jsavimbi

> Shit-talking in the pub.

I've become that guy, that whenever a sticky fact comes up for debate, people just turn to me because they know I'll be looking it up.

What I really enjoy is when some asshole refutes the evidence and stops talking to me. For good.

> and it's incredibly easy to switch services

Not when you have your entire team/company using gmail as a paid service. And when you factor in the part about the user being the product in social networking, basically you're forcing a paying customer of one product to become a revenue stream in another.

Monopolies find themselves in trouble over this all time, just like when a customer service agent from your credit card company or local energy conglomerate passes you onto a sales rep from a third party without your knowledge. It's how they scam the old, ignorant and uninformed.

tl;dr: you cannot change your bookmarks when you have no other options.

It's akin to a grocer refusing cash and instead only accepting payments made with their branded store card, for the customer's benefit.

I'm surprised there hasn't been a legal challenge to this.

I don't shop local any more unless it's for a premium item and the customer service is beyond average. Not when Amazon can deliver consumer items the next day.

> "First impression lasts."

You're obviously too young to recall the first versions of Facebook or maybe you haven't even taken a good hard look at the latest one. They all suck but they're fun for their users and adoption rates speak volumes.

> Just to be clear, visual design is not about drop shadows, background textures and glass effects.

You have no idea about what you're talking about. You're not even a rookie.

The chaotic comment system IS the application. There's nothing else and that's what makes it so unique.

If you're not a designer, don't design. Just focus on building your product, app, service, whatever. Visual design is temporary and won't hinder adoption as long as the product itself works as advertised and is fun to use.

Set your hourly rate, configure it to represent how much time you think you'd waste sifting through online designs and spend that amount on a decent theme that will work with Bootstrap, Foundation or any other framework that a developer can configure.

Designers don't post billable collateral on the web. They're too busy working and keeping their design under the radar is part of the business. They don't have a Github mindset so don't bother trying.

Pretty much. When I worked at bars in college I knew of a guy who used to give glowing recommendations for bartenders he'd fired. To his competition.

Outside of that, the best thing to is to confirm employment with dates. Oddly enough, some people will list a reference from where they were fired for misconduct. I'd bet that said person doesn't even understand what constitutes misconduct, why they were fired and how to avoid it in the future.

Well that was easy. Thnaks.

Anyone who has spent time in San Francisco, worked in the industry or ever spoken to a person who writes like that knows the story to be a fabrication.

That's an option and it works even better than the bundles do with TextMate. Just goto Action > Install Extras and you'll see bundles and themes. Once I figure out this split-pane thingy I'll pony up my $49.

Yes, those ones.

I don't recall having a wordpress account and I've been using gravatar for about three years now.

I have yet to receive a request for parallax. And we I do I will kindly point them in the direction of any marketing firm who knows nothing about usability or implementation.

tl;dr: An information architect is a librarian for the internet.

As with every position in every industry, you'll come across good, mediocre and bad people filling the role of an information architect.

Info-architects should not produce code, specs, interaction design or anything visual beyond a high-level site map. And they should not be asked to do so unless they can write production code, produce visual design or architect the full user experience, something most cannot do.

Their role is to understand what information the system is receiving, analyzing and transmitting, how the information relates to itself and how that information should be best organized and disseminated in order to meet business requirements.

If you meet one who knows their shit, cozy up and learn as much as you can because it's been my experience that many of the root causes of adoption failure lie in the engineer's inability to properly organize, relate and disseminate information to the user. Not scale, not coding skills, not lack of design.

Keep in mind that there are people with experience and education everywhere who through a variety of factors end up in retail. Apple simply skims off the top. There are other retailers who do the same, the problem is that most people never come into contact with those people, mainly due to the exclusivity of their products so Apple can easily draw the attention of any journalist due to their open door and relative geographic accessibility. It's like restaurant rating sites; anyone can eat out and review a meal, ergo a popular yet lazy approach.

What the article fails to address is that a) I'm already sold on the new product prior to its announcement and release and b) as a backup, if I really need it, there's a retail store where I can purchase the good or service that I need to easily complement my previous purchase.

Apple store employees are gophers, regardless of background and pedigree. They're cashiers that fetch my cables, machine or add-ons instead of me having to surf through the isles of a warehouse cum store hoping to catch the eye of someone wiring their third shift. And that's why I readily pay a premium for their products: a combination of hardware excellence and premium customer service.

That Apple doesn't pay commissions and top dollar to their low-level retail employees doesn't surprise me. It's a manifestation of supply and demand and I accept that.

Roger. That's the same reverse engineering that other people are doing, thanks.

What, if any, API are you using to interface with Pinterest?

Can we just please have the Netflix recommendation engine?

Within the constraints of a hackathon-type scenario, in general I would hypothesize about the expected user interactive results (the experience) model my data, establish the basic CRUD and wrap the UI around that, tailoring the experience to what the actual user outcome will be. If you do it in the order listed in the post you'll end up spending too much time with a UI and later having to model the data around it. That's backwards.

tl;dr: hypothetical use case, data model, CRUD, UI, test for results.

It would be very cool, though.

He needs walking around money. So what?

People are comfortable when others in their class assume the chronology of traditional employment. In the office, nine to five Monday through Friday, drinks after work on Thirsty Thursday, see you on Monday again. That's called career stagnation and threatens no one, hence it's widely accepted.

The way out of stagnation is to develop methodologies and processes that take advantage of the inherent weaknesses of the stagnated. Rooming a bunch of guys together or maxing out on Red Bull isn't the answer. Finding smart, dedicated and talented people to work with and avoiding the bozos is.

> Rob Leathern, a social media ad guru.

There's your problem right there.

CEO's these days... They have no fight in them.

I've been seeing a lot of that as well. My advice is to stay away from the aggressive response unless the plaintiff is being really nasty.

Being an observant in this web-publishing business for a short while, and speaking only from limited experience, I've witnessed some unfavorable twitter posts in regards to content and how an editorial team treats them. They look into the problem and validate, devise a response through consensus that they deem adequate and one person on the team reaches out and tries to make right.

In Zee's case, it appears that he decided that he "had this one" and went the bully route. That's too bad because since he picked such a great Twitter handle, this clown is going to be hard to forget.

> I'm honestly amazed that this is crawling up Hacker News quite frankly.

C'mon, it's never been pointed out that you're kind of a douche? Seriously, never?

Thanks for sharing but it breaks commonly-held navigation conventions.

I know, I know.

No, I did not mean prime minister.

In Spain, the head of state is the monarch and the head of the elected government is known as the "Presidente del Gobierno", or president of the government. Although a counterpart can be found in other parliamentarian systems such as the prime minister in the UK, the Spanish president of government is not primus inter pares but the undisputed head of the government.

Well, at least he just has some blood pressure that needs tending to.

Even though I mostly disagree with the man's politics, I must say that it takes a smart prick to make a contextually accurate and funny joke in a foreign language at an indecisive moment like that.