tbgvi

This sounds like at least one rationale for an anti-trust case.

The debit rates you are referencing are for in-person transactions where a pin number is entered. Debit cards can be used for online transactions but the interchange cost is more like 1.8% + $0.10.

Pre-approving a transaction would do the trick and it wouldn't hold up the line, good call.

Hopefully increasing the response time to > 2s (whether it's settable in the API or just has a longer timeout) is on the roadmap, I can think of lots of future use cases where you would want a human in the loop on authorizations.

Looks like a great product and props to you and your team for shipping this.

One of the concept mockups says patent pending. If the author is attempting to patent this I can see why he wants to re-open the established standard, but there isn't much value in changing how the buttons are arranged. And frankly, if he's trying to patent this button layout, it doesn't matter if it's any better because it will never be used due to the patent.

The future is more likely dialing by voice than it is a re-arranged button layout.

Voter registration data is available for purchase, but only by registered political committees and can't be used for commercial purposes. This also doesn't include a lot of the breached data like partial SS#'s and drivers license #'s. As a Chicagoan I'm not too happy about this breach, and there has been surprisingly little coverage of it locally.

For payments related news I regularly check pymnts.com and greensheet.com

This was created a few weeks ago for a local hackathon run by a sustainability focused non-profit in Chicago. Placed first out of around 13 teams and thought I'd run it past the HN crowd. Unfortunately we only have data for Chicago at the moment, but the team & I plan on making improvements and adding data.

Some more background is here: http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140707/downtown/how-green-i...

Quora is a great resource for learning about how certain startups gained traction. There's even a specific topic geared towards it here: http://www.quora.com/How-Did-X-Get-Traction-1

Sounds like you've used it & would recommend it?

It definitely seems interesting and possibly valuable, but I'd be a bit apprehensive about it. IE. I feel like its much better to get introduced organically to and advisor than pay for it. When it's pay per minute it seems like they're incentivized to take on anyone whether they can provide solid advice or not. Also feel like there would be a stigma like "here's this guy who can't get an advisor so he has to pay for it".

Edit: I should probably just try it, potential value > potential awkwardness :)

I think strategy/tactics for getting initial users depends on what you're selling and who you're selling to.

Best advice I can give would be to figure out who needs this the most, find someone like that in your area, and start a dialogue with them. 1-on-1 selling definitely isn't scalable, but you can ask them things like 'how do you find out about new services you can use for your business', 'what blogs/news sources do you read', 'who's an influential person in your line of business' etc... Once you have this info it will be obvious (hopefully) where you should be focusing your attention.

Reading up on lean startup methodology (if you haven't already) would help get you up to speed on this sort of process. Good luck!

This is probably referring to local business directories, which Google uses in part to drive their local search listings (the results with the map & location pins).

That being said it's ironic that Yahoo is providing a service to help people rank higher on Google.

Great idea, instantly reminded me of 'Lose It or Lose It' which is the same concept but for weight loss (loseitorloseit.com). Putting money on the line is always a great motivator.

Whenever you get some completed projects it would be cool if there was a gallery to check them out.

This absolutely works, if you've developed an app you should definitely have a support/feedback form somewhere.

Just launched our second app and we decided to include this, and I think it's had a hugely positive impact on our ratings and reviews. Where people would have left a bad review before, now they're submitting feedback straight to us. It's also helped us prioritize some things after getting the same question repeatedly.

It's a little more work (we've been following up on all feedback), but it seems to go a long way.

I've been working on exactly this for the last couple years. You can find us at cashierlive.com - my email is in my profile if you have any questions.

GigaOM seems to cover enterprise/b2b startups more than other tech blogs. You've probably run across it already, but if not then it's worth a look.

It tough because they restrict you to a pretty small space for keywords. I stumbled into this one... but you should try using the names of competitive apps in your keywords, or perhaps complementary apps.

I un-intentionally did this once (one of our "competitors" had a fairly broad/generic app name), and it definitely seemed to kick start our downloads.

Not sure how often you plan on updating your app, but I'd definitely recommend experimenting with the keywords. Unfortunately you can only change them when pushing out an update, so you'd need to update frequently to do a lot of experimentation with them.

Check out PhoneGap and their new service PhoneGap Build, it might be what you're looking for:

http://build.phonegap.com

Touché. I wasn't sure if this was a joke or not though. The fact that people actually do this when naming something made it pretty hard to figure out if he was serious.

Just curious... why would you want to do that even if you're stuck? This is more of a quick brainstorm method, I don't think he's even looked to see if the domain name is available at this point.

Also, I'd rather have something like "getflint.com" or "flintapp.com" than "flnnt.com" or something. When you start getting into cutesy abstractions like that it becomes hard to remember.

Just wondering how you'll handle spam? What if someone goes to fiverr, gets a couple hundred spam tweets, then buys it for a couple bucks?

Really interesting idea though, reminds me of Pay with a tweet.

I've had an app rejected for something very minor, but still something to consider. The app required a login and I didn't include a test account login/password for the app reviewer. Even though there was a way to register via the app, they wanted a test account.

There's a spot when you submit where you can add notes for the reviewer, that's where information like that goes.

I didn't read it that way at all. He was asked what geographical areas are seeing a bunch of activity and he mentioned Estonia. I didn't see any comparisons between Boston and Estonia in there.

I'd guess that the reason their bribes were higher isn't because they had more power, but because they had more money. If a politician is making 50k, a 10k bribe would be significant. That same 10k is a drop in the bucket for a tv station owner with millions.

False alarm? I'm in the busiest room on Turntable.fm right now and there's 15 people in here. Maybe 200 total using it right now. Looks like the US-only restriction isn't working out too well.

No, you're right :) Swiping a card makes it a card present transaction, which have lower rates than keyed entry. Some processors will even shut you down if too many of your transactions are keyed (worried about fraud).

From what I can tell, this just does the scanning and doesn't actually process the transaction though? Could be wrong on that. Also, 15 cents per scan seems expensive.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder :)

I would look around on Dribbble (http://www.dribbble.com) and find someone that fits the style you're looking for. Not everyone there is available, but a lot are.

I feel like prettying your site up should only be a minor consideration when doing a redesign. You need to have clear goals, and some hypotheses on how to reach those goals. It sounds like his hypothesis was "If I make the site nicer looking, then more people will sign up and pay". By looking at the data he's found that isn't the case.

There's still a lot of other stuff to test on a site, only some relates to how it looks. Things like headlines and images/screenshots can have a huge impact. A nice design gives you a good base to work from, but shouldn't be the end. Throwing in the towel and saying "design must not matter" is the wrong way to go.

For example... their new site has way too much text, not enough visuals. Especially the features page. I would add some screenshots and try to use a more descriptive headline. Instead of "Features" or "Gory details" I'd try something like "We make WordPress run like a well oiled machine".

There's a Japanese word that represents the process perfectly, "kaizen". Committing to continuous improvement will end up in results eventually, fancy design or not. Design can definitely be part of the process, but it's not the only thing to work on.

Well... it probably depends on how they claim to get these followers/fans.

If all you have to do is pay money, then yes it's a 'scam'. While it isn't really a scam because I'm sure they'll get you more followers or fans, they'll all be bots or fake accounts.

If they're some kind of social marketing agency, then it could be legitimate. That being said, there isn't any magic to engaging potential customers with social networking. There's plenty of free resources that can help give you advice.

The main difference is whether you're getting followers/fans that are actually interested and engaging with what you're doing. You want quality, not quantity.

Agree, I wish you could change the status. I don't like asking for a feature when I'm not using something, but I ran into this same thing 5 seconds into checking the demo out.