skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
From looking at the site, I gather you're doing photo hosting, but that's about all I gather. What I think you should be thinking about is "How am I different than flickr?" As far as I can see, none of the "other features" differentiates your site from flickr. So why would someone go for your service instead of a trusted site with a huge network effect?

And as another poster said, you shouldn't brag about stuff that's little more than basic functionality. Sorting by date is not a cutting-edge feature. Neither is not spamming the user's friends. Or "easy access to full size." Listing those sorts of things as features makes it look like you have so few real features that you had to stretch to fill out your list.

Finally, you need to figure out what your audience is. It's extremely unlikely that you're going to beat Flickr at their own game, so you need to find a niche they aren't serving well. Frankly, I'm having trouble seeing what that niche would be, but if you want to succeed you're going to have to find it.
Not sure why they call it an Autopsy. That suggests that something is dead...
If you are having problems with legitimate email being stopped by spam there are a number of ways to improve your odds of getting through. What email address - your domain or the email of the person doing the invite? Do you have SPF records set up? Reverse DNS? What does dnsstuff.com have to say about your IP being in any spam databases? Or DNSreport have to say about your domain?
what i meant was that if google can get good people, a incubator with a strong backer like sabeer bhatia who is known in india should attract lot of good talent.

in any instance, I find your arguments to be all true in the present but not necessarily forward looking - we all know that india in good in certain things and not in another. i have heard similar arguments when i moved to UK that people are not entrepreneurial but look deep enough and you find enough evidence that there is change happening they aren't just out their thumping that we have done this or that.

- the question to be answered is what has to change to make it a reality !.
Yes, I am new to the mobile world - that is why I asked the question!
I would suggest using a different body font and add some gradients/borders.
I've always wondered why delicious/yahoo haven't integrated delicious search results into the main search more. I find that delicious search does a pretty good job for general searches (recipes, ajax, etc).
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah that is def something we are working on... Hope to have that ready soon.
This is a very slick little application! Some random thoughts:

It wasn't obvious to me that the anagram clues were anagrams. Woul it really kill you to spell out "anagram?" Maybe even put "Anagram:" before the clue instead of putting it in parentheses afterwards?

What's the point of the "play" button? Why not just give the user a puzzle right out of the gate?

The delete key should let me delete a letter, and probably go back to the previous letter.

There should be some way to choose the direction of my typing with the mouse when I click a square that starts both an across and a down arrow. For example, perhaps add a little "right" arrow and a little "down" arrow in opposite corners of the square that users can push? At the very least, if I'm entering a "down" word and I click a square in that word that's also part of an "across" word, it's confusing for it to switch to the across word.

Let people make their own puzzles. A really easy way to do this would be to simply ask the user to enter 40 or 50 word-clue pairs, which you could then assemble into a new puzzle. This might also be a source for new clue ideas.

Relatedly: let users rate clues. This will allow you to refine your database. Your rating options might be something like "Hard," "medium," "easy," and "unfair." Clues that get several "unfair" ratings could be automatically weeded out of the database. Once you had a substantial database of ratings for clues, you could offer puzzles with varying difficulty levels based on the ratings.
I've always thought reddit had huge potentail here, if only they would fix their broken search feature.
Huh, I guess asterisks have special meaning in the site markup. I was trying to make a bulleted list, but instead I got every other point italicized.
What's your honest opinion on Ingolingo?
Hi guys, this is my new application, finally released to the world. It's a word trainer with a few unique things thrown into it.

I'd appreciate some honest criticism - what you like and what you don't like. This is the first draft, and I realize there is still a long way to go before getting it perfect!

Thanks!
Mark.
A really great book about, well, "growing" a business is called just that:

http://tinyurl.com/2dxnoc

It predates a lot of things, but says so much that makes sense, and that I recognized from other people's writings (PG included). It's worth buying. Of course, being from the 80ies, and talking about a garden tools business, it doesn't talk about high tech much, but I think a lot of the lessons are quite worthwhile.

BTW, raganwald also seems to like it:

http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/04/venture-capitalist-passes-away.html
Nice. Well made and straightforward.
And we should get rid of images too! Everyone should use lynx! The market will drive the technology - not the other way around. If people want sparkle, connections will get faster.
Yeah, my first thought was: Facebook app it! A good tie in might be to generate crosswords based on your friends' names, and make the clues be based on their interests, wall posts, or something like that. Hmm, actually this sounds interesting, give me a holler if you'd like a collaborator ;)
While I agree with Godin's general premise, the obvious (at least to me) implication of this to hackers is to make "enterprise" software. This is rather unfortunate. The sales cycle for such systems tends to be very drawn out, and large companies decide to purchase from vendors in a manner that seems rather arbitrary using criteria that is often non-obvious e.g. the long term survivability of the vendor is frequently at least as important as the quality of the product they provide.
"The crossword grid doesnt quite look right in IE6"

Typical :-( I tested in IE7 (and firefox, safari, and opera). Thanks for the heads-up.

