monkeyspaw

Not speaking for patio11, but I would guess the free trial allows businesses to evaluate whether the software meets their requirements.

Companies have budgets to pay for what they need. Their concern is that the software meets those goals, then they are willing to break out the checkbook. They know they have a problem, they have a budget to solve it, and they just need to know your software solves it.

Consumers, OTOH, may need to have value proven over time. Thus, the dropbox usage limits make a lot more sense.

Apologies for the delay in responding, it's been a busy week.

I guess it depends on who you're building for. I've built for a non-technical audience, and wouldn't call them stupid just because they convert due a lightbox popup. Many of these folks want the emails I send, but wouldn't be able to find a more subtle signup.

In general, I try to help my users and not call them stupid.

Yes, they do. I recently had a bad experience with flights on SW, and their cust service rep had to charge me $50 to change the flight.

I emailed a few days later and explained the situation. Without a delay, they refunded the $50, then gave me and my travel companion $100 vouchers for the hassle.

It wasn't even their fault -- SFO was having weird tech issues.

It's kind of a "no explicit or implicit warranty provided" situation, is it not?

I wonder if there is a business model in them saying something like, "We can do this if you pay us $20". They could continue to give away the product, and charge for service/support.

They obviously don't think it's worth their time/effort to look into one person's situation. That's awful for you. At the same time, maybe that's part of the reason they don't charge -- they want to build software, not support it.

That sucks. But if the LTR of a customer < employee time to fix by a large margin, it becomes more rational.

As someone in a similar situation: I don't like tie ins with huge companies. My experience with the Facebook API has been horrible in the past (constantly changing, poor documentation).

In short, I don't want FB/Goog/Apple/etc. to keep buying up the independent operators that I know and love. In a similar way, I prefer to frequent my local coffee shack over a Starbucks. Nothing Starbucks could do would really change my mind.

There's not really anything facebook could do other than not being facebook. Sorry.

Why bloggers insist on using the awful lightbox/email signup/popup windows: because it converts better.

I concede it could be bad on developer focused sites. But I also have to believe they have tested it, and by their metrics they have more 'success' using popups than not.

(Don't get me wrong; I hate them too.)

Knowing what you now know, what tricks would you use to make the web interface more like the VT100?

My guess would be keyboard navigation, and entering numbers as codes instead of clicking radio buttons.

It's important to remember that discoverability in an interface doesn't matter as much when you can train the workers. Not everything has to be intuitive, especially when you control training (and you can trade eventual speed for immediate understanding).

This is the basis for all the VI/Emacs users who claim to be more productive than in a visual editor/IDE.

Fascism is "extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice."

I can see how strongly held views might lead one to exaggeration, but I don't think hyperbole lends anyone's position much authority.

The recent sequestration doesn't affect anything that led to the current standards. It may affect the regulatory environment going forward, but we're in the current situation independent of it.

I agree that food safety is a concern, but believe the source of the problem lies in the American relationship with food. More, bigger, and cheaper lead to the conditions we see.

Just to play devil's advocate: sometimes the dangers of a drug aren't evident until many years after exposure. The FDA tries to balance the benefit of the drug with the dangers. Otherwise, many beneficial and lifesaving drugs wouldn't hit the market until decades after the initial trials.

There are thousands of pages of regulations on federal meat standards. I think your statement would work better if you said, "If it were 'well regulated/sensibly regulated'..."

It's also possible that regulations are confusing, unenforceable, out of date, or addressing symptoms instead of causes.

I don't disagree with you, but I think your comment needed some clarification.

Spotify has a $3 billion valuation as of last November. Pandora's value seems more in flux, but is probably somewhere in the 1-2 billion range.

That doesn't seem to me like they're small fish compared to twitter. given how much valuations fluctuate (Pandora was at $4 billion as recently as 2011), I think they're all in the same bin.

After all, Twitter's valuation is based on a less certain business model than the other providers, who have successfully implemented ads and premium accounts, and have paying customers.

Thank you for connecting the SMS to the lack-of-dial tone. I thought it was the most interesting part of the article, but wasn't explained very well.

So if I have this correctly: the Push-To-Dial feature necessitated an out of band control mechanism, and this mechanism is what SMS lives on?

Do SMS messages still use the out of band? I'm guessing that iMessage, etc., use the data channel (based on the encryption discussion last week). But when I send a text that's a proper SMS, or an SMS from Twilio/etc., does that use this out of band mechanism?

The small amount of research I just did suggests that the networks pay the local stations the affiliate fees: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-the-tv-business-act...

