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nudge

803 karma · joined March 17, 2010

email@minutes.at
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nudge··on Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
You need to balance what you need to get done with your natural curiosity. Separate them out and make sure both happen.

1. Work out what material you need to cover on your required studies.

2. Break it down into shorter, manageable bits. A chapter per week, perhaps.

3. Make completion of these bits concrete, so you know you are progressing (and not just reading). Completing the exercises, perhaps.

4. Break down the bits even further, so you can plan them across days.

5. Every day at the same time, start working on these bits.

6. When you finish your bits for a day, stop working. Your reward is the rest of the day to learn about whatever you feel like, guilt-free.

nudge··on Why one company is making all its employees learn how to code
Do you feel the same way about learning to speak foreign languages and play musical instruments? Is it obnoxious for a person to teach introductory French night classes, when fluency will take years and may never be possible for the students given their other commitments? What if it is not even likely that they will ever have French-language conversations "of value"? Does the very act of proposing learning this new skill insult French speakers everywhere?

I keep encountering this attitude among programmers, that the idea of "learning" is something that is the completion of a journey of worthiness. It's extremely disappointing.

nudge··on Ask HN: Easiest way to ensure a HD is not readable?
Drive metal stakes right through them. I don't know if this will make it impossible to recover data, but it'd be difficult.
nudge··on Tell HN: A new method to maximize hacking in a startup
I've got a better idea. You give me the $4k and I'll fly to San Diego and beat you with a stick any time you stop working.

Seriously though, this is a really weird plan. It's a huge amount of money to spend for something that almost certainly won't have the effect you want. Unless you want burnout and a serious case of "maybe we should have budgeted more time to take a look around Hong Kong, which is actually pretty cool".

Take a working vacation if you want, but it's not the place you're in that's causing you trouble.

nudge··on Ask HN: Beta users flocking over to competitor
It's impossible to answer this properly without seeing your site. With that in mind, here are a few thoughts:

1. Features don't matter in the abstract. You can succeed with fewer features by being, for example, simpler. That's the 37signals "do less" line. You say features are crucial for your white-label solution. Are you so sure? Why do you think this is? How do you know this is why you are losing customers? ("Clearly" is a dangerous word). Who do you think your customers are? What if your customers were somebody else? (See point 3).

2. "...even though their price point is higher..." - this suggests you don't know that high price is often precisely why customers choose things. High prices suggest high quality, and in the absence of other ways of distinguishing between products, it's a very easy one for people to follow. Perhaps you charge so little that you give the impression of not being serious? And, relatedly, perhaps if you charged more you would be able to spend more to acquire users?

3. Pick a niche and own it. If your site works for user types X, Y and Z, just pick some subset of X to go after. Your product will be more targeted to them, which makes it easier for them to see it as something they could use, and it also should make it easier for you to market. See, for example, the many sites that offer build-your-own-websites for photographers, as opposed to simply just build-your-own-websites for everybody.

4. Win on design, on copywriting, on user experience, on humour, on speed, on sociality, on security, on reliability, on locality, on trust, on friendliness. Win on anything that's not what you can't win on. On the internet, there's room for more than one winner.

But, like I said, if we could see your site you'll get better answers.

nudge··on Why are there no good online voting/election tools that are also free?
Why would there be such a thing? Would you create a service with that kind of value (and actual running costs) and give it away for free?
nudge··on Ask HN: bad ideas vs letting creativity flow
Say you have doubts, and that you want to discuss them. Then discuss them, in an orderly and dispassionate way. Keep in mind the possibility that you are the one who's wrong, and you'll be fine. Be calm, rational and modest.

Also: creativity does not mean not rejecting ideas. Creativity involves rejecting vast quantities of ideas. It just also involves creating more ideas than you reject. So one important phase of being creative is uncritically spawning vast numbers of ideas. Another important phase is critically evaluating them. Hemingway (apparently - this is potentially apocryphal) said "I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to throw the shit in the wastebasket."

nudge··on Ask HN: Why are tools for local events a "perennial tarpit"?
My guess would be that there's very little money in it, and for what money there is (advertising of such events, perhaps), competition is fierce.

But if you've got a good way to disrupt it, go ahead!

nudge··on Ask HN: Why can't any companies turn a damn profit?
http://37signals.com/bootstrapped
nudge··on US Patent: Method of Recording and Saving of Human Soul for Human Immortality
It's a patent application, not a patent. The difference is important.
nudge··on When an Idea stops being an Idea
Okay, that wasn't clear to me, but it's a good point.

You could write up some advice to other non-programmers / "business guys" unsure of how to start: "writing a spec" is indeed a good way to start building.

nudge··on When an Idea stops being an Idea
Why are you wondering whether you have an idea or 'something more'? Just build it, or hire somebody to build it for you, or talk it over with some people. Anything that moves you forward. Wondering what you have isn't going to help you at all.
nudge··on Joel Sposky: Response on Job Application (through Twitter)
The email is badly formatted. There are many unnecessary paragraphs / line breaks in the middle of sentences. It looks unprofessional, and does not reflect well on the sender's technical abilities.

