I always felt there were lots of gymnastics required to get data into a suitable format for Google charts (filling zeroes in time series, tough to work with multiple series, etc)
20-30 minutes of content is plenty to satisfy me. I really enjoy the ignite format, where the slides are on a 30sec timer, but they do too many presentations. We need events where there's lots of pressure on the attendees to keep the presentation tight and fewer presentations in the whole event.
A bunch of you all emailed for invites--we're sending a batch out later this week. We'd love to hear more of your thoughts once you use it. A few cursory answers: everything is free for now (we're still trying to figure out what the transaction fees will look like, but they will be competitive with credit card), Paypal is a great comparison and as someone recced with a link Paypal Wars is an awesome read, we love the Godaddy brand too, the syntax is very flexible and constantly adapting to the way people want it to work, if anyone knows the textpayme guys would love to chat with them (i'm @kortina), Fundraiser events-YES!, and yes security and fraud are tough problems but we are eager to tackle them. Think that covers most of them. Again, thanks to those who wished us luck and provided criticism.
In a more informal vein, I just got some space in Soho and am looking to host a semi-regular hackathon. I have done these in Philly in the past, and it has worked as follows. A bunch of people get together for a full day on the weekend, enter with a goal of accomplishing a side project (either a small new project or a piece of a larger project), and we all work from early morning til late night, then get some good food and drink afterwords. At previous hackathons I've gotten iPhone apps and simple web apps built, and they have been great fun. Sometimes it's just motivating to be around a bunch of people who are working something out of passion for creating, and this is a good way to harness that vibe. Get in touch with me if you're in NYC and interested in this sort of thing: @kortina on twitter or the same on gmail.
I posted here because I thought you guys might have some tips for further refining the estimate and some ideas for other sharing sites to include besides webmail sites and facebook and twitter. Also, I make the claim that most apps that send direct traffic are "sharing" apps - email, twitter and facebook clients, RSS readers. Can you think of any apps that might lead to large amounts of direct traffic that aren't necessarily "sharing" apps?
One of the things I always liked about Facebook was the lack of a global namespace. Every name on Facebook was contextual, when you logged in, so that Steve Andersen to me would mean something different than Steve Andersen to you, just like in real life. Sorry to see that go, but I suppose it's a tradeoff and a lot of good things will result from the new namespace.
"Meanwhile, for individual developers, the process disproportionately favors development of so-called 'crap apps.' Why should developers invest time in developing complex apps that might take months to review, when they could develop simple apps of limited utility that are more likely to get into the App Store in a day or two?"
This point seems spot on. Has anyone else been afraid to devote months to an app for the same reason? Seems like a scary investment given that you will just be subject to Apple's whims indefinitely.
I'm very disappointed to see that this is just snapshots and only runs in Windows. I would probably pay $10 / mo. for a Mac OS X suite that ran ie6, ie7, and ie8 without requiring me to use VM Ware or Parallels. The best solution I've found so far is crossbrowsertesting.com, but it's a little slow and tedious.
You're right that the reporting stuff is hard to do and difficult to abstract. Google Analytics and Mint both seem like pretty good systems that work for wide userbases, though. I guess because payments are so intertwined with authentication/access levels is why just a custom reporting and easy to use credit card processor may still not be the entire answer.
Just commented on the post, but I know there are tons of smart hackers here who are prolly also interested. I've been working on this with a friend and will have the beta version ready for developers sometime in April. Email me at gmail or dm @kortina to get on the beta list. Our goal is to make credit card payments so easy your little sister can swipe credit cards at a lemonade stand.
There's an important distinction to make between "advertising business" and "data business." Data can be useful for advertising, but can also be useful for tons of other stuff--news, filtering, etc.
Amazing place to meet people doing cool stuff in interactive media / music / film. I went last year for the first time and my only regret was not having gone before. I suggest coming with a mind ready for learning and a notebook for jotting down notes and ideas--it's very fertile ground for thought / brainstorming.