Mamady

There are petty crimes and there are serious crimes. Objective-C in Ruby is definitely the latter.

I totally disagree.

Side projects are a way to experiment and broaden your knowledge of technologies. Focus is good, but prolonged focus can lead to boredom and resentment.

Giving employees the chance to vent their creativity with new and fun technologies (via side projects) often leads to much happier employees. There is also a built-in feedback loop that allows that knowledge to flow back into the company with better practices, architecture or just the use of better tools.

Let me summarize it this way: Side projects are the best form of training you can provide for your employees.

And that's why Google has 20% time.

Some ideas are smart. Others are GENIUS.

This is the latter.

I recently took on such a venture and opted for PHP with the Phalconphp framework.

It worked out in the end (I did it over a weekend, not a whole week), but I have to admit that Phalconphp is not very stable - it's only at v0.4. But it is VERY, VERY fast.

The truth is that there is no way you can learn a whole language AND build an application in a week. So pick your favorite dynamic language and then find a lightweight framework for it.

My picks for lang would be in this order: PHP, Ruby, Python, Javascript (Node.js)

Im not joking at all.

It's not as if HN is "feature rich" - the short comings are spread across the board, why should they implement a multilayer login security system but skimp on everything else? Have you ever done PCI compliance? Login is the tip of the iceberg! But that is exactly my point - HN doesnt need to do this stuff or become PCI compliant, because they dont store (very) sensitive information.

HN is a poor MVP at best. Its the community that makes HN amazing, not the product.

Q: If someone were to steal your HN password... whats the worst that could happen?

A: Not much.

It would seem extra security layers wouldn't provide much benefit.

For all the hackers in London... the last line of this article is why you should be moving to SF :)

What has the world come to, when a company such as 37Signals has to start flipping sites?

I was running on linux for a couple of years. Then I got tired of my laptop battery being destroyed, the fan on my laptop being in overdrive at all times, and also having everything run slow even though I had paid for top hardware. So I switched back to Windows.

I WISH I could use linux as my primary, but I really can't justify all the flaws just for a bit more security.

THIS ... is the beginning of an awesome company.

Finally someone speaks up! +1

I wrote about this not long ago on my blog: http://www.forouzani.com/would-you-pay-2x-for-a-10x-develope...

I think the short answer is that startups should be hiring for 10X devs, without having to raise their prices.

But, in the real world - you usually get what you pay for.

Although I agree - I'm not sure this is monetizable.

The real question - are these people willing to pay $500 to say "Look ma...."?

Why why why?

Why would you do this?

This is wrong in so many ways!

The service is a good MVP - now it's time to beef up the features.

I have a friend who is working on a very similar product - it will be launched sometime in the next few weeks... keep an eye out for competition ;)

There is definitely some resistance to paying for travel information when so much of it is available for free - I totally agree with you on that. However, our product is more aimed at short trips, where investing in lots of time to research the destination just doesn't make sense.

I feel like $4.99 is a reasonable price considering the amount of time it saves you.

What would you consider a reasonable price? Or specifically... what would be your own personal "too expensive" threshold?

Thanks for the suggestions. We are currently giving our itinerary authors 75% of the sales - and that has got the word out a bit (just not enough I guess).

Trying to build a social community is something we should possibly try, but it will take a lot of time - and we weren't convinced it would catch on.

We have done many tests with Adwords - our margins are tiny, and adwords doesn't seem to work for us. We are still testing this, but we are not even close - we are many, many miles away. I'm sure we are missing something with adwords, but we have tried a lot, but still not succeeded.

We have a very basic discount/promo system, but building an affiliate system takes time, and we haven't had any requests for it, so it is not at the top of our roadmap.

Thanks for the great ideas - some of our thinking has been along the same lines. One of our biggest barriers is funds, which means we have to push as hard and fast as we can before we are totally depleted.

Design is something on our list, but neither of us are designers, and getting a good design will cost a fair amount.

We have tried to provide them in physical format, but the price significantly exceeds that of a travel guide - I'm not sure if it makes sense.

We haven't considered the fandango route - I guess it is a revenue stream that we should investigate.

The iphone app is coming... but its not feature packed, because we had to outsource it, and as always, funds are limited.

Well the idea was to build a marketplace in the hope that we would get lots of different itineraries for each location, with each one tackling the city from a different angle. It would be up to the individuals to write itineraries how they deemed fit, and the review/rating process would make sure the best ones were highlighted.

Unfortunately, so far we have had to seed the marketplace with itineraries which are costing us $100+ each, so we dont have the luxury of making many itineraries for each city.

Also, each itinerary takes many weeks to write - $20 just wouldn't cover the expenses of bespoke itineraries.

The microsoft stack does work quite well, but usually for 50+ staff. For less than 50 the cost of administration becomes a disproportional overhead.

I take vendor lock-in with a grain of salt... if the solution works well, the lock-in (almost) doesn't matter. When it comes to mission critical business systems, most companies have vendor lock-in, whether it's with Microsoft, Google or some other company.

I think most startups stick with Google Apps. For network filesharing have you tried Dropbox? If large files are an issue - you will need to setup a fileserver in your office something as simple as a samba server could do the trick.

You could also trying to get an invite for AeroFS.

Thanks for the great feedback. We have just recently launched the second version of our platform, which allows for interactive itineraries, but if you want to "take it away" with you, it still needs to be downloaded as a PDF.

We are in the process of building our mobile apps - unfortunately we lack inhouse skills for this, so it has taken us longer than it should have.

Regarding design - although we know we have to improve our design, we didn't have the insight you just provided, very useful information - thank you.

A shameless plug for our free 1 Day self-guided tour of SF: http://www.unanchor.com/launch

That's exactly what you need :)

Bad PR always seems to get instant action - it's more damage control than anything else.

If you have an audience, you have PR power.

I agree - time tracking on a granualar level is very high friction and ends up being a waste of time. Better to focus on things that bring more ROI, like product.

Unless your billing on an hourly basis, chances are that counting hours is too much micromanagement.

If someone in your company is screwing up, you always want to know. Now whether you want to take action or not, may vary depending on the situation.

Sometimes it's a difference of opinion - if you are getting lots of applications, should the HR person waste time responding to failed candidates, instead of sourcing more candidates? Maybe you think they should - and it's not a waste of time, but rather common courtesy - if so, point it out to them.

I think as a CEO, it's important you set certain policies where you think the industry standard may not be aligned with your company standards. Then make sure you communicate these policies to your staff.

if you reveal the traits the typically reflect a bad apple, the bad apples will simply make sure they adapt to hide their traits (or innocent apples with these traits may start questioning themselves). Either way, Im not sure the net effect is positive?

This is a really cool concept - if only it didnt need extra hardware.

If the sensor was integrated into a laptop - that would be awesome.

As an avid biker I can tell you this is an awesome idea!

There are already a lot of ride-outs happening, most of them are organized through forums - this makes things difficult and not 'realtime'. An site/app like this would really hit the spot.

If you ever need feedback from a biker, I would be happy to lend a hand.

One thought - you should allow users to give their email to get an update when their city is supported (Im in London, UK).

well i guess thats a given - being a cofounder typically means you dont get paid in the initial stages - hopefully that wont last for too long ;)