bjplink

I worked almost exclusively on internal inventory systems for the first five years after I graduated from college. These systems were custom built for commercial printers who ranged in size from small specialty shops (think promotional items like pens and golf balls) to large factories with 8,000 SKUs and 12 million pieces of printed material stored in a three-floor building with dozens of rooms. So I speak with a least some authority on this matter I guess.

Once you get the bugs worked out of your program (or you integrate an off the shelf product) the nightmare really begins. The big problem with inventory tracking isn't the software or the system but the people who use it. If your people are accustomed to their method of pen and paper to an Excel doc they will resist a new system initially and maybe forever. If there's ever an error, and there will be, they will blame the software and not a co-worker or themselves. The factory with 8,000 active SKUs has had a bug free system for years now and still, even when a mistake can be tracked right down to the individual who made it, they blame their computers. It's just human nature.

And if your software has bugs then you can pretty much kiss the whole thing goodbye right from the start. One of the projects I worked on was plagued by errors that a no-longer-employeed junior programmer couldn't fix. By the time the cavalry was called in to correct things all faith was lost and never really recovered. Unbeknowst to us, the workers in charge of the inventory started running their own parallel system with pen and paper.

Your problem is compounded by needing to track items across multiple locations but saved by the low amount of items. Yobiz looks pretty interesting. I would strongly suggest going in the web/intranet app direction.

I've gone on a bit long but I just wanted to wish you the best of luck.

Their blog is hosted on Tumblr which is down right now. Tumblr goes down a lot so check again later and it will probably be up.

This story is a month old now but I just came across it this evening and it's quite a read. Gaming Google has gotten pretty out of control now and this is a perfect example of how.

If you don't have a lot of money but are interested in doing something you might want to check out Kiva (http://www.kiva.org).

They give micro loans to small businesses in countries around the world. You, over the course of months, get your money back and you can then redistribute it back to another person somewhere else.

I've been a member for nearly four years now and in that time I've managed to help with 14 loans.

Right, instead the Diaspora guys took $200,000 of everyone's money then went into hiding. That's way better...

Considering most of the people who bother to comment on a TechCrunch article are just trolling for backlinks I wouldn't let what they say bother you too much.

Also, I think TC readers are notoriously poor performers when it comes to actionable signups/registrations/purchases of the things they're so quick to comment on. I'm not sure their thoughts on pricing are worth much.

To start, I just want to say that I like the concept of this a lot. It's one of those "Why didn't I think of this?" ideas.

But to be a little critical, the web site for it needs some work. It's too heavy on the shadow effect for the text in the body and the menu. It's tough to read.

I get that the plugin uses some high-end Javascript but maybe it's best left for the plugin and not the promotional site. The screenshots inside the front page slider are too small to be really useful and I wonder if you can get away with just one long video instead of making me click and load six videos separately.

I have maintenance deals with almost 100% of my clients (either with a monthly fee or a by-the-hour agreement). The only time I don't charge is when the error or problem is a direct result of something I've done.

I have an industry specific suite of content management systems and utilities so typically a mistake found by one client is a problem for them all. Not charging for fixing your own mistakes helps generate a little goodwill.

I won't share dollar amounts but I'll tell you my accounts convert from free trials to paid at an 11.33% rate as of today.

I do it (http://www.forescoregolfstats.com) for a very simple little web app that I developed a few years ago. I only suggest the one-time fee method if your app requires little maintenance and support. I receive a support request once or twice a month at most and the app runs on lightweight web hosting.

I don't actively push new updates. This month I set aside a few days to rework the interface a bit but other than that the feature base has been pretty static since launch.

This is probably the best stat of the article:

"According to Amnesty International, people living in the Niger Delta have experienced oil spills on par with the Exxon Valdez disaster every year for the last half century."

Here are some previous posts about NewsLabs that might be interesting reading in light of this announcement, in case anyone is unfamiliar with what they were about...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1159683

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1259603

I'm also an only child that regularly talks to myself. I would bet that the percentage of only children who talk to themselves is pretty high.

I don't know how many sports fans we have around these parts but Twitter has become an outstanding source for breaking sports news. At the trade deadline for the NBA and NHL last season, news was breaking on Twitter well before the major networks were announcing it. Some of the best beat writers are on Twitter posting major announcements before they even bother to write a story for their own newspaper. I would pretty willingly pay to keep having access to that information.

I've only been a member for a few weeks but I'm beginning to notice a positive influence on my work as a result of Forrst.

Most of my jobs lean towards the role of a developer and not a designer anymore, but since I joined Forrst I've gone into my few design tasks with more focus on quality and detail. I'm experiencing a new found motivation to put extra time and effort into details knowing I intend to post something for others to see (and critique or praise) now.

The math nerd would be right Ray Allen is a good shooter. You can look over the course of his career and verify that. But that's not the issue with streaks in sports. The issue is that Ray Allen isn't a good shooter right now.

The idea that you "expect" something doesn't diminish its importance; especially when the Celtics need Ray Allen to hit threes to improve their chances of winning. They don't care that he's hit them in the past because previous scores don't count in current games.

As a sports fan, I have a problem with this statement: '...picking the number "7" implies that number 8 got on base.'

