bradleyjoyce

for me project ideas come from either problems I've experienced myself that I want to solve, or some app that I know I want.

In the case of http://tweetsaver.com, there was no other solution at the time it launched (over a year ago) that offered a decent way to back up my tweets, as well as search all my old tweets. I knew that, had there been another service at the time that offered this, I would have paid to use it.

Most of the ideas that I have that have come from speculating on what might be theoretically useful or super successful/popular are still just domain names :-)

when I read the title I thought it was talking about http://pulseapp.com/ which I could see raising $800k ... but a news reader? I don't find pulse to be THAT amazing.

ah yes, more post title traffic bait my Michael Arrington. I guess that's what you have to do when the thing you're posting about isn't really all that interesting.

really? json is so much easier for me to read than xml. What do you like about xml?

As a user... I download apps with beautiful icons over apps with ugly icons all the time... in my personal opinion, I associate a bad icon with a generally poor application. To me, if you don't invest the time to make your icon great, then how can I expect that your made your entire app great?

I wouldn't tell her anything, quite frankly, other than to suggest that SHE analyze the situation and make her own determinations.

Going to extremes (don't leave the house) is obviously not a realistic or constructive option.

I would think that the pattern is more than just being a woman... but I know what you are trying to say.

I'm not saying that her behavior is at fault (100% the man's fault), but I'm suggesting that PERHAPS there is something she could have done differently to avoid what happened, and if so, it would be worthwhile to determine what that possible thing is.

hmm that is a very interesting way to put it actually... I wonder what the result would be if the author performed such an analysis.

You're definitely right about trying to change the world.

I'm in no way trying to say it's her fault. But if there is some pattern to the situation perhaps it would be worthwhile to analyze in the hopes that it didn't happen again? It's unfair and unjust that in doing so she might uncover something she could change to help prevent some pervert from doing something atrocious... but if it did prevent it, wouldn't it be worth it?

It seems logical to me... but I guess in being logical I'm somehow being sexist or something (which is why my original comment is getting downvoted?)?

touché (even though all your examples are in un-related industries) :-)

hmm it might be, but I've never done that.. basically clients would pre-pay for a chunk of hours (use them or lose them) and overages would be billed at normal hourly rate

"It’s not the first time something like this has happened to me, at all. It’s not the first time it’s happened to me at a tech conference. But it is the first time I’ve spoken out about it in this way, because I’m tired of the sense that some idiot can ruin my day and never have to answer for it."

At this risk of everyone taking this the wrong way....

(1) If it's not the first time this has happened, it might be time to re-evaluate the pattern of behavior that led up to the unfortunate event.

(2) Never have to answer for it?!!? Um if you're sexually assaulted (multiple times?!?!) you should definitely be reporting that to the POLICE where the offender will, I'm pretty sure, have to answer for it. Right?

I totally understand that blogging about this must have been incredibly difficult for this person, and perhaps naming the accused in the post lightens the burden on her a bit... but this should definitely be a police issue, not a blog issue!

I really really really want an app that will sync time tracking against tickets in GoPlan (http://goplannapp.com) with FreshBooks... that is, I something where I can send time entries in GoPlan to FreshBooks and then generate an invoice.

I even started writing a ruby wrapper for the GoPlan API, but have gotten sidetracked by other stuff :-(

I generally have structured based on some average of "how many hours will you need me if everything goes terribly wrong" and "one or two small things a month" multiplied by my a slightly higher than normal hourly rate.

In cases where clients don't want to pay a retainer so to speak, I'll usually give them the option to pay as they go, but at generally 2-2.5x my normal rate.

there is always the risk that someone could take "your" idea.

However, the chances that your idea is unique and particularly special are small. The chances that you'll be able to protect your idea from someone who really wants to steal it are also small.

You are much better served by sharing your idea with a lot of people (might as well make them people you trust, no reason to go out of your way to have someone take your idea), gather as much feedback as possible and build build build.

Your time and effort is much better spent making progress on your idea and moving faster than any idea thiefs than it is worrying about idea theft and trying to protect your idea.

Ideas are generally worthless, everyone has them and on their own don't mean much. Build something of value, then worry about protecting that.

I really dislike the new interface.

It seems that I know have to decided between viewing my contact list and viewing a conversation. I also can't see all my online contacts broken down in the groups I've created, I have to click on each group to see online contacts within that group, or I have to view ALL online contacts.

I don't see any preferences for changing how conversations/contacts are displayed. :-(

The group video calling might make it worth the annoyance of the new ui.

I think Google's billions in revenue and profits would beg to differ with you. (ads on google search results are generally highly relevant and get clicked a lot)

you are right, however, if the people you are generalizing for are HN folks, and websites other than Google.

no, you're confusing UI and UX... without ads, the user interface might be better (less ads, less clutter, etc) however, it could be argued that without the ads the user EXPERIENCE would not be as good... as very often ads are highly relevant to what the user is searching for on google and are therefore of value to the user.

