skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
1) You need to radically increase the professionalism of that website to support the $499 price point. That price point is not necessarily high for someone in an IT group at a large company, but he cannot pay it to you because everything about your site -- the design, the copy, the video, etc -- screams "risk."

Look at other sites which successfully sell to large corporations with buckets of money and try to hit the note of restrained professionalism they go for:

http://www.fogbugz.com

https://spideroak.com

http://smartbear.com

I picked companies which are on the smaller side. Importantly, they don't look like they're not Real Respectable Software Companies of the sort that will cost you your job if using their software breaks your entire office for a day.

2) Price is typically not the reason software fails to sell. What is your strategy for acquiring the attention of people who have $499 to spend on software deployment? If I were you, I'd be thinking along the lines of creating lots of content specific to their needs, since the organic SEO benefits from doing so are substantial.

At least one B2B business hanging around the forums has had success with this -- they turned a source of data that they already had into a lot of pages, and those pages have lead to leads which bought things priced substantially north of $500. Hopefully they will chime in with their experiences.

3) You need radically more textual content, to answer the numerous worries your prospects have prior to shelling out $500 to you.

4) After someone credible buys this software, get approval to use their logo and then mention that it is in use at Respectable Brand Name. This is social proof and decreases the perceived risk of using your software.

5) (Much love to the HN community but I have to say this.) Ignore the opinions of anyone who says "Reduce the price" that does not also have authority to install this software at their corporation, because they are not your customers and they will not buy your software at any price. Among many other reasons: price signals quality, and if you adopt App Store pricing (or even $29.95 pricing) you will be communicating that you are not nearly reliable enough to be trusted with computer systems which would burn six figures or more a day in the event of downtime caused by a botched deployment.
HomeGrocer was a previous attempt to deliver groceries this way that was started during the end of the dotcom boom.

The vans Amazon has in Seattle are all ex-Home Grocer vans. In the early days it was very obvious, though they've repainted them more carefully now.

I suspect Amazon picked them up cheap after HomeGrocer imploded.
I like the idea of a compromise, a coworking space where you generally come in each day planing on working on your own thing, but things may randomly popup during the day and you might end up getting involved in something completely different for a bit.
>promised them ten million dollars which you didn't have.

When I bought my house I promised the seller an amount of money which I didn't have at the time. There is no difference.

Not having the money at the time of agreeing a sale is routine. Not having the money at the time of the transaction would be unacceptable.
1) The website doesn't justify a 499 dollar app. (the website is to simple)
2) The GUI of the software is old fashion and to simple which isn't worth 499.
3) Your marketing can be much better. You don't appeal to your audience which are system administrators. I had to look for 3 minutes to understand what deployer did.
4) Where are the bullets with the benefits? Like saving time, money error etctetc
You're right. The fact that Amazon is running two trial services (fresh and tote) in the Seattle area does not substantiate the headline claim that amazon is going to roll out a grocery service nationwide.

Skepticism is merited here.
"You have to explicitly "like" something or check in."

This only works if the "like" actions are filtered to company-approved material only. Otherwise you can "like" a post trashing the company.
wha? What does Wikipedia say? Canb-e-rra or something? Being Australian I'm too lazy to look it up.
What's your added value compared to ninite?

Why does one need to register to dowload the trial?
Amazon legally organizing their business so that they can avoid being forced (under threat of violence) to pay money to a state (that has proven it cannot responsibly spend it anyway) is not theft. It is, actually, theft avoidance. Theft is when you use force, or the threat of force, to take from someone to whome the property rightfully belongs. Taxation is closer to theft than tax avoidance.
Your video needs more professionalism. Given that video, I'd rather just use Windows Deployment Services or pay for Altiris.

* What's with the closing statement? You need to redo that, this YT video feels more like a developer demo than a demo that needs to sell to the stakeholders in the business.

* "Trust me" is not a word used in most demonstrations aimed at corporations

* Don't go searching for the Finance Copy Area machine in your demo, just know exactly where it is.
I'd go much bigger than 11px... I think it's pretty much a given that the download trial link is way too small. It needs to be clear for people that they can give it a try without having to fork out $500 immediately. I don't think you need A/B tests to prove that - it's pretty much a given that 10px is too small.

I'd also agree with @patio11 - the website is outdated, unprofessional and I wouldn't trust it. I'd pay a decent web designer a couple of thousand to get a bespoke design that will be much more suitable than what you have now.
Yeah, I know. I should give away trials to non registered people as well, I'll put that on my todo list.

This is quite different from ninite. Ninite doesn't let you install software on many different computers - uDeployer is actually meant to install software on many different computers.
They can easily get a tame standards body to bless an existing implementation without any changes if they want. This is basically ECMA's business model.