I had assumed the locals were paying to get content from the networks, but that doesn't seem to be the case (also indicated in another comment.)

I heartily agree, personally.

But people often like games because of the hoops they have to jump through, not in spite of them.

Shopping is a game to many people. You can't "win" unless you get a lower price than other people.

I've been doing yoga for about 6 months now.

I've gained strength, flexibility, and feel fantastic every time I leave a session. I also believe I'm less stressed and can focus better.

The classes I attend present the physical aspects as a gateway into meditation and relaxation.

"Oh, so what you're building already exists as a part of this other application"

Perhaps it doesn't focus on that component, then? Can you resegment the competitor's market, at a lower price, so that your product does just the one thing but does it better?

I like the strategy of finding one thing that your competitor does and focusing on that but doing it really well. Makes it easier to explain the value prop, too.

So many times, large offerings are very expensive, have 15 components, but the primarily value for a segment of the target market is just the small piece.

Provide value, price accordingly, and you can succeed.

SS suggests that at some point, you simply can't grip dumbbells heavy enough to tax your larger muscles.

I would guess that stability muscles like the rotator cuff will be unable to get stronger at a rate fast enough to tax larger muscles.

Yes, but I believe the stabilizer muscles (rotator cuff) can't continue to support the forces placed on them at a high enough weight. Generally, people "max out" stabilizers before muscles like pecs. So you plateau with dumbbells before barbells.

According to "starting strength", at some point you can't hold the dumbbells due to limitations in grip strength.

Maybe the better solution is to reinforce how dangerous "distracted driving" is, and change the laws so anyone can get in trouble for doing it.

Then the marketing could give examples of what it means to be distracted -- fighting with kids in the back seat, texting, eating cereal, etc.

How does this compare with developer time? It sounds like you spent more time tweaking the Naive Bayes than you did with the black box SVM, with the same results.

Just started this program about a month ago. I'm stronger, fitter, and healthier than I've ever been.

It really simplifies things in the weight room, points you in the right direction, and says "now go do this."

It's pretty much gimmick free, and very straightforward. Highly recommend it.

I am compelled to point out that gmail is just an interface to email. Perhaps you meant G+?

Either way, I think email is a pretty open method of communication. As hard as they've tried, FB/G+/Twitter have managed to augment rather than supplant email.

They're also pretty new. I suspect in 30 years, nobody will be using them, but email will still be around. (Probably still using SMTP and battling spam, TBH...)

As a baseball stat head, I can extend your analogy.

In late 1990s, when Quinton McCracken first published DIPS theory, it was postulated that pitchers had zero control over their "luck based" factors (BABIP, in this case; expanded to include LD%, LOB%, HR/FB%, etc.)

Now there exists enough data to identify outliers, to whom the theory of DIPS (Defense Independent Pitching Stats) doesn't apply. Matt Cain, for example, is acknowledged to outperform his DIPS.

No matter what the statistics suggest, people will believe they're the Matt Cain. And some will be. By definition, they're the outliers that our statistical models do not account for.

My argument against showing no pricing is that general consumers are similar enough that you can bucket them. They want to see pricing. And they're smaller dollar values, so you can't afford to take the time to customize a quote for them.

Enterprise buyers are used to the effort to get a quote. And they want to feel special. Combine that with how different they are (is enterprise 100 users, or 10,000?), and you can see why they aren't sufficiently similar to treat in one plan. The high dollar value also means you can afford to have a high touch sales process.

Normal customers often shop on price. Enterprise customers often don't. You're selling to the normals, and sending a signal to enterprise folks that you can handle a customer of their size.

If you had gotten a CTR on the low end of reasonable, I'd suggest optimizing your copy. Since you didn't, my impression it's one of two things: 1) people who liked ebay != ebay sellers and/or 2) facebook ads aren't very effective for this market

Try a more sophisticated targeting on facebook (can you target by people who have posted a link to an ebay item?)

If that doesn't work, I'd try a totally different channel. Seems like there should be lots of forums, blogs, and websites where ebay sellers congregate. Shoot for those.

It's going to be tougher than an area where budgets are high. Many PHBs don't understand the need for dedicated testing.

Most jobs I've worked, people just assume the developer needs to do the testing. It's an uphill battle to convince someone otherwise (again, just my experience).

My immediate thought is that it's a name trying too hard to be clever. Some portmanteaus are clever and I like, but this one feels forced. It's like my mind can't skip over the fact that there should be 2 't's in the middle of the word.

Are you worried about the TalentTrue / TalenTrue confusion?

And wouldn't the analogy be monitoring internet usage, rather than video surveillance? Something that is extremely common at most major corporations?