Hacker News Reader

foulmouthboyon See the Web Site, Buy the Book

It's just like any form of marketing. It's can be difficult to prove that somebody bought a book because of the book's website. From the tone of the article, it doesn't seem like many publishers have really tried that hard to do a really good web analytics implementation to find more information.

Also, the website could be really ugly or offensive, which could scare off a potential impulse buy.

foulmouthboyon When newspapers are gone, what will you miss?

I'll miss actually holding a newspaper in my hands. Folding it into the perfect size. Tossing a particular section over to somebody within my vicinity with articles circled. I'll miss ripping articles out and putting them on the fridge or a cork board. I'll miss taking silly putty, pressing it up against the sunday funnies and reading it off of the pink blob. I'll miss sharing a newspaper with somebody on the bus after I'm done with it. There's a bonding that happens when you're able to leave information with somebody else in a truly tangible manner.

There's a whole cognitive aspect to newspapers that Seth is deliberately ignoring. Maybe it's nostalgia, but still. That's what I'll miss.

foulmouthboyon Ask HN: Musicians?

14 years of piano lessons. Also clarinet and saxaphone and I'll mess around with just about everything else.

When I told my piano teacher that I was going to school for engineering and got into the pre-med program (as opposed to music), she was in total shock and her immediate response was, "wait... are you smart?"

foulmouthboyon The alluring danger of dilettantism

Guitar Hero is a bad example of the argument being made here. Guitar Center attributes a recent spike in sales from games like Guitar Hero inspiring players to learn the real thing and move beyond their video game introduction to music. http://www.edge-online.com/news/activision-guitar-hero-iii-p...

foulmouthboyon Ask HN: Do you criticize?

I'm an analyst and strategist, so the answer is yes. Otherwise, I'm not doing my job.

foulmouthboyon Why the secret to speedier highways might be closing some roads: the Braess paradox

I think your example is a little too limiting for this paradox to take effect. The paradox is based on people guessing what others are going to do given a set of options, where your example basically sends them through in the most efficient manner possible by suggesting that one person is going to be willing to wait 80 minutes when that person knows that others are able to do the trip in less than 10 seconds.

foulmouthboyon Ask HN: Do you guys use speed reading techniques?

Isn't that a broad assumption? If I read a particular book twice as fast as someone else, who's to say that I enjoyed the experience less?

foulmouthboyon English-Prime - English without "is"

The former sounds much nicer.

foulmouthboyon Top Social Media Sites of 2008 (Facebook Still Rising)

I know there's a fine line differentiating "social media" sites from everything else, but if a list like this is going to compare Flickr, Facebook and Blogger.com as if they're in a single category, then I don't see why sites like YouTube or Digg aren't included as well.

foulmouthboyon Bargain Hunting for Books, and Feeling Sheepish About It

I've recently rediscovered the library. All the latest stuff including CDs, DVDs and video games. Sure, there's a waitlist for some of the more popular items, but you can't beat the price.

foulmouthboyon "Text editors should take a lesson from video games."

I agree with you that the downvoting is a meritocracy, but that's my point. A user has to earn the right to use that particular function. The difference in learning how a piece of functionality is used and why or in when it should be used is two sides of the same coin.

foulmouthboyon Facebook Folds In Face Of Massive Litigation, Bans Project Playlist

Facebook is shutting down because of a lawsuit!? Oh wait. It's just a linkbait headline from TechCrunch.

foulmouthboyon "Text editors should take a lesson from video games."

Any complex system that is useful when only provided the most basic functionality could "take a lesson from video games". It's essentially building the learning curve of the system into the functionality. It's really not unlike HN's system of disabling downvoting until certain karma is reached.

IT professionals I've worked with do this kind of stuff all the time to keep employees from breaking stuff until it's shown that the employees can handle the added functionality.

foulmouthboyon The transformation of Reddit

One good reason might be that a dating site has very obvious and proven monetization opportunities.

foulmouthboyon Interviewing at Facebook? Advice from Facebook’s Engineering Hiring Manager

It would seem like good policy for a company built on the premise that everyone should share their information to actually share their information. I'm not saying that they don't have ideas and plans on how to proceed, I'm just saying that if they were really confident about the viability of those plans, they'd be more vocal about them.

