crcsmnky

Eventually, it will be interesting to see what functionality people have gotten used to in the current version of Basecamp that doesn't make it over to the next version and how those changes get implemented.

People don't always use tools the way they were intended to be used. Because of that, there are non-obvious features/functionality that may not have even been on the drawing board for the next version. Will 37signals go back and re-implement those subtle pieces or will they put a stake in the ground and say "this is the new way forward".

It could end up becoming an interesting study on how to bridge the gap with two systems when the next version is a complete rewrite.

I guess the key here is, are you storing files or are you mirroring files?

It would seem that the best possible solution is to run your own file storage service, but who has the time/desire to manage that? For a free product like Dropbox, I'm content (for now, at least) to make that tradeoff. I don't have to worry about clients or syncing or servers, etc. I just save my files on my computer and then they appear on my other devices.

Perhaps the trick (to avoid data loss) is to backup locally as much as possible. I do backups once every 1-2 weeks depending on how often I'm nagged by Time Machine. That seems to be the only way to get the convenience of cloud storage while also not losing data if they go away.

Show me the profits being impacted by piracy. Show me the number of jobs lost to piracy.

I get that it takes a lot of people across the production chain to get media developed and delivered to the end consumer, but I have yet to be shown how piracy impacts those people.

I'm not naive, people steal content. They do it all the time, in fact. Hell, I download show off of BT every so often. But how much of that revenue did you actually lose? Just tell me, I want to know.

Why are legitimate movie downloads (that are locked with DRM) as expensive as DVDs? Why is it that when I purchase digital content I'm simply renting it, I don't actually own any of it?

The MPAA serves the interests of studios executives, plain and simple. They don't serve their own ecosystems; if they did, they would innovate more and attempt to actually create more value for their own employees (and related businesses).

I would call myself a long time lurker on HN and have recently started commenting on stories. There's no real reason why I started, I think I just finally felt like it.

That said, I have been reading the comments for some time and I think the quality has changed when it comes to items that crack the front page. Beyond the first 30-40 items I think the discussion has remained far more useful than not. That's not to say that discussions worsen as stories move up, I think the volume tends to increase which invariably brings less helpful comments. This is not hard and fast, just my anecdotal observation.

I'm always happy to read posts from people who've learned something new and are excited to share it with the world. I feel like I don't make time to share my own learning experiences.

I would love to the see the author go a step (or maybe multiple steps) further and do some simple scale/performance testing. Essentially, how easy was it to develop and then deploy a Django app into production? What happened when too many requests came in? What did you do to diagnose?

Generally, I would love to see some simple performance measurement baseline to compare experiences with diagnosing and scaling. Like a best practices guide, maybe specific to certain frameworks of where to even begin when you're preparing to deploy an app.

Having played with it a bit, I would say that I enjoy the using the interface and the OS has potential. They definitely need better ways to highlight or identify elements with contextual menus. It's a guessing game at the moment, at least for me.

Really, my biggest gripe is the lack of apps that meet the same levels of functionality as their Android/iOS counterparts. I feel like the stock Twitter app is terrible and none of the other Twitter apps are as good as the top 5-6 on the other platforms. The same goes for Facebook. That comprises a large percentage of my usage outside of built-in functionality.

I will say though, I dig the People hub for managing all of the contact information. The social networking built in is good for at-a-glance usage but wouldn't replace a dedicated client for me.

As far as I know, just leveraging APIs to unify contact lists. If you never set them up, you're not forced to interact with them.

Part of the problem with these job ads is that the writer is trying to communicate their level of passion and excitement about the position and how they feel that the person they hire will have an impact (at least on the organization). Instead it often comes off sounding corny at best and arrogant at worst.

Ideally, job ads would have some or all of the following traits:

- very up front on their hiring process (phone, in-person, project, etc.)

- recognize the difference between skills needed for 90% of the work vs those needed for the other 10% (tends to follow along the required vs "bonus" or "nice to have" skills)

- instead of saying "we're changing the world" they say something more realistic like "we're making enterprise SaaS analytics better"

- recognize that devs appreciate having a good plan for product development (and some tools/processes behind it) over snacks, soda and pizza

- tell me the types of tasks I'll have to deal with on a day to day basis

- tell me how they expect this position to grow or change (if even at a high level, i.e. do they have a plan for this person)

Basically, the more "real" they are tells me how self-aware they are and how serious of a candidate they're looking for. That sells me way more than the bullshit perks.

Funding doesn't equal success, it's simply a longer runway to failure. That said, what would be more telling is data about how many companies last and are able to build something compelling or sustain any kind of growth, compared to how much money they raised (if any).

