access to a real liver rubyist, it's a good way to see how one might approach a problem.

opt. The Pickaxe 2nd ed (dead tree format). Some folks just like to step away from the computer, and still think about computers.

Other than books:
The google groups for rails:
rubyonrails-talk (general discussion. A great list btw good questions get answered very well usually. No attitude at all.)

rubyonrails-core (the core contributors and rails internals)

rubyonrails-spinoffs (mostly the ajaxy stuff)

rubyonrails-security (created after an incident last year
to spread urgent messages about rails vunerabilities, announcements only)

The api docs:

either at api.rubyonrails.org (rails)

or caboo.se (another rails doc project)

www.ruby-doc.org/core (Ruby core)

www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib (Ruby standard library)

Hope this helps,

J.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates discuss desktop vs. web apps and mobile devices (excellent arguments and ideas!)
Scientology as a way of marketing your product
Ive seen reports about this kind of stuff before the thesis being

"stupid people click on ads"

I almost never click on ads, in fact i only click on them when i like a site and want to make them some money. My mum (bless her) knows nothing about the web. she is likely to click on adsense ads simply because she will think its part of the site!

I think many people could follow the same lines by mistake. The fact of the matter is, she is more likely to click on "get rich in x days" than you and I. We are well versed in the web and are experienced cynics. newbies often get taken for a ride.