mdolon

No offense but this whole thing seems like it's getting out of hand - do we really need another social network for people who've deleted their FB accounts? Kind of ironic if you ask me..

I like the concept of the site however I want to see what using the virtual cards is like without having to sign up first. I would also recommend a redesign, as certain elements could definitely be realigned to make the experience of using the site better. If you improved on the design and usability, I could see myself recommending this to my friends. If you'd like, shoot me an e-mail and I can provide some more info on how to better realign the site.

If anyone has any specific questions about the site, the setup or anything else, I'd be more than happy to answer them.

I would argue that it's easy to use for a hacker. For the majority of bloggers, using git and Heroku is probably not a simple or easy task.

I think you meant Blosxom: http://www.blosxom.com/

Your link goes to someone's personal homepage. :)

It does seem a little silly, though that could be said for most things that haven't been tried before. Couldn't you just combine a bunch of pictures into one huge image? Or if size is limited, you could just have an image that has a URL of an external picture gallery. I applaud thinking of a revenue model early on but I would think there's a better way..

Labs can definitely be an important factor - I know I had to use make use of my USB ports in several of my labs (something the iPad lacks). Also, many universities require laptops that meet a certain criteria - I would also look into that for your school before purchasing one.

Every day is (should be) Mother's Day. If you don't already keep in touch on a more frequent basis, why not start today?

I give in: http://devgrow.com/desk.jpg

Desktop runs: XP (90% of the time), Ubuntu and OS X (hackintosh from my retail Leopard disc)

15" Macbook Pro for travel and for making music

Desk also has a slide-out tray for keyboard & mouse

That's interesting. I might buy one just to try it out then, I hurt my lower back a couple of years ago and it never fully healed, and slouching on a leather chair all day doesn't seem to be helping..

(thanks for the inspiration)

What is impressive is working while sitting on an exercise ball!

From my personal experiences, I don't think that would work as well for a few of reasons:

- Students don't have that much time - just creating a business plan and convincing presentation/pitch was hard enough for most groups at our school. Actually funding an idea and executing is much harder and more time consuming, especially if you're taking a lot of credit hours.

- With our business plan competition, we would start out with a large number of interested students and that number would drop with each meeting. I'm not sure how many students would be able to manage (or have interest) in pursuing their business until the end of the competition.

- This would only work for certain businesses and eliminate ones that require research or a significant time investment. When I took part in the competition, we were competing with a group working on a medical product that will hopefully save lives one day. They were at the very early stages of their prototype after having researched the principles behind it for a couple of years. They won the competition and I think(hope?) used the funds for their business.

- I assume it would also be harder to judge, as different businesses have different measures of success (based on revenue, # of customers, etc.)

All that said I do wish students would actively pursue a business to learn the ins and outs of it through active involvement. I just don't think it's feasible to do it through a competition. Maybe the whole entrepreneurship club could work on a business together though? Or find a struggling local business and help them - that would be an immense learning experience in itself (I wish there was a class that did that).

You could start a business plan (or elevator pitch) competition. Find sponsors to donate a few thousand as the prize money and get local entrepreneurs, angel investors and VCs to judge.

We do it at UNC (http://www.carolinachallenge.org/) and it does a few things:

  - inspires and motivates students to start a business
  - brings attention to the entrepreneurship club or business school
  - provides funding to a new company (if the students choose to run with it)

There was a huge debate on this a few years back, however most of that seems to have died down now. Matt Cutts discussed it a few years ago: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalizatio...

I think it's a matter of personal preference - just be consistent with whatever you pick.

I did, and I think it can only help (it certainly can't hurt to). The main scenario I can see this being of importance is if you recently started redirecting to a single domain and Google has previously crawled your site, setting a preferred domain may help to regain your page ranking.

I blogged about this a while back at http://devgrow.com/best-bet-css-practices/

For practicality I find myself using multi-line CSS during development and use a CSS optimizer before going live, which makes the code look a bit cleaner and reduces overall file size (albeit not by much).

