systemtrigger

Beating people who are very young is wrong. That seems axiomatic to me. I do not have a medical journal article bookmarked to satisfy your question but can suggest "On Children and Childrearing" by Henry H. Lindner M.D. http://henrylindner.net/Writings/Childrearing.html

> Spanking is far less emotionally manipulative than twenty nagging reprimands, it’s fast, and it’s certainly effective.

I disagree. Spanking is coercive, psychologically harmful and it teaches the child their body is ruled by a bully.

Wow, it looks like you worked really hard on that stuff. I bet it's a solid product suite.

I would never buy it. But take that with salt: I'm not your potential market.

What I might potentially buy (and for a much higher price) is a screencast of you showing me how to build a FB app.

You've built ~60 FB apps. IMHO the product you should be selling is 'How to build a FB app.' And if I were you (and if I were a good presenter) I would do screencasts.

Your extra investment in front of the computer would, what, a week? Leverage what you've already done, showcase it nicely, and build a tutorial.

Check out railstutorial.com. That would be my model.

Yes I would pivot if I were you. But big caveat: you know this space much better than I do. I've done zero market research on FB app How-Tos, manuals etc. I haven't even read the beginner tutorial on how to make a FB app.

But I know that scores of people would pay to learn what you know.

Good luck!

Don Quixote by Cervantes, or Shogun by Clavell.

Corollary: Some ideas are vastly more lucrative than others. Which is why it's useful to spend a week listing your top 999 ideas. Execution is a PITA so choose carefully.

The guy said he spent 3 years on it _while holding a full time job_. That's not equivalent to "spending 3 years on it." He's trying to make a forum for congressional bills and his v1 looks good. Instead of criticizing him for releasing a less-than-optimal service, how about channelling that energy into a mockup or something tangibly constructive?

Your argument is valid for standard correspondence. It is not valid for commercial marketing. A well-designed HTML email will look stunning in the vast majority of email clients. If marketing ROI is the goal, it is best to ignore the edge cases you mention.

You and I are in the minority. Imagine if Groupon sent their daily flyer in plain text: Click-through would plummet.

Yes. They seem to have it down to a science. Way beyond my area of expertise.

Not yet but I have increasingly been clicking on AdWords ads so I'm sure it's just a matter of time. The guy in marketing at the small company I'm working for spends $20k a day on AdWords campaigns and he tells me it's extremely lucrative if you know what you're doing so yes obviously a lot of people click on those ads. The affiliate program we have pays out six figures annually to dozens of affiliates who reinvest the bulk of that into their AdWords campaigns. Lots of people click those ads. The HN crowd, by and large, does not.

You guys built that in 24 hours? Killer job! I skimmed the javascript... How do you collaborate on something like that? Does one person write most of javascript, and one person mostly do design, etc? Or is everyone mostly working on some aspect of the javascript?

It's also time he could be devoting to productive activities. Blogging and creating infographics for daily posts are time wasters. Given his desperate financial situation he needs laser focus on making cash. Which for most people means "get a job and give up your hobby until you get some savings in the bank."

Your software sounds clever. Are you confident CafePress will let you use it? How automated is the process? You're planning to use it yourself, correct, not sell the software? A blog post on your lessons learned sounds interesting, definitely.

What stops the site owner from tracking keystrokes?

Facebook already has video voicemail. Half the time it breaks during a recording and you have to start your message over again. If you can program better than the Facebook team, success! Even if you build a worse product a lot of people might nevertheless try it, and there's your ad opportunity.

The project collaboration management space is pretty crowded. If you go down that road, differentiate. Own a segment. The work of a telecommuter is identical in most ways to the work of a commuter. Go niche or don't play.

Parents can't buy enough toys and crap for their kids. Make something that will truly engage kids. Your idea of filtering public domain search results has limited financial potential. Make a game. People pay for games, no one pays for search.

This adjective clarifies nothing. We don't know how many weekends it was or if you're telling the truth. Besides it's irrelevant what days of the week you pushed the keys. Call it "a project" or MVP, IMHO.

Who is paying for your college tuition? If it's Mom and Dad, I think you're a fool if you leave school. A degree from a reputable college significantly improves your market bargaining position. How much of your future earning potential are you willing to gamble on your startup idea? How brilliant is your business plan and how accomplished are your hacking skills?

