eslachance

It's also pretty large for me too, font size 25px.

Another error I caught: softwre

I guess he needs spell check on top of WYSIWYG, too?

So no one really is safe. Android users have to contend with secret keyloggers, RIM, Nokia and Apple have secret backdoors, and from what I've heard even the fabled "security" of BlackBerry messenger is just a global cypher, it's not even an encryption...

When will be masters of our own devices? When everythign is fully open source and free?

That's interesting... The PC equivalent is thumbs.db, which can be disabled through a simple OS option. One of those rare occasions where a PC is actually more user-friendly than a Mac. Oh wait, did I just open Pandora's box?

Well, whatever it was, I can't read it anymore. It's dead, 404.

The problem with this statement is that what you say is true... but only for the software the developers are actually distributing on CNET.

Whether CNET passes their own wrapped installer through VirusTotal is a good question, and I for one highly doubt that's the case. Who knows, maybe they tried, got a hit for malware and decided that they would ignore it because it would be counter productive...

Awesome. Yet Another Web Service Not Available In Canada. I think I'm going to start trending #YAWSNAIC .

It's not like Canadian distribution laws are so complex that no one can understand them. But services available in the US that are also available in Canada are rare... Pandora, Spotify, Google Music, Amazon MP3, etc... None of these are in Canada, and Senzari already says it's not available in my country. But Grooveshark and Last.FM work. Is someone being lazy?

This is almost a TL;DR... But it's so interesting that I ended up readingt the whole thing. Like anything that relates to politics I take it with a grain of salt, but I think this is an awesome insight on the inner workings of the Occupy movement, how they were born and how they continue to evolve. I learned a great deal about OWS today.

The language doesn't seem very professional... And I'm also wondering how they thought, as a reseller (with branding) that "closing their reseller account and asking for a refund" could mean something else than closing all of their accounts. These were Backify accounts, not LiveDrive... It just sounds very unorganized to me.

I don't see any source that would lead me to believe that "Most" of the Dwalla transactions come from BitCoin, anywhere in your 3 links.

"A portion of" or "part of" does not mean "most of", any way you look at it. So, do you have any concrete sources?

I'm not exactly sure what the issue is. This isn't (as far as I know) information that wasn't available before. It's just that it's now aggregated in an easier to reach location...

Ah, I should have looked there. Didn't know where to find the TOS for apps using Twitter.

I will definitely report them for this. Thanks for the link!

I was almost taken aback by the comments about maple syrup being a "symbol of American authenticity", being Canadian. But considering the value of this article, it's a feeling that quickly dissipated. It's a shame that I have only seen Grade A around here. I don`t recall ever seeing Grade B syrup anywhere. Plus we only have light and medium, I've never see Dark Amber either!

Jealous of American Maple Syrup? Blasphemy! :|

Perhaps (and take this with your grain of salt) you're voting on comments and posts that aren't actually popular with the rest of the users. If you're upvoting comments that other people ignore or downvote, then it would seem to you like your votes are always ignored since the posts and comments end up in the bottom.

Again, only a theory, I mean nothing by it.

Since that's your only feature, I would assume that's what he's talking about. Opera does not support html5 drag & drop.

Atlassian uses Google Gears as an alternative for browsers that don't support it, and I think there are other tricks to support it, but I'm not sure.

Perhaps browser feature detection would be in order, if you're not already doing this?

I write the FAQs for the company I work for and believe me, they do. Not all of them of course, but I've seen enough visitor stats, search queries (with and without results) and emails to know that some of your clients will go out of their way to look for the answer online before emailing.

Customers will give up if a) the FAQs or help system isn't easily reachable, or b) if the FAQs and help system sucks.

The best thing you can do if "people don't read the FAQs" isn't to trash them - it's to make them better.

I think I'm starting to see the value, especially reading other comments here. Seeing an email that I recognize may be a great opportunity for a personal hello. I think perhaps one proposed solution would work best - having a list of new users that haven't received the welcome email, see their information, and then decide to send the regular message or edit it before sending. I think that's the way I may be heading, it sounds balanced and right.

But, again, what do you say in an email that is personalized? Do you switch sentences around at random, change "hi" for "hey", forget a comma, replace a dot by an exclamation mark?

Responding to "it's a waste of my time to write the same email a thousand times" with "you should reply to each email personally" is moving the goalpost. The OP is about sending a first welcome email to every user that signs up, not about replying to an email sent for customer service or technical support.

