1,141 karma · joined August 22, 2012
I contacted the founder the day it was released, 4 days after and 2 weeks after, all with well thought out emails which I spent some serious time on. Unfortunately he didn't respond to any off them, not even with a simple "fuck off."
Honestly, though, doesn't using VoIP seem way harder than pressing one button on Facebook?
As someone who's never used it, I would have to go through the effort of Googling for a client or an online app, figuring out how to use it, adding my billing information and then actually paying for it, when Facebook is completely free!
Also, this is always a good time to bring up how ridiculous international calls are from the UK for anyone who doesn't know. [1] My 22 minute Facebook conversation with my nan over Facebook last night would have cost me £22 + a small connection charge.
[1] http://www.vodafone.co.uk/discover-vodafone/managing-my-cost...
I'm 20 years old, I feel that's somehow relevant before I give my long list of anecdotes.
When I woke up this morning, I checked my feed, 3 notifications! The first (ranked by importance of course) was that one of my cousins was pregnant. She lives in Spain, I'm the only member of my family in the UK, how would I otherwise have found out? Snail mail? Pah! Takes too long and my address isn't always static for longer than a few months. Phone? Really? Do you know how much international calls cost when you aren't on a Silly Valley wage?! E-Mail? ... Do people actually still do the whole E-Mail thing? And isn't E-Mail completely broken anyway?
The second was a party event my friend was throwing and had invited me too this weekend, it took one click and now I know all about it, I accepted and left a message.
So in 30 seconds on one application, I've discovered my cousin is going to have a baby, congratulated her and let her know that I "like" this outcome, told my friend I'm cool to hang out this weekend and asked him if he wants to go halves on a Pizza Saturday.
Last night I used it to talk over video with my grandma who's been ill recently (and also coincidentally lives abroad) because she doesn't know what a Skoop (Skype) is and MSN no longer exists, but Facebook is still here, she's already on it and she uses it frequently.
After this I checked up on my company feed to look at photos of my co-workers birthday party and the comments on the photo I took (and uploaded in seconds to the internet after applying filters to make him prettier) of him opening his presents.
I literally just got out of bed and I have a message already from my girlfriend (who's out of texts) asking me what we're doing tonight, I've told her it's a surprise and send her a photo to give her a clue.
Anyway...
The point of this is that while you may detest Facebook for whatever privacy issues you may have (and lets face it, other companies such as our beloved Google are often much, much worse) it is a fantastic application making it easier than ever to connect to the people who I actually care about (for the record, I only keep 40 friends on there), if perhaps a little out of your particular use case.
What I liked most about this, as a Chrome user, was one click installation through an add-on. It was as simple as clicking a link and pow! It's in. This is both a testament to yourself and the Chrome team themselves.
Now... All we need is an iPhone app and my HN reading experience will be complete...
These guys help you to perfect contracts, from building the forms (as complicated as you need, they do hospitals, financial services and more so yours should be a piece of cake) to sending them, sending reminders and making sure the client follows the correct funnels.
That aside: https://www.echosign.adobe.com/en/home.html
Echo sign is what we use here for our employment contracts, it's all legally binding and it's fast and easy.
-------------------------------
After reviewing the source code, they use javascript to submit a form which redirects you to another website, carrying along some marketing data such as what brought you to them, etc.
document.location.href = "http://www.google.com/ "
or the HTML meta redirect:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.google.com/ ">
Both of which can redirect your browser to another location.
It's pretty big news, as far as I know they are the first major MMO to swap to WebGL. They were using Java and had been building on it for nearly 10 years but they found that WebGL offered better graphics performance and easier programming than it's Java equivalent so decided to switch. It is slower, probably around 10 or 15%, but offset by all the new graphical features, longer draw distances, more vivid colours, etc.
I'm on the other end of the scale - if I did move to Silicone Valley, my income would at least triple within the first couple of years... Assuming success and a visa.
This is enough to live by and enough to keep myself entertained but it isn't enough to be able to save, it's not a viable income level to be able to risk my home and my safety on a job I could lose in two months time.
... I should move to silicone valley. Things seem much easier out there.
When I go home at night and my girlfriend is sat there, the last thing I want to say is "hunny, I'll have to find another job. Super awesome startup-v4 is out of cash, I'll probably have a new job in a month but we'll have to tighten our belts until then."
The question I have to ask myself is this: What's best for my future family? That I 100%, undoubtedly love my job, or that I 100% always put food on the table?
For me it's the latter. For most billionaires, it's probably the former.
Honestly, I don't believe this is a 'Buy Tumblr and stick an advert in every <div>' deal, it just doesn't make sense, they know from experience it will destroy the ecosystem of Tumblr. It would make so much more sense to integrate Tumblr with their own products and build on top of it.
They have this image (which they rightly deserve) of being a big, bumbling ancient Behemoth of a company which provides no real use or purpose to the internet, but this could well be part of a bigger revitalization.
Cutting off the fat of the company, bringing in new properties with the intention of keeping them alive, changing the company dynamics to make it a better place to work, bringing in more talent and having a much more youthful outlook on things... These are all good things.
It remains to be seen whether or not Yahoo can perform this transition but things look good for them, if they stick to their guns and simply improve Tumblr without lowering its value to the community, I can see a real future for Yahoo, one where it isn't just irrelevant, but where it makes it's own products and creates new and exciting applications.
What I really want to see, is whether Yahoo is capable of making the move to generation XI and what it brings to the table now it's finally left the time warp it was stuck in.
HN doesn't tend to take too kindly to none-ycombinator job postings, it goes against the spirit of the site, but as someone else mentioned, puzzles and challenges tend to bring the eyeballs to your site.
But they showed faith in me when I really needed a job, they hired me on the day of the interview and even paid me early when I was about to be homeless (again.)
I love the culture at my company, I love table tennis at lunch and Bacon Fridays, I enjoy my work and the people I'm with. Regardless of where I want to be in 5 years, why would I give all that up for a minor chance at being rich?
That being said, I am a big fan of CodeIgniter, I love the simplicity of it's MVC system and I wish I did more work with it.
I'm 20, I want to go to my simple 9 to 5 job, tackle a really difficult challenge, maybe debug some Magento because that's where the real challenge is at my company, then maybe for the last couple of hours I'll work on some of our in house products to enjoy the freedom of custom development.
Then I'll go home, make something to eat (at a reasonable hour) and hopefully spend a great night cuddling with my girlfriend while we watch old movies on my laptop.
While being a billionaire business man is very enticing, right now, at this point in my life, all I want is to be happy, and working 80 hour weeks to risk it on a 3% chance to make it something amazing just isn't worth it for it.
Re-uploaded the GIF file for him, hopefully this one loads for you.