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gbeloteon Using Video to lift landing page conversion [Case Study]

I wish people would include sample size when talking about conversion rate lift. Otherwise for all we know the measured lift is noise and isn't repeatable. Doubling conversions from 4 to 8 out of 100 visitors means much less than 400 to 800 from 10000 visitors.

That said, it makes a lot of sense that a marketing video helps people learn more about your product, get more excited, and feel more comfortable taking the desired action.

gbeloteon Facebook sees 600,000 compromised logins per day—0.06% of all logins

You can't treat each day as an independent random event: if a user has a weak password (e.g. "password1") then they may be compromised multiple times in a year.

gbeloteon What my 4-year-old taught me about technology

It's very interesting hearing about young kids trying to interact with "old media" like they would an iPhone or iPad. Swiping a billboard, tapping a magazine cover. To me, these aren't obvious ways to interact with the things I've gotten used to all my life.

gbeloteon GitHub open sources Hubot (chat bot)

This is great, thanks GitHub! I've been procrastinating on writing my own Hubot, now I don't have to!

gbeloteon Mobile UI Patterns

Word. For those with a mousewheel: on some browsers you can hold shift and roll up/down to scroll left/right.

gbeloteon Reasons why you wouldn't sign up.

I don't feel the "pain" of wanting more friends, so maybe I'm not your target market. This probably makes me a bad person to take feedback from, but since giving opinions is fun...

The problem for me isn't not knowing how to meet new people (e.g. going to interesting meetups), it's getting past the social anxiety of leaving the house and trying to make friends from strangers. At a glance, your app doesn't help solve that -- it looks like another kind of meetup aggregator (albeit a more casual one). While it may be something else and/or technically be a perfectly great service to help me, it doesn't seem like it helps me get past the irrational mental resistance of going somewhere uncomfortable. So when I look at your page and see headers like "GROOOVY FOR IPHONE" and "WE'RE LAUNCHING SOON" and see what looks like a list view of a calendar, it doesn't get me excited. I eventually noticed that clicking the little circles lets me look at different "pages", but that feels like work and I lost interest quickly.

gbeloteon ‘Angry Birds’ Maker May Hold IPO in 2012

That seems nuts from the outside, I wonder how they plan on maintaining Angry Birds popularity (and revenue) for 20 years. The article references Nintendo's 26-year Mario brand, but it's not like that was their only schtick.

gbeloteon (reddit) YC applications are due, did you apply? If so, what are you building

FWIW I think some people are just trying to troll. It seems like some of the comments have been downvoted into the negatives. (Maybe by HN'ers?)

gbeloteon Show HN: TwoSides.co, because there's at least two sides to every story

Wow, the interface is very slick. I really like how you put focus on the viewpoints and how you collapse the details. Even though there's a lot of information it doesn't feel very cluttered to me.

gbeloteon Please help! Anonymous Survey on Real-Time Analytics

Not really, it depends on the context and is somewhat of a relative word (like "fast"). I personally interpret "real time" as "practically instant".

In the case of RT analytics, there's probably very small practical difference between 1s and 30s: it's typically dwarfed by the reaction time of the observer (what advantage is there in reacting 29s seconds sooner?).

In the case of something like a stock trading tool, 29s could make a huge difference and it's not practically the same as knowing instantly.

gbeloteon It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer.

Yes, but presumably they aren't spending those extra 20-30 hours writing StackOverflow answers.

gbeloteon It's official: developers get better with age. And scarcer.

I don't think a 45-year-old developer has inherently more free time than a 25-year-old. Given that a 45-year-old is more likely to have a family than a 25-year-old, I'd expect them to have less free time.

gbeloteon Ask HN: Are there many web-based games that are subscription-based?

Very cool, thanks! Do you mind me asking how much users pay for a subscription? How sensitive is your game to "critical mass"?

That's a good point about fairness and casual vs serious, it makes a lot of sense.

gbeloteon Ask HN: Are there many web-based games that are subscription-based?

That's interesting. In the CoD:Elite example, do you know if the "haters" were folks who paid and were disappointed, or were generally upset about not being able to play for free? Do you think that deterred others from paying?

gbeloteon Ask HN: Are there many web-based games that are subscription-based?

Cool, thanks for the link! I've noticed that a few sites align their premium with being able to play more. Chess.com is a service that I started paying for because I wanted to get past the rate limit and they had a lot of neat-looking members-only things.

gbeloteon Ask HN: Are there many web-based games that are subscription-based?

Good point RE: MMOs, I wasn't thinking about them as a separate category. Why do you think it's easier for them to pull off a freemium/subscription model?