I didn't suggest adding CSS animations at all, but rather looking at CSS/design galleries that showcase great design. I recommended this (and still do) because understanding (and identifying) good design is something that takes time to learn and requires building a knack for. It's essentially doing research on what works and what doesn't.

User interface is critical to good design - I completely agree - which is why I suggested taking notes on all aspects of the featured websites, including their layouts. You can have a functional interface that is unattractive, just as you can have an attractive interface that isn't functional - they are both important in their own rights. Trends are also important to identify and learn from, as they highlight proven techniques and methodologies that you can build on.

I haven't read that book but I'll check it out, thanks for the suggestion.

The best advice I can give for someone wanting to learn good web design is get a feel for the aesthetics first - visit CSS and design galleries (cssremix.com, cssdrive.com, unmatchedstyle.com, drawar.com, etc.) and look through designs noting trends, styles and layouts. These designs are showcased because they are aesthetically pleasing, which in turn effects the presentation of your product.

Then start visiting tutorial and resource sites (smashingmagazine.com, tutsplus.com, etc.) and learn as much as you can on techniques and even more on current trends. After you do that it's a matter of imitating bits and pieces of proven designs and following trends. Steal until you are capable and skilled, then unleash your creativity for your final product.

Hope that makes sense.

A lot of people seem to share the same opinion about quitting Facebook but are hesitant because there aren't many better alternatives. Does this mean there's a market for a secure, more private social network? Maybe one where everything is completely private, unless you decide to make it public to other members.

If people want/need something like that it sounds like a fun weekend (or two) project.

I wish I had an identical twin so we could split the costs.

That's strange, e-mail me your credit card info and I'll verify it manually.

If your problem is CPU usage rather than bandwidth overage, consider switching from Apache to nginx. I found my LAMP WordPress blog (hosted on a small VPS and using W3 Total Cache) was having trouble with concurrent users - traffic spikes would make my CPU usage skyrocket.

I've since switched to nginx and the results have been great under moderate to high traffic, and without the use of any caching plugin.

In the video I noticed the password to your demo account was 4 characters, so naturally I tried out demo for kicks and it worked. I guess it doesn't matter now since you've already made the video but just thought I'd let you know (in case accounts are deletable or something).

My friend at http://ewrestlingnews.com/ tried it out for a while and gave really good feedback on it. User engagement increased exponentially and I think he noticed a slight traffic bump too for those pages. Certainly worthwhile for the little code required to implement it.

One pleasant surprise was that they give you a sample snail-mail invoice, even with their free plan. It may be a clever marketing ploy but it works - I remember opening that envelope and being convinced that this would add a whole new level of professionalism to my freelancing.

Saw this earlier today on Reddit as well - this is truly a goldmine of useful information. The range of topics he covers is simply amazing, with everything from basic chemistry to fractional reserve banking. This man even quit his job as a hedge fund manager to pursue this non-profit full time, so it's definitely a worthwhile cause to donate to if you're capable.

Personally I'm going to try to watch a video or two every day, even for material I already know. His videos are short and they do a great job of refreshing old knowledge.

From the few times my site (devgrow.com) has been on the front page of HN, I've gotten about 1000 visitors or so over the span of 24 hours. This has been consistent for both a post with 10 upvotes and another with 18. I would assume it would get maybe double or triple that if it had more votes and stayed on the front page longer?

/r/programming on the other hand sent over 3800 visitors during a 3-day period.

Hope that helps!

I think this update is the complete opposite of that trend - Apple is trying to do a ton of new things all at once (ads, game center, multitasking, etc.), almost too much in my opinion.

Relevant: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230333830457515...

Sounds very interesting, something I would definitely consider purchasing for myself, as I've been interested in iPhone app development but haven't had time to read through my thick Cocoa and Objective-C books. If you can make yours simple and short, I would certainly check it out.

On a side note, I wonder if it would compete with this: http://www.amazon.com/iPhone-Application-Development-Dummies...