skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well... depends, my startup is around position 20 in this listing about unique visitors / month but still I'm not rich ;) It is probably related to the nature of the deal we did and the fact our user base is in Italy, but what I mean is that if you don't get acquired and your business model is advertising 1,5 million unique visitors per month in a reddit-alike site will not make you rich most of the times.

For example assuming 5$ every 1000 impression, with an average of 3 impressions for unique user with 1 million of unique visitors a month you get from adsense 15k$. If there are two founders and bandwidth to pay this means you are making just about to survive.

In this web 2.0 bubble we are living this days I see very few news/technological sites where the business model is advertising and they are really profitable, or I'm missing something? Advertising tends to work only in services where your user base is the average john smith with IE6 clicking everywhere there is a banner. With smart users it gets very hard.

I'm not as experienced as many founders following news.yc but I suggest that if you plan to start a startup you should try hard to get an idea where there is a different business model than advertising, like PRO accounts or things like where there is a straight line binding user satisfaction with your earnings. In our new service we are trying this new model, even if this is also very hard indeed being the world full of free-everything-web-services :)
Don't like this design binding CSS stuff and application vars, I could use as alternative a function that gets a CSS++ and turns it into a CSS, so that the CSS remains self contained. Something like this:

@define companyred #ff5000

@define warningborder border: 1px red dotted

h1 {

color: @companyred;

}

....

So that the CSS file makes sense by itself.
The are a few problems with this approach. First, it takes more work. Second, it makes it harder to share values between CSS files. (Of course, you could add an @include statement to the "CSS++" language -- but that's starting to get pretty heavyweight.) Lastly, having yet another language is kinda unnecessary and confusing, as compared to just integrating ordinary Ruby expressions.
PDFs are almost never worth checking out. They tend to indicate someone believes their words are too valuable to demean them with a mere website...and folks who think that way are generally blow-hards. I think I'd rather catch up on Particle Tree articles than read the suggested PDFs (because it's a great resource...but I think this post is off the mark).
I wonder how much joelonsoftware contributes to his companies success. The blog is something one couldn't easily mimic, as few people can write as well.
First: you did the work just one time, it's a 10 lines of code function :)

Second: I use only a CSS, and only a JS file, it takes a lot of sense because the client will cache them both the first time, so even without include it's ok most of the times.

Lastly: It's semantically not more complex than your. Just @define to define and @symbol to expand.

But of course it's just a point of view like many things in design. I wanted to share my view about this because I planned to write the interpreter for this stuff and write a blog entry. Thanks for your article I'm happy it makes sense for others to extend in some way the CSS in order to have some kind of symbols.

CSS gurus and standard fundamentalists will usually reply that with inheritance you should never need this kind of stuff, but they lies ;)
Ah, misunderstood you first time round. The problem with just doing symbol expansion is that you can't have values that depend on other values (like the "Width + 10" example in the post). For us, this has been a large part of the gain.
Perhaps it's possible to mix this two things to get something like:

ruby {

.... ruby code defining stuff ...

}

attrib: @stuff

Self contained, not a new language, able to define stuff relative to other stuff.
Regarding the top navigation bar, we've already started work on a new nav bar that will give greater clarity and be easier to use, and will be topic based...

I will will post an update when the new nav is online.

Thanks for your comments so far!
Basecamp and Backpack from 37signals use PHP
PHP Easter eggs tell us everything:

http://basecamphq.com/?=PHPB8B5F2A0-3C92-11d3-A3A9-4C7B08C10000
http://backpackit.com/?=PHPB8B5F2A0-3C92-11d3-A3A9-4C7B08C10000
Isn't that just telling you that the web server has PHP loaded into it?
Sure, no problems, SwellJoe. What are your personal Top 3 Open Source project sites (like SourceForge)?
I don't quite understand: how do they trade the airtime? I don't think in Europe there is a way for a phone user to transfer his airtime to someone else? I can see how they could trade the prepaid cards, but how does the mobile banking work?
If you try these strings on a URL that isn't PHP, they won't work, even if the web server has PHP support. In any case you can:
1. Try it somewhere.
2. Visit http://37signals.com/index.php
3. Ask'em directly.
Actually the easter egg only works if the given page is interpreted as PHP.
SEO advice for a small (non-IT) business?
hi, i've started working for a small tech company (catalysis, engineering, R&D services) and to my horror, i've discovered it's almost impossible to find us on a search engine unless you know our company name. I suspect that a consultant got the website up and running a few years ago and nobody has really fed and watered it since. Compared to the crowd that hangs out here i'm an IT newb but i'm suspicious of hiring a SEO company (especially one that cold calls us!) since i'm not qualified to distinguish quality from snake oil. Can anyone recommend a quality service provider or should we just focus on making the best quality site we can, try and get our customers to link to our homepage and make sure we're indexed? Any help appreciated.
http://37signals.com/index.rhtml also works.

As does http://37signals.com/index.nothingspecial

Apparently, the file extension is irrelevant when processing pages.
Aha - ok, well then like their own site, 37signals.com, it's the front page that is in PHP, something that has been known for a while.
Can't get enough Justin? You can watch Justine
I believe Joel gets some of his ideas about workspace arrangements from the book "Peopleware" by DeMarco and Lister.

In the book, they don't necessarily argue for an individual private office for every programmer, but argue that a quality work environment has enormous benefits. Interruptions cause huge problems, and random noise can be distracting as well. A door that shuts is one of the most important parts of being able to reduce interruptions and random noise.

A personal office isn't mandatory in order to make progress along those lines. The book actually suggests that you set aside a space for a small group of people (1-4), with furniture that can be easily rearranged.

edit: Just a another comment on the article...

BDUF Big Design Up Front: I think it might be a mistake to assume Joel's arguments in favor of software specifications imply BDUF. A specification is a fluid thing. It helps ease communication between all parties throughout the development process, and lets you save time figuring out some kinds of problems.
Do the research and do it yourself. It's not rocket science, and most SEO services seem to be snake oil salesmen to me. Even the honest ones don't have that many tricks to teach you. If they were to sit down with you for an afternoon, that would probably be enough to tell you most of what you need to know.
Getting in the game at Microsoft / Robbie Bach's job is to make software giant's entertainment division profitable
Is Justine more intelligent than Justin?

Justin Kan, the star of Justin.tv, burst onto the Internet scene two months ago when he strapped a camera to his head to broadcast his existence live on the Web. He says he has been searching for someone more intelligent and charismatic to become the network's next Web celeb. Ezarik is his perfect match, name and all, he said.
Triple play not enough? Say hey to quad play / Telecoms adding cell service to TV, Internet, landlines
Free, Legal, On Demand Steaming Music? LaLa is Going to Give it a Shot
Zamzar Converts Anything (and Everything)
Yes, btw... if an application is good quality for the customers who cares what language they used?
Peopleware is a great book. Well worth a read by anyone who has a "desk" job, including those lone wannabees sitting at home with their laptop. http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/pw.html
Google Deal Said to Bring U.S. Scrutiny
The makefile rule will leave behind a .css file even if there's errors. Compare to "cc -c foo.c" and the existance of foo.o on an error; we don't do "cc -c foo.c >foo.o".

Things like this can cause hard to find problems further down the line in a big system build; after the error the target file exists and is newer than the sources.

Either don't use shell re-direction or do "cmd foo foo.tmp && mv foo.tmp foo".
Hitwise Weekly Category Report - News and Media (Yahoo News #1)
Well... those of us interested in replicating their success:-)
Good to remember this case of 20% effort for 80% result. Why build all of your app tediously if one page is enough.
In addition to the carrier restrictions, you also have device compatibility problems across handset manufacturers. I know a company that does J2ME development and they test on over 250 handsets.

That's why my startup chose to use the built in browser on the phone.
Given that Flickr is written in PHP, Delicious in Perl, Reddit in Python, Foo in Bar, I think that unless you are using something like Java or C++ that really will make you 5 times slower in the development process it does not really matter too much. IMHO this is highly related to the nature of web applications where the design of the UI, the feeling, and the idea you are developing is much more important than complex data structures and funky algorithms (being the only real challenge scalability in many projects).