The question is, if there are already multiple interoperable hardware and software implementations, including a couple of independently produced open source ones then what benefit does a further English language description bring?

If I ruled the world then two independent open source implementations plus a spec would be required for "standards". If I had to give up one of those, it would be the the spec that went first.
The main page is a bit messy, it doesn't have consistent typography, colors, or layout (at a glance there are 6-8ish distinct content areas). Clean it up a bit, simplify things (compare it to http://basecamphq.com/, as an example, which only has about 3 distinct content areas), use fewer font colors, etc.
const, of course, comes from C, where it works pretty well; unfortunately, C++ introduced features (e.g. templates) that didn't work well with const, resulting in stuff like vector::const_iterator (like vector::iterator, but for const vectors. It's completely different from vector::iterator, or so the compiler insists.)

Java is meant to be "C++ without the sharp bits", and removed this feature (and a host of other stuff); I imagine the fact that arrays are not "OO" enough has also something to do with it. C# is meant to be "Java done right/the MS way", and followed suit.
Going long on a 2x leveraged oil ETF for the long term IS a surefire bet, just a very bad one.

Going long via a normal oil ETF for the long term is still quite questionable.

What the above poster is saying is - you're doing something with real consequences and, by writing about it you could hurt not just yourself but other people too.

Learn from his mistakes and given you are patently insufficiently informed to do this, don't do it. Given all you're trying to do is implement Scott Adams and NNT's advice why not just link to their articles and leave it at that. Why do you feel the need to pontificate to the world about this subject?
Clearly, he's not getting enough conversions now to be able to get a statistically significant result in a reasonable time frame.

I'm all for A/B testing, but the problems here are at a much more fundamental level--it is about understanding your market, and matching your customer's expectations. There will be plenty of time for A/B testing, once the sales volume is there to support it.
Anatomy Of A Perfect Landing Page
You don't even have to pay a couple of thousand -- $50 for any of the SaaS web templates from themeforest.com or $70 or whatever for one of the product highlight ones from WooThemes would be a quantum leap in the perceived quality of the site. You can always reboot the design later with more professionally placed drop shadows and Helvetica after the software has sold a bit.
window.onerror in WebKit
> Those sites come with a 0% clickthru anyway so you're not losing anything

On the other hand most users from these sites will not see the ad in the first place because the use adblock
Mahalo 4.0 Launch
I am sure other people were working on similar things, but how many of them were able to execute on them as well as Dropbox has?

Google has supposedly implemented something like that for Gmail Attachments, but Dropbox seems to have the complete package.
Hm, good point -- I agree.
Doesn't look similar at all, but just found out about www.poetsandquants.com. Maybe that'll scratch your itch.
Your first point is quite wrong. I've been selling $600 value software for years now, and design of the website has typically had no effect at all on sales. What people care about is "does it work" and "will it be supported"?
I came here with 18 comments in the thread expecting to see people talk about why this person is not a great candidate and, honestly, am quite shocked to see people defending this pick. I assure you, had Bush made this pick it would be lampooned as being too corporate etc etc etc.

I understand that people want to give lawyers the benefit of the doubt and not judge them by who they represent, but honestly, I find that logic appalling. Would we really be saying that for a lawyer who defended the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal? No, b/c anyone with _any_ integrity would likely walk away from that...or anyone with any political smarts. Same in this case. It seems clear this man is not about ideals or principles but rather money and privilege. Is that who we want in arguably one of the most important non-supreme court law positions in the country?

Even if he _is_ about that, he hasn't proven it with his judgement by taking those cases. This should also count in the decision. I'm sorry, but I cannot find the silver lining in this nomination. Perhaps someone can educate me....
You point out that most of RIAA's positions prevailed as a matter of law as an argument against representing them being a breach of professional ethics.

I think that these are two different contexts. I don't like the term "ethics" so I'll use the word "morality". There is a difference between something being moral and something being legal. For an extreme example, everything done in tyrannical states, such as north korea or iran are "legal" because they are done under the laws of that country. That does not mean they are moral.

A lawyer who defends a reprehensible or immoral character in order to defend a moral legal principle is to be respected.

But I'm not sure this is the case here. (and I'n not saying it is not the case either.)

My point is to note the confluence of legality with ethics/morals and to point out that they are not the same, and thus one cannot support the existence of the other. That a law exists does not make breaking it immoral, nor does the lack of a law prohibiting something make the act therefore moral.
A few thoughts:

* AdSense is commonly known as blogger welfare. There are a few people making huge money from it, but they use techniques you would probably never want to adopt (content farms, keyword arbitrage, etc...). Generally speaking, you use AdSense to supplement your main monetization strategy that should be something better.

* Boxes, like the one criticized in the article, tend to convert very well.