Since when is having a poor user experience good for business.

I would also say that having a poor User Interface and poor User Experience is doubly bad for business.

I'm reminded of the recent article posted here to HN about Expedia removing a single field from their checkout form that resulted in $12MM to the bottom line.

Better UI + Better UX = Better Business

The danger of NOT bringing on a technical co-founder is that you're then dealing with a different type of developer/tech person. This technical person is generally the type that gets (or could get) paid good money.

So as Travis mentions in his comment, if you don't have lots of cash on hand, you could run into problems. There is really no shortage of jobs available to developers, and chances are many jobs out there will pay much better than what you can afford to pay at your startup. Unless you find the perfect person who doesn't mind making less than he/she probably could and is still 100% dedicated, you'll probably have a high turnover rate.

In contrast, you can generally assume that a co-founder is going to give you 100% all the time as they theoretically have a lot of skin in the game.

In many startups, you probably don't need a technical co-founder, but you probably should have one anyway.

"When people ditched their CDs, they lost album art and liner notes, but those were never a part of the actual listening experience. The music bursting from headphone and speakers was still music, was the same whether it came from a disc or a download. When the liner notes vanished, the songs remained the same."

and all the people who are hardcore about audio cringe at the notion that music sounds the same regardless of origin or equipment used to reproduce it... these also happen to be the same people who cherished the album, who saw insights into the music from the artwork on the cover, and read the lyrics over and over.

I'm a geek. I owned a Kindle and read books regularly on my iPad and iPhone. I love the technology.

However, it drives me crazy when people make say that the details in the "antiquated" and analog versions aren't/weren't important. There is truly much being lost.

I use Fireworks.. but I would venture to guess just about any image editing software would use a similar process :-)

a quick imitation would be (using Adobe Fireworks):

   1. create a new doc
   
   2. add a rectangle

   3. set the fill color to your choosing

   4. set the texture to something like sandpaper @ 30%

Donesky!

Screenshot: http://img.skitch.com/20101103-mudstgaqysxkr6rr5d4jkg83f3.jp...

I'm not sure there is a "best way" other than direct referrals, unfortunately. The problem is the the HR/recruitment industry is fundamentally broken. Jobs are inevitably farmed out to 3rd party recruiters who then sub-farm in the effort to make a split (commission) if their candidate is excepted.

This of course is a generalization but it is the root of the problem.

There is absolutely no reason you should raise money from outside investors for this type of business. You grow this business with sales, with more customers paying you for your services. If you think, yeah but if I had $500k of investment I could hire two sales people and two more techs blah blah blah then my guess is you will ending up wasting a lot of money and failing. Grow your company with the people and skills you have. Be frugal. Put cash in the bank... then when you're at the breaking point, hire a new person.. rinse and repeat. Then you still own 100% of the company, you have cash in the bank and can eventually afford to take some risks on your own products.

I've been in situations like this where people just simply don't understand what it takes to write software. The fact of the matter is that HOW things get done is so widely varied, it can be incredibly confusing to a non-coder. For example, one particular problem may take 100 lines of code and 5hrs to solve while another may take 5 hours of thinking through the problem and 10 lines of code to solve.

If you're boss doesn't understand this, chances are he never will, so like others, I would suggest you begin the search for a new job. Another option would be to return to freelancing... chance are you could still contract back to the current company while you're looking for new clients if you had to.

Alternatively, you could print out every single line of code you've written at the company and dump it on your bosses desk so he can see how much work it really is (since you mention he's extremely visual).

ah thanks for the tip.. did some domain shuffling recently and I've neglected to forward that one on.. http://bradleyjoyce.com should work :-) Thanks!

This exact thing happened to me... I used pledgie + paypal to accept donations to help a friend out in Peru who's home had been devasted by flooding. Paypal froze my account, customer service wouldn't tell me what was up, only that I had to EMAIL the "Compliance Department" which doesn't do phone calls. The compliance department told me I needed to provide the paperwork to prove my non-profit status, which of course I could not do. I sent my friend the amount donated out of my own pocket since the money was locked down in paypal. After 3 months of emailing back and forth I finally got nasty with them and threatened all sorts of lawsuits etc etc. While they haven't reinstated my account they finally allowed me to withdrawl the money. That account is basically in a permanent restricted status and unusable.

PayPal is the new mafia.

http://simplegeo.com/ would be a good place to start... we used it on http://www.foundtown.com for some stuff

yes, I'm serious. 37 seats x $1000 = $37k in pocket as you said. No one is debating the fact that they are only able to do this after years of hard work. Could Joe Schmoe of the street do this? No, absolutely not. But putting "How to make $37,000 in a single day after YEARS and YEARS (and YEARS) of hard work" doesn't exactly fit in the title field.