Ah, well, not much you can do about that, then.
41 karma · joined April 30, 2008
Edit: It turns out this varies—maybe. Here's a funny thread on an opticians' forum on the topic: http://www.optiboard.com/forums/showthread.php/11990-Hipaa-q... They don't come up with much, but they sure don't like online retailers.
The Massachusetts Board of Registration in Optometry requires optometrists (not opticians) to enter PD on prescriptions at a patient's request, in which case it would be covered by HIPAA: http://www.mass.gov/ocabr/licensee/dpl-boards/op/regulations...
The New Jersey State Board of Optometrists, on the other hand, takes the opposite position: http://njpublicsafety.com/ca/faq/optfaqsII.htm#4b
In comments to the FTC the National Association of Optometrists and Opticians said it "agrees that patients and eyeglass consumers have the right to a copy of medical records, which will include the pupillary distance if that measurement has been taken by either the prescriber or the dispenser" (emphasis theirs) but takes no position on whether or not the measurement should be required. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_comments/2... (pp.12)
So... that settles nothing.
What does that mean? It seems like a contradiction in terms. Stretched-canvas prints were invented for the interior design market. While I won't go so far as to say that a museum has never hung a canvas print, I've never seen it and I'd be surprised to see it done except as a self-conscious thumbing-of-the-nose at the establishment.
Some thoughts:
* As others have mentioned, it's too easy to single-click accidentally and create a note.
* Pasting a URL to an image isn't discoverable. An explicit button for this on the toolbar, or one that appears when a new note is created, would be better.
* That aside, I really, really want to be able to just drag and drop images from my computer onto the page.
* As others have noted I wish I could zoom out to see more notes. The "map" is a good start but I think it should be fully zoomable.
* Chat is cool but it sort of takes you out of the experience. Try experimenting with integrating the chat into the corkboard metaphor, maybe: Instead of a pop-up in the lower-left corner, let me create post-its that are actually live chat rooms.
Anyway, this is a great start. I hope you keep improving it!
"Well, it's true that Spine was inspired by Backbone, an excellent library, and its controller API is very similar. However, the similarities end there. Internally the library works very differently. For example, Spine has no need for Collections, which are required for pretty much every model in Backbone. Spine provides a class library, and has very different ideas when it comes to server sync. Lastly, Spine is much simpler and half the size, go and check out the source."
And, as gilesc also points out, Pandora regularly changes their encryption keys, which makes maintaining this kind of software kind of obnoxious. (The solution to that problem, I think, is to make the software download and parse the .swf file on startup or just on failure to yank out those fresh encryption keys itself, but I never tried it.)
I just cringe a bit when I see these sorts of apps, not because I think they shouldn't exist (seriously, Pandora, just release a goddamn API), but because I'm just picturing the lawsuit hammer coming down on the well-intentioned developers who are just Pandora fans.
Regardless, I applaud PromyLOPh's work and am keeping my fingers crossed for his continued lack of legal fees.
[1]: https://github.com/PromyLOPh/pianobar/tree/master/src/libpia...
I worked on a project very similar to this (and of course the others linked in this thread) for awhile (because I had a need for just such a service), so: 1) Kudos to you, the developer for actually shipping, which I did not do, and 2) I agree with others that you're pricing himself out of the market.
Personally I think that $0.99-1.99 is the sweet spot, and you should tweak your cost and page counts to match that. I've never had to fax more than ten pages, so if I went to this site with my 3-6 pages I'd scoff--"Five bucks for three pages? Pffff." But that's me--maybe lots of people need to send 10-15 pages. You'd want to do some market research to figure what are the most common page counts.
Off the top of my head, though, I'd charge $0.99 for the first five pages. Disregarding marginal costs, that's 50% profit per transaction (assuming you eat the cost of a cover sheet)--at least! 125% profit for three-page faxes. After that you can tack on your $0.25/page and it's all gravy.
And, of course, this would be an easy thing to A/B test.
Edit: By the way, if you were willing to buy $500 in InterFax credits up-front (instead of $10 for their smallest package) you could do 10 pages/$0.99 with at least 33% profit. If you went down for the $2k package you're up to 48% profit.
With 15 pages for $5 you're looking at a minimum 184% profit. So I can understand the draw--but I don't think the average customer will.
Edit 2: Changed numbers to factor in cover sheets, which you'll likely want to eat the cost of.
I'm partial to it because it has a cheeky alternate URL: http://steakoverflow.com/
As for Google's rankings, I don't think these sites are any worse off than the Stack Exchange sites, which all share the same basic design and markup and many of the same boilerplate About, etc. pages.
Is it great for users, i.e. people actually trying to find answers? Well, that's an open question. I think ultimately it is because someone looking for FarmVille answers (yes, Mahalo has such a site, and yes, an incredible number of people have FarmVille questions) is going to get more relevant results than they'll find on Mahalo Answers proper. If these sites didn't exist would they find better, or faster, answers to their questions? I think sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn't. Generally answers on Mahalo Answers are higher-quality than, say, Yahoo! Answers, which I see showing up in the results for many of my Google searches.
I don't blame anyone for disliking the practice--it does have a bit of a smell--but I do think it's a good business decision for Calacanis et al.
(Disclosure: I used to work for Jason Calacanis at Weblogs, Inc. and Propeller (nee Netscape.com) and enjoyed the experience. I haven't talked to him in a couple years but I bet if I called him up he'd do me a solid. Oh, I was also an early Mahalo beta-tester and use Mahalo Answers once every couple of months.)