Just because a program doesn't have successful entrepreneurs running it doesn't mean they're companies are doomed to fail. It all comes down to picking the right companies and the right markets to chase. If I were building an enterprise-oriented SaaS product, it may make sense to join an incubator/accelerator where the mentors have deep enterprise sales experience from an enterprise company.

Failed ideas or products do not make you a failed entrepreneur.

If you look back on every failure and can honestly say (a) I didn't repeat the mistakes of the last effort and (b) I am learning what to do for next time, then you are probably on the right track. Though this is the naive, altruistic view of things. But sometimes people need to be reminded.

The problem arises when people aren't being just absolutely brutally honest with themselves. It's not just execution that needs to be fixed, sometimes it's the people or it maybe the market doesn't truly exist.

(I feel like the author doesn't say enough to distinguish the personality differences between the example lives and the new "single" life.)

I'm all for reducing complexity in one's life but not at the cost of surrounding myself with people that challenge my own understanding and beliefs. They're not there to convince me to change my mind, instead they help me solidify my position better. Having different parts of one's personality is important to not become a narrow-minded or uninformed individual. Your own personality facets shouldn't be so divergent that you change so much in different social situations and never move beyond superficial communication.

If I only ever focused on one facet of my personality I wouldn't learn anything. That seems counter to the approach an entrepreneur/founder would need to be successful.

While the reimbursement policy is certainly (quite) troublesome and extremely annoying, I'm more concerned about the climate/environment in Chile once the program ends.

More countries need to foster entrepreneurial endeavors with a solid mix of residents and non-residents (almost like an exchange program) to get a better global mix of problem/market/solution. Startup Chile appears to be a good first step at addressing this.

However if Startup Chile didn't create a strong ecosystem (including investment and other support) then there's a risk that an increasing number of companies will fail once the program ends. Programs with high failure rates won't survive and have less chance of being funded in the future.

Hopefully Startup Chile is capable of adapting and addressing these concerns and other incubator/accelerator outside of long standing startup environments (e.g. SF, NYC) can learn from this example.

Do any developers maintain statistics for their apps on jailbroken vs. non-jailbroken devices? Do any developers take jailbreaking into account when building their apps, or is it just an ignored segment?

It would be interesting to note trends in jailbreaking activity against iOS versions and any potential changes to functionality for App Store apps.

There's always the ability to tweak specifics for your setup that aren't available in many platforms.

IMHO, you shouldn't use a PaaS unless you know how to set your stack up. Essentially, if you don't recognize or have respect for the convenience you're being given (by going through a platform) then you'll potentially make bad decisions down the road. Personally, I prefer to learn how to set it up and scale it myself initially which helps me better understand what to look for in a platform.

Plus, there's something fun about putting all the pieces together and watching your apps come up (especially if you don't normally handle this part of the stack).

The idea of a Django-centric development environment is interesting, but I'm not entirely sure what this is offering over the usual terminal + editor + browser setup. That's not to say I don't think an IDE would be useful, I think it would. It could integrate several popular Django debug tools, database tools and (if your into it) some WSYWIG HTML tools.

I would love to have see the README updated with some idea of what the developer's long term vision for this project is. That might generate more interest and constructive feedback for the community and developer.

What are the rules for this type of subscription based gameplay? If you add a feature and I use for it one month, does the feature disappear unless I pay again next month? Are all of these types of features service based, so that I'm getting more out of it each month?

For awhile there was this general sense that Google was doing a little bit of everything and getting involved in everyone else's business (the root of the "what if Google decided to enter this market" question).

However, lately they've been making the news for the products they're no longer focusing on (Wave, other Labs, etc.). Could it be that with things like the UI refresh, Google+ and a shipping service (and a host of other initiatives), they're attempting to connect more with people and put out a "human touch"?

Is there any difference between Wordpress hosting your blog vs. Google+?

If anything, Google+ gives me some additional flexibility like audience control. For example, I could write general long form content on Google+ for mass consumption and also use it as platform for sharing content with a specific set of people (in one or more circles). Why go to (and expect) other people to follow you to each different social site for content (images, status updates, etc.) when I can compose all of them from a single place and have fine-grained control over who sees each piece of content?

Just because I can set up a personal blog site (whether hosted myself or by others) doesn't mean I want to spend the time doing so. If creating content and making it available are my top priorities, Google+ appears to be a good, centralized place to publish.

EDIT: Removed a dangling "Having".

Insert obligatory post from Netcraft confirming that XYZ is dying.