catone

I don't think this could ever actually work. If you've already lost 2 followers, then your tweet is already out there in the timelines of your followers. Those who are going to see it, probably already have. Those who aren't, probably weren't paying attention and never will anyway. There are already services that tell you what you said that made people unfollow you -- so you can delete tweet manually or modify your tweeting behavior (services like: http://www.tweeteffect.com/ and http://twitterless.com/ )

Twitter couldn't remove it from timelines until people refresh, and I'm not sure if third-party clients cache tweets, but if they do, then you'd never get your problem tweet deleted from those timelines either.

I guess this feature could somehow block people from retweeting your tweet? Maybe... I suppose. But, uh, most people don't retweet things that made them want to unfollow you. So that would be a silly feature.

What Twitter SHOULD do, instead, is fix their delete function, which leaves deleted tweets in Twitter search. Or provide a quick edit function (i.e., editing available for 90 seconds after tweeting) so people could fix typos.

Well, Thomas Fuchs also created script.aculo.us, so I'm thinking he can rewrite it if he wants. I suppose he and the handful of people he worked with on Scripty2 with thought they could do it better, faster, lighter, whatever if they started over.

You can't say "You haven't seen this before" when you were covered on ReadWriteWeb 2 weeks ago -- that means a lot of us have seen it before. ;)

That said, it is a cool app. Nice work. One critique: There was no easy way that I could see to show the document with out edit marks. I.e., there should be a way to switch between showing the document with edits implemented by each editor.

I make my living as an editor, and when I'm editing in Word with track changes I often like to view final with the edits hidden so I can read through what I've changed and make sure my edits are good. The edit marks get distracting and make heavily edited docs hard to read.

Also, add in the ability to easily push edited documents into Wordpress, and I could use this at work. ;)

Any experience with domain transfers (with either DynaDot or 1and1)?

Well, the reason is I just no longer trust their software. Only getting email updates about auto-renewals for some, but not all of my domains was never a big deal, but another apparent mistake (their software not updating my CC across all my domains -- some have auto-renewed without incident on the new card since I made the change, but it appears not all were updated when I used their bulk account info change tool) has sort of made it a big deal.

So I just don't trust their software anymore, and want to find a new registrar.

I used to use http://www.w3counter.com/ and never had any problems with it. I honestly don't know how it compares to the rest mentioned here, though, as I have never used them.

The design is very pretty, but it actually seems kind of broken to me in Firefox 3.0.11 on the Mac (OS X 10.5.7, res: 1280x800). This is how it loads for me:

http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/1438/69220612.jpg

As you can see, the "Free Sign Up" button and video are out of place.

99designs wasn't built in 16 months. This is nicely spun (maybe the result of the PR company 99designs hired earlier this year?) but still rather misleading.

I'm a former SitePoint employee, and have been around their forums since 2003 and as a moderator 2004-2008. 99designs was spun off from the SitePoint Marketplace 16 months ago, where it existed as the SitePoint Contests property (essentially the same thing but branded under their Marketplace). The first contests were actually held on the forums, and if memory serves, that happened in about 2002 (before I got there, could have even been 2001).

Eventually the Contests and Marketplace sections of their ultra popular web developer forums grew big enough to be spun off into dedicated sections of the site (still part of the SP organization, though), so SP developed and acquired technology to create those new areas. That was in 2006 (see: http://www.sitepoint.com/about/media/release?id=39 ).

I was involved early on in developing rules and moderating the Marketplace and Contests area. Once the Contests area got big enough, it was spun off as 99designs, and has grown like a weed since. (This time it was actually spun off as a new business entity.)

So really, more accurately, 99designs has built a successful business over the past 6 or 7 years (or if you want to go by the date it was spun out of the forums, over the past 3 years).

All that said, SitePoint is a really classy organization, full of great people. Matt Mickiewicz is a really nice guy, and what they've built is very impressive. I wish them continued success.

I usually just use a text file (Textmate is my editor of choice) to create a spec sheet describing what my idea is and how it works. From there I share that planning doc with my partner and we start making mockups together (or more likely, she does, since my Photoshop skills suck). If I need to make a mockup for her to clarify something in the text file, I use Photoshop, or since my Photoshop skills suck, pen and paper (not that my pen and paper drawing skills are any better).

No wow factor, but it works for us.

