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The answer to your second question is covered here: http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/08/a_short_rant_about_hosting/ ("Why not go with Linode/AWS/[other virtualized hosting]?")

tl;dr - I/O performance

Nice idea for a site.

Design feedback: Perhaps this is just my personal preference but I found the text very difficult to read (typeface choice + not enough leading). I also could barely make out hyperlinks because the colour was so close to the rest of the text and there was no underlining.

I'm using Chrome on a Mac.

I assure you it wasn't me.

The Offline feature for Gmail I was referring to was the new Chrome app. It's mentioned in the Google Blog post I linked to and can be found here on the Chrome Webstore: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejidjjhkpiempkbhmp...

When you wrote "Google and Offline are like Oil and Water", I took you to mean (1) that the two don't mix, and (2) you think this is a deliberate strategy or approach by Google, and that it's wrong.

I think (1) is correct, but I accept that I may have inferred too much with (2).

If so, please accept my apologies: newish user here finding my feet.

I just felt it necessary to point out that Google has not abandoned offline capability, and understands its importance. I believe employees use a version of Google Docs internally that has offline functionality, as they have beta-tested new Google products / features before.

In the HN thread from last week for the new app announcement, one of the Gmail offline team members contributes with comments about why offline is proving tricky to implement:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2946150 (user's name is nex3)

There's also further comments about how other Google employees have contributed on HN about how offline access to Gmail, Docs and Calendar is understood to be fundamental for ChromeOS.

None at hand -- but I do think the Wikipedia page for brand is an interesting read.[1] It has a section on branding approaches and unlike a lot of articles I found on a quick 15 minute Google just now it's refreshingly dry and hype-free.

Having said that about articles, I think for every method that people claim is the "perfect way to come up with a brand", there's a story of brands that became established but had origins that didn't involve mindmapping, brainstorming, SEO tests, research groups and the like. Two examples from the UK, one now a little faded: Amstrad, which is just AMS Trading shortened, AMS being the initials of Lord Sugar, and Virgin, which one of Richard Branson's early employees suggested because none of them had a lot of experience of running a business.

Go for a walk and one might pop into your head. You never know! If you're in NZ as your username suggests (?) then you certainly have the scenery for inspiration :-)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand

Internet.bs for me. Very cheap, straightforward management, quick to propagate changes.

That is a bit offhand. Google has added an offline feature to Gmail, and are rolling out access to Calendar and Docs, as they outlined when they announced the Chromebooks at I/O earlier this year.[0]

All this replaces the previous work they did for online/offline through Google Gears -- which they're continuing to support until they've migrated data into HTML5 features.

[0] http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/using-gmail-calendar-a...

You're very welcome. Good luck! If you do decide to come up with a brand name there are lots of articles online on methods and things to consider.

I always remember the tale of George Eastman. He was looking for something short, something that was easy to spell and unambiguous to pronounce in lots of languages, and something that meant nothing. The result? Kodak.

I recommend The Black Mirror, an anthology of German and Austrian science fiction: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Mirror-Other-Stories-Anthology/d...

Also German, and 50 years old this year (!): the Perry Rhodan series.[0] It was being translated into English but I'm not sure if it still is. The earlier 1960s American English publications were very popular, I believe.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan

I see. I wouldn't consider it a priority request. And don't get me wrong: I think the site's functionality at the moment is great: quick, simple, straightforward. I've already emailed it to the three people I know who work shifts :-)

A very neat, useful application.

I second some of the other feedback here (saving details, better labelling of on or off days, .ics export).

One extra feature you might want to add: ability to check a date in the future without having to scroll through the calendar months. So, in your wedding example, I could put in my shift details, the start date, and the date I'm checking, and it would tell me whether I'm free or not.

This is all solid advice. On the last point ("one-man shop"), Jason Fried wrote a column for Inc. on being a one-man company and feeling and fighting the need to exaggerate its size: http://www.inc.com/magazine/201106/dont-exaggerate-your-size...