Gifting is interesting, I first noticed it with reddit. If you don't mind me asking, why did you pay for your friends on Tribal Wars?

gbeloteon IdeaPaint Coming to 1,700 Lowe's Stores

I work in a coworking space that has IdeaPaint everywhere. It's awesome. But you're right: it's lower quality than a typical whiteboard. The surface is bumpy and doesn't erase as well.

I personally don't mind the negatives and enjoy the extra real estate, but it's certainly not for everyone.

gbeloteon Facebook email is live

Have you already claimed a facebook.com/username? I thought the same, but it seems like my username@facebook.com was already setup for me. Try sending yourself an email to @facebook.com (ideally from the email coupled to your FB account).

gbeloteon Talkbee: book Skype sessions with awesome people (beta sign-up)

OpenTok is another good potential service provider that's very customizable/programmable

gbeloteon Bitcoin exchange account of Coinpal shut down by Paypal

If you make it illegal to accept BC as a business that will deter many websites from using it. And the best way to kill BC is to make sure it doesn't hit critical mass.

The difference between filesharing and BC is that in the former the value is in the files, but BC is only valuable if you can trade them for something you value.

gbeloteon Lessons Netflix Learned from the AWS Outage

> I am wondering how they could simulate the loss of an AZ. Any ideas?

They could instrument whatever library they use to interact with AWS and make it report failures or fail to respond to "create new instance"-like commands.

gbeloteon HN: I am building a site that will help hackers and designers exhange work hours

I really like this idea, I'm a general fan of skill bartering.

You might want to consider capturing what camp folks are in when they sign up so you get a better sense of the distribution before releasing your beta. You might find that it's very lopsided.

gbeloteon Poll: Display points on comments?

I like comments without, I find myself focusing more on what's being said than skipping over folks with significantly less comments.

I've read criticisms about not being able to quickly/easily filter out top comments (which I care about, too). But there might be other (better?) ways of achieving that without reverting back to scored comments. For example, coloring/annotating comments that cross a certain threshold (either an absolute number, or relative to the other comments in the post). The advantage of color is that it becomes easier to visually filter out highly voted comments.

gbeloteon Ask HN: Help me, I fuck around on the Internet too much

Self discipline is key. No tool can really prevent you from goofing off. Things can help, but it all boils down to you.

One thing that helps me: focus on the good feeling when you accomplish something and think about how you're going to get there.

Also I have a framed picture of this - http://www.someecards.com/workplace-cards/when-work-feels-ov...

gbeloteon Subtle Google easter egg

Thank you, I thought I was missing something really subtle

gbeloteon Jason Cohen: How to work out whether advice is helpful to you.

He wrote about this some on his blog: http://blog.asmartbear.com/vetting-startup-ideas.html

I don't see why AdWords couldn't work if you built the right experiment. For example, a simple email-capturing landing page with a price tag doesn't touch on it as much as personally talking to people and finding 30 who will (not would, as Jason emphasizes) pay at that price. You can learn a lot from just talking to folks, and an AdWords campaign could help you get in touch with the right people.

gbeloteon Steve Jobs on Apple's brand strategy in 1997

The challenges are different.

Most startups struggle to get awareness. A very abstract tag line (e.g. "Do it the fun way") doesn't really help with that problem. Your customers are different too -- a "mainstream" audience is more moved by what feels good than early adopters (who, generally speaking, are trying to satisfy a "pain point").

Apple in 1997 was very well known. They were competing with PCs in a technical way (e.g. faster computers), and it wasn't working very well. Their shift in marketing was to build a stronger Apple brand and make more of an emotional pitch. It turned out to be a more powerful differentiator and was longer-lasting than focusing on the benefits of a particular product.

gbeloteon Boring Boston Tech Companies That Are Actually Interesting

I hear they also write much of their software in LISP

gbeloteon Boring Boston Tech Companies That Are Actually Interesting

Vivek Wadhwa dissed Boston when speaking at an MIT event and that sparked the topic:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2281824 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2281966

And FWIW my startup is in Cambridge too and I really like it here.

gbeloteon Is the Boston technology scene living in the past?

Your point about hiring's a good one, but there's certainly a developer drought here too -- sounds like it's worse over in Cali.

On the flip side I've found bootstrapping to be a viable option in Boston/Cambridge. There's enough demand for developers that it's reasonable to find good contracting gigs (light long-term or heavy short-term). A couple hours a week or a few packed weeks makes it so you can stay afloat without being at the mercy of Boston investors.