> I feel confident that I could start a successful startup around the idea.

How confident and how successful? Many YC companies aren't ramen profitable. What makes you so positive that your startup is a sure thing?

I'm not saying you can't do it. I'm just saying there are a lot of smart, miserable people in the deadpool--and you should know why you're special. Make sure your strategy is solid, check your assumptions, check them again, and good luck.

> I can always come back and finish.

Are you positive you'd have enough money to pay the remainder of your tuition and that the admissions department would welcome you back?

Ask him "What is your second-best idea?" Also: "Please share an example of a 'Fortune 5000' business that has not yet been built, but if it were would be a very clever business model."

Very cool. Any chance you plan to integrate with Firebug?

Another way is to impose a hard stop at the 7.5 minute mark. If after a yellow light and a red light the presenter is still yammering, cut off their mic.

Autoadvance is inhumane. Speakers should not be expected to have their timing down so well that every slide transitions smoothly. The presenter will inevitably be a couple of seconds off on every slide.

I am impressed how well you pulled it off. It is hard enough to write, memorize and deliver a 7.5 minute speech. Then to add a sadistic constraint like autoadvancing slides, that raises the bar. But you nailed it. Hats off.

Shane's conclusions regarding public policy run counter to most of what I have read. He says:

"We need to reduce the incentives for marginal entrepreneurs to start businesses by reducing the...tax benefits that encourage more and more people to start businesses. Because the average existing new firm is more productive than the average new firm, we would be better off economically if we eliminated policies that encourage people to start businesses instead of taking jobs working for others."

One of his premises from earlier in the book is that most startups in which barriers to entry are low are colossal wastes of time. This may be valid but it does not follow that GDP would improve if we made companies even harder to start.

Notes from the book: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17455578/hn/illusions-notes.html

Nice. Browseable: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17455578/hn/design/1.html

The OP added clarification after I posted my answer to the original Yes/No question. I was the first to comment so it now looks as if I didn't read the full question. That said, my reply hardly added to the conversation and I regret it.

Yes.

Letscrate makes you wait for the upload to finish before you get the link. Sendoid gives you a link instantly, regardless of file size.

The free version of Letscrate limits files to 50MB and your library caps out at 200MB; the $9/month plan allows larger files and caps out at 10GB. Sendoid is free for all file sizes and imposes no caps on the size of your library.

Letscrate offers no security measures. Sendoid creates an encrypted link between sharer and receiver, and has options for password-protection and one-time usage.

No, I am arguing the opposite. I said there are many people who consider themselves to be web designers who do not have the skills to implement their ideas. These people are common in marketing agencies and all they do is make PSDs for devs to implement. This is a problem when the dev is faster at doing it all by himself, including design which he can often do just using Firebug. I am saying that front-end devs are designers by definition and in general they should avoid working for other designers who are stuck in Photoshop.

I think the author may be making a hasty generalization but I agree with the sentiment that many web designers are self congratulating blowhards. I can't tell you how many times I've heard some self described "creative" wax endlessly about color palettes, their feelings or design in general. The result is often a Photoshop file they can't implement so the file makes its way to a "coder" or if they're being generous a "developer." The tragedy for the developer, apart from being the lowest in the chain of command and first to be laid-off, is that he may be better at design than the Designer. Just because someone calls themselves a designer doesn't mean they are better at design than someone who calls themselves a developer or hacker. If you are good in Firebug's HTML tab and you care about every pixel, IMHO you are just as deserving to be called a designer as someone whose sole output is Photoshop files.

Yes, outside the grid to the left looks good in a full browser -- but as you mention, that wrecks the mobile layout. I wouldn't worry about it too much -- where you've got it isn't bad, it's just a little hard to read on the busier background. Btw, on an iphone the max-height you're applying to .app_summary is causing a little bit of overlap: http://idea.s3.amazonaws.com/appdiem2.png.

Sure, feel free to email me -- address in my profile -- or just reply here.

You could maybe try putting it in the top right, like this: http://idea.s3.amazonaws.com/appdiem.png. The problem with that though is if you get a long app name it's going to overlap.