As I said in a previous Raspberry Pi thread[0], the comparison is supposed to be with high / school school textbooks, not college ones. School textbooks are cheaper than those used at university.

Raspberry Pi is a charity "to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level" and the device is aimed, in part at least, for use in teaching programming to children.[1]

$25 (roughly £15 at current rates) is a good rough price for a school textbook in the UK. A quick Amazon search shows this.[2]

Bear in mind, too, that the product is aimed in part at developing countries, where school textbooks may be cheaper.

[0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2949932 [1] http://www.raspberrypi.org/?page_id=2 [2] http://www.amazon.co.uk/school-textbooks-Books/s?ie=UTF8&...

I agree. I think a lot of people do this already, and not just for sites where they can't remember the exact URL. It's often just as quick to type 'bbc' or 'facebook' into the Google search bar, especially if Google is your homepage. You don't have to worry about typos, either. Some computer users I know, older users, access everything that way. When I asked one why, she replied that she found the browser address bar "fiddly".

Earlier this year Bing stated that "about 30%" of search queries are navigational.[1]

[1] http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/20... (paragraph before penultimate screenshot)

Some suggestions in these Quora threads:

http://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-feedback-plugin-that-I-can-u...

http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-website-feedback-widge...

Or, a couple of jQuery examples (there are probably others):

http://plugins.jquery.com/project/imfeedback

http://wpaoli.building58.com/2009/08/jquery-animated-feedbac...

This is a (lengthy) summary-cum-reaction-to-cum-review of the book by Douglas Rushkoff.

A good related read is Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget: http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-Gadget-Manifesto/dp/030738...

Writer, philosopher Alain de Botton: "We should cite our age not by how many years we've lived, but by how many we statistically have left: a 70 yr old UK male as 8 etc."

http://twitter.com/#!/alaindebotton/status/95809899929407488

I am glad somebody posted this article. I found it very thought-provoking.

Some background:

The original paper by the Jesuit priest was discussed on HN a few months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2421107 (includes a link to the abstract of the article, in Italian)

Here's the website of the Catholic open source advocacy group mentioned: http://www.eleutheros.org/en/

One of its cofounders pops up in the comments at the Economist to defend accusations that the Catholic Church is jumping on a bandwagon ("if you can't beat em, join em" is the accusation).

Here's the Eric Raymond post mentioned: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3094

"The Cathedral and the Bazaar" is available on his website: http://catb.org/esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/

.co.uk now too.

This is a great system. Depending on the type of emails you're sending, you could also use Gmail Labs' Canned Response feature to speed up the follow-ups.

I think the comparison is supposed to be with high / secondary school textbooks, which are cheaper than university ones. Raspberry Pi is a charity "to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level" and the device is aimed, in part at least, for use in teaching programming to children.[1]

[1] http://www.raspberrypi.org/?page_id=2

I think you should emphasise that the browsing history is stored remotely. That looks to be the main advantage for me, because for Chrome users at least, the inbuilt history search is already very powerful. (As an example, I visited your site, then hit Cmd-Y and searched for 'italian restaurant' and it came up straight away.)

Google Account users can already activate Web History to get a similar service. Not everyone is a Google Account holder, of course. Does your service offer any additional features to Google's offering? What about a different privacy policy? For a service that will essentially store all my browsing history I found that section in particular a little sparse.

Previously on HN:

1. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2935773

2. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2932910

Drag and drop in Google Docs (and Gmail) is HTML5.[1] I don't think WebKit supports it fully, though. I am using Chrome 15 canary and when I visited html5test.com I got "partial" for the "dropzone" attribute under "Drag and drop". Same for Safari.

[1] http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/04/google-turns-to-html5-for-g...

As I understand it, vi's author, Bill Joy, used a terminal that placed arrow symbols on hjkl because it did not have dedicated arrow keys.

Wikipedia backs up this story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HJKL_keys#HJKL_keys

Here's a single page version: http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/gold-coins-the-...