To present ideas to people on the outside, I usually just do it verbally or via email. You should be able to explain your idea in relatively simple terms using nothing but words, imho. Again, no wow factor, but it works for us.

I get an Internal Server error on any link I click.

But to be honest, I probably wouldn't have even bothered trying to click if I hadn't visited the page with the specific intent of giving the app a try to review it for you. It's just way too much text, with no real rhyme or reason for why it's presented the way it is, and no real incentive to do anything but close the browser. I agree with mediaman as well: voting should be possible without need to click through -- think of another incentive to get people to click through (like commenting/debating the merits of the head to head).

I'll just throw Codebase into the mix: http://www.codebasehq.com/

It's my friend Adam's app (he's an admin at Rails Forum). I've never used it personally, but from what I have seen it is pretty nice and I know anything Adam is involved with must be solid. So, just presenting it as another option.

It's sort of like Basecamp + Git with a little Lighthouse thrown in for good measure (or something like that). ;)

Because I think it was a human on Earth interpreting data from a machine in space, rather than a human tweeting directly from orbit.

Though I guess these tweets are emailed from a human in space and then interpreted/posted by humans on earth -- so I dunno: do these really count, either? ;)

What matters most to me in my decision to get a Pre or stick with the iPhone is carrier. I will never switch to Sprint.

But I did switch to AT&T from Verizon to get an iPhone. I'd switch back in a second if Verizon either got the iPhone or the Pre (assuming the Pre offers a user experience 90% as good as the iPhone -- which _appears_ very possible, maybe even likely -- and there are apps to replace the ones I use daily... I could use my iPod Touch for games if I really missed them).

If Verizon got both phones then, well, I'd have to see what the user experience was like on the Pre then make a decision. But if Sprint remains my only option for a Pre, no deal. The last rumors I heard were that their exclusivity was only 6 months... which makes me hopeful.

The thing that worries me most about the Pre experience is that as far as I know there is no virtual keyboard. A physical keyboard is a huge plus in my mind, but that means no keyboard available in landscape mode, which is kind of crummy.

I don't know that this argument is necessarily valid. I own an iPhone but I don't own a Kindle, and haven't used one for more than a couple of minutes, but a lot of people I've talked to who own both swear by the Kindle's e-Ink screen. From what I hear, for long periods of reading, and for outdoor reading, the Kindle beats the iPhone (and because of things like screen and battery, not form factor).

Certainly, an Apple tablet could do a lot more than a large Kindle, but it won't necessarily "render it moot." The Kindle might still provide a better experience for the one function is it meant to: reading large quantities of text... and if there is a market for for a device that just does that (and there seems to be judging from the Kindle's early success so far), then it will likely continue to do well.

This was already on HN when it was on RWW a couple of days ago. ;)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=589049

I agree, except that I think there's also a lesson to be learned from this piece about marketing -- dishonest marketing, sure, but there it is.

I found it interesting, so submitted. shrug

The Tamagotchi funding model... neat. I like the idea, very clever. Though I wonder what happens to your line of code if it gets deprecated...

Probably. $12/year to have a nice address book for keeping in touch with old high school/college buddies, and playing a couple of fun games (namely Prolific and Lexulous) seems worth it.

Also, if enough people continued to use Facebook, it would be worth the $1/month to have access to the marketing opportunities that exist there.

More easily tracking your brand (or your competitors) = helpful.

Doing it through Twitter DMs = not so much, imho.

Twitter just has way too much noise, so it's not a great interface for receiving alerts about important information. I'd rather get alerts via RSS or some sort of custom dashboard. Better yet -- offer the alerts as many different ways as possible: RSS, Twitter, web dashboard, iPhone app, email, etc. and let users use as many different alert methods as they want.

For my last job (community management at a startup), I had a ton of RSS feeds set up pulling in blog searches, Twitter searches, web searches, etc. on our brand. I also had email alerts set up, and a Twhirl running in the background on our Twitter account pinging me on @ replies. My goal was to make sure I had as many different ways to catch, filter, and alert on all that info as possible so I didn't miss anything important. (Something to filter out the redundancies would have been nice, fyi! :)).

Thanks! Those looks pretty slick.

TechCrunch would never respect a company asking them to take down leaked photos... and these weren't leaked, they were published publicly. By which I mean: Can someone who has local copies of these put them up somewhere? (Dustin?)

