nicw

Signed up, looking forward! Managed to get a 'pending' ticket that was dropped by a fellow HNer. Thanks, whoever you are.

The concept sounds great, and the technology works really well. But, having just used it for the last couple months, the ballpoint pen is so bad that it instantly degrades your handwriting. My notes may now be digital, but I can't understand them.

Now that Evernote has acquired PenUltimate (handwriting app), I think you'll see some really good integration on the iPad where you can use the stylus to write your notes, and it will end up in Evernote automatically.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/25868-news-penultimate-...

Ha! I saw those pictures and had the sentiment. Looks like fun but not my cup of tea either.

For others: http://richkidsofinstagram.tumblr.com/

Here you go: http://5by5.tv/founderstalk/38

I agree. Ideally, that would be nice, but it isn't going to happen. IMO, the most professional approach when you are leaving is to give individuals specific feedback that you think will help them succeed. However, you should already be giving that kind of feedback to individuals, waiting till you are leaving doesn't come off as very helpful or genuine.

An important note: You can decline your exit interview. Unless this requirement is sewn into your signed employment contract, politely decline the request from HR.

This is a start: http://handleopenurl.com/scheme/ Register your URL scheme there to avoid collisions and help garner support from those who want to support your app.

While there may not have been a lot of user-facing changes in iOS5, there were a LOT of development changes that has reduced the amount of hackery needed. For example, iOS5 included the ability to style many aspects (navbar, buttons,tabbar) that previously had to be hacked around and were unstable. Developers either gave up on the styling and used the new features in iOS5, or would have to maintain the hack + new appearance classes.

This halfway-in,halfway-out implementation is what frustrates me. Those people who are drowning get the same answer "Well, Core Data isn't a relational DB so you shouldn't treat it like that." But yet all of Apple's nomenclature screams RDBMS.

tl;dw They freeze the view count at 300 to do some background checks for determing valid,non-robot views. Sometimes users are viewing simultaneously so the number can get to 301,302,etc before being stopped. Limiting number 300 was an arbitrary choice.

ha, you're right, thanks. I'll leave as-is so your comment doesn't look garfield-minus-garfield.

I view the PM role akin the role a sweeper plays in curling. A good PM will clear the path for others on the team to do what they do best. Sometimes that's wrangling with devops so the developers can keep programming, or it's calling a meeting with stakeholders to brief them on potential issues before they get out of control.

A good PM is offensive, not reactive and thats why a lot of times it seems like they're just calling meetings. They're generally the only person that interacts with all the different teams (management, QA, dev, IT) and so they can see the upcoming roadblocks. IF they get those solved beforehand that's worth some $$$ :)

To add a quasi-citation, here is a story where Greenpeace was fined for running into a coral reef - one that they had showed up to protect

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4395572.stm

I upvoted, but wanted to add that I'm interested in knowing this as well. Is there anyone that could speak to how a company would approach moving from one stock exchange to another?

Going further, a dark knight takeover strategy is to quietly pool the shares that multiple companies have -> into one company that then owns a majority stake or has enough votes to exert decisions in their favor.

I'm not saying this is the intent here, but one of the first steps down the path.

They may look to own more of the company - but at a lower price. A story like this could cause the stock to dip - especially if seen coming from a 5.8% minority owner. A large enough stake that it looks like they are concerned, but small enough that they don't have the direct access to Yahoo! to rectify.

I have the first edition and it's great. You can either poke around on Stack Overflow for hours to see what the "best" approaches are - OR just get this book and bookmark heavily :)

"Reverse-engineered" is really how this project should be worded.

EDIT: At the time I gave this author the benefit of the doubt. Looks like he pulled the actual shaders from the Instagram binaries, which is not cool.

Altucher is my hero. I'm always happy to see his posts on TC.

A really good explanation is here: http://www.quora.com/Whats-the-difference-between-fixed-widt...

but the tl;dr is: Different needs for different book types. Think of a reflowable epub as a .TXT file and a fixed-layout epub as an HTML file w/CSS. Yes, a .TXT file is indeed reflowable and adaptable for a screen size.

But what if you're writing an instructional book? Or you've made an awesome photo book of your travels? This is where presentation is more important over reflowable. It's important that the images you are referring to in the text are on the same page. Fixed-layout doesn't have to mean exact pixel representations just as most modern-day web pages adapt to user screen size. You can still "reflow" your text into a fixed-layout epub, the creation tool helps make this easy.

At the end of the day, the screen ratio of tablets is fairly similar, and epubs are just HTML + CSS. A fixed-layout epub gives the author the choice of control - they don't have to specify rigid container widths just as much as they don't have to specify a font.

It's a little bit of both. What really happens is that you're looking at a moving target in terms of both inputs and outputs. Think of this like the early browser wars, where even a standard chunk of HTML could look different.

You can create an EPUB formatter that works to your satisfaction, but you've only coded it to work with that set of books. The next set of books may have different layout requirements, like padding between the text and the images.

Secondly, the epub world is evolving, and the readers that display the epubs all have their own interpretation. EPUB is simply HTML/CSS inside a .zip. e-readers are essentially browsers wrapped in their own chrome.

So, the real trick is to automate as much of the formatting as possible, but then have easy tools for the Author to make the final tweaks.

There is definitely a misnomer that ebook creation is easy, especially as so many creation tools seem to output to .EPUB. The key isn't creating an EPUB, it's creating a good-looking EPUB.

This stuff is hard and I totally understand your pain - I'm the digital product manager over at Blurb.com (ebook!). We're primarily focused on fixed-layout epubs which ensures that the picture you laid next to the text will always stay in the same place. Reflowable epubs are technologically easier to create but the output can vary so much that it makes the author look sloppy at times. Not cool.

You can create a Blurb book and then convert it to an ebook for $1.99. We create them to Apple's strict epub standards so you can even submit it to their iBookstore. No DRM. :) (http://blurb.com)

Looking forward, I think we are going to see a larger focus on fixed-layout ebooks in the future as more tablets are created (Kindle Fire, iPad) and authors see the limitations of reflowable ebooks. I'm not knocking reflowable ebooks, but just writing a book in itself is a huge undertaking (congratulations!); trying to maintain formatting and a clean layout afterwards feels like you're being punished.

As to anyone else who has gone through ebook creation/conversion with Blurb (or elsewhere), feel free to send me a note or comment with your questions. It's rare that a HN thread directly relates to my work :)

- Nic.

Inversely, I think it's up to each one of us to communicate how we should be interrupted when we're busy. If we don't say "headphones means send me an email" then our co-workers don't know that we're in heads-down-mode and they'll keep walking over.

huh, don't know why my search came up empty. Too good to be true :)

Can't read, I get a "too many redirects error"

Very lame. But do a search for "Down tech tools" and we can all read it.

Hard to take a design article seriously when the gray-on-black text is so hard to read.

Woah, thanks. I didn't know the USPS provided this API

Stopped reading at first typo in the abstract.