What's nice is that actually if you master computer science it counts even in web programming as long as there are non trivial problems to solve, but this happens 5% of the times compared of 95% when you write, for example, a compiler.
Or if they can modify the script so if there's an error a return code of nonzero is returned which can be checked by the makefile.
VibrisseLibri MarisaMultiMedia
C'è VibrisseLibri!
There's VibrisseLibri!
There's VibrisseLibri! Blue pill
There's VibrisseLibri! Red pill
dont be silly like me and go on justine.tv. big mistake (i am at work)
Don't know why anyone's modded you down. I was thinking that either the interpreter, e.g. ruby, or the script itself already returned a non-zero exit status and the makefile detected that. That doesn't cause make to remove the target.

$ make foo

false >foo

make: *** [foo] Error 1

$ make foo

make: `foo' is up to date.

$

I suppose they could do "cmd foo >bar || rm bar" instead of the mv I suggested. But that causes no bar to exist whereas the mv leaves the pre-build one behind.
"I am going to try as much as I can to do 24/7."

The hardest problem Justin will face is scaling human talent.
This is a good article that should give you the basics of SEO:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-seo1.html
Do you mean projects, e.g. Vim, or sites that host projects, "like SourceForge"?

Also, Open Source only? How about Free Software?
Facebook App | Share your Stock Portfolios With Your Friends
Hey guys, we have just released our facebook app. If you invest in stocks, do give us a try out.

You can compare your portfolio's performance against the market and you can also keep track of your facebook friends' latest portfolio transactions. So you know exactly what your friends just bought or sold recently.

It's alpha version really. So there might be bugs and all. If you encounter any bugs and have any suggestions, do contact me via Facebook or nospam [at] stockalicious [.] com

Screenshot of the app:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2374170837
This has never arisen so far (the code is so trivial that errors are rare), but it's a good point, so I just updated the post.
I think it might be a good idea to have specialty channels and more interactivity.

See for example this proposal:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.models.rc.air/browse_thread/thread/370ab19a29339553

Also see:

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=11679
YCominator News LinkedIn Group Up and Running!
Hi All,
Thanks for your interest, and I just got notification this morning that we are up and running on LinkedIn. If you previously sent me an email, you can join the group simply by clicking here: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/3426/750DD96C11B4

If you want to be added, simply send me an email with your First Name, Last Name and Email Address to yclinkedin@gmail.com or apply through LinkedIn.

Finally, there were a couple of people who asked about getting the list of emails to use to start a newsgroup, or email chain. Since I didnt ask people for permission to do that, I'd suggest simply starting a new thread and people can submit their info there if they want to.

Thanks a lot, and happy networking,
Eddie
Did you give your cofounder equity immediately? Or was there vesting and/or a trial period?

I am interested in learning more.
this is only true of the product info sites, not the apps themselves.
Why Are Fakes Always Better?
Announcing Future of Web Apps Expo at London Excel on 3-5th October 2007
Desktop Tower of Money- How a casual flash game is raking it in.
dupe - see front page "lone developer makes 6 figure revenue per year"
IPO, Web 2.0 Style
I suppose you could also make $(SOURCES) depend on $(GEN) to save having to remember the "make clean" sometimes. Speaking of clean, the ....out needs cleaning up too, e.g. "rm -f $(SOURCES:%=%.out)" perhaps (untested).
This is the most asinine thing I've ever read on here. The first thing any smart person can figure out is that RoR doesn't make 37signals what they are. They have always said that themselves. Fast agile development, and all the other things they talk about in their Getting Real book make them what they are, but certainly not which language/framework. This is a lot like debating what care you're going to buy based on what the manufacturer of the car that won NASCAR last weekend was.
I thought the interesting thing about this post is that 37signals, the creator of RubyOnRails, is using PHP.
Yeah. This needs to be posted on the top comment level.
You Only Need to Build a $3 Million Company (Part 1)
There's an article in Iberian Portuguese, for those who want to read this language, based on this essay at
http://www.efeitosvisuais.com/blog/2007/05/22/microsoft-is-dead-parte1/
I'd guess around 99.99%
Wait, shouldn't that be "Had enough Justin?" Man, the Chronicle always has the sloppiest headlines.
Really? The most asinine thing ever? I don't agree with that, but you do have a point. Still, it is interesting that 37Singnals is using PHP, not shocking, not mind-blowing, but interesting. Just like it would be interesting if Microsoft were using Java for MSN.
I just interviewed at Google. They are dead, too. All the egos and hubris of MSFT from the mid 90's, wrapped up in a comforter of cult-like Jesus-freak "this is teh google wayz" BS.
5 things to remember when launching a startup...
Don't hire a PR agency - do it yourself.
Maybe they use PHP like a better version of server side includes. For this RoR is probably an overkill.
Aside from the fact that I think your rudeness is uncalled for, I do think technologies are relevant, and make a difference. Sure, there are other things that are important as well, but I do think there is a best in many cases. It may not be the same for each case, but it's worth looking at what different people use and how it enabled their success.
That's exactly how they're using it, and why the original poster's "discovery" really isn't that exciting.

