skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Richard East on Marketing
Pay attention to Richard East and avoid the Lead Generation Vendors and Many Of Your Competition from Robbing You BLIND.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/12/yammer-reaches-beyond-c...

Well my English has grammatical mistakes but it seems like my idea doesn't have that much issue. Yammer has announced my idea ( point 2 ) today... lets see whether it came from Hacker News Posting or it came from their brain :) We will see when Yammer releases that ...
On the design: I love the clean aesthetic and color scheme. I would try to to make the page vertically a bit more compact, so the entire "Login using Google" is above the fold. I have a relatively large monitor, and yet only the top of "Login using Google" shows on my screen.

Then I'd test some descriptive instruction above "Login using Google" to explain why they should - the value to them. "Take a test drive and see how your social life improves - all you need is a Google account to get closer to your friends" - something like that, just make it shorter. Test different variations that answer the question, "why should I go to the next step?" It might seem obvious to you, but you're intimately familiar with your site. Me, why should I log in? The site looks nice, but what's the value here? What's the learning curve? Will this be a pain in the ass to get running? Mention how easy and fast they can do something cool, and then deliver on that promise once people log in.

Cheers mate, and best wishes.
Programmers know when they've been more productive because they feel it. This is not the kind of measurement that is accessible to metrics and formal studies, but that doesn't mean it isn't real. It does mean that the measurer and the measured have to be the same person, or people working closely together.
Difficult to say if this will catch on, all I can offer is my own reasons why I would not use this. I wouldn't play Mob Wars either, but that hasn't stopped it from being a success.

- I'm not in USA.

- My friends are really reluctant to start using new services. It took ages for them to start using Facebook.

- My friends probably do not have Google accounts. In fact they would probably be more likely to use this if this was a Facebook app.

- As you say everyone needs to eat, so it is safe to assume that each of my friends will have dinner anyway. So if I want to have dinner with a particular friend, can't I just SMS them? I think they would find this more natural than me trying to talk them into signing up for something.
Yammer annoucement vs Netvorx idea ..well I am happy :)
Few days back I posted this

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=451494

And there is similar news on Tech Crunch.

Well my English has grammatical mistakes but it seems like my idea doesn't have that much issue. Yammer has announced what i had said in my posting ( point 2 - 2. If any organization wants to deploy netvorx within their network rather than using http://www.netvorx.com then we will charge for maint & support. If organization wants to just use as-is version then there won't be any charge.)

lets see whether today's Yammer annocement has any relation with Hacker News Posting or my email to TechCrunch just before Yammers annoucement ... :)

In either case I am feeling better that my brain is still working in right direction to generate idea

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/12/yammer-reaches-beyond-corporate-firewalls-open-sources-iphone-application/#comment-2623930
How I'd refine those pitches: Look to identify the problem to the consumer, and answer how do it better. Compare the following - "Hi, we're New York Pizza, and we want you to be satiated. You should eat good food." to... "Man, you ever get hungry and you're not sure exactly what would hit the spot? We're New York Pizza - we make good pizza, at a good price, 24 hours, that always hits the spot."

I'd kill the word "social network" from your pitch - people roll their eyes when they hear "another social network" - there's got to be ten million would-be social networks online now. Pitch yourself as the first, and only "..." that's completely unavailable on the market. Don't try to carve into someone's "social network space" - I'm at my friend's house right now. He has Facebook and Myspace and checks both of them. He has a dead Friendster account. He won't use another social network... but he DOES use Evite, because that scratches a different itch.

Something like - "It's easy to get lost online, and miss out what really matters - like eating good meals with good people. I founded Sponty because I remember back when it was simple and easy to get pizza with your friends, and you'd get together with people you cared about to watch a favorite TV show now and then. We're drowning in info with Myspace, Facebook, Friendster, and a million other tech things that keep us apart from our friends and zombies in front of the screen. Sponty makes it easy to meet up and hang out with your friends, and do what really matters in life. Join as at Sponty and get back to the days of great times, with great people, with no hassle. It's easy to join - all you need is a Google account - and you'll be using Sponty like a pro within 10 minutes. Just don't feel too bad that you'll be away from Facebook doing cool things!"
Did you try it?

It should fall-through to e-junkie's traditional non-Javascript cart hosted offsite. I personally think the experience is decidedly suboptimal next to either of the JS carts but, honestly, I think the Internet is moving away from assuming that Javascript is optional.

(I would have a different opinion if I had to support a range of mobile browsers but, well, I sell downloadable software to elementary schoolteachers. Most of them don't think "Ooh great I loved this downloadable free trial! Let me write down the URL, get out my iPhone, type in the URL, then order a copy!")
Actually most don't. Two years ago I could tell you in Las Vegas or Atlantic City exactly which ones do. I'm not kidding either.
Thank you for the heads up. We've actually submitted the application. I will update the graphic.
Well, I've done a LOT more than that, and it's still generally $20s, except for certain ATMs in certain casinos. Even in casinos that have ATMs that hold $100s, only a few certain ones generally do. The Wynn is the only casino I know of where all of them have $100s.