I'd be interested to see them.

Also, not sure what the netbook comment in the post really means. It was pretty evident how big netbooks were going to be after the first Eee PC went for sale, which was late 2007. But that doesn't really matter, since Arrington's tablet isn't really anything like a netbook (at least, not as they're traditionally defined now).

We're going to start to see a lot of cheap, touchscreen tablet PCs running Linux and Android (and maybe Windows 7), though, over the next couple of years.

As usual, Ryan to the rescue. :)

Thanks for the link.

I'm kind of sick of the "kill Web 2.0" meme... it's easily as tired as the term Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 isn't a version. For O'Reilly it's a marketing term used to sell books, blogs, magazines, and conferences. For everyone else who took part in the infamous definition discussions it was a helpful prompt for talking about where the web is and where it's going. Really, though, Web 2.0 just signifies whatever we're doing with the web right now that is exciting and cool and different from how we used the web 5, 10 or 15 years ago.

Here's an excerpt from a piece I wrote at ReadWriteWeb last year entitled "There is No Web 3.0, There is No Web 2.0 - There is Just the Web" ...

"[The] versioning of the web is silly. Web 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0 is all really just whatever cool new thing we're using the web to accomplish /right now/.

...

Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 -- they don't really exist. They're just arbitrary numbers assigned to something that doesn't really have versions. But the discussion that those terms have prompted have been helpful, I think, in figuring out where the web is going and how we're going to get there; and that's what is important."

Link: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/there_is_no_web_30_ther...

So let's dispense with the "Web 2.0 is over, onto the next version!" meme and instead just focus on what the web is, what we can do with it now, and where we can take it in the future. </rant>

And of course, coincidence or not... does it really matter? I don't think anyone with a straight face could accuse TechStars or YC of actually stealing ideas at the investor level, but if an enterprising entrepreneur sees a good idea put into action at one, thinks he or she can do it better and pitches it to the other, so what? From a consumer standpoint, competition is good. (Actually, it's good from an entrepreneurial standpoint as well.)

Anyway, I think likely these are coincidence more than anything. A good rule of thumb: If you have a good idea, someone else has it as well. Right now. And they're working on it, too.

Anecdote: My biz partner and I started work on what we think is a great idea beginning of last December almost immediately after a late-night brainstorming session on IM. By mid-January we'd identified two similar competitors that had launched in the past couple of months. By February we found another that seems similar (but is unlaunched). And two weeks ago a fourth competitor came out of nowhere and launched.

All that means is that other people think our idea is good, too. We think that's probably a good sign (and so hope to launch in the next couple of weeks).

Skype, IM (usually Yahoo! since it supports offline messages), Basecamp (less than I used to), Google Docs, email, and Senduit for sending large files back and forth.

GitHub, Linode, AWS.

A merchant account is in the cards, though we don't know where yet (and haven't finished the process of incorporation, so can't get one yet).

At some point we might use Exceptional (I like the look of it, but I'm not a coder so I'm not making the decision of whether we need it or not) and if Get Satisfaction proves useful perhaps pay for a plan there. We'll see.

What's with the picture of Barney Frank?

I thought this was an April fool's joke, but IMDB has a page for it and a quick Google search does turn up articles from 2006 mentioned Jolie being attached at one point.

I can't tell if this is an April fool's joke or not... I know nothing of cat science.

But it could take incoming calls via wifi. 3G would be required only if you needed ~100% connectivity. In a wifi-only Skype app on an iPhone that supported background processes, it could auto connect to wifi networks whenever available and take incoming calls via Skype In... when there isn't wifi available it would be akin to the way your phone can't take calls when you have no service.

Anyway, according to the PC World article, Skype for the G1 works over 3G... I suppose that'd be an ATT vs. T-Mobile issue, though.

Skype for the iPhone sounds great -- I'd love to be able to easily make free calls over wifi using my Skype Out account (the current Skype-enabled apps like TruPhone fall short, imho).

But, and correct me if I'm wrong, without background processes Skype for the iPhone can't take _incoming_ calls unless it is running. Which means that it will never be able to completely replace my ATT minutes for calling while connected to wifi. It would be amazing to take calls via my iPhone on my Skype In number, but it's not feasible (no possible?) to have to keep the app open and active all the time to do it.

Not Skype's fault, but a major problem with the iPhone, in my opinion.