I don't care for it for more serious work, but if you just want to template up one or two pages without a lot of hassle, PHP is far better than Rails.
cool

if you're using rails there's also this:

http://blog.airbladesoftware.com/2006/12/11/cssdryer-dry-up-your-css

also, even if you are just using ruby, why not rake and erb instead of make and eval?
Ever wonder where Digg.com got its first thousands of users?
it's more than file extension

http://37signals.com/here/is/a/bunch/of/nonsense

(though that does throw off the path to the css)
Ask the Wizard: Customer Service - Foundation over Platitudes
Notice that Kevin does not mention that Digg.com is his own site.
100% agreed, but maybe I'm a bit biased since I'm using mod_ruby + eruby even to build applications, instead of rails.
Meetup CEO compares Facebook 07 to AOL 94, urges caution
Join YCombinator News - LinkedIn Group Here!
Hi All, Thanks for your interest, and I just got notification this morning that we are up and running on LinkedIn. If you previously sent me an email, you can join the group simply by clicking here.

If you want to be added, go to the link above to join or simply send me an email with your First Name, Last Name and Email Address to yclinkedin@gmail.com.

Finally, there were a couple of people who asked about getting the list of emails to use to start a newsgroup, or email chain. Since I didnt ask people for permission to do that, I'd suggest simply starting a new thread and people can submit their info there if they want to.

Thanks a lot, and happy networking, Eddie

PS I resubmitted this so the actual link can be in the title.
Heh. I've had a similar problem. I do recruiting for investment banks, and sometimes the job spec says 'developer' but the job description clearly calls for a hacker. Financial HR departments are usually pretty forgiving when they can plausibly deny responsibility, though.
A VC: What Trumps Email?
"Another thought: whose review of a product is likely to be more neutral, the one from a blogger who bought it with his own money, or the one from the blogger who got the product in the mail for free?"

We should try this with politicians and juries -- instead of letting them come up with policy on their own, we should bribe them so they'll look at it more objectively.
Google adds impressive zoomable, pannable, street-level views to maps (reload if it doesn't appear)
Maybe it's time to stop treating 'blogs' as a monolith, since they're as definite a medium as, say, "Ink-like substances on tree-like materials." Some blogs will become less reliable if they can get paid to advertise -- just as some blogs got less reliable when people realized they could distort facts to support their political favorites.

If you want a blogger you can trust, you're already screwed. Blogging makes you exactly as anonymous as you want to be, so it's almost certain that what people refuse to disclose is whatever will hurt them most.
Here's the story: http://gigaom.com/2007/05/29/google-maps-goes-streetside/
xobni trumps email :)
3 things I learnt about PR by getting my startup mentioned in the NYT, the WSJ, Business 2.0, Forbes.
Typical uncov BS. I don't know anything about the startup in question, but this:

earnings are so not Web 2.0. Profit is old economy bullshit, and Foldera knows it.

is complete crap. Earnings are a crucial part of what make Web 2.0 different than 1.0 -- this time, people are trying to figure out how to make money. Oh, and BTW, you actually can make a lot of money with a Web 2.0 business. Hell, ask the Plenty of Fish guy -- $5-10 million in annual revenue, one employee. Earnings are so not Web 2.0, my ass.
DormItem is for sale on eBay
Tagged - how to decieve users with social spamming
When did you know you should quit your job and go full time with your startup?
What sort of price you hoping for (if not $50k)?
meatless.
They use PHP for include files written in PHP.
They're just using PHP for the front page of the site, not the whole app.