Thanks for the ideas also!
While your criticism could be valid, there's no reason to be a jerk. Communication skills are as important as the facts you are trying to convey.
I hadn't - thanks!
very good point! I missed that totally! I should know better than to type when sleepy!
Download? Hrm... not easy to try out... Windows only? Woops, you lost me, and I was actually kind of curious, as I need to learn some German.
I've tried every suggestion from every article I could find on the subject - SPF is set up; DKIM is set up; dns records are fine according to every checker I could find; SpamAssassin doesn't report anything bad; the IP's not in any blacklist I could find.

Thanks all the same though.
See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27783
This guy posted this site like 2 months ago, and refused to listen to reason back then. Sometimes you gotta pound sense into a man.
chinese olympics are near. you might have a market there.
Black-on-blue lettering very painful.

The puzzle itself looks nice, but I think there is a slight contrast problem with the black-to-white fading of the white squares against the black background. It just feels slightly off, no big deal.

However: You've clearly got some bad bugs in this. I went to answer "Country whose capital is Tehran" and it took a good minute before I could enter the answer. I clicked on it, the correct row highlighted green, and when I went to type "I", the second letter filled in "I". Then I pressed the first square of four, but the attached (horizontal) row highlighted. So I clicked on the IRAN squares again, typed I-R-A-N, it didn't work, and after some fiddling, I typed it again, and it seemed to enter I-I-A-N, then I-I-I-N, then it highlighted the last square, which flashed I then R then A then N as I typed them, then finally I typed it again, it seemed to go I-I-I-I, then changed to IRAN, finally. ???
I agree with davidw--you've already lost me (a Mac user) as a customer. Unless there's some special feature I'm missing, there's no reason this shouldn't be a web-based application.
1. Where do they get data on top web apps? It looks like it came out of nowhere.

2. Canada is 30 million people. Even if they all used Internet most of the time, it would hardly be worthwhile to target specifically as a market. (OTOH, some media conglomerates do quite well building web portals for Canadians, but they use their other properties to promote them)

3. Montreal is a cool place to be, with a pretty cheap cost-of-living. There are a lot of subventions (tax breaks, mostly) for tech companies, but I don't know if it's applicable for startups. It probably is, after months of paperwork... No idea about investment opportunities. There are 4 big unis, including McGill, which is pretty top notch, and quite a few tech companies. Plus, if you're from a friendly European country, you can probably get a 1-year work-holiday visa.

http://www.anyworkanywhere.com/whvchart.html

I hope that they can get the ball rolling...
Yes, we're launching in China in a few months. Our focus is on the non U.S market, particularly Asia, but also Europe on some specific things.
Thanks for the feedback!

It's possible the site is overloaded to the extent that ajax messages are getting lost (I have no resend mechanism right now).

Out of interest though, what browser/os are you using?
Now if gmail could allow users to undo the "send" action.

I think this is an example of how the experience of gmail can sort-of trivialize the problems associated with undoing events. How many actions are there in gmail? Not that many, and it took me 15 seconds of testing to find this message:

"The contact has been deleted."

Without an undo button (!!!). Undoing is quite a bit more complicated in, say, a word processor where the different actions are absolutely choked with side effects. Everything needs to know how to undo itself, hold its state (as well as application state, where appropriate), sit on a stack waiting for ctrl-Z. In addition, certain things (like backspacing numerous characters) need to be able to "fold" together to work correctly. Webapp programmers generally haven't had to worry about this like desktop programmers...
The web version is under development. The web version is more complex because it also uses the unique features that the web has to offer. So it will be out in a few weeks.

However, we are planning on selling the desktop version traditionally, and since it is more straightforward to develop, we decided to do things backwards and launch our Web 2.0 application as a desktop application first of all.

If you want to get info when the web version is done, add yourself here: http://www.ingolingo.com/lists/
Unless you're on Heroes or House...
I had a good experience at the devHouse Boston event last weekend, which was my first time at one of these events. It was ~30 people in the Boston area that got together on different 1-day projects. There were a lot of different skillsets in the room, and it was great to immediately get the feedback of more experienced people when problems came up. More personally, I now have a better understanding of skills I need to further develop to be a web app hacker. I also spoke with a couple hackers that I may work with later.

If you're in the Boston area, I may help organize a monthly devHouse event, depending on the level of interest.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30824
Amazon Web Services "success story" on 37signals
I think cryptic crossword players would be particularly interested in this. There is a significant amount of kudos associated with solving an unusual clue and therefore perhaps more desire for users to share solutions with the community/collaborate on solutions. I know avid fans of the Times (UK) crossword who pass their part-complete solutions back and forth throughout the day, your app would be an easier way for them to collaborate. For more details see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptic_crosswords
Overall looks great.

