colinsidoti

If I understand this correctly, a portion of Google employees' bonuses was tied to their success in social. I guess it's not a mandate, but it's certainly motivational.

http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-just-tied-employee...

It would be awesome if that "Call Now" button was implemented with Twilio Client to directly call someone.

Because they're avoiding "credit" entirely.

I suspect this is the start of their own implementation of "credit", and they're comfortable with losing some money at the beginning. In the long run, the traction they gain from the good customers could/should be worth more than the money they lose.

For the consumer, $3 on $500 is incredibly low interest.

I just wrote about this a few days ago: http://colinsidoti.com/2011/11/dear-mark-zuckerberg-re-faceb...

Very excited to see the features they plan to build out. Specifically, giving developers direct access to handsets seems like it would open some cool possibilities.

Although the goals are clearly different, Dean Kamen (inventor of Segway) has been working on optimizing Stirling engines for years with seemingly great results:

http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news4.24.08d...

Very interesting, I had no idea. A little more digging brings me here: http://bandwidth.com/about/read/verizonAgreement.html

"Bandwidth.com, Inc., a privately held telecommunications company in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, announced today that it has signed a commercial deal with the Verizon wireline companies under which the parties agree to terminate each other's VoIP traffic at a rate of $0.0007 per minute."

This is for landlines, but still a much lower number than I was expecting to see.

Unlimited Voice and SMS to other carriers is expensive. Look at Twilio's pricing or Skype's pricing, or any other voip provider. Text and calling to your own network is essentially free, but off network gets expensive. Granted, I don't know how big of a cut these voip providers take, but I can't imagine it's that high.

Put it together with usage data, you quickly get over $19: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/u-s-teen-m...

Edit: Just want to point out, I'm not saying this is a bad bet to make. They can attract a ton of consumers with a super low cost, and if those consumers do most of their communication in-network, eventually they'll be in the green.

At $19/month for unlimited, they're probably operating at a loss unless they can build up a significant customer base.

I imagine we'll see an incentive program soon..."Refer 5 friends and this month's bill is free." If you refer the 5 friends you talk to most, the company will save much more than $19.

VoIP is cool, but traditional phone calls and text messages are not always ideal. I think innovation on the communication channels themselves would go a long way for this company. Think http://voxer.com

Facebook is in a particularly good position to pull this off correctly. They already have a "cool" factor, and if they could come up with a communication tool that people really like, so much that you're jealous your friend has it but you don't, the people will come. Blackberry pulled this off for years with BBM, but lost its "cool" somewhat recently.

I considered joining this industry for a little bit, it's fun technology. My research pointed me towards athletic departments instead of teachers for budget purposes, as well as a stronger desire for a coach to be connected to his/her team than a teacher to be connected to his/her students.

Please note that this was determined off a very small sample size

Yea there's a lot more to it, I'm looking at this as the fundamentals. If I can't make the fundamentals enjoyable nobody will use the rest of it.

Includes are kinda rough in javascript because they require a separate http request, and would get out of hand if they're used as frequently as they are in server side templating. I need to implement some type of front-end caching, but need a way to distinguish which templates are in memory and which require a request. Thoughts are appreciated.

It's a location thing. A number of stores have tried this by me, but only one has really pulled it off. People often use it for their big family orders that are well upwards of $100. In general, the place also has better prices than other stores. There are repeat customers, but shopping online certainly doesn't account for the majority of their grocery store runs. That said, the place constantly has a line of cars with huge orders being loaded into their trunks. Never small orders.

Make sure you're in an area that's largely populated by families, and make sure your prices are already good.

Sounds like you have a bad recruiter. (2) is a situation that should never happen, as they get paid by a percentage of your base salary.

That said, it also sounds like you're in a situation where it's incredibly difficult to negotiate. I'd say take whatever they give you and kick ass at your job. You'll build up your resume, and in a few months if you believe your underpaid, you'll have something to negotiate with. Moreover, with something substantial on your resume you won't have any trouble moving elsewhere.

If you're worried about your recruiter, I'd recommend calling TTS Staffing and asking for Morgan, he's the best that I've dealt with in New York.

Certainly, the system would need to be unriggable.

There's a number of hiccups but nothing that strikes me as impossible to manage. You and your karma rich folks could "invest" in other posts as much as you'd like, but if the non-Karma rich don't offer a simple upvote, I don't see why you'd receive a return on your investment.

There'd also need to be some element of time, so the sooner you invested the more you can potentially make back. And perhaps if you invested too late, you still have potential to lose.

I've both responded to SO questions with updates, as well as had one of my top answers be replaced by a newer, better solution. In browsing questions, I've also seen a number of updates to existing answers.

I guess the point is, if you've spent a lot of time figuring something out, and you've proved that a number of solutions on the internet are now wrong, you're tempted to make it easier for the next guy. I think this is true regardless of the medium, but SO seems to have done well at creating an environment where it happens.

