mdolon

If you don't mind me asking what happened to it? Facebook now reports about 5,500 monthly users. I'm guessing you were acquired by SGN but I'm don't see why that would cause traffic to drop so much.

I'm going to try to call this one now: my gut instinct says this will be a huge success. Hopefully I remember to check back a few months down the line to see how my prediction faired.

Great work guys!

Edit: I just noticed lists I email don't get formatted correctly. It's slightly annoying for such an otherwise beautifully designed layout.

I tried the demo but after 2-3 steps it said I was still at step 1 of 7. When I tried to refresh to see if that was accurate I was told I had already checked out the demo and to register.

It should work fine as long as you carrier unlock the iPhone. I'm not sure if this is available for the iPhone 4 yet though (due to baseband changes), I know it's possible for older generations. Don't waste your money getting it unlocked at a store though, do some research and use one of the many available free (and now legal) programs like blackra1n and quickpwn.

There's a T-Mobile store in Queens, NY that was already doing this a week ago, they had a huge banner outside that said something to the extent of 'We sell and unlock iPhones.' I remember pointing it out to a friend and wondering how it was legal but I guess now it makes sense.

If anyone wants to check it out, it's at the corner of 74th and Broadway in Jackson Heights.

I think it depends on a few factors, namely:

- The likelihood of the company selling (consider both near or long term) or going public

- The difference between 10% profit and the salary you would make with 10% ownership

- How likely profit is to increase compared to the likelihood of the company selling

In other words, it totally depends on the company and the situation. A web design company will probably never get acquired or go public, and so ownership doesn't mean much, whereas if you're working on something that interests Google or Facebook, the chances of acquisition (and the value of ownership) increase exponentially. Then again, my reasoning is based purely on monetary gain - you should probably consider the impact of ownership on the company and your personal life/career as well.

I guess the suspicions about it relating to National Security were right after all. In case you missed it, there was a lot of discussion about this just yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1527449

This is interesting as well:

BurstNet's chief technology officer, Joe Marr, said that the FBI sent a "Voluntary Emergency Disclosure of Information" request to the firm. Sources have confirmed to the BBC that this was the case but FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said the bureau does not comment on active investigations. However he did say that the FBI had not asked for any websites to be shut down. The FBI does not have the power to remove content from websites or to take them down. That can only be done with the authority of a judge.

I feel bad for the site owners - these are businesses, not just websites - they shouldn't be able to take down an entire network (and possibly someone's livelihood) over a couple of offending sites.

The only question I have is: how does it deal with harsh weather? Especially with offshore setups where storms are frequent, can it handle high winds and strong waves?

Overall it's an incredible step towards innovation in energy, kudos to the entire team.

I'm not sure how likely this is but it would be very interesting to read about the profitability of Hacker Monthly and how much time/effort has been spent on it so far. Is this something that may eventually turn into a full time gig for you?

Almost - the GPL wouldn't apply to the CSS, JS or HTML of his themes, nor would the GPL nullify trademark and copyright. Still doesn't mean that his claim would hold up in court but it probably wouldn't be completely hopeless either.

In terms of accessibility, I assume the label element is more important as the name of the input element isn't visible anyways (for screen readers and people with CSS disabled). I agree with you though, it does seem like a headache to deal with for more complex (or multiple) projects - makes more sense to name the input field something unique that you can easily remember.

I didn't expect to see the birth of a new meme on HN.

Another fear I have is that you could change your terms or your prices at any time and I'd be stuck, as all of my user data would be on your machines (unless of course I could export them). Personally, I'd rather have full control over my database, though I'm sure a few others would be OK with this setup.

I think I get the idea but I wouldn't trust any critical information (esp. user info) with a 3rd party, at least other than my host. If this product is supposed to be like Wufoo that's fine, but if it's meant to replace the primary database used in your web application then I don't think this is viable. I'm sure latency will be an issue, as well as security and privacy.

Not sure how useful this is but I'm one of those guys who hates adding anything to Facebook, including games. When I clicked on your link, however, it didn't ask me to connect to Facebook - rather it asked me what weapon I wanted to use to kill an enemy. In terms of engagement, that's a heck of a lot more likely to convince someone like me to connect your app/game to my Facebook account, so nice work on the splash screen!

I've enabled the Backtype Connect WordPress plugin until I get more comments on my blog - the plugin pulls conversations from social media sites and Twitter mentions and posts them as comments. This makes it seem like posts have a ton of comments when in reality, they only have a handful. It's a slightly deceptive but I think the psychological effect the reader has is worth it (but I could be wrong).

I believe you can pre-register one at GoDaddy: http://www.godaddy.com/tlds/co-domain.aspx

My ATL nodes are up and running. I don't think I've had any downtime with them at all in the last couple of years, at least not memorable ones.

Square has secured at least $10M in funding (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/square) and are pretty far along from what I can tell. That said, there's almost always room for competition, especially in the payment gateway market. If you think you can make something that is better/cheaper/simpler/etc., I'd say go for it (since you've already been working on this for the past few months). Find a partner to help you out and if you need money, try pitching to local angel investors. If you can seriously compete with Square (and convince them of that), it shouldn't be hard to get some kind of seed funding.

What's interesting is that other businesses have already started making money off the data Twitter is providing, like http://whatthetrend.com/. It would make sense for Twitter to monetize their immense data and boost revenue, although that would probably kill these competing businesses.

Do phone books have cell phone numbers now? (I haven't picked one up in ages) I suspect the majority of FB users are posting their cell numbers.

This man is incredible, his projects page is teeming with greatness: http://www.tomscott.com/projects/. Also, maybe it's just me but the background image on Tweet Trumps is kind of trippy when reading the text on the page.

I really do feel your pain, as I have been through similar mental struggles before (and still do occasionally). One remedy I've found is to release a MVP or show your work to others, as it helps to reaffirm what you are doing isn't a complete waste of time. Launch early if you can and once people start using your it or you start making money, it's much easier to keep pushing forward. This one is more of a reminder to myself than anyone else but your product doesn't have to be absolutely perfect before you launch. Quality control is important but striving for perfection can be an impossibly long journey that can quickly lead to burn out.

I'd definitely be interested, hit me up on GMail and we can discuss it further (mdolon at gmail).

I hope this is not in poor form but I too am a freelance UI designer/developer. From the HN crowd, I did some work for raffi (designed FeedbackArmy and AfterTheDeadline). My portfolio is at http://mdolon.com/ and my blog is http://devgrow.com/.

What's the rest of your diet like? Are you physically fit? I'm a bit curious as to what a breakfast of Slim Jims and Red Bulls will produce in the long run.

A friend of mine was attempting to filter Gmail using AI, is this similar to what you were thinking of? His product is: http://gtriage.com/

What field is he in?

When investing, how important is a founder's educational background and work experience? What do you think is the best indicator of a successful founder?

A big part of it is psychological - when I was at the Apple store last night, people were waiting in line to play with any and all of the Apple products. Whenever someone would move away from something, another person would jump on it without knowing or caring what it was. If a consumer sees everyone around them buying a product, chances are they're going to want that item too. It's like peer pressure for the consumer market, you buy things to be cool (of course this applies to everything, not just Apple).