* Programmers are the worst demographic to monetize, particularly with ads, and even worse with the often not-so-contextual ads from AdSense.

* ProgrammingZen and Math-Blog used to receive similar amounts of traffic when I used to have ads on both. I make 4 figures a year from AdSense ads placed on Math-Blog. ProgrammingZen on the other hand generated a few dollars a month at best, much like your experience. Keep in mind that Math-Blog is still fairly technical, so I wouldn't discount AdSense a priori, but the less technical the better (in general).

* Having a programming or very technical blog I'd suggest that you try to monetize/support it through affiliate links to reputable merchants like Amazon. I make 4 figures a month from the Amazon Associates program alone (albeit not from ProgrammingZen alone, of course).
I face the same problem. I think it is a "business owner/entrepreneurial" syndrome (if not chronic disease). The shear number of "stupid" (according to our entrepreneurial mindset) tasks that are necessary to accomplish is often discouraging and a turnoff.

My method of getting over this syndrome is made of a few simple steps:

- make myself unavailable for some time (could be a couple of hours or 2 days). And if this is not possible resort to waking up at odd times like 4:30 or 5:00 AM where you have no chance of being disturbed.

- I get started by picking the easiest tasks and doing them almost mindlessly. That helps in making you feel good about yourself (i think the fact of achieving tasks must release some "feel good" hormone/chemical in ones brain, i call it the "good job candy") and once you start getting a taste of the good job candy : you effectively start building momentum.

- Once you build momentum you are usually good for going through the entire list, because having started with the easiest tasks, each next one you complete yields a higher dose of good job candy and thus more drive to dig into the harder tasks.

That being said, an even better (in the sense of it's efficiency) motivator is the near disaster situation during which i suspect most of us become supper efficient.
Interestingly the latest draft of the IETF's Opus codec spec actually contains source code, zipped and then base64 encoded:

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/codec/current/msg02022....
My immediate reaction on seeing that it is for deploying applications and Windows is mentioned was "Why not use Group Policies or System Center Configuration Manager"?

Also the applications that you show being deployed aren't exactly the kinds of things that most enterprises would be bothered about pushing to desktops...
Your blog needs to focus on the customer's pain and how your product fixes it - it should be a key part of the marketing message to bring IT shops with the same problem into your site.

Off the wall - but the price might be a bit low for larger corporates.
Only LINSERT, LREM, LRANGE, and the blocking commands are expressed using the the query, but I agree that none of them should be. The others are just arguments which have to be arguments in order for the resources to work. Which leads to...

Keeping the Redis names means REST isn't even an option. There's no way around that. For instance LINDEX and LSET operate on the same resource, i.e. the same URL. Giving them different URLs means abandoning any and all RESTfulness.

This exercise was probably only useful in showing that REST is not what you want, but it was interesting to think about. Thanks for the question!
Very few 'For Rent' signs because most Australian cities have a rental shortage, at least in the heart of the city. I have a property in Brisbane that has been vacant for 3 weeks in the last 10 years. It is highly unusual for it to be vacant between tenancies.

The reasons are varied, but increased planning laws and high immigration means that the supply of city properties is not keeping up with demand.

And yes, home ownership is very big in Australia.
It seems to me that when you ask for feedback here on this site, most answers are about website design and typography and length of text and other unnecessary but very visual stuff. This stuff is unimportant. If a person needs your software, all that stuff will not deter him from trying it. If I need some deployment software and your text is a bit gaudy, I'm not going to abort the download.

I've been selling software at your pricepoint for 5 years and more. If you want to sell, follow these rules:

- Design of your website don't matter

- Add a price-list request form and remove the price

- Get into a real and genuine conversation with each person who requests your pricelist

- Answer emails within 30 minutes and be very helpful

- Make sure there is no competition with exactly the same featureset who is cheaper

- Use affiliates and people who are selling similar stuff. Get into partnerships with them

- Make sure you have your website listed in all download sites possible. They will rank higher than your actual site typically

- Make sure your software works perfectly, has an easy install and does not require any additional installs and does not crash

- Capture the email addresses of your potential customers and email them

People want software that works well, is at a reasonable price and that has a human behind them, when they buy at those prices. All the other stuff is really secondary.
On the contrary, it makes sense. There were a huge influx of liquidities from the central banks around the world, and this money needs to be invested into something. Western GDP is pretty flat now and has been for a while if you don't take into account the various credit bubbles, and will probably stay so for the foreseeable future - as long as oil prices stay over 75$ a barrel at least, which may very well be forever.
What are your biggest competitors? I am assuming the big players would be at a higher price point?

More the an GUI complaints people have pointed out the thing that initially gets my attention is that I can only see 6 programs, unless this was able to install just about everything someone needed when provisioning new machines the value proposition seems to be lacking.