And most non-casino ATMs have a per transaction limit of $600-$800, independent of your card's limit. You can do multiple transactions, but you'll get $20s every time. This too varies a bit in Vegas and AC, where you can find much higher limits, but again only in the right ATMs in the right casinos.

Vegas casinos have a rule that they will only trade you up to $500 in $100s for lower denominations per casino per day. It's to prevent laundering. The Feds absolutely hate $100 bills because of that. If the FBI were able to get rid of them, they would in a heart beat.

Since I made most of my money playing online poker and withdrew it that way, I would often spend hours each day walking up and down the strip cashing $20s in for $100s.

I've never understood why $50s weren't used more. It seems like the optimal bill. Spitting out $500 in them isn't objectionable, and I imagine a lot of people withdraw $50 (or would if you made it a quick cash option).
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"the crash of 1873, the Great Depression—have a way of upending the geopolitical order, and hastening the fall of old powers and the rise of new ones."

There has been much ado about the US failures, but the failures in the UK seem even more serious. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere as the focus seems to be on the US, as is usual, but this is the last nail in the coffin for the UK as far as I can see, after this it will be an island off Europe that spends its time talking about the old empire.
Bespin is a Web Based Editor from Mozilla Labs
Introducing Mozilla Bespin, a Canvas-based IDE
Yours is cleaner and that mixin thing made me dizzy just looking at it and after going to Sponty first, I was taken aback by how mixin looked so complicated, had so much text and wanted to inundate me with words and junk. Doesn't matter if it's true, that was my impression.

I think you've got a good core, you'll need some other "hook" to draw a critical mass of folks, I think...but the basics are there in my mind. Easy to use, simple and cool.

Thanks for sharing.
Bespin: A new Mozilla Labs experimental extensible code editor using Canvas
The question here is: How do we KNOW that methodology X makes us more productive developers? To answer this question you need to know more about productivity than just a highly subjective 'yes' or 'no'.
By the way now half complete Netvorx.com is on ebay

http://cgi.ebay.com/netvorx-com-site-on-sale_W0QQitemZ300293...

but let me know if someone with connection wanna be partner ( like PG ;) ) .. It seems like you need connection more than idea
Oh, you mean like SOAP or XML-RPC? Yes, I would prefer using HTTP as a protocol over using those any day.

Sarcasm aside, I don't see exactly what HTTP buys you over establishing a TCP connection to the server and talking to it directly. Points one and two, check. If your favorite language can talk HTTP, it can talk over TCP.

Besides, in a URL like http://foo/bar?v1=x&v2=y&v3=z is in itself a type of protocol, namely the name/value pairs. Sure, I know HTTP and can debug problems at THAT level, but what about at the higher level? There's still a protocol (oh, I forgot that v4 is mandatory when calling bar, but optional when calling baz).
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Hi bemmu,
Thanks for the feedback!

1. We plan on offering Sponty in many different languages. 2. It also works great on the iPhone (and similar phones) and it doesn't require a time commitment like social networks do. We really want you to be in and out in three seconds.
3. Soon we'll add more authentication options.
4. Sure, SMS works great for one-to-one. However, it really does'nt scale if you'd SMS all your friends to see if any of them are up for grabbing a bite.
Why are we using HTTP (and bundling in a web server) when all we're doing is just passing along a bunch of strings?
He briefly mentions some of this; not all tickets are created equal, and neither are all lines of code. Writing thousands of lines of boilerplate code may not be as productive as fixing dozens of critical bugs without adding anything new. Similarly, hitting on a lot of relatively simple tickets may be less productive than fixing the toughest tickets.
1) The front page has screenshots of HTML components. They look like you can interact with them, but you can't. This is almost always a bad design choice.

2) I don't want to use my Google account. I always use a site-specific email address when registering for a new site. I'll never give one of my actual gmail addresses.
So...

We can't quantify it or inspect it. We can't corroborate it. We can simply ask a programmer whether they are productive or not and trust them to answer for themselves.

And if Alice meets Bob on the street and they disagree over what makes them productive, there is really no way to settle the question. If Alice says she is more productive using Ruby than Python, but Bob says the opposite, we must trust that they are both right, and furthermore we can't really draw any conclusion.

Because Charles may report that he is more productive with Ruby, or Python, or perhaps Arc, and again he is the only one who knows.
Why didn't they use the already established rel=bookmark value from the hAtom microformat? That's already in the wild on countless blogs and websites.

