Hacker News Reader

hworkon Networking: How do you manage your network and stay in touch with your key contacts?

37Signals' Highrise -- not out yet -- could prove to be a good way of doing it. I can say that I'm certainly excited. Check out the preview post here:

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/265-preview-1-an-introduction-to-highrise-the-product-previously-known-as-sunrise

hworkon On Improving Schools

Hmm this extra comment showed up as I was trying to edit my previous post. Oh well!

hworkon On Improving Schools

Shawn, I too am very interested in improving the classroom experience using the web. You might want to check out my buddy Mark's post on creating a viable blackboard alternative: http://www.markmcgranaghan.com/2006/12/16/idea-lightweight-blackboard-alternative/

He outlines pretty well the costs of maintaining blackboard for college campuses (very expensive) vs. the quality of its product (not so hot).

For some feedback, I think the automatic grading system is interesting but incredibly difficult to pull off. Teachers have a huge, vast array of testing practices and to create a system to easily check them would be very time-consuming. Maybe it'll work for very small cases, like multiple choice.

Also, building on top of other suggestions, I would separate the features from the reasons for making them.

hworkon Word Source - The Social Dictionary

First Impression: great front page. I am not enthralled / don't understand the wordsource live stuff, however.

hworkon Users Who Know Too Much (e.g. who read the print-friendly version instead)

Commented the wrong post, my bad.

hworkon Four unusual uses for Subversion

If I could put my whole life in subversion, that would be great.

hworkon Facebook is Stickier than Peanut Butter

I'm not sure of the experiences from other early facebook adopting schools -- but my old school (Bowdoin College) was among the first -- and it's still like crack to them. Not as ridiculous as a few years ago, but it's still wickedly popular. And from my perspective the alum retention rate, as the article mentions, is very strong.

I think the genius of Facebook is not just the eliteness, but instead a new word I'll makeup called 'localness'. Facebook cordons off the scary, wild web and presents you with people that you know or could at least see yourself knowing or bumping into. Combine that with early entry into the social networking world, very strong and appealing UI, and yes, eliteness, and a few years later, you've got 18 million users.

hworkon A Fatal Paper Cut - Too many shareholders and bad shareholders agreement

The one thing this article screamed to me but isn't outright said is maybe you shouldn't be handing out the shares so liberally in the first place? I was wondering what others thought about this. Of course I say this as my ETS (Estimate Time to Startup) is a few months away....