I went to MIT for EECS and left on voluntary withdrawal after three semesters. There were two highlights of my application to MIT: 1. I was the first person to make online, real-time games for the iPhone (pre App Store with AJAX). 2. I held a full time developer job for two summers in a row, and part time two days per week during the school year between.

Once I got to MIT, I learned that my grades and SAT scores were below most of my peers. I had no "hook", and those two points above are really the only unique things I could attribute my success to.

The kicker is, I did those two things without MIT, and you could do cool things without MIT too. Nothing I did was particularly hard, they just took a lot of work.

You say you "don't have the option to attend MIT", but you're wrong. You don't have the option to start MIT with kids the same age as you. I'm willing to bet that if you went out and built some cool things, MIT would be happy to offer you admission. But don't build things because you want to get into MIT, build things because you want to build them, I promise they can tell the difference.

But this brings up an even bigger question. If you're able to build things that are so cool that they could get you into MIT, would you really still want to go to MIT to get an education? Or would you rather continue building cool things?

To answer your question more directly: No, your not at a disadvantage. You're in a different place, but you can still go wherever you want.

I made the first real-time, online, turn-based games for the iPhone/iPod Touch before the App Store existed. They used Javascript and AJAX and worked well, but couldn't compete with Apps in the App Store when it was later released. HTML5 does not change that.

The App Store killed the Web App by offering native device functions to developers. These functions could theoretically be built-in to Safari with some custom Javascript hooks, but I don't see much motivation for Apple to do that. I imagine it's more likely for Android to do.

While were on the subject, native hooks through Javascript would be freaking awesome, and make mobile apps much easier for existing websites to create.

Fantastic. Pusher is an awesome product that eliminates the headaches associated with building a real-time product. I'll never build a chat with polling again. I use it for my website and haven't had any problems (well one, but it was mostly caused by my inexperience with rails)

The best part is the pricing, especially for startups. 20 concurrent users for free is a big number. Compare it to something like MailGun, and it seems like $20/month gets you a lot more value.

I believe Ericsson can be used internationally for everything Twilio does in the states. They're a bit more corporate than Twilio, and their website is hard to navigate, but once you get in contact with them they're more helpful.

They are not able to provide long codes (10 digit phone numbers) for messaging in the States, but they can use long codes for messaging internationally.

In the states you're limited to Short Codes, but they do offer MMS support, which one-ups Twilio. I believe they also have a higher send rate, but I don't remember the specifics. Ericsson also has mobile payment support (charged to the carrier), where Twilio does not.

My research was specifically for messaging, but there is voice functionality as well.

Overall, Twilio is a lot more developer friendly. I think I waited something like two weeks for a callback from Ericsson, which would never happen with Twilio. But if you really need international phone numbers and advanced features, take a look into Ericsson.

I use Twilio now, but I don't use Ericsson yet. Chances are my product will end up using a combination of both, but the nature of every product is different so do what's best for you. Twilio can text/call internationally, but not with local numbers, which I believe makes the cost quite high on yourself and your users. Apparently there are also other solutions I haven't looked into yet (see other comments).

http://www.ericsson.com

We also wrote a blog post that goes over our major points without specifically addressing each competitor:

http://sidaza.posterous.com/51234289

Thanks. I was pretty disappointed to see my success story pushed down the "new" page so quickly, but this works as even better news.

Between when I made that post and now, an additional 100 group messages and 500 messages have been pushed through. I haven't seen a jump like this before, presumably due to Bin Laden's death.

I can answer specific questions here if anyone has any.

Taking steps to prevent malicious logouts would mean that you're creating cases where a logout will not succeed. This opens the possibility of having a bug that prevents people from logging out at all, even if they want to.

Would you rather have a bug that allows logouts, or a bug that prevents them?

That said, I would love for Facebook to put this snippet in their footer.

Startup Idea - Live streaming where people say what they're going to do, then collect money in escrow before they actually do it. IE: I'll try and do a standing long jump over these ten people if I collect $20.

If they succeed, they get the money. If not, the money get's returned.

Other use cases could be people constantly streaming and having a "hat out" to "throw money" in, akin to street performers.

Crowdsourced, streaming entertainment.

But it raises the question, do you have a way to single out the corpus of good comments from the past? If past up-votes were reliable I don't think this thread would exist.

I almost launched a site that was meant to compete with HN. Here was the strategy to take you over:

Note: Thanks to Incubomber.com members and Aaron Burrow for coming up with these ideas.

The specific problems that were being addressed:

1. Karma is given for link aggregation instead of content creation. Consider the user that is lucky enough to be the first to realize that you have posted a new essay on PaulGraham.com. That user will instantly post the link on Hacker News, and is guaranteed to gain a ton of karma. But aren't you more deserving of that Karma?