Sheesh.
Immediately. He's taking 5% equity in exchange for no salary (He got other biz that he is earning his money from)

In a way, this 5% is sort of compensation for his consultation/advisory services, albeit more hands on.

He ask for 5% equity plus directorship. Problem is, right now i'm the only director. So if i don't like him, i cannot sack him as director. I have to wait for 1 year for the AGM before i can don't re-elect him.
Wow, an article about startup goals that's written from the point of view of an annual profit rather than of a buyout jackpot.
Yeah he talks about that in Founders at Work.

After all those schemes he tried that were mentioned in the article, he says one of the biggest reasons for his companies' success has been his blog.
I think his point was that a lot of Web 2.0 companies are launching with the hopes of quickly getting acquired before earnings are really relevant.

Did del.icio.us have any earnings when it got acquired? No.

Flickr? Barely.

Plentyoffish is definitely the exception to the rule -- they are not really "Web 2.0", the founder just happens to have a big mouth & nice blog.

There are plenty of entrepreneurs making hundreds of k a month with little to no employees; they just don't brag about it on their blogs.
Agreed. I'm not a big fan of laptops, but having various work areas that one can move between would be ideal.
Ask the Wizard: Keep Us Posted
And AOL is still alive (sort of) today. Facebook would be lucky to be the next AOL. It means they will merge with NewsCorp (read TimeWarner) someday instead of being bought out by them like MySpace.
This has already been done by SASS (http://haml.hamptoncatlin.com/docs/sass).

Ex. In SASS

!main_width = 10

!unit1 = em

!unit2 = px

!bg_color = #a5f39e

#main

:background-color = !bg_color

p

:background-color = !bg_color + #202020

:width = !main_width + !unit1

img.thumb

:width = (!main_width + 15) + !unit2

yields

#main {

background-color: #a5f39e; }

#main p {

background-color: #c5ffbe;

width: 10em; }

#main img.thumb {
width: 25em; }

(Edit: Is there some way to format comments here on new.yc like there is on Reddit? I tried using both pre tags and indenting and neither worked…)
The FTC is investigating the Google-DoubleClick deal
Compete Blog: The Torso of the Internet - 1,718 sites are attracting over 1 million visitors
33% margin? sounds rather optimistic as most people struggle for profitability...
Strangely, many young facebookizens aren't very net savvy (facebook is their internet) & they have little desire to go beyond the walled garden -- just like the old AOL users. There's even a proprietary Facebook messaging system (kids don't use much open internet email).

Hm. Interesting. I've never heard anything remotely similar to this, and I don't see any sources.
"being part of Google could be a lot of fun"

I'm tired to read this sentence again and again.
The Google culture from the outside is disturbing.
YC funds InstaCalc: founders head to Cambridge for summer
Both delicious and flickr had earnings before they were acquired; they just didn't have profits. Since advertising is a proven business model on the web now, this wasn't a concern.

Plenty of Fish seems web2.0 to me; it may not be ajax-enabled, but it's certainly a social network.

There are plenty of entrepreneurs making hundreds of k a month with little to no employees; they just don't brag about it on their blogs.

It was just an example; I could have named any of the other companies you're thinking of to make my point. The point is that they have earnings or at least a solid earnings plan. "Earnings don't matter" is not the web2.0 way.
The server headers confirm this.

Server: Apache/2.2.4
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.4
does web.py have documentation and are you using webpy?
just to add to this, its dave fetterman who runs the platform, and dave morin works for him. also, i've heard from others how morin failed to deliver on promises of getting dev. access
The funny thing is that standard cubicles are well-suited to making it difficult for you to do that.

Cubicles are neither private, nor collaborative. Cubicles create social barriers between you and your neighbors, yet do little to block the flow of noise in the environment. There's no real privacy, yet no sense that collaboration is encouraged.