julio_the_squid

Now that every browser includes a search bar next to the address input, why go to Google's home page at all? I very rarely do so.

I assume malware authors would be targeting Mac OS in addition to, not instead of, Windows.

The same logic works out for normal ('voluntary') software applications, doesn't it? Most companies decide to focus their efforts on producing software for Windows, based on the idea that the market is much larger. Companies nevertheless do decide to produce software for Macs, for various reasons.

You have to click the 'assumptions' on the upper left. It seems that vast figure is generated by comparing to Microsoft Exchange, including sysadmin time.

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/messaging_value....

Also, it appears that in various 'assumptions' on this site, it is ignoring the total number of people working for the company. When you edit assumptions in one part, it reads...

How many people work at <company>? 1 [...] Think of the last time you worked on a group project. How many people were on that team? 10 [...] What percentage of <company> employees use laptops? 60%

So, apparently 10 times as many people worked on the last project as were employed by the company in total, and .6 of one employee uses a laptop.

Sure, but there are several other factors to take into consideration.

1> Very few Macs are running anti virus/spyware software, as the users generally believe their systems to be immune to malware

2> The malware authors are probably already targeting Windows, why not do Macs as well? The sites I work with are up to 25% Mac usage now. That is significant.

3> As Mac browsers have not been attacked as often and scrutinized as carefully by attackers, it appears Apple and other browser vendors have not taken as much care to harden the Mac browsers and OS.

4> Is having a Mac a weak financial signal? I wonder what data is there is out there about the affluence of the Mac-owning audience. Apple isn't targeting the low end of the market, that's for sure.

So, in summary: it might be relatively easy, plus, why not.

It depends what you're up to, I suppose. If you were seeking to install keyloggers to record financial authentication details, why not target people whose choice of computer hardware indicates they have more money than average?

She is saying that she shuns the idea of working for Google based on the lessons learned working at Microsoft.

What is with all the Firefox hating in here?

For me, Firefox takes about 1 second to open on my Mac, 2 seconds in Linux, and 3 seconds in Windows. No idea how you see it as similar to IE 8 in any way.

I agree they have a long way to go to be as slick as Chrome, but sorry, it has nothing to do with Opera - Opera never had even 1/10 of the market share that FF has now.

Are you using a Mac, by chance? The Mac version of Firefox isn't the best.

Linux is not Firefox only by any means - Google Chrome for Linux is very good, and the development tools are identical to the Windows and Mac versions of Chrome (which are the same Safari's tools). Opera for Linux is also top-notch.

Have you tried IE 8's dev tools? Firebug beats the pants off of IE 8's tool in usability and features, for me. Like most of IE, the dev tools are adequate, but lack a decent interface and are not updated or improved often, if ever.

I like Chrome and Safari's tools, but my personal assessment is that Firebug is more comfortable. It has all of the featured you mentioned except possibly the local database inspector.

For the site I work on the most, twice as much of our audience uses Firefox as Safari and Chrome combined, and FF even exceeds IE usage. So not only does it have my preferred dev tools, but is the most important browser for our audience.

"He noted there have been no discussions with Microsoft to license Windows CE, the operating system designed for handheld devices, settop boxes, and other non-PC products."

is my favorite line.

Vague bug reports and scope creep are definitely up there.

One of my least favorite situations is dealing with other people's minor plugins or libraries...

If it's in Python, usually it's good as-is.

If it's in PHP, usually the structure is so disturbing that if we have to use it, I simply try not to look. The code ranges from naive to over-engineered, the latter of which is especially pointless in PHP.

For other people's JavaScript, usually I'm horrified by all of the 'for' and 'if' blocks that are lacking braces. Argh! Half the time I end up rewriting and removing portions of various plug-ins, and I often feel the compulsion to go fix all of the lazy bracing at the same time.

I'm not in the 'all links should be a hideous default RGB blue' camp, but we may as well note that the readers of this site are not similar to the target audience of the average website in terms of technological sophistication.

I'm interested in visualizing the data, not graphing the prose. A line graph would work great, with the y axis representing dollars and the x axis representing time labeled with each President's name.

Yeah, the creative flash tools drew good attention and may have engaged people early on. I think now though, with the overwhelming wealth and variety of items for sale on the site, and with the large number of experienced shoppers, the interest of most people is in efficiently sifting through the items. I've heard more than a few people say they were turned away by seemingly random search results, and that they have grown tired of playing with the color search and whatnot.

Are you sure? The general consensus among sellers is that the search tools are lacking. They are great at finding fairly random collections of items, and some of the tools are fun toys, but it's not the best if you're actually looking for something specific. About half of the sections on the page are fairly useless for serious shopping.

The number of items on Etsy has increased by 100 times in the past few years, but the lens through which you can see the items has stayed the same size - search pages of 20-30 items. Few people are going to page through more than 20 pages of results.

