michaelrkn

i'm hoping to be able to offer student loans at some point down the road. with a developer's salary, it shouldn't take more than a year to pay back the loans. it will require partnering with a bank or other lender, though, so it will be a bit of work to get off the ground.

thanks for the support, austin!

you can sign up to be notified of future classes: http://www.epicodus.com/future-classes.html

i'm putting all of our course materials online at www.learnhowtoprogram.com. only the first chapter (which is probably review for you) is publicly available now, but after the first class is over and we've hammered out the kinks, i'll make the entire curriculum available.

that said, i really think most people learn best with others, in person, so i'd really encourage you to take a trip for a couple months to join a class like epicodus or one of the other "hacker schools". (or convince someone to start one in dc!)

thanks doug!

badger.com is the only non-sucky registrar i've ever used.

Awesome, Renee!!!!!!

"The reason for this is because I’ve had some entry-level web dev interviews, but I didn’t know enough of the basic foundational questions to get past the 1st round." i would guess that it isn't a lack of "that theoretical background" that's holding you back, but not having a deep understanding of very practical skills. most udacity/codecademy-type sites will teach you programming syntax, but not design patterns. other resources like railstutorial.org will teach you how to use web frameworks, but not give you the deeper understanding of what the framework is actually doing if you don't understand web programming already.

on the programming side, i'd suggest familiarizing yourself with object-oriented design; i've heard that http://www.lynda.com/Programming-tutorials/Foundations-of-Pr... is a great video series. i'm not sure of a good resource to gain a deeper understanding of web development, but i don't think protocols are the right place to start. i'd look for resources that really dive into the http response cycle, mvc pattern, and the guts of whatever framework (such as rails or django) you're using.

good luck.

Here's an example of what I think is telemarketing done right. We have a client that's a roofing company. They scout areas that have seen a lot of damage from storms, note the houses with roofing damage, and look up their phone numbers. They call the residents, explain how their home insurance companies usually cover most of the cost of the roof repair, and offer to schedule a time to take a closer look at the roof and give an estimate.

I think it's mostly about targeting - don't just call tons of people with no reason, but focus on particular people who have a high likelihood of becoming a customer. Then call them with salespeople who know the industry, be helpful and courteous, and take people off your list who don't want to be called. And, of course, follow the law.

Unfortunately, there's so much bad telemarketing that the good stuff has gotten drowned out, so it's easy to see it all as bad.

I like the credit card idea.

Very well put.

I have my business line on GV and it filters out hundreds of spam calls.

I couldn't have said it better. I believe this business was not trying to follow the law, so I sued them for everything I could. I mentioned in another reply that there was another company who called me illegally, and I found out that they fired the person who set up the calls I got. I didn't sue them.

There's actually a decent chance it's a real company. I once got a call for insurance that I was sure was a scam, but after playing them along for several calls, I found out it was a legit company. I talked to their CEO, who was very nice, found out their company name, and then explained to him that I could sue him for several thousand dollars. He apologized, said it was an outside firm that they had been working with, and said they had stopped working with that company because of complaints. I didn't sue them.

Our Terms of Service require that customers be familiar with the relevant laws, abide by them, and take full responsibility for obeying them. Because we're a pretty small company, I also personally know all of our clients and talk with them about what they're doing. If it seems like they might be about to violate the law, we talk it through. This has only happened a couple times, but I have switched off somebody's account because I thought they were violating the law, despite the fact that they've taken full responsibility for compliance.

You're right about robocalls, but we primarily deal in live phone calls, dialed by a computer but connected to a live person ("predictive dialing" or "power dialing"). These calls are almost always legal for political campaigns.

The best place to report illegal calls is http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm. Your local police department probably won't have any idea what to do with the complaint. Good luck!

That's why I didn't sue for any of the calls after I talked to a rep - only the automated calls, and the call that came after I asked to be on the DNC list.

Thanks to Voice over IP, this is pretty much impossible to regulate any more. The telephone networks were built on a trust model that VoIP destroyed. Now, you can originate a call on the internet that's nearly impossible to trace.

Hi Sentient. We actually mainly work with political campaigns, which are exempt from the regulations. I don't think we benefit from the uncertainty; it makes it difficult to explain to potential customers what is and isn't legal, and we turn away clients sometimes because they aren't familiar enough with the laws to know what's legal and what's not.

Hi Corin. I asked to be on their internal DNC list, and several days later, they called me again. That's illegal. Don't you think companies should have to respect your requests to be put on their DNC lists? I mean, if you unsubscribed from an email list and kept getting emails, wouldn't you be upset?

also see: apple, twilio, ikea

leave a comment at the bottom of the post if you like what you read! -michael@impactdialing

funny you ask. i just posted http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1027584.

gotta love that, right? i'm figuring that once this is built really well for political applications that i'll take it to commercial market as well and deal with all the regulations at that point. commercial clients can provide a nice stabilizing business stream to balance out the comings and goings of political campaigns.

yeah, twilio seems pretty cool, and i'm looking at it for another voice/political project. but it's basically an api for level 3 with some nifty features tacked on, so for a project as voice-heavy as a predictive dialer that doesn't need the extra features, i'm guessing it makes more sense to find a developer with voice experience and avoid the markup and the added layer of potential problems. if somebody with twilio or other voice experience is listening, i'd love to get another opinion.