2. Community bias crushes the little guy. It seems that a bot is constantly running on Hacker News that matches titles against the regular expression "`YC ?[WS]?\d{2}`i" and automatically adds karma until it reaches the home page. But what makes news about a Y Combinator startup any more interesting than another startup? Some power users have a similar effect on the community. This predisposition makes it excessively difficult for unknown users to establish themselves.

3. Up votes are given where up votes are not deserved. It’s hard to blame the users, though. If someone makes a hilarious submission, it certainly deserves some recognition. Similarly, if someone reiterates a widely known fact, it still feels right to express agreement. Unfortunately the only way to communicate these feelings is by placing an up vote, which is not the proper way to place votes and detracts from the quality of the community.

The solution was Anonymerit.com (Never launched, but one of us may get to it eventually.)

Anonymerit.com Eliminating Bias While Evaluating Credibility

What is Anonymerit? Anonymerit is a new type of community where submissions earn merit anonymously. At the end of each month, the top submissions will be compiled and published with their author revealed (optionally). (Kudos to Hacker Monthly, we may have swiped this from you)

How does Anonymerit work? Anonymerit is focused on content creation rather than content aggregation. All submissions and comments are the original work of their author, but Anonymerit will withhold their identity. Submissions are kept anonymous so the community can evaluate the content's credibility without introducing bias towards "noobs" or "power users," a symptom that plagues many communities as they become more established.

To evaluate a submission, users can participate in two polls with simple plus ('+') and minus ('-') options. The first poll evaluates the popularity of a submission. In general, this is used to determine if the community agrees with a post. The second poll evaluates the merit of a submission. For this poll, a '+' is used to indicate that the submission was thought provoking, informative, and insightful. A '-' is used for submissions that focus on widely known ideas, or are simply reposted content.

This separation is imperative because it allows users to quickly express their feelings at a granular level. The total scores can reveal that a submission is generally disliked but still worth reading, or that nearly everyone agrees but the content is already well-established and does not need to be reiterated.

--------

A monthly publication combined with anonymous postings is awesome. The publication is required because it motivates people to post their original content on HN rather than their own sites. Entrepreneurs, knowing that investors will inevitably be reading the publications, would kill to write quality content that makes it into the publication. This same fact also serves as motivation to properly vote and comment on submissions. YC already has a huge name, but imagine how much bigger it can be with a renowned publication.

The anonymous aspect is good because it lets people post anything without the fear of being stomped on by PG. In the end, you're only really looking for the best, and you can still find that through the publication. It's a win win.

Haha, I don't know if anyone else is trying to break into this sector, but reading HN makes it absolutely nerve wracking. It seems like every day I read a title like this and poop myself a little.

Nothing new here. As I see it, their main advantage over GroupMe is that they don't have to pay Twilio (assuming they're hooked into the Google Voice fun). That's probably hardly an advantage though because they still have to pay the carriers.

I imagine they have something bigger things planned

With Hash URIs, I have an opportunity to create an application with a better experience for my users. In taking advantage of this opportunity, I also get to put less load on my servers. That's a win-win...bi-winning if you will.

But wait, now you tell me that by using these Hash URIs, I also annoy hackers who are attempting to use my application in an unintended manner... That's more winning than Charlie Sheen could shake a stick at.

No, I don't care that you cannot use wget to browse my application. I built it to work in a browser, and it works darn well in a browser. If I really want you to have easy access to the data within the application, I'll give you an API.

The ways everyone solves the puzzle are much more interesting than the puzzle itself. I made a mysql table with one column set as the primary key and did an insert.

This reminds me of this awesome thread on Sitepoint (5 pages of different ways to output the numbers 0-9): http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/php-34/write-loop-php-prints...

"Product and business development related work is where I think I can contribute the most. Is it realistic to think that anyone would hire a 19 year old, unproven college drop out?"

Realistic, yes. But is it realistic to think you'll get paid a salary worth mentioning? Not so much.

It sounds like you want to get in on something early, and most things early just don't have much money in them. My advice: find a start up you love and go for it. If you're really gung ho about a specific startup and are willing to share the founders' vision, I have a hard time believing they would reject you're help. Expecting a decent salary though, is probably too much.

I was in the same situation as you 2 months ago. I couldn't find a startup I loved so I started my own. Now, I'm developing a product out of my old bedroom in my parents house (free housing ftw). When the product's done, I'll move out west.

The one thing I would stress is to always have a backup plan. Things will not go according to plan as much as you'd like, so be ready. I'm living with my parents now, but if they kick me out I know exactly where else I can get free/cheap housing while I develop. If I run out of money and realize my startup won't make it, I can most likely go back to school. If I can't get back in school, I know I would have an absolute blast being a bartender on a cruise ship. After I save up some money I'll start over.