Most of the time, at least when it comes to sportscasting, picking the number 7 implies that's the total number of batters faced up to that point. You don't say a batter has gone 2-for-3 through 6 innings when they really went 2-for-4. When a guy is doing baseball play-by-play he doesn't say the "last 5 of 7 batters" and mean there were more than seven total and he's just choosing not to tell you about them.

Look at the kid who had a hit in every college baseball game he played this season. His hit streak was 56 games long before his team was eliminated from the post-season. If his streak ends during the first game of next season, they won't go on Sportscenter the next day and say he's gotten a hit in 56 of his last 56 games and try to hide the fact that he didn't get a hit in game #57.

Last night, during the Celtics-Lakers, game they mentioned that Ray Allen was 0-16 on three point attempts since his last make and that he was cold. No one would sanely argue he wasn't having a tough time shooting but I'm sure a math nerd could explain this away with a large enough sample size of shot attempts over a longer stretch of time then one playoff series.

But the point of a streak is that it's based on a finite set of recent attempts. No one is saying Ray Allen is statistically a bad shooter (he's actually one of the best in the history of the game) but you can't argue that in recent games he's shooting poorly from distance. It doesn't get much worse than making 0% of your shots.

I'll tweak this a bit because the following worked for me:

"Give your first client a ridiculously low price."

The keyword in that sentence is "first" because you don't want to get into the habit of low-balling all of the time but it's not a bad idea when you're getting your start.

My freelance career started when I was offered to bid on a job by a friend who was working for a large sports organization in Ohio. I came in really, really low compared to the other vendors who were bidding (although, at the time, I didn't know HOW low). That one job, which I did very well for a low price, resulted in a client and work I still have to this day. And that client then turned into referrals that got me involved in an entire industry.

Or you can look into buying something on the cheap: http://themeforest.net/category/site-templates/admin-skins

Hafner fell off the map after hurting his shoulder. This also conveniently coincided with the height of the steroid blowup. His overpaid contract has crippled the team financially since just about the second he signed it.

CC and Lee were traded immediately after winning Cy Young Awards for prospects. That's not something you do when you want to keep a winning team together. Especially when the prospects you receive back have been less than thrilling so far.

Carmona seems to be running on the fumes and reputation of one successful season. Before that, he was a failed closer. Since then he's been up and down as a starter.

The Tribe sent Martinez to Boston because, while he's an awesome hitter, he's an average at best catcher and the team felt they had better prospects coming up behind him that would be cheaper (that's a recurring theme for the last decade or so).

The Indians are hampered by a cheap owner, an uninterested fan base, and a town that ranks them a solid #3 behind LeCavs and the Holiest of Holy Browns. Home attendance this year was right around 10,000 fans the last time I checked. The weather in Ohio hasn't been the best but that's still miserable for a team that had such a long sellout streak back in the day.

I have a small golf handicap tracker (http://www.forescoregolfstats.com) with a limited free account and then a one-time paid upgrade that lifts those limitations.

As of right now, my free signups are converting to paid at 11.65% and that's about 1% below the average over the last year or so.

Caveat: My sample size here is very small. I've don't next to zero advertising for this site. Still, with the number of free alternatives that have sprung up since I built this thing, I think that percentage is pretty good.

I would love to see this Google chart's rising trend compared to Facebook's rising user base over the same period of time. This "flock" might turn out to be an insignificant and miniscule percentage of Facebook's 400 million plus pool of active users.

All this proves is that a bunch of nerds got caught up in an open source telethon and gave some money. I highly doubt anyone at Facebook gives a damn... especially if they've watched the "pitch" video in which these guys come off like a bunch of 18 year old goofballs.

This is kind of a hot niche with website flippers at the moment. With the domains age you might be able to sell it pretty quickly on a place like Flippa.

Otherwise, if you aren't looking for quick cash, I'd sit on it and see how the AdSense performs while trying out some affiliate offers. Standard practices for content sites like this. You'll have a better idea of its worth after a few months.

I'm just under 50 at the moment. Off the top of my head, I think five of those 50 are idle.

I own a Kindle AND an iPhone and I broke down and ordered a 16GB iPad last night. It's going to be used mainly as an on-site input device for some industrial clients I have. It will be used with a modified version of their intranet I'm going to be developing. The main use will be for hard counting inventory.

You can still use the old ones. They just don't go out of their way to advertise them, so to speak.

Paul Graham certainly didn't give Viaweb to Yahoo for free.

Joel Spolsky sells software for a living and is looking to turn a profit with StackExchange soon.

Why should people be criticized, on a site specifically built to attract entrepreneurs, for trying to turn a profit with their venture? How hypocritical.

I've been solo full-time for two years now (and off and on as well before this) and I'll vouch that having a special room for an office helps considerably.

Just before the new year we built a brand new office for myself in our house and it has been great. Before I was in a spare bedroom that doubled as my girlfriend's computer area and productivity just wasn't as high as it is now with my own space.

Plus, I got to fill it with a bunch of my sports stuff. You can't top that. Photos available upon request if you're into gawking at other people's workspaces.

I use them for a paid membership site I own and haven't had any problems for several years now. I'm pretty low volume though so that might have something to do with it.