HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

jbenz

946 karma · joined March 14, 2008

I'm a Client Strategy Director at Conversion Path.

I live in Columbus, OH.

jeffbenzenberg at yahoo's email service

My personal site is https://soapfusion.com.

submissionscomments
jbenz··on Technology Article Comment Generator: Updated for 2020
You're making yourself look like a total Luddite by discounting quantum-computing-added drone-delivery-optimized software systems. I mean, thanks for playing, though.
jbenz··on Coronavirus Data Visualizer from Germany's Best Kept Secret
After submitting this, I discovered:

If you click the coronavirus icon in the top left a few times, the data doesn't seem quite that bad...

jbenz··on Criticizing Google got me fired
The number one person in power at Amazon = the number one person in power at the Washington Post.
jbenz··on Kim Jong-Nam Was Killed by VX Nerve Agent, Malaysians Say
The Rock came out when I was 13 so needless to say, I'm a big fan.

I absolutely thought VX Nerve Agent was fictional until today.

jbenz··on Google acquires FameBit to connect YouTube creators with marketers
Hey, I hired YouTubers via FameBit quite a bit ago to help make videos like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=Ko586_GPuR8

I have to say, it was a great experience. Famebit encouraged both sides to be open and transparent. They wanted to their YouTubers to include a note like "sponsored by so and so".

We wanted that too. As an advertiser, I'm not trying to sneak into the native content of unsuspecting viewers. I want everyone to know the scenario. The fewer surprises, the better.

And this type of thing works great on YouTube. Users aren't totally scornful of sponsored content. I wish more platforms were like this. Can you imagine how angry most reddit users would be if someone posted original content (even if it was great) and said "This is a paid posting by..."

Sadly, it didn't work out for long with FameBit. We were getting a lot of new storefront owners... but they seemed very young, and they had no concept of copyright issues. That's a story for another day.

jbenz··on NRA complaint takes down Surge's 38,000 websites
I guarantee I never would have heard about this video (which sounds hilarious) if not for this news story.

Pretty sure the NRA knows who Barbara Streisand is. There were all upset about her movie, The Long Island Incident. Maybe they are not as familiar with her Effect.

jbenz··on How I turned “Street Sharks” into an online social experiment
Let's say Netflix asks the production company for the cast. DIC Entertainment went defunct 7 years ago. Let's say they were still around though. Would someone there have to dig through physical filing cabinets? Or would they just google it?

Bottom line: Henry Winkler voicing a shark as a meta-jumped-the-shark reference is brilliant.

jbenz··on Did we reached webdesign's coolness boundaries?
I think it is easy for the design world (myself included) to take itself too seriously sometimes, and start to sound pretentious.

This seems like a great antidote. I think it's funny. Design needs more humor.

I love the scrolling "BUY TICKETS" and the rollover effect of the cursor gripping a wad of bills. Ha.

jbenz··on Financial Misstatements
If you're choosing between "should I commit a felony or not" should it matter how often other are charged with it? What happens if law enforcement suddenly becomes more interested?
jbenz··on Michael Crichton and Computers
Disclosure! Yeah, the one that became the movie with Demi Moore and Michael Douglas. A man is sexually harassed by his female boss.

The book is kind of about that, but also about technology. It was published in 1994 and I would say it was futuristic, if not a bit misguided.

Crichton envisioned a virtual reality tool where -- if you wanted to find a certain file on your computer -- you would run down the halls of a huge virtual library, opening virtual filing cabinets and picking through files by hand. I think this was supposed to make finding your digital files "easier"... but seems hilarious now.

Who knows, maybe some version of that will still come true. It's been a while since I read it, so I might be mis-remembering.

Almost all of his books had some futuristic technology involved, including Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Timeline, etc.

jbenz··on Michael Crichton and Computers
If it makes you feel any better, I followed the exact same path. He was one of my favorite authors when I was a kid, but by the time Prey came out... yeesh.

But I still love Sphere, The Lost World, and so many more. I even love Disclosure, with its hilarious take on virtual reality file storage.

jbenz··on Show HN: HackerBracket – What are you working on?
Maybe the name could instead reference a hardware bracket? Like something that holds up a shelf, or I don't know, holds up startups to be seen. You could swap out your sports-sytle-bracket-icon for something that looks more like this: http://sugatsune.com/products/Images/C-Bracket-SU-B-P60.jpg
jbenz··on Vermeer's paintings might be 350 year-old color photographs
I, for one, am hoping this word slowly seeps into public consciousness and then into dictionaries. If it is a subtle nod, it's a perfectly cromulent one.
jbenz··on Ask PG: Are you ever coming back?
I meant it in the sense of "will he ever comment again under the HN username of PG". For all I know, he might be commenting now under a different username, but if so, that's his business. Not mine. It has been a while since the PG account has commented. I was just curious if he plans to return to the PG account.
jbenz··on Show HN: Turn sketches on paper into app prototypes
It's a beautiful site. Are you at all worried about the name Marvel? Especially now that Marvel Comics is trying to work with designers and developers too? [1]

[1]http://developer.marvel.com/

jbenz··on SparkFun: We Hear You
For the record, Jack Daniels sent us a Cease & Desist recently and it was not nearly as nice as this one. It was your standard "stop doing this or we will take action" C&D. (We had parody t-shirt designs in our user gallery.) A letter like this would've been easier to swallow.
jbenz··on Money for Nothing
>Why in the world would bot 2 offer the book for $11? It would know that nobody would buy it when there was one already listed for $10.