Basic search has improved significantly since Chad Dickerson came on board, but I think even the tech staff acknowledges that there's a long way to go.

One major problem is the tagging system, and the lack of true categories. It used to be that your first tag functioned as the 'top level category', but they didn't make this clear in the listing creation step. You could (can?) also choose contradictory tags/categories with no problems. The top level categories are rather disparate conceptually, and aren't particularly well chosen (i.e., 'Quilts', with 24k items, has it's own top level entry, same as 'Jewelry' with 1.4 million, and art, with 500k). Also, the tags and titles are completely in the hands of sellers, some of whom mis-label items inadvertently or intentionally. It's a bit of a tricky deal.

What strong community communication tools are you referring to?

As far as I can see, actually cultivating community has been a big shortcoming for Etsy. The 'teams' section of the site is very underdeveloped (it's been the same for years and isn't tied into the rest of the site very well). The forums are frequented by the a small group of focused people, mainly all sellers, and the tone on there has been very negative for years. The in-house messaging system ('conversations') is extremely lacking, with no serious organization tools for your messages. The shop/item favoriting system doesn't function as a social networking 'friends' system, it's geared only towards shopping.

Etsy sellers tend to network through their own blogs (mainly on blogger), independent craft blogs, and use Twitter for communication.

> Chris Munns, Etsy Sys-Ops Team.

Wow, where'd you hear that? :)

I'm quite familiar with all sorts of websites, but haven't ever used Facebook. Last night, I was trying to use the site to configure a profile, test an app and share the profile with my partner - I have to say the site confuses the hell out of me. I can't believe so many people are using something with such an awful design.

I too am somewhat put off by the various statements from the CEO that his mission is to 'change the world'. I can think of another 2-3 rather manipulative, drive, self-oriented business founders who insist this about themselves, too. "Anything for another billion bucks" would be a much more honest assessment of their personal motivations.

This is at least the second long time Twitterer to found a new business related to finance or payments (the other was Jack Dorsey's Square). I guess they're in a position to perceive a high level need in that area? Pushing money around gives you a lot more chance for revenue than dealing with mere tweets, I suppose.

That's about what I envisioned while reading the article. All you'd need is different sections on Twitter, and to choose which to subscribe to when following someone. All the clients would need to know is that you're subscribed to X's stream 0 but not their stream 1.

These issues are certainly nothing new.

I had years of emails from the late 90s happily stored with Excite's webmail. Then, after one or another merger they instituted a policy of deleting any account that had not been signed into within 90 days. I had moved on to using desktop pop3 mail, and that was that - they deleted all of my archived messages without any recourse or so much as an apology.

I don't believe there had been any sort of export, download or backup option, either. I should have learned from that, but lo! Netscape did the same thing to me not long afterwards.

Wonderful pictures. It's so different in color.

What I'm wondering is what was Obama doing in Spain as a young boy? http://citynoise.org/upload/42155.jpg

Definitely a better plan than ignoring absolutely everyone. While it's certainly not good to be overly influenced by others, being completely unaware of what's going on isn't the best plan either... yes, I tried it.

Well, it would have all happened without Gates, and we'd all generally have software of better quality. Gates did a lot for himself and his shareholders, which I guess is the point of business - he didn't do so much for the world of computing.

That said, sure, Microsoft is a lot better than the businesses that merely push cash around and take a stack for themselves in the process.

Yes, it could certainly do without the "what she said" part. That's not the main content on the page, though.

That's what I said about Blippy, too. But then, I find so little use for most mainstream products and services (Facebook, cosmetics, Rice-a-Roni) that it is apparent people like me are not the target market.

It's significant that there are now two nascent companies with this specialization, and apparently investors are taking the idea seriously.

How long before Facebook adds 'Show your credit card purchases on your Wall', aka Beacon v2? I wouldn't be surprised if they refined it based on current observations and their past experience with Beacon. This would make investing in Blippy or Swipely seem a bit more risky.

That was my comment, too - it's interesting how a program like Kickstarter has become a viable alternative to something such as, well, ycombinator. Noted, though that you're only receiving money here and not the other related benefits, which can be substantial.

I think you've missed the point here. This isn't a command that tells your account to accept follow request, or adds someone to your following list - this is a command that instantly makes other people 'accept' a follow request from YOU. This works completely differently in how it would consider the username parameter, and in that the change is applied to the other person's account, not yours.

Follow and Block make sense as commands you can send through a message. But Accept? Why would you ever be able to control an action on someone else's account? It's rather odd that this exists at all.

Yeah! BALLS TO THE WALL!

This is such an odd bug. I guess it goes to show that nobody knows what strange code which should have been removed four years ago lurks in the heart of Twitter.