There are a number of other problems with the email, such as the ALL CAPS SUBJECT (which people hate) the fact that the sender has started an email with "Dear Sir/Madam" when they know the recipient's name (sir/madam is used when you don't know their name), and the coupling of Dear Sir/Madam with the signoff "Thanks", which is also incorrect. Also, why is the word "very" capitalised? And other such bizarre mistakes.

It just looks extremely unprofessional.

nudge··on British bank shuts website until April 2012
Just to clarify, it's not entirely down. It's just investments. I use this bank for checking and credit card and they're both fine.
nudge··on "Tunneling Under" the New York Times' Paywall
I don't understand this at all. What is it you want from the New York Times, exactly? A more restrictive paywall so that you can't view things you find on twitter? Or just no paywall at all, and a pony?
nudge··on Show HN: SunScanner - my attempt at a better travel search
Looks pretty good to me, but if I limit the search to Heathrow and just a few months in the middle of the year, nothing comes up. Where are you getting your data from?
nudge··on Ask HN: Review my first project (gift certificate templates)
Good looking site and a sensible product idea. A few thoughts:

1. "GIFT CERTIFICATE TEMPLATES FOR YOUR BUSINESS" is not the best tagline, I think. "Template? What's a template?" Perhaps better is something like "Sell gift certificates for your business". The fact that you're actually selling 'templates' isn't really important to them. What they get is the ability to sell gift certificates.

2. Below the "sign up to the mailing list" on the front page the information is a bit messy, and there may just be too much of it. What's the difference between the "features" and "about product" tabs? (I don't want you to tell me the answer - I'm just saying it's unclear). Perhaps just grab the most important points and say them as clearly as possible, without requiring clicks onto tabs or anything. Things like "add the name of your company" are probably redundant - I would expect that I would be able to add the name of my company at the very least! I would probably just junk a lot of that stuff and fold it all into a "How it works" page. Then on the front page you just have "Start Printing Gift Certificates" [not 'templates'!] or "How it works"

Various other of your pages could do with cleaning up a bit like that, but overall I think the idea's probably a good one.

One final thought though: is there any fraud prevention involved? What's to stop somebody just making a really good colour photocopy of their gift certificate? You don't have any ID numbers or anything on the certificates, do you?

nudge··on Ask HN: Why bother using MailChimp?
It would be to allow you to concentrate on your core functionality without worrying about whether you are complying with spam laws, getting delivered, what your delivery rates are etc., running the mailserver. It's just paying for all that to be made a lot easier for you. There's lots of services in this area though: mailchimp, campaignmonitor, sendgrid, and Amazon have one now too.
nudge··on Ask HN: Why are some sites - like TechCrunch - so slow to respond upon loading?
Techcrunch has a ridiculous number of widgets. Try browsing with a blocker (I use the Disconnect extension on Chrome) and you'll see the difference.
nudge··on Ask HN: What techniques do you use for personal goal setting?
Goals don't work for me. Habits do. See if you can transform your goals into things you can actually do, rather than things you want to reach.
nudge··on I'm a cargo cult programmer, help me
"Programmer" I think is a little like "scientist". It used to be possible to be an expert in all things, but it's not really any more. So don't be so hard on yourself. You're like a biologist retraining as a chemist.

But since you've found something that fascinates you, go for it!

nudge··on Jerry Seinfeld's Productivity Secret
Recently (unsold) on flippa: https://flippa.com/auctions/118288/Streak-ly---motivation-we...
nudge··on I'm a cargo cult programmer, help me
Kudos for discovering something important about yourself.

Your path forward probably should be determined by the kind of work you want to do, but I think you know this.

Certainly don't be sucked into the new technologies because they're cool. Nor should you necessarily get a CS degree, depending on the work you want to do. You sound like you want to learn everything ever about computing, but that's a recipe for frustration and won't necessarily help you.

But anyway, good luck.

nudge··on Ask HN: Why many kindle books are more expensive than hardcover ones?
Because it means more profit, and because the market will bear it.
nudge··on Ask HN: Rate my site "Would Be Better.com"
It doesn't seem worth pursuing to me. I mean, it's well-executed and the design is pretty good. But it's a toy - it doesn't solve any particular problem or serve any particular purpose. So for that reason you'll always struggle to get traffic (leaving aside the question of how you would ever monetize it).

Why does it not solve any particular problem? Probably because it's too vague. It's people leaving complaints about things in the middle of nowhere. There's no reason to think anybody who could fix these things is paying attention.

I would move on.

nudge··on Ask HN: Web framewwork for non-programmers
Try Zoho Creator: http://www.zoho.com/creator/
nudge··on Does "You are what you eat" apply to developing?
For posterity, the url to the article itself (as opposed to the blog) is http://trentwalton.com/2011/01/26/you-are-what-you-eat/
nudge··on Best(cost and scalability) hosting solution for a web application
I think that is just their App Engine for Business costs: (for others' reference: http://code.google.com/appengine/business/)

You may want the extra services that this gives, but it is not the standard App Engine offering.

If you are not using App Engine for Business, the costs are for CPU and bandwidth, etc., and not for users, and so should be significantly less than that.

edit: The standard pricing structure is at http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/billing.html and there is a free quota as well which is pretty generous.

nudge··on Best(cost and scalability) hosting solution for a web application
If you don't mind developing for their data structure, I think Google App Engine makes scaling pretty easy.
nudge··on [dead]
Already posted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2234379
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