The author covers that point with this quote:

>In this case, buyers could easily find the "original" products for themselves, and pay less... but the search results are cluttered with millions-sold arbitrage super-stores

jbenz··on J.K. Rowling and the Chamber of Literary Fame
As I remember it, there was a feature implemented where leaders (veteran accounts with high vote averages) do get something of a boost when they comment, at least within the sequencing of the comments in any one thread. I think this was done to help improve the quality of the conversation, even before the removal of the vote totals next to each comment.
jbenz··on The 1% fallacy
The sivers.org post tells the story through an anecdote. I'm with you. Who doesn't love a good anecdote?
jbenz··on If You’re Thinking of Launching a Social Media Startup, Please Don’t
I sure would love to see examples of some of her more successful Bebe or Modcloth facebook / twitter / social ads. Or hear about how many iterations it took them to to get to a successful system.
jbenz··on What Happens When A Twitter Client Hits The Token Limit
Shouldn't the real news today be that Twitter has invented time travel?
jbenz··on Wedding Startup RegistryLove (YC S12) Lets Couples Register For Anything
Based on the name and the vertical, I thought this was going to be another site from the team behind http://weddinginvitelove.com/, http://weddingplannerlove.com/, http://weddingphotolove.com/, etc... but there appears to be no connection. Interesting to see that this naming convention is becoming a pattern.
jbenz··on Kippt (YC S12) Launches Bookmarking App To Become The GitHub For Links
I discovered Kippt through the front page of Bootstrap (it's one of the main thumbnails - I would say the best looking thumbnail - under "Built With Bootstrap"). Has that been a good source of users for you guys? Or not at all?
jbenz··on IAcquire Banned From Google After Link Buying Allegations
Very interesting. From the article:

>I am not aware of another agency that was banned by Google for this practice.

Isn't it possible that Google caught iAcquire buying links (or engaging in some other form of SEO spam) for their own domain, and that's why it was delisted? If they were willing to do it for clients, certainly they were willing to do it for themselves.

On an unrelated note: check out the first comment thread on that article. Each response gets thinner and thinner until it is finally just a single character on each line. That's fun.

jbenz··on Yahoo Axis
I took this to mean that there is only one term of use for Axis right now and it is this: if they ever get terms, those terms will be displayed in that rectangular box with the rounded corners.

Everything else is fair game.

jbenz··on Nine-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes
From her blog (http://neverseconds.blogspot.com.es/2012/05/i-had-really-coo...):

>Today I have been sent lots of photos from America. This one was sent in by Kimberley who works in the Glenview school district, near Chicago, Illinois. Dad timed me to find Chicago on the globe and it took me 48 seconds but it was not fair as I was looking for it spelt SHicargo.

I hope I'm that kind of dad someday. Cheers to her father for the encouragement and for meeting with the school council. And of course cheers to Martha.

jbenz··on The (un)Official Hacker Tee
Ouch. Tough crowd here. I've designed a few t-shirt websites in my day and I just want to say that your JAG Shop is really, really well done. The typography, the cleanliness, the sliding images on the homepage... nice work.
jbenz··on Crowdtilt (YC W12) raises $2.1M
From the article:

>I’ve found that when I plan something like a vacation rental with friends, it’s often done by email with a lot of chasing for payments in the aftermath (that could just be my own flaky friends, of course).

It's definitely not just the author who has flaky friends. I think almost everyone has problems collecting money from friends. This makes me think of fantasy football and what a pain in it is to run a league. This, in turn, makes me think of WePay. I wonder how WePay is doing with these two specific use cases: vacationing friends and fantasy sports. And I wonder what they think of Crowdtilt.

jbenz··on Senators want to block Facebook’s Saverin from reentering the U.S
Yes, exactly. They are trying to change the law with the "Ex-Patriot Act". Also, let's address this:

>Do we punish profitable corporations who pay no tax? Of course not; they're abiding by the laws.

Maybe we should change this law too. Especially in a political environment that is supposed to be doing everything it can to support small businesses. It takes a certain sized corporation to be able to funnel their earnings through Ireland (for example). Makes it hard to compete for the little guy.

jbenz··on Plagiarism, the plot thickens
Ah, but it would be so interesting if it actually had all been manufactured! I think this opinion comes from my love of movies where, in the end, the entire plot turns out to have been elaborately planned by the clever hero all along. I'm thinking of The Thomas Crown Affair (Pierce Brosnan verison) among others.
Page 1 of 6Next →