dtsingletary

It's absolutely necessary; it should, in fact, be illegal to omit a volume control on any audio-playing control, embed, device, or otherwise. This is a bit of a tangent, but stay with me: Much like with playing audio without asking for an opt-in (PLAY button), not having a volume control makes assumptions:

a) The computer's volume is at a sane level.

b) The video or audio has a volume track recorded at some standard volume

c) by extension, ALL audio is always at the same level, and therefore a user would never have audio turned up to listen to some prior softer audio

d) The user doesn't already have some other audio playing, or that your embed audio takes precedence over that.

e) Their speakers have volume control; they might have headphones on. You don't know their sound situation, you can't make assumptions about it.

The reason I go so far as it being illegal to automatically play audio, and not offer even per-embed volume control is because this all has the potential to cause serious damage to their ears, equipment, and health.

That's why! :)

It's not really clear when you're providing the e-mail address that it's going to be used as an index for you later. That might need to be better stated.

Sounds like a job for an outside developer using their API...

A company called Microsystems used to have a product named D3: http://www.microsystems.com/pdfs/d3-success-stories.pdf

Unfortunately, they had to discontinue the product, in part due to a patent dispute Microsoft lost about how it uses XML in Word, if I remember properly.

A solution like this needs to be flexible and allow the logic to be diverted by humans, but is a brilliant thing for real estate and other industries that are full of common books of contracts and rules.

It's so nice when people don't respect things like this.

Frankly, I'd wonder why you want to be a customer of AirBNB, then. Not because they're asking for this, but because it seems like a pretty valid piece of information for a company that banks on authenticity and trust between its buyers and sellers. I understand this for less reputable apps and companies, but if you're willing to circumvent the information they've requested through an authenticator (and data provider) of choice, and your reaction is to poison that data, then a) Why are you authing with Facebook? (You answered that, I guess: you won't do it now) b) Do you distrust the site you're using to find someone to share some housing with?

Would any solution for authentically sharing data be acceptable?

San Francisco, CA (SOMA) Klout (http://www.klout.com) is looking for engineers, and lots of them. http://klout.com/corp/careers

We have lots of data and are growing wildly. Great perks in the office, fun people, and lots of opportunities.

Klout consists of a team of scientists, engineers, thinkers and dreamers banded together to create a standard where one had never been before. We believe that every person who creates content has influence and our mission is to help individuals understand and leverage their influence.

tyler at klout dot com if you'd like to talk more

This turned out really well; better than the screenshots let on!

San Francisco, CA

Klout

We're looking for Engineers! A few of them! Great ones who are cool and get stuff done and want to be part of a fast growing company.

We are the standard for influence. We have a lot of technical problems to solve.

http://klout.com/corp/careers

It's a fun place to work. Everyone is smart and knows their shit.

Most of the engineering is in java/hadoop/nosql, depending on your position. We'd love someone with NLP experience for the Research engineer position.

Feel free to contact me at tyler at klout.com (or through HN).

The boiler: Klout consists of a team of scientists, engineers, thinkers and dreamers banded together to create a standard where one had never been before. We believe that every person who creates content has influence and our mission is to help individuals understand and leverage their influence.

Just want to add that when consuming an API like this, it's always good to make sure you're adhering to the Terms of Service.

The Object-Oriented Thought Process ( http://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented-Thought-Process-3rd/dp... ) isn't a perfect book, but it's not a bad one. It refers too much to other books, but combine that with a language text and you should get the concepts pretty well.

I'm in their WebsiteSpark program, through StartupToDo.com

The service is great, they're really trying to build a sense of community, and obviously, you're getting the whole suite of development tools.

However! I've been concurrently (okay, mostly) developing the project I'd intended with it in Rails instead.

That said, it's still a great deal for a small developer who wants a little more power than the free editions.

I get the point the guy was making, but it seemed a little dickish. Thanks.

One point not being made here is that nearly every wireless carrier requires you to add an Enterprise Data Plan to your service in order to use an Exchange connector. AT&T requires this with the iPhone. Verizon, T-Mobile, etc. all require it for the Blackberry. I haven't heard of a single device/provider that doesn't require an elevated service level to allow for enterprise mail access.

So there's a security by obscurity to start with: the average user doesn't know to ask for the Enterprise plan, let alone what Enterprise even means in context. So the scenario here requires that a) the salesman talked them into it, b) they bought into that service for the extra $15 on top of the data plan, or c) they consulted with the company's IT department or policies and knew they had to get that service. If they didn't, they simply cannot connect to the Exchange account. There's very little "oops, I didn't know what I was doing" here. I hope that most companies have a clear policy against checking your work e-mail from personal devices, and on your own time. There are legal implications for overtime pay. We may look the other way in startups, but this can't always be done.

Most law firms require this, unilaterally. It's part of the deal-- we'll pay your enterprise data plan in exchange for knowing that we may wipe the device, control which apps you can install [this is another can of worms], so on and so forth, per the requirements of malpractice insurance and data security.

In a perfect world this wouldn't be required, but I think we all know this can't possibly be the case in many industries.

My guess is that the existing software is too cumbersome for a smaller business to use? I've been looking at this problem, too.

Law firms tend to use this software, but it really should be adaptable to anything that has these requirements. We use Autonomy WorkSite: http://www.interwoven.com/components/pagenext.jsp?topic=PROD...

But there's bound to be a better way. Web apps with solid frontends or separate desktop apps.

I think URL shorteners are cool, and all the rage, but: - I remember when del.icio.us/ came out. Not that it's a shortener, but they all have this clever naming crap. When you're not able to click the link, it's awfully hard to remember-- okay, did the first period come after the first three letters? What's the bottom domain, again? How do you even spell delicious? Did they spell it right?

- There's an implicit trust that must be made before expecting a user to click on any shortened URL. Since you can't follow it through to the content without actually clicking on it, there's no way of knowing whether you're headed to a clever browser hijack (or worse)!

- Which brings us to the work-safe barrier that most everyone who works a real job has. Websense, in most cases, blocks anything that's streaming media, TV, porn, advertisements, gambling, etc. etc. etc. And then it logs it, and it logs which user accesses it. When I'm at work, I'm pretty judicious-- I don't want to be recorded as clicking on YouTube links, or listening to Kanye West's latest gaffe, let alone going to Facebook or Myspace. URL shortners completely obfuscate where the link is taking you-- so the damage is done without you even knowing what choice you make. Therefore, unless I'm absolutely certain it came from someone I know, and it's specified what it is, I'm not clicking that shit. Which brings us back to implicit trust.

Most people don't check the links first, or even do this 'trust check' before they click on links. How long until we see, "Woman fired for watching Jack Johnson video on company time?" (accidentally, of course). It shouldn't be that way, but it will be before too long.

Did anyone else get invites to apply for some yc startups, but didn't get accepted for the Work At A Startup event?

Freshbooks does sound like it fits the bill. What I see a market for are SaaS accounting apps that are tailored to the domain language of particular industries: accounting for bands, accounting for programmers and consultants, accounting for day care. So on and so forth. That way people feel more comfortable with the language used to present the accounting.