I would never reply to a client using a canned response, I hate those with a passion. But the first email being sent, the client didn't send anything, doesn't know you or your writing style, didn't offer you any chance of customizing because it's just a "welcome to our service, thanks for signing up, I'm there if you need me" email. My point is, write it as if you would send it personally, but automate the actual sending.

Reading the email in the linked post, I don't see any "personal note" in there. Other than the first name which, as redguava points out, is easily obtainable. It looks personalized, sure. But there's nothing telling me it isn't sent by a cron job.

I think it's a nice trick, and I will definitely apply it myself once we're ready to roll out. I do have one comment though (similar to redguava's).

Emailing the first 1000 users, fine. But doing it personally and manually, why? Aren't you going to end up using exactly the same text for all your users (either that or risk typos that make you look less professional, not more human)? Don't forget the risk of developing CTS while you could be doing much more constructive stuff.

I would say, have it automated but sent a couple of hours after signup, or have them sent in batches at a time where you would normally sit down and do it. I'm thinking that people either assume it's automated or they assume it's manual, one way or the other.

I'll second this, it's the kind of thing that you should be looking at, or asking a representative of the company who's selling the software. I'm glad this post appeared, my company was contemplating Office365 as an EDMS with extra features... but if we can't send emails to more than 500 people (or even 1500) per day, it's utterly worthless to us. Sent it to my boss, now he'll think I did some deep research for him :)

I'm intrigued by the idea, because I'm not extremely good at programming and this can probably be a fairly good mockup tool that can be shown to the real hackers instead of drawings on a napkin. Then again, there are apps for that already.

But at the same time, I'm horrified that this is "Frontpage for programming" and that we'll start seeing glittery, neon-colored apps on the web, smartphones and shivers even Linux! Software design in the hands of commoners is pretty scary stuff.

What is this I don't even...

So, just to get this straight, the answer to "A 20 minute, 40 mile commute to work costs you $125.000 and 1.3 years of work, over 10 years" is "I take the train and I listen to podcasts" ?

I see how he's trying to show a most positive side, but what he's doing is both moving the goal posts and a strawman argument.

Plus, shameless self-promotion.

You forgot two points in your lifecycle: - Irregular posts apologizing for not posting more often. - Various defeated remarks about "not being read by anyone, anyway".

At least, that's how my personal blog (and a few I tried starting) went, in addition to what you already mention.

I think that it's an awesome ideas, the same way services like "twitpic" offer hosting of free-floating images without the need for a hosting, you offer free-floating blog posts without the setup. I like it!

It would be nice if there was a possibility of creating and using a database. As far as I know (and I don't know much, mind you), using the console is either necessary, or makes it much easier, to create, say, an sqlite3 db. Another feature request would be the ability to upload images or static resources but I get how space and security can be an issue in that case. Oh and one last tidbit, "guarnatee" is not a word (welcome.html) ;)

Other than that, I really appreciate the simplicity of it all, the ability to download the package after you're done especially. Great job, mitsuhiko!

I'm not sure I follow how this is supposed to be progress. This looks like NASA did before the had real shuttles, and (though I'm not an aeronautical engineer) it seems really strange to me that they think launching and bringing down, not one, but 3 different parts of a space vehicle safely and exactly where they want it... Sounds far fetched to me.

Virgin Galactic seems to have a much better design and plan - plus, they actually have a working spacecraft, spaceport, and they're selling tickets for the first flights in 2013 right now. SpaceX is a CG animation of a rehashed 30-year old design. Wanna know who my money's on?

I will second that, if you're going to write an article about new technology for the future, having it work on technology today is a basic decency.

Now why would you ever want to do that? :P

Myself, I'm still slowly learning. Coding came out of necessity. I've been working for different technical support jobs for pretty much my whole adult life, and started off trying to automate a couple of things around the office, and then for clients (a PHP script that generated a regex which configured a client's email account in Outlook Express, for example).

I created a couple of useful things which gradually became more complex - a little voicemail queue (where we'd enter client messages and then call them from the top, in a cycle), then generated a map of our client's locations using google maps, etc.

Nowadays I'm fairly fluent in JavaScript, VBScript (don't laugh!), and I'm gradually learning Python simply because it's something that I need to learn for a project. I'm not a professional coder by any definition, I "get by" with a little help from my friend (who IS a hacker).

So my advice would probably just be "go your own speed, on your own highway". It really depends on your needs.

Oh no! That means he can't use Google +!

Not anymore, I closed my account a month after yet another news item on HN about someone who's account was frozen for no apparent reason. When will people learn?