phereford

Preface: What I am about to say is a complete and utter assumption.

One would assume that ATT did some analysis on bandwidth usage patterns amongst heavy users. They probably came to the conclusion that the top 5% of bandwidth hogs account for X% of their entire bandwidth throughput.

ATT's approach doesnt really solve their problem very much though. If someone has extremely sporadic bandwidth usage but uses gigs at a time, limiting these users won't do much for solving whatever problem they are trying to solve. Maybe their data modeling/forecasting is so accurate that they are able to segment those 5% into various segments and limit that way.

I donate to OCW as well (LOVE OCW) but I don't think any of this information is on a closed system. I believe JSTOR allowed all mit ip addresses access (for free) to every article in their system.

Aaron's downloads came from an MIT address to the JSTOR database.

I agree with you that knowledge needs to be more accessible, but this is not the method to achieve it.

He violated Terms of Service for a large database of journals at an egregious rate. If he had stolen say...10,000 articles this may be a non-issue. The fact that they can tie 4,000,000 articles to him is what makes this so bad.

The other part that is extremely bad is his measure to continually evade MIT MAC banning through spoofing. That measure of evasion proves, to some extent, his intent to steal and is a form of computer fraud.

Okay...now I am a tool and can't find that study...but here is my personal account of reviewers helping downloads for my old application.

We got written up in Thrillist boston, Phandroid, Androinica, Droid-Life, TalkAndroid, and Gizmodo. From all of these review sites we reached roughly ~18k downloads in a week (our product is a fantasy football app).

While the majority of those downloads came from Gizmodo, we definitely would not have been able to get there without being written up on all the other blogs.

From those 18k downloads, we averaged about 11k active through the first 3 weeks of the application and it steadily declined after that (assuming that they were bored of their fantasy league or moved on to another app).

The thought behind the reviewers is if its a source that is trustworthy or has built a following, their post/review is more meaningful than an ad. These reviewers are an AMAZING source of word of mouth for app developers while an ad is simply a pay to click.

If you want to see a chart of our downloads over time, I'd be more than willing to share to show you the value of these relationships as opposed to a one and done ad campaign :).

I do understand your reasoning and logic behind your belief. If you were to ask someone now: "What application do you use to video chat with?" the answer is most likely going to sway heavy to Skype. If you ask that question in 3 to 9 months time and that answer has not changed, then Skype will be just fine.

Personally, I don't like the idea of video chatting through Facebook. I use skype exclusively to video chat because its what I am accustomed too, it's the application I trust. Trust being the keyword there because I do not trust Facebook.

I don't think Skype is a competitor to Facebook at all. Facebook has had a good partnership with Microsoft for several years and have finally found a good social element that Microsoft brings to the table (Skype).

Skype is great for video calls, Phone calls...and thats about it. Facebook does everything else.

Totally agree with nik here.

Mobile ads are not the means to acquire new customers. Relationships with review sites, blogs, and other media outlets is your best bet. A good review can get you some pretty good uptake. We got reviewed in several Android blogs and reached 18k downloads in a little under a week (our app was free).

I haven't experimented much with mobile ads primarily because they aren't effective and won't ever be effective. At least, that's what the studies say :).

I am going to start off by saying I haven't read the article. With that said, didn't Google deny Facebook from scraping contacts off of gmail a year (or two) ago? I forget the exact method they implemented, but I know it stunted Facebook's ability to scrape the emails for a good while.

How is this any different?

I don't think this is too much to ask. Anyone who uses apps on Facebook are well aware of the permissions and probably deny some apps beacause of what they ask for.

Sure some of the Android permissions are a little obtuse, but users are definitely aware of those permissions that are important.

While this opinion piece seemed to create the notion that the FBI caused his demise, no one but Hemmingway knows of the actual incidents that took place to lead him to that belief.

I am sure there were many other incidents occurring in his life that contributed just as much to his early departure.

I can only imagine what it was like back in that era, specializing in a SPECIFIC field with no tangents and suddenly being unable to perform your specialty due to any reason. If anything, this probably lead more to his demise than the FBI.

I got a "Database Connection Error" (I am sure your server got hit hard with being top 5 on HN). :) The irony makes me giddy.

Okay. My point is what is active? Someone who logs in once a year? Once a month? Sure 50% of "active" users log in once a day, but what about the other 50%?

I dont think when Facebook said they had 500 million users that they meant they had 500 million active users. I thought I saw a post today (or this week) that they hit 750 million users (without the word active in it...or so I think).

The definition of active is so obtuse and varies wildly from company to company that it doesnt even matter :).

Mobile browser market is small potatoes compared to desktop browser market :(.

I have been running my startup for a little over 2 years now (bootstrapped). After inputting my constraints/situation to the simulation, it was pretty much spot on. I definitely wouldn't argue with what the numbers showed up as :)

Totally agree with what base said. The hindrance in developing for all phones is the OS. Some ATT/T-Mobile phones are not allowed to upgrade to 2.2, heck sometimes not even 1.6+.

I ran into that problem with an app I launched last year. Doh!

While yes, Abrash's point was that you are a hero because you finished your project on-time, patio11 has a great point.

There have been many a horror story of long long LONG hours posted on here ranging from RockStar (lost the link) and many others because of a looming deadline with no working benefits for those extra hours.

The AOL buyout has really pushed me to stay away from anything they write. While the quality of articles and writing was dropping pre-buyout, it has definitely gotten much worse post-buyout.

You can't use the logos of any NFL team without their consent. Stats are fine...logos are not.

Yea I agree. Have you check out sportsdatahub.com ?

While their UI is not as great as yours, you might be able to generate some ideas for visualization from their platform.

Its not really of use to anyone playing fantasy football, but it is definitely beautiful.

While the app is somewhat limited in functionality, the UI is awesome and the usability is cool. Good job