I swear, sometimes Google's awareness of existing web conventions is shockingly lacking.
Google App Engine Blog: The sky's (almost) the limit. "High CPU" is no more.
I've always thought of code editors as a bulletproof example of apps that has to be written in native code.

Very interested to see the code and how they did all this in Canvas in a sensible way.
I agree with you 100%. I've noticed a strong correlation to me personally feeling like I've been productive and having a "how did it get so late?" moment. The times when I look at the clock every 10 minutes are the times when I'm usually thinking about things other than my code.
Where's the business model?
As a non-english speaker, I actually Googled for "hangoutable" because I didn't know what it means and mentions of Sponty came on top :p

On the site itself:

- I have no idea how you're eco-friendly (sorry, the leaf conjures this emotion)

- Underlined blue words are links: I thought I could click on the main page "Katie" and "Dave"

- The logo on http://www.thesponty.com/about is different than on the main page (the beta word)

- About page "Got it." on the question list. Got what? None asks "Got it. So how..."

- "Speak your mind" is a poor choice of words indicating where I can send you feedback for a service that lets me type anything. It looked like I could click there and some page would come up that would let me do something.

But anyway, let's login!

- Can't you put your logo on the Google Account login page? (I honestly don't know). Like, "<logo> Sponty uses Google..."

- Can't you redirect to the main page instead of the /hn doorway? I logged in and had to go somewhere else to use the site. One extra step is bad :(

- I had to delete "Your name here...". onclick delete the input contents. (Firefox 3.0.6)

- My timezone is -3 gmt! Nowhere before it said the site is for USA people :( But let's fake and say I am Eastern;

- Network, same as above.

- Clicked Save, reloaded profile edit. I guess I have to click again to go to the home page?...

- Make your friends hangoutable: http://www.thesponty.com/Inerte_82 But I am not Inerte_82.

- Cliked on Post, form came up: You should put something like a datepicker on "When". It's 02:15 AM here, and 12:00 AM appeared on default. Clicking too much arrows...

- When I submitted the form, a spinning circle appeared on "12 - 3 am" box, but my entry appeared on "3 - 6 am". Spin the cirle on the time I've selected.

- The calendar opacity is too high, showing elements behind

Overall I liked the concept! But I am grumpy tonight I guess :p
Couldn't see it either. Why those late nights and stress have been worth it?
This is precisely what I applied to YC with a year and a half ago. It's really great to see that people are working on it!
You are much better off with doing the following: (1) All responses for non-canonical URLs are 301 redirects to the canonical URLs, (2) Your website will never link to a resource using a URL other than its canonical one, (3) you encourage people to link to pages on your site using the canonical URLs.

This way your site will be very cache-friendly while still being usable. Also, all search engines will be able to understand your site without any proprietary extensions (a.k.a. "standards" at Google, apparently) being needed.
You actually don't need a sign. It is yours by use (when you first publicly display it), the sign is optional.
Thanks for the reply - After you that the majority of H1-B's are going to Indian outsourcing firms, I took a look at the demographics and stastics to see if that's true. Here's what I found:

India accounts for the most H1-B visas at 102,382 since 2005. The next highest is the United Kingdom at 30,755. That's interesting - India does account for 25% of H1-B's, however the rest of the top 10 is: UK, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Japan, China, Venezuela, South Korea. Six of the top 10 are wealthy countries with high standards of living - the people from those countries are quite likely skilled professionals.

The government should work to clear up and end abuses of the H1-B program to bring unskilled laborers over here, but that's not what the majority of the program is doing. Giving visas not bound to employer would straighten most of that out right away - it would take away the incentive for employers to get crummy people, because they couldn't pay undermarket wages.

As for India - I think the reason India is so highly represented is the same reason Ireland was 150 years ago: It's a poor country with people who want to work hard and make it in America. I think some people (not you) cite the India thing and plays as a sort of latent racist card. "Those damn Indians, taking our jobs!" Why shouldn't Indians come over here? There's some damn brilliant Indians with nothing going on for them in India. The best and brightest want to come here, just liked we've seen whenever there's been a famine or poverty in a country. America's been built by people who came here for a better life.

So okay, only 25% of H1-B's are to Indians, and not all of those (obviously) are outsourcing firms or an abuse of the program. As for the Sergey Brin comment - the author was writing how we should restrict immigration because it costs Americans jobs. My point is if immigration was stricter in the 70's and the Brin family hadn't been allowed to come to the USA, then we'd all be worse off. I say get as many bright and hardworking people here as possible, however we can, and loosen up immigration for anyone who'll be a good citizen in a field there's demand for. I agree with you that we should cut down on unskilled laborers abusing the program, and get better filtering criteria. But I've worked with some amazing Indian coders, and those are people I'd love to have over here to drink tea with, sit on the beach with, talk code and business and Chess, and see them raise their kids to be Americans if they get citizenship, or be grateful for the contributions they made to our economy and way of life if they go home.
Could it be that productivity differs for each person? Maybe we can't have a productivity scale that is the same for everyone? Maybe it has to be applied personally?