Sometimes single-clicking on a square made that square get the next letter typed, sometimes it didn't. Other than that it seemed smooth.

I don't think there's a reliable route past spam filters for any kind of web-site invite. You might give users some text to cut/paste into their own email to friends.
Thanks.

I really should have noted that you can just cut and paste the url of you game and send that to your friends if the emails don't get through.

"Sometimes single-clicking on a square made that square get the next letter typed, sometimes it didn't"

I've never seen this myself - what browser/os?

Thanks again.
ff 1.5.0.12

I tested a little more, and the worst problem seem to be that in a situation like this:

EDIT: I can't get the formatting to work, but picture a horizontal "HELLO" with "LEMON" coming off the HELLO's second "L".

... and you click on the "l" in lemon, it highlights "hello". You really should NEVER have ambiguity like that. Maybe a second click should alternate between them.
"Maybe a second click should alternate between them."

That's exactly what it does, for me. Thanks, I'll test with ff1.5 and see if I can reproduce this.
I love it. Great work guys.
blocked by mimesweeper (my workplace's firewall) for adult content.
Bechtolsheim working on new supercomputer for Sun
Nevermind, I'm stupid, it does work [the double-clicking].

But lesson learned: Other people are going to be stupid, too.

And apparently my earlier problems were due to latency. If you go too fast, the updates come up a little oddly, and the letters switch 1) When you type, 2) A moment later to something historical, and 3) Back to what you typed.
Have a Life Outside of Your Startup
Heh, no problem - thanks again for the feedback.
I claim that one of the best features you could add is a feedback mechanism in the site. At the minimum, stick "Report a bug, Request a feature" as a link on all of the pages. Then give the user a simple text field to type their comment into. If you want to go fancier, I think iminlikewithyou.com has a nice feedback mechanism. (The implication being that you could look at their site and steal the mechanism :) )
Most of the posts on this site are merely uselessly vague, but this one is actually false.

I realize it would sound a lot nicer if I said that founders should strive to have a balanced life. After all, how can an unbalanced life be good? And yet it is probably not a coincidence that so many successful startup founders blow off everything else while they're working on the company.

The one non-work activity I think is a net win for founders is exercising. But the reason it's a net win is that it helps you to work harder.
I'm assuming there have been many scientific studies done on how people acquire language. It would be nice to have language training software that took into account the scientific findings. You quote a bunch of statistics, but there are no sources on where they came from.
How is it "wrong?"

I'm surprised to hear you of all people have such a strong opinion against what I've written.
for your desktop version, offer free content updates for 1 year. That way early users wont feel ripped off because they paid money for initial content.
Side note: this is one area where functional programming languages can really shine. In a pure functional language, all data structures are "persistent", meaning that all previous versions hang around as long as you keep a reference to them. All you need to do is push them on a stack and you have built-in undo support for any operation in the language. If functional languages supported SoftReferences (to my knowledge, none of the pure ones do), you could even have the garbage collector eat the bottom of the undo stack transparently.

In Haskell you could hide this in a monad: it'd act like the State monad, but with an additional action to "undo" that just pops the stack and restores the state. You could also put some special processing in the get/set actions to handle things like folding transparently.
I was put off by the grandiose claims (and the download!). I know it's the way these things are normally written, but you should at least substantiate what you can. Like the "ten times" bit. 10X Compared to what?

Otherwise, I love the website design, and it seems very interesting. I'll try it out as soon as I can find Windows.

I'm currently learning German by reading comics, which is pretty good at providing some form of positive feedback, as well as image clues. I'm curious to see if that can be improved.
I step away from the computer and take a hike in nature to refresh my perspective daily. Unbalance sounds like more like how to handle an obsession. Finding one's own balance with their work in the positive is passion.
Yes its an important point. But you'll need users to be able to prove that. Its ok to lie a bit initially I think :)
You'll need some hardcore marketing and sales..probably distribution as well. Any expertise in that ?
I don't know anything about your background, but it's clear that you are not Facebook's targeted audience. As a FB user from early (summer 2004), I can attest to how much it has impacted college.

Almost everyone I know is on Facebook. While this may just be my circle of friends, or my particular Uni (UCSB) it is clear that there is value with FB. Being able to keep in touch with your friends, to see what their up to, hell even to throw parties is all done on facebook.

Just this weekend, I asked my friend who was turning 21 why he didn't throw a party. He told me that having moved into his new place he didn't have internet. I asked what the hell that had to do with anything. He said that he couldn't create an event on facebook and thus no one would come.

So anyway, the whole point of this work-avoiding rant is that I wouldn't be so quick to judge the value of FB when it has already impacted my life and perhaps changed the college experience forever.

