jason_shah

This is very clever.

Has anyone else seen forays into data science in the work place based on passive information, e.g. the calendar?

This seems good. I like that this has the potential to expand the total pool of donated items and help reallocate resources to people who need them, while also helping people clear out their homes too.

Personally I'm really excited about Composer. So many implications...

- What does this mean for Evernote? - Can Dropbox pull off a new product without prior traction? Mailbox seems to have generally worked out OK, but what's happened to Carousel? - Will messaging inside of Dropbox a valuable angle on collaboration and if so, will anything happen between Dropbox and Slack? - What will this mean for Dropbox's relationship with Microsoft? - Who will Dropbox acquire next? They have files, mail, notes...seems like a modern Exchange.

Author here. Curious what others have learned from the latest iOS8 apps!

Not only is Product Hunt important because of the visibility it provides to new products (and entrepreneurs), but also because it's arguably the most dense collection of high quality discussions about product development decisions. Notably, Ryan and his team have managed to accomplish this without being unnecessarily exclusive.

This is tremendously valuable for the technology community.

Free shipping on both products puts it at $13.24 on Google [1] and $16.17 on Amazon [2]. But yes, my post could have been much more objective and scientific.

[1] Google https://www.dropbox.com/s/vbnpel7w2mscpv2/google_express_pro... [2] Amazon https://www.dropbox.com/s/gh0rcveo1sqtmgw/amazon_prime_produ...

Some of these UX moves, to be fair, have been used by an increasing number of mobile and messaging apps. MessageMe is just one example of comprehensive implementation alongside effective design.

According to Foursquare's co-founder Dennis Crowley, as quoted by TechCrunch, the service saw 5 million checkins per day as of Feb. 2013. But that was the same as per-day checkins as the previous year. Flat growth to me, especially in their space.

The rest, and a fairly critical piece of my statement, about checkins moving to Facebook and Path I admit wholeheartedly was anecdotal and speculative.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/11/foursquares-new-series-d-ro...

http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/16/interview-dennis-crowley-of...

Admittedly I don't check in often. I use Path / Facebook for this now.

Trey Titone suggested in the comments on the post that if Foursquare could do frictionless sharing with the app running in the background, maybe they could get more checkin data. But I think the battery constraints / privacy concerns are too high, at least in the next 18-24 months, for people to opt in for this without getting much product value.

Battery life will get better, apps will be more battery-efficient, and privacy concerns tend to fade away. But frictionless checkins don't seem highly compelling to me from the user point-of-view for people to make the necessary sacrifices that adoption would demand.

I'm curious what others think about this. I'm a fan of Foursquare and their team and hope I am wrong about this. I'm also confident they will still have a large exit.

That being said, without a product hook that's very engaging, I think it's hard to build a local ads business, which is what I think Foursquare sees as its revenue stream. Do people see Foursquare differently, as say, an ecommerce company? Do they even need a growing product hook to build a good local ads business?

I'm curious about their hand-holding UX approach. It worked for me. But I don't know if it's something that helps most users, or just gets in the way. Would be great to be able to A/B test something like this on mobile.

There are definitely a lot of negative reactions to the queue.

However, it's more the new user experience once you actually have access that's building love. Naturally, waiting doesn't build love. Maybe some excitement, but also some animosity as we saw in this case. But if you can drive the excitement as they did for some people, but most importantly capitalize on the hype when people are actually using the app for the first time...that's when you build love IMO.

According to AngelList, the Mailbox team is at least 5 people https://angel.co/mailbox-by-orchestra

I wonder if they have additional folks from the original Orchestra team pitching in right now given the fast rise of the app though. And I'm sure they can't hire fast enough right now... http://www.mailboxapp.com/jobs/

Aside from their new user experience, I wonder what the impact of the queue has been.

Does it make people want to use the app more or push the app out of memory?

Insecurity and legitimacy is all I could come up with in my first pass. Anyone else have ideas on why everyone wants to call themselves entrepreneurs these days?

Maybe there's nothing wrong with it, but it seems like an annoying misappropriation.

I really learned a ton during this hackathon and want to share everything I can with the HN community. Let me know if there's anything I can add!

"Your expected wait time is 45 minutes..." And then after a brief moment, the same voice comes on and says "We've cut your time in half. It's just 20 minutes now!"

Implicit in your description of the different paths you and your friends have taken is an important fact: everyone's path to success is different. So is their definition of success.

Dropouts have made it. Dropouts have failed. People who stayed in school have made it. People who have stayed in school have failed.

Ultimately having conviction about what is right for you and not wavering with the startup flavor of the day sounds like it will serve you well. It may lead to a different path of success if these other opportunities involving you dropping out pan out well for those companies that you could have been a part of. But it in no way does it preclude future success or suggest that you won't have your own homerun later. Excellent self-aware post, Dan.

Implicit in your description of the different paths you and your friends have taken is an important fact: everyone's path to success is different. So is their definition of success.

Dropouts have made it. Dropouts have failed. People who stayed in school have made it. People who have stayed in school have failed.

Ultimately having conviction about what is right for you and not wavering with the startup flavor of the day sounds like it will serve you well. It may lead to a different path of success if these other opportunities involving you dropping out pan out well for those companies that you could have been a part of. But it in no way does it preclude future success or suggest that you won't have your own homerun later.

No offense taken. Your point is fair. I do think this should be a calculated cost of business for Amazon, and I would buy less on Amazon if I didn't have the convenience that's offered to me by occasionally ordering similar items and expecting to most likely return one without a hassle.

That being said, I honestly didn't think all that much of the broader economic and environmental impact of my consumer behavior in this case and appreciate the comments reminding me of it. Thanks.

Good point. Certainly will reconsider this practice in the future. Thanks for pointing this out.

Yes - you're both right. I am flawed and should improve. That being said this is just an honest account of an experience.

That's true in many ways. The actual site's UX isn't bad per se because it's pretty easy to find what you want, buy it, manage the order, etc. And yes, that's what "it's all about" at the end of the day.

I think I was caught in a little bit of Silicon Valley myopic thinking since their site isn't shiny and that's what is mistakenly considered as interchangeable with good UI design these days. That being said, Amazon.com the site does still need to improve UX in a couple key areas. Compared to more contemporary e-commerce sites, the ability to compare items and make sense of ratings (i.e. the flaws of the 5 star rating system) is where they need to make the most improvement IMHO.

It may have been an overstatement to say "their site leaves much to be desired" in all fairness.

Amazon really blows me away with their end-to-end experience. The funny thing is that their site's UX leaves much to be desired, but it's highly functional and they still have a world-class brand even without a world-class frontend for Amazon.com. We obsess over our web app's front-end design, but often neglect the end-to-end experience.

This is useful data to see. Thanks for sharing.

If you're willing to say, how are you calculating the $4.63 value from each conversion? Perhaps worthy of another post otherwise...

A good idea for another post (or series). I'll be drafting one soon and will post on HN.

Ouch. Sorry that was your experience with this post. I'm currently drafting a more detailed account with more color that you might find more up your alley.

I think adoption is key, ESPECIALLY when you're only earning from subscription fees.

Only charging for a service and not offering a free version can kill adoption. I know very few online services, especially consumer-facing services, that don't give you SOMETHING for free.

You and I may know it's high quality. But if you're a skittish consumer and there are free or freemium choices, I think it's unlikely that a paid-only option will thrive.

Awesome work. I just registered.

In the UI, it would be helpful if a user's email address is shown in the top right or somehow otherwise provide (obvious) confirmation that the registration worked.