But then again, maybe if we drill down deep enough, we'd find common themes or aspects for why Alice feels more productive with Ruby and Bob with Python.
Very useful. Thank you sir.
It's sort of depressing. A year of struggle and ultimate perseverance against the odds... to release something that doesn't make any money. I mean, kudos for sticking with it and refusing to give up, but... now what?
There are quite a few uses listed in the last paragraph of the article.
You're jumping to conclusions. I'm not saying this is the only possible measurement, I'm saying it exists and has some properties and not others. The absence of more "objective" measurements does not mean that programmers are talking nonsense when we discuss our own productivity. I think it is probably true, though, that the nonsense ratio tends to go up when we start discussing the productivity of others. That should tell us something.
Nope, Jon Candy is not part of ENTP. We do really appreciate the kind words he said about Tender though :)
You're right - mixin has been around a little longer, I think, but Sponty definitely has the simplicity thing nailed.
Look at twitter... how long was that around before any attempt at monetisation emerged?
I didn't claim that he wasn't telling the truth.
suburbs just don't scale. If the population of the USA keeps increasing, this country has to move forward into more urbanization, more density, and higher buildings and mass transit. When I moved to California, I was surprised that its architecture had more in common with the Midwest than with the more urban east coast. Appart from SF, you have to have a car to go anywhere. In the east coast, from Boston, to D.C. you can get along fine with urban transport + zip car.
But I realized, most of the cities in the east coast were created centuries ago, and were made for people, and not cars, and tend to have higher densities (even comparing suburbs to suburbs). Unfortunately, most Cities in CA, were made for cars. (with SF being the exception).

There will be natural forces that will make cities to increase their density. LA is already a big giant parking lot, how much further can it expand? All the bay area highways (all 5 lanes ), are already clogged all the time. What will happen when there are 20% more cars in the street just two decades from now?

People either have to endure long hour + commutes, or live close to their working places, or choose their work and place to live according to public transport accessibility.

Necessity will shape this nation. It wont happen overnight, but in few decades things will be different.
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i prefer something like itsAllText, which lets me fire up my own local
editor for any textarea (using it now with emacsclient). employing a
local editing tool lets me keep all my keyboard shortcuts, which is
why i use one editor instead of another.

what i would really like to see is direct embedding of your choice of
local editor directly into the textarea. there's no way to satisfy
everyone with one editor.

but still, bespin is very cool and an improvement over plain old
textareas
this is awesome. thank you.
I second the Facebook app idea.

And I really like the calendar that shows all my friends and what they are doing today. That would be really nice in Facebook and at this point I don't know if that's enough to not just sign up for another service, but also check it and get friends using it.

I can see someone who just wants to login, see what's going on and if there's something s/he can join and then log off and go. And I don't think being part of FB hinders that. It probably helps.
It's an unsatisfying conclusion, but is it really all that surprising? To coin a metaphor, a programming language is a shoe; only you know if it fits right. It might stretch out and become more comfortable over time, but it's not a debatable point that it's pinching your toes.

Programming isn't a natural mode of thought, and programming languages aren't a natural mode of expression. I think it's unrealistic to expect that we'll ever find a universal best practice.
Good luck with that Microsoft. I think the thing that drives traffic into Apple stores is that people want to experience an OS they haven't used before and see what the buzz around Apple is about. I have heard good things about Windows 7, but will the new OS bring people into the shop the way a "foreign" OS like Apple's does?
Part of the problem is that people talk about productivity in the abstract, which is like measuring your height with an invisible ruler and saying "I've gotten taller." Once you define a metric, it's easy to measure yourself against it. Lines of code? Easy to measure. Weeks taken to ship something? Easy to measure. Number of features completed on your checklist? Easy, if you made a checklist.

None of these metrics are perfect, but they're a heck of a lot better than nothing, or "I don't know". You can iterate, and refine the estimates as you go along. Just make a conscious effort to measure something. Getting actual data trumps all these endless arguments.
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Good question. I have a few ideas that I'm going to be pursuing.

- Setup a deal with flipclips.com (or someone similar) and let people purchase a branded flickbook of a period of their lives.

- Maybe potential for some kind of picwing.com affiliate deal / application.

- Some kind of "pro" account with more features (more picture widget output options etc).

- Display advertising (yeah, know).

They're a few ideas I'm toying with.
You should listen to a recent This American Life[1] episode where both Tyler Cowen (anti-bailout) and some other dude (pro-bailout Princeton prof) argue that Obama's bailout constitutes the closest thing to an expierment of Keynes' ideas that we will ever have.

[1]: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=128...