kes

I'm going to take a leap here, but I'm pretty sure that -- on the internet -- hacker/blogger/programmer/designers are not a 'niche'. There are numerous communities for all of these people. Instead you should focus on groups of people who have a hard time connecting. There are plenty of communities that have no real internet equivalent. A small list of actual niches:

- UrbEx (Urban Exploration) - Board Game Enthusiasts - Cooking (This could be a big one. Food blogs are really popular, but disconnected.)

There are a lot of people out there, and if you can focus on long-term user acquisition (which rules out the 'try every new thing and then drop it a month later' tech crowd), you'll be a lot happier.

I like the idea, and I apologize for having nothing more productive to say other than 'sounds quite a bit like Flickr.'

Flickr has all of these features. Their main purpose is to host photographs, but with the rise of info-graphics (good stuff and bad stuff here) and other forms of picture-media, there could be a good place for a service to take up this new market segment.

I don't think that deserved to be downvoted, but I think that it implies "all other things being equal".

On the subject of the 'cool' factor, Yahoo Pipes has been around for years: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.edit

I wonder how this relates to Reddit. Both sites (SO and Reddit) have unique, community driven and created sections.

Would a site like Reddit benefit from turning some of these sections into top-level domains? I know that they are having financial issues right now, and could this be a possible step to move away from their problems into something that would be profitable?

I wonder if this isn't a more common problem than some hackers realize. We don't all want to be CS and programming geniuses. We just want to know enough to get by and prove that our ideas can work.

A common sentiment among this group is that 'idea people' are worthless unless they can work hard at making that idea a reality. Unfortunately, not everyone wants to dedicate themselves to the technical end of that process.

I like the idea, but not everything needs to be social. I've been slowly working through certain collections of movies, and if I could add them automatically to my queue, that would be great.

I have no need to 'show off' to my friends, because my Netflix queue is highly personalized to me. But, it would certainly make it easier to feel like you had a grasp on any certain body of work (such as my current obsession: everything directed or produced by Scorsese).

Try Fever: http://feedafever.com/

A mother and her child have a completely different relationship than two grown adults. Assuming that we should break our backs for our parents because of the natural order of life seems silly to me.

(I submitted this story.)

I would really like to see Chris Ashworth interviewed on Mixergy. I think he's got a great story on niche marketing, problem solving, and pushing things forward.

(Edited for grammar.)

Why not simply have two CSS files? One would show the links in the same style as the main text, one would show the links so they can be explored.

A simple button next to each post and you could choose depending on your wants.

(Note: I am not a 1337 haX0r, so I could also be very dumb.)

Glad to see that Google isn't going to push Typekit out of the way with their new project.

If you like this, try out the original Oblique Stratagies: http://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/

Does this really belong here?

I knew that I recognized his name. He writes http://overcomingbias.com/ which, along with http://lesswrong.com/ keeps me making sense.

(Both are worth reading regularly.)

Disagree. Tweetie is better simply because it has separate windows for each tweet. That feature alone has kept me using it.

I love my Trek. It's a great utility bike, not flashy, and lightweight: http://www.trekbikes.com/ca/en/bikes/bike_path/fx/72fx/

But if you're looking for a fixie, my friends tell me that they love their District (also Trek): http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/urban/district/district...

I'm going to go out here on a limb, and vote no. It's not needed - that I can see - and would only serve to clutter.

'And if it's a PDF, you can go to hell!'

I get what you are saying, and there are a lot of good reasons to believe in using the basic file formats (read: old formats, not better formats), but I think that this is a poor way of looking at the spreading of information.

While a .txt file is accessible anywhere, it is certainly not always more readable. Just because someone could write their thoughts out in a linear fashion, doesn't mean they should. Slide decks are great, and they are sometimes the best option for presenting vital information to a large group of people.

There are good reasons for wanting very basic encodings of thought, but there are also very good reasons to make things more complex (internally) to make them more simple (externally).

Also, OpenDocument is hard to use, as is OpenOffice.

I would also like to point out another example: @arjunbasu who writes micro-fiction.

Let me be the first to say the obvious here: huzzah for spamming social media!

I know that there are a lot of mixed feelings about Twitter and it's value. But I think that this book does a good job of explaining various uses, and style/structure guidelines for what I personally believe to be an exciting new protocol.

Most books about Twitter are full of complete bullshit, but this one caught my eye at Borders. I read it, and was pleasantly surprised by it's coherence. Suggested.

(Twitter account: @thebook)

A Javascript project that does this - http://code.google.com/p/hyphenator/ - with an example -http://j.mp/bakUUw

A relavant Reddit thread - http://j.mp/d8H3Tf

Evernote is even worse on Mac. I've been using Journler (http://journler.com/) because it's too much of a hassle to keep my stuff in OneNote on a separate partition, or run VMware.

I wish there was a OSX port for OneNote, which I think is the most usable not taking software I've ever tried.

The page has been updated:

"Dear visitors from Google. This site is not Facebook. This is a website called ReadWriteWeb that reports on news about Facebook and other Internet services. You can however click here to become a Fan of ReadWriteWeb on Facebook, to receive our updates and learn more about the Internet. To access Facebook, please type "facebook.com" into your browser address bar or type "facebook" into Google and click on the first result."

I think this statement is far more ingenious than you are giving it credit for. I think that you could interpret this to say "I like women sexually, but not socially or mentally".

Now, I'm certainly not saying that this reflects his feelings, but that phrase certainly made me chuckle the first time I read it.

Perhaps Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond would be a good book to pick up.

Although it doesn't directly apply to any of the subjects you listed, I think that knowing a bit about world history is a good way to make connections in the philosophies of different areas.

"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by David Eggers. Ironic title, thoughtful and enjoyable book. Suggested.

The author would seem to be suggesting that the process of writing is a task that not only expresses what we are trying to say, but benefits us by making our thoughts coherent. While I think this is a valid argument (I often start writing when I'm trying to get my thoughts in order) I don't think that it necessarily benefits our culture in total.

A response to our supervisor’s clever status update on Facebook is written carefully, so to keep the repartee going. Concision and wit are privileged in these new forms. Who would not welcome shorter, funnier prose?

An interesting ideal, to be sure, but not something that is actually seen in our interactions. More people are writing, but this does not imply that more people are thinking about writing. The "25 Things" lists mentioned are not filled with creative, original and interesting thoughts as implied by the article, instead they are filled with nonsense and inane "LOL"s and "I don't really know...haha".

It would be a nice world if more people cared about what they wrote, but writing only reflects thinking. If a persons thoughts are crap when they speak, nothing will change when they start pecking at a keyboard.