Hacker News Reader

Looks like Google is becoming the new Yahoo. The place where great startups go to die.....

lachlanjon The Great Cul-De-Sac Problem And How To Alleviate It.

Try the link for the cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&clien...

Do we seriously need a blog post on "why" she was fired? I think this is blindingly obvious... Yahoo is now a shell of the company it used to be.

lachlanjon TechCrunch As We Know It May Be Over

100%. So how long for arrianna then?

lachlanjon The Freelance Surge Is the Industrial Revolution of Our Time

I'm sorry but I lived an extremely rural town for 10 years with <20k people and all of these thing were available. I'm not convinced these are exclusive to cities.

lachlanjon The Freelance Surge Is the Industrial Revolution of Our Time

Let's not forget that the industrial revolution was all about mass production. Read about adam smith and his essay on mass production of the pin for more details. I don't see this freelance revolution as anything close to mass production. Quite the opposite actually.

lachlanjon The Freelance Surge Is the Industrial Revolution of Our Time

Not that I am disagreeing but would you mind mentioning the social advantages that you are talking about?

lachlanjon The Freelance Surge Is the Industrial Revolution of Our Time

Funny, i've been meaning to finish a blog post on this exact same topic. I actually think the freelance revolution will be a reversing of the industrial revolution.

The industrial and neolithic revolutions brought the masses together to form towns and then large cities, where as I believe with the increase of freelancing and e-jobs, along with better remote working environments, people will start to question the high cost of living within a large city.

lachlanjon Woothemes forks Jigoshop - is this ethical?

It's interesting how most comments on this thread have no issue with the fork, yet most of the comments on the blog post are very much against the fork. (Strange considering they are mostly from the WordPress community).

lachlanjon Woothemes forks Jigoshop - is this ethical?

Totally agree, not to mention its very hypocritical considering WordPress itself a fork of B2. It seems to me that people are happy to embrace GPL when it suits them, but condem it when it doesn't suit... When you build on an GPL product you accept the freedom it provides, both good and bad.

lachlanjon First Night With Google Plus: This is Very Cool

Well that certainly took less than 6 months - http://www.facebook.com/videocalling

Any guesses as to how long it takes for Facebook to copy G+ circles?

lachlanjon A preview of Gmail’s new look

Very good point. I assumed because they looked very similar that it was the same person, but quite possible that someone else did the designs. Definitely very similar elements in UI though.

"Hertzfeld, who has been working at Google since 2005, is indeed the one we can thank for the better-looking interface on Google+, as he’s the design lead on the project."

He was the lead for the design, not just the circles features.

lachlanjon A preview of Gmail’s new look

beat me to the link by a few seconds :)

lachlanjon A preview of Gmail’s new look

The man behind that would be Andy Hertzfeld: http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/28/google-plus-design-andy-her...

lachlanjon A preview of Gmail’s new look

Really disliking the red, it stands out way too much and implies urgency. Seems like a really bad UX choice to me?

lachlanjon A preview of Gmail’s new look

I really like the new apps and search interface, but the use of red is really bugging me. Surely this is basic UI that urgent things are made red like alerts etc. I fail to see why the 'compose mail' and 'create' calendar event buttons need to be a glaring red?

lachlanjon First Night With Google Plus: This is Very Cool

Short term there may be some cross over, as with MySpace and Facebook, but long term the average person will only maintain one personal "social" profile ie I don't include linkedin(business) or Twitter(broadcast/news) as a personal social profile (I know me not including twitter as social is asking for trouble but its a different kind of beast). MySpace is effectively dead after being sold today for a 10th of the price News Corp bought it for.

lachlanjon First Night With Google Plus: This is Very Cool

Using a partnership with Skype it could definitely achieve this. Whether that partnership would ever happen is debatable.

lachlanjon First Night With Google Plus: This is Very Cool

Google+ looks amazing but if you think Facebook won't have these features copied within six months you are wrong. In particular the circles features which seems like the most compelling feature.

Also the "average" person won't maintain 2 social profiles and will gravitate to where the users already are. If Google wants to compete in social it's need to do more than just "sharing". They must have features that people need to use. These features may come. I don't know what that is? Deep personalized search integration? Beat Facebook to their inevitable Skype/video integration? time will tell.

lachlanjon Poll: What database does your company use?

MySQL all the way. WordPress FTW!

lachlanjon Google discontinues support for IE7 in Google Apps

I disagree, as a web developer big or small it is your job to set the standards for what the web should be.

Small freelancers make up a greater percentage than bigger firms as developers. At very least you should make it known that supporting old browsers is not a standard service and will incur extra costs to the client. There is plenty of literature to point your clients to in order to back up your point. If we all do this one by one it will have a greater impact than this move by Google.

lachlanjon Which tech giants will still be around after 100 years?

Yes, Ai which is applied to advertising. They do advertising in a very unique way but I still feel it boils down to ads. I think they will be a huge force for Ai in the future, they should be more so now, but will the make money from Ai unrelated to ads in the future? Time will tell.

lachlanjon Which tech giants will still be around after 100 years?

Terrible Article, I am surprised to see the from The Economist. It seems like they just want to name drop the most popular tech companies of late.

Facebook has just as much chance of disappearing in 5 years as it does of being around in 100 year.

Google probably has a better chance than any of these companies of being around in 100 years, they are in the oldest industry of all time. Advertising. Plus they have shown they are willing to invest in new technologies to stay current, ala self driving cars.

Amazon has massive potential, but by no means are they guaranteed.

Apple, Google and Microsoft all have ridiculous piles of cash, provided they don't make any stupid big bets, all of these companies will easily be here for the next 100 years just on these cash piles alone.

lachlanjon Mac OS X Lion Can Run in Chrome OS-Like Browser Only Mode

Nice find. Your answer makes much more sense given apples focus on apps. I can't see them trying to compete with chrome, especially after announcing icloud.

lachlanjon news:yc (iPhone HN client) finally accepted into the App Store

For everyone that is so happy to pay $5 for this app, how about you leave a review on the app store. I saw this app before reading this article and was suspicious about paying $5 when there were 0 reviews... I think your praise would be better served on the app store? :)

lachlanjon Ask HN: What are some web apps that use the .io extension

drop.io is a well known, recently sold to Facebook. path.io changed to path.com boxcar.io is an awesome iPhone notifications app. pen.io is a new startup from the Launch Conference.

Thats just off the top of my head... If you find any more please add them to this thread :)

lachlanjon Ask HN: Web apps listed by price

Thats a pretty broad topic :) Here are a few lists, not sure if they have pricing?

Maybe start with Google Web Store as most of them are web apps: https://chrome.google.com/

This is a great list: http://startuptools.pbworks.com/

And this Hacker News thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1769910

lachlanjon Salesforce acquires Manymoon

This is clearly something that google should have acquired, with such great integration to google apps. Hopefully Salesforce builds and integrates this service. A win for Salesforce!

lachlanjon Poll: What CRM do you use at your startup?

Agreed. Google contacts is not a CRM but could be so much more. It could be an amazing CRM if they implemented my wishlist: http://www.sennza.com.au/google-me/

Not likely though....

lachlanjon Poll: What CRM do you use at your startup?

I totally agree with you here. If you are planning on scaling up you team Salesforce works well, especially for managing big teams or even a number of teams.

However if you are small company say under 10 people, salesforce can be cumbersome.

So really it depends on what your company does and what you need to capture.