As it is, my own guess is that facebook's business plan involves selling the personal information of its members. This would be the most obvious commodity and also the most obvious reason why facebook wouldn't want to talk about their business plans.

foulmouthboyon Analyst: Apple to release 'closed' Netbook with iPhone-esque App Store

The general purpose software problem quickly goes away when we consider online apps like Google's suite and whatever webversion of iPhoto, iWork etc Apple would come up with. Developers may not want to write apps for both an iPhone and a netbook, but they will if that's where the audience is.

foulmouthboyon Interviewing at Facebook? Advice from Facebook’s Engineering Hiring Manager

I don't think it should be a joke at all. It seems to me that a company that doesn't know what its business plan is should probably be hiring people who have a talent for making business plans.

foulmouthboyon Social Networking Anti Patterns

There's no way that identifying it as an "anti pattern" is going to kill the practice of requesting credentials for other sites. For one thing, it's being done on the majority of social networking sites out there, including all of the most reputable ones, and for another thing it's something that a lot of people find very convenient.

At best, it'll become like opening zips and exe files. Users will have to become aware of the potential dangers, but the practice of providing the files will remain.

foulmouthboyon What to do with your ideas for other people

If someone has great ideas for a big company that are valuable, then that same someone should be able to come up with ideas for a small company or a startup that are an order of magnitude even more valuable. Start helping those small companies and startups and build a portfolio to take to the big companies.

foulmouthboyon What do you do for fun on Friday, Saturday nights?

Which one? Is it The Spoils? Cause I've been thinking of trying that one out.

foulmouthboyon Ask YC: Feedback on my community website

You're suffering from a bit of a ghost town. I think more people would rather join and help build a community than be the first person to actually start a community.

Is there an existing community that's working the way you want it to? It might make more sense to start regionally and build from there a la Craigslist or Facebook.

foulmouthboyon Twitter vs. Email. Fight!

There's always space for email. My private phone conversations might be useful and/or interesting to random people and somebody out there might have some helpful insight, but seriously... They're my private phone conversations.

Maybe I'm old school, but for me, there actually is something appealing about expressing a thought in more than 140 characters and specifically to a person of my choosing. I'm Web 1.0 like that.

foulmouthboyon Ask YC: Why do you think Pownce failed?

Bad branding? Even before I knew what it was, I had a sense of what a Twitter was. Pownce sounds like I'm about to get ambushed.

foulmouthboyon Kottke: Does the broken windows theory hold online?

What's interesting about online comments is that the comments themselves become a part of the "landscape" of a site. So a site could be aesthetically pleasing and designed well (i.e. no apparent "broken windows" as Kottke would define them), but if the comments are full of expletives and "roflmao" type messages, then they effectively become the broken windows.

If I were to apply the broken windows theory online, I'd consider "bad" comments as graffiti and "good" comments as public art. The broken windows would be more an analogy of a community misusing what's been made available to them as opposed to a designer purposely or accidentally creating something ugly.

foulmouthboyon Listening to users is bad.

Name me a single hugely successful internet company that is driven and built by user suggestions.

Flickr? Craigslist?

To create something game changing you have to be like apple, you just build interesting stuff and test it on users until you find something that works and then you release it to everyone.

How will we know if it works if you don't listen to the users? Quantitative information always benefits from qualitative feedback. It's really not enough to know what's successful if we can't tell how or why it's successful.

Also, the advice from almost anybody creating new and interesting products is to place yourself in the shoes of the user and build things that you yourself would find useful. Who should we be listening to then?

foulmouthboyon Why Google or Yahoo should buy Twitter.

I would think Yahoo is having enough trouble with their own business model. To me, it wouldn't make sense to take on something that's, so far, been almost impossible to monetize.

foulmouthboyon 3 Flat-Screen Makers Plead Guilty to Trying to Keep Prices High

Take part in the class action lawsuit if you're eligible. Quick Google search turns up: http://www.lieffcabraser.com/antitrust/lcd-antitrust.htm

foulmouthboyon SEO is Dead

I've come across plenty of companies that have no idea what it means to do "best practices". Companies can be notoriously bad at very important parts of their own business. Just look how many companies outsource accounting. They literally don't trust themselves to handle their money properly.

And just as there are dodgy accountants, there will be dodgy SEO/Social Media consultants. The key with good leadership in a company is being able to identify what's what.

foulmouthboyon Obama names tech execs to transition team

Judging by her bio, she looks amazingly well qualified. I don't think that being a former VP at Goldman Sachs means it's "more of the same". If anything, when taken into context, it just means she'd understand the industry at a greater level, which would put her in a better position to help fix its problems.

http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/user/3018/view

foulmouthboyon Anatomy of a Facebook Ad Failure

From his own numbers his conversion rate is coming in at 1.6%. Quick Google search suggests that 1.7% is average for referral programs, so his ad wasn't exactly a failure. The failure happens when we take into account Amazon's referral fee. It simply doesn't make sense to spend extra money on something that's intended to be used in no-cost situations, like alongside blog posts.

Numbers: http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/09/22/top-10-online-retailers...