P.S. I do agree with you that FB apps are overrated. Most of my friends are sick of them, and the only one worth having is the Graffiti app.

P.P.S. Have some coffee. It helps.
First thing I noticed - I can't delete letters, or if I can, it's not intuitive at all.

I clicked the letters and tried backspace and delete - didn't work, gave up.
How does debuting your app on news.yc affect a possible future application to yc?
I guess it will help you, because it gives you some face time with the YC founders. The reason I would debut my site here is if it fails it will happen quickly and early on. That means that I won't be wasting time on something that's not worth it.
I observed the bug on Firefox/XP. The only reliable way I could reproduce it was to move the mouse slightly so that the letter was briefly selected when I clicked. It might be a case of just moving quickly/selecting. I think it might sometimes happen apart from that, but it's possible that it's the same thing but with deselection happening quickly.
"Mentor someone about youror your companyscore competence.... Dont forget to get mentored as well."

It's the MBA reinterpretation of swinging!
Is this a product looking for a market (i.e. businesses using online storage now seem to be happy, so why switch?)
I certainly can't speak to pg's views about your content at large; I'm confident that I can provide an accurate representation of why he would disagree with this article.

Quote from one of his essays -
"My final test may be the most restrictive. Do you actually want to start a startup? What it amounts to, economically, is compressing your working life into the smallest possible space. Instead of working at an ordinary rate for 40 years, you work like hell for four."

I happen to agree with him 100%.
Google: Why we're buying DoubleClick
Thanks, that's great info.
YCNews: I can't find the search box
Now that YCNews has grown and has a lot of valuable resources and discussions, it's probably time to have a search feature. How about it YCNews? It'll also reduce the chances of posting the same questions again.

P.S. If this has been requested before, I apologize ;)
Its because they don't have one!!!
How does paying 60K for 1.4 million users qualify as a bubble. It's just a few months salary for one developer. Slide has now hired a developer who created something that 1.4 million people wanted. Think of 60K as signing bonus. Hardly a bubble.
I don't think it's possible to find "balance" but it is a good idea to take a little time away... or else you end up with tunnel vision.
Can't hurt. If YC thinks YC founders are smart, and YC Founders think your app is cool/well-done, it's likely that YC will give a more serious look to what you've built.

(disclosure: I've never applied to YC. I think I'm too old!)
Start with $100 million, and start an airline.
Down2Night.com: New nightlife platform lets you search, invite, keep track of your nights
This seems to work well, but am I correct in thinking that it's been a while since the last crawl? Any plans for upkeep?

I haven't read yc.news very regularly until recently, but I'm starting to post more, and I hate being that guy who asks the same questions -- a search function would definitely be useful for us late adopters.
Just Say No To Google: Internal Microsoft Email
So, how about a text box on the YCNews home page that posts to this URL? Or, at least, a link somewhere for those who didn't know that this existed?
At the very least you need to provide a space and you need to come up with a tentative schedule to share with us so we know what to expect and how to plan for it. 11 hours is a long time to commit.
Does anyone actually read software EULAs?
I'm just trying to figure out where anyone suggested I was talking about "balance". I was saying that from time to time you need to unplug in order to get re-charged to work harder.

Did you see the part that said I worked for 3 years without seeing my friends or family? I'm working on my 10th startup in 13 years. I'm the last person to advocate balance!
Googling with the option "site:news.ycombinator.com" works adequately, but just doesn't have the same panache.
Maybe it's just me, but it might be nicer to have the example on the website translate to something that's a little more polite than "bitch".
Too old? You're never too old. I think people don't do themselves any favors by disqualifying themselves, in ANY arena. If someone else wants to, they can, but that's their problem -- always be confident you bring a lot to the table and others may miss out.

Humans are not infallible machines. It's like playing chess against someone: if you play you always have a chance, and your chances are only ever 0% if you resign.
It was awesome, I was there too. Lets make it once a month. The biggest problem is finding the space to host it.
pg: Please add a search feature. The search feature is the one thing that's most missing from here.
The initial $100,000 check he wrote to the Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page is an investment now worth more than $1.5 billion.

So $100k for 1%? That's 40x the YC rate. What kind of dilution are we talking about?
iMedix - Say Hello to Healthcare 3.0... we've got invites!
See also: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/googlife
In many of those countries people live in big and tall apartment buildings, so dropping an expensive fiber to just one block of those gives you TONS of users. Compare that to a typical rural suburbs in US, where you have to put down miles and miles of cable just to cover a big subdivision of standalone houses.

Besides, raw download speed is not that important IMO. Well, perhaps for video. I wish browsers could download more than two files at the same time. I believe this limitation is pretty much obsolete these days.
Usually not much one way or the other.
I went with Assurant health (www.assuranthealth.com) because I need maternity coverage for my wife.
It reads more like a balanced review to me. jkush did you actually read all of it?