Something I think of when I think of a suite of applications is portable apps, a quick browse of their applications list shows probably a couple of hundred apps.
Video: Future is Here, Rails and Cloud Ecosystem
Come on! You think that someone who needs that software will be deterred by a 10px different in download button size? He found this website somehow, but then can't find the download button because it'S 10px too small?
Digital Photo Printers Make Printing Pictures at Home Easy
Techcrunch now displaying a holding page with ads before showing the article
Don't know who downmodded you. Perfectly acceptable advice. I'm not saying it's the answer, but relevant nontheless.

IMO $500 for deploy tool is a bit too much, when there are so many free tools available already... or whip up your own bash script.

To OP: You should have a Features link. It's always the first link I find when comparing products.
I could put up with the amounts of ads on the website but this is just getting silly now, and to make matters worse, the link they tweeted went to a 404 page (it happens sometimes for me and I guess its something to do with the CDN not caching for europe quick enough)
Doesn't his girlfriend get seriously pissed off with him getting up at 5am and waking her up?
Brisbane is an interesting case. Between about 1992 and 2002, property in the city went basically nowhere value wise. I bought a property in 2001 for 20% less than the owner had paid in 1994. Then, in about 2002/2003, it nearly doubled overnight and has never looked like going back. I foolishly sold a house in 2002 which was listed 2 years later and brought more than double the price I had bought it for. It's again in a long slow slump (compared with inflation) - this is likely to persist for some years. So your experience exactly covers the period of greatest growth in Brisbane.

I agree with you, though, current conditions make it risky. However for the OP now would be a good time to convert some USD into well-located Australian property.
Yeah, I had to get a German to lookup what "ᵊ" really means in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It was only then I found out that of the two listed pronunciations on Wikipedia[1], the first actually is the usual Australian pronunciation that my ill-fated attempt at self-deprecating humour hinged upon.

Damn your completeness, Wikipedia.

1. /ˈkænbᵊrə/, /ˈkænbɛrə/
Thanks for your points. I also think the website is very unprofessional, not to talk about the video demonstration; my accent is quite horrible and the absurd amounts of "hrms.." are unacceptable considering my target audience.

I guess I wanted to go for a more "casual" feeling. In the sense that companies would feel more comfortable knowing that I was just a casual developer and that I will have full attention towards them and their success with my product. I guess that's not how the real world works though.
As far as I can tell, you're wrong, but only on the "recently".
OMG Quora is Down What will we talk about? oh wait Quora being down.
The company I worked for last year actually needed to deploy these 3rd party apps. Flash and other free software needs to be updated to the latest version to avoid security concerns... so the idea for uDeployer sparked.
Google To Acquire fflick For $10 Million
Stock picking does work. You just have to pick stocks wisely. Looking at the recommendations of "financial experts" is not stock picking. What is the basis of these so-called "experts"? The fact that they are stock salesman. Do you let a used car dealer advise you on which used car to buy? OR do you do your own research?

To further that analogy, this article is saying that because used car salesmen advise you to buy cars that benefit them more than you, you should just give up on picking a car and instead just drive whatever car you're assigned by some entity made up of used car salesman! You may be driving a clunker, but at least you didn't have to think about it.

Stock picking works. And not just for Warren Buffett. Using someone else's "hot tip" is not stock picking. But analyzing the economics of the situation, both macro and micro, and the particulars of a given company will let you predict the return you'll get from a given company.

You know how to know whether an investment program is rational or not? If it considers prices. A given stock may be a fantastic company, but it may be over priced.

When you see people talking completely independant of any price analysis (as they do in this article and the comments) they are essentially debating on whether red or black is going to come up on the roulette wheel. If you don't have the price of the asset as a core feature of any analysis you're just gambling.

Commodities are probably the best investment going right now, and for one simple reason: we are in the age of inflation. So, not only will their prices be going up because of inflation, but because people will be piling into them to avoid inflation.

Don't take my word on it, though. This is not a hot tip. Learn enough economics to be able to analyze the world.

Don't just buy into an investment ideology.
what i didn't get from reading the article: is amazon procuring its own groceries or is it just providing delivery for stop and shop?
If you're looking for a python DOM API, pythonwebkit is currently in development here: http://www.gnu.org/software/pythonwebkit/
This type of thinking doesn't explain Houston, Las Vegas, Phoenix - the list goes on. These are large cities by Australian standards but fit very few of your criteria. Las Vegas depends on the Hoover Dam, but certainly not trade or shipping.

Water supply is the major issue in Australian cities, but this can be solved (see Kalgoorlie) if people put their mind to it. I agree that Australia needs to develop the regional areas more.
Money flows like wine in the valley