komlenic

The title is literally "Consume less, create more," not "Consume none, create always".

I've noticed this too when examining what I view to be problem spaces. Often there is truly room for technical innovation alone - a better way to do something - but it is only when this technical innovation actually addresses a pain-point that you end up with something great.

For example I've been looking at some ideas in the personal debt-reduction space lately. It's easy to dream up technically better tools that could help people visualize and track how they can pay off their debts and build wealth, but that would require the assumption that the tools alone are people's only pain point. Paying down debt isn't fun. It takes a long commitment with no short term reward. It's not sexy. Work from these assumptions and somehow address them and you've helped solve a pain-point. Work from the assumption that we can build a better tool with feature x, and you ignore the real problem, and your real opportunity to address it.

But from your Q's it seems like you're looking at whether or not this is a longer-term viable idea. Hopefully some smart people will comment with experiences/facts on the legal subject.

All that legality may not matter so much if you can position yourself as a clearinghouse where these other parties just have to have a presence to survive, instead of a competitor?

Pair up these three and I think we're all set: http://impossibility.org/ https://domize.com/ http://nxdom.com/

Both have their respected places, but Oracle is in general "more". More complicated, more difficult to install and configure, more flexible, more powerful, more money. If you don't need "more", then MySQL is quite capable.

Domain Name: SNOWDAY2012.COM Created Date: 03-Feb-2011 Expiry Date: 03-Feb-2012 Registrant Name: Paul Jefferiesr

Still, based only on my own past experience (assuming your review is a positive one) I'd say 4%-5% is fair... more than that seems like a clear reward and message that "we need to keep this person", and less than that seems like "eh, here's something".

EDIT: As to your second q: knowing what similar people in your industry and area are being paid might be a good figure to know (and if you can do it tactfully, bring up) - but being able to point out some of your accomplishments in the past year that the reviewer may not remember or be aware of will probably get you farther.

I don't know the ins/outs of what you're doing, but think:

my server -> your awesome service -> oooh charts

Then underneath this main simple illustration, perhaps in grayscale, you could have an example of the "old" way to do something like this (and point out why it sucks).

On a more concrete note, the green and blue tabs at the top seem inconsistent, compare https://peerleaf.com/Report/1 to https://peerleaf.com/About Shouldn't the demo tab be blue when you're on the demo page?

Looks like a good MVP/start. It wasn't immediately clear what the service does, but it was pretty close. (I'm saying this is a good thing, but could be made great.)

I may be picking nits, but I think the word "innovative" in the leading sentence could be replaced with a more descriptive adjective that better defines what the service actually monitors. "innovative monitoring service" vs "____ monitoring service". Sorry, no suggestions off the top of my head.

I think the two sentences in the "REST API" section are good, but are just begging for a graphic to illustrate it.

Anything in particular that you are looking for a review on?

The .ly domains are attractive, especially considering so many great names under that TLD are still available. However, I'm personally a little wary (whether there is just cause to be or not) and I would be wary x10 for anything commercial/financial.

As a user/visitor, I'm going to need a compelling reason to visit your site everyday, and "what would happen if the banner ad and the site content switched roles" isn't very enticing. Now, a cool piece of interactive art one day, a great 24-hour deal the next, followed by a free album/song download from a few artists, with a clever game the next day... these are some of the kinds of things that may give you traction. It's got to be "wow this site has cool stuff everyday" not "let's see what ad is up there today".

It's a chicken/egg horse/cart problem, but you're probably putting the cart before the horse if you're thinking monetization and advertising right away. I'd think of it more like "send in your cool stuff and we'll pick the best to display for 24 hours" and see if that works.

Again, great idea, but you have to prime the pump!

I didn't sign up to test, but if you're not doing so already, I'd definitely think about including some links/settings right in the emails that allow users to: adjust # of pages, etc... maybe even a "I don't really like this book, suggest something else" kind-of functionality.

Good luck!

This is a general design book, but one that is packed full of information and examples that you might find helpful. It's not a how-to book, but if you feel like you can recognize "good/great" design, but can't really produce it yourself: this is your book. You won't look at anything visually creative the same way again.

Otherwise, consider: "when all you have is hammer, you treat everything like a nail". People, myself included, tend to stick with what they know and are comfortable with. It's no surprise that all your designs end up looking similar: you're probably using the same tools in Photoshop and the same techniques. No tutorial is going to directly help you create "elegant graphics" in any meaningful way, but there are certainly great tutorials out there that will expose you to new techniques and skills which will broaden your personal toolbox.

Having a broader toolbox or skill-set makes new things possible that previously you might have not considered.

If it were me, I'd cache the results of an api call to HN with a last-retrieved timestamp and check against that for requests > 24 hours to retrieve again.

Personally, I'd consider moving the text about the free option (that comes up when you click see plans/pricing) to be a little more prominent, but this kind of thing really comes down to how you want to approach monetizing. If it were me I'd be doing everything I could to encourage people to be aware of and use the free service - I think as it sits you're going to get a lot of "ok neat" reactions, but perhaps not a lot of people actually using the service (even the free version). I'd hate to see your work languish... why not do everything you can to just get people using it?

I think the idea of paying for the email form etc is sound, but as other have noted, the price may or may not be right. That's something you'll have to determine.

FF 3.6/win... firebug shows a "source is undefined" error on line 312. while (source.length...

Monetization without ads might be done (at least in part) via a paid smartphone app? You could offer the full site experience for free, and ad-free, but charge for the app with shopping list integration etc?

With that said, I wouldn't fear advertising on a site like this. It's a great chance for targeted ads, and a few unobtrusive ones would not detract from the service or experience.

I had to dig in and really look for the faq to get an answer to why instructions weren't showing up in a recipe - should you detect when instructions aren't present and put a little note as to why? Even better, let me know that I can click edit and copy/paste the instructions in myself when they aren't automatically retrieved.

Might be an edge case you want to investigate: The first time I tried to use the bookmarklet was on this page, and it did nothing: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/banana_bread/

Wanting to do something, or realizing you need to do it does not remove your personal barriers that lead to procrastination: maybe it seems too difficult, you don't know where to start, you're afraid of failure, or maybe you're suffering analysis/paralysis. You're still "motivated" in the "I want/expect to do this thing" sense, but you lack the motivation in the "wow I can do this, get to work" sense that you need to push through and get moving.

This is where "motivation follows action": you start small, identify some easy steps that will begin moving you towards the goal, and do them -- and through this action, motivation often follows.

I don't know if this is strictly true in the absolute sense, but we're very programmed to think "ok I need to get motivated so I can get something done", when what seems to work far better is thinking "ok I need to get some things done so that I can get motivated". This follows the "take small steps, any steps" idea.