thegrif

The ideal situation would be a PaaS that achieves the advantages of a hosted solution without compromising on the customer's ability to extend the platform into either their own environment or adjacent cloud providers.

Many companies have built successful revenue models around open sourcing the core platform and then monetizing the PaaS/SaaS offering.

Either way, happy to help anyway I can - thanks for following up.

Congratulations for being in such high demand :-)

I don't think you're going to be able to charge an hourly rate if the bulk of your correspondence is via email. It's going to cause more problems then it's worth.

Airpair.com provides 24 hour access to an expert, priced based upon the complexity of the problem (a proxy to how much work is actually required on your part). They also calibrate the expert assignments, making sure the more advanced professionals get the more difficult problems. This could be a possibility for you - unless you want to continue handling all requests yourself.

I wonder if you could use Slack as the primary platform for orchestrating the transaction.

1. User hits your website, becomes convinced, submits the inquiry, and deposits money into his account. Managing a balance adds complexity, but you always have a better chance of getting more money with one transaction versus smaller ones.

2. Upon payment (let's use Stripe, because that integrates with Slack) they are issued an invitation to your Slack instance. A private channel is also created that they will be restricted to. The private channel should correspond to some sort of customer ID - because you will want to use the same channel throughout the lifetime of the customer to maintain continuity,

3. Optionally you may also create a tracking ticket using something that integrates with Slack and Stripe. The ticket contains the stripe transaction information, the original inquiry, key info on the customer, and hopefully links to the customer's past interactions.

4. The advantage of Slack is all of the built in integrations. Most of your back and forth can be via the persistent chat - and you can have a bot reminding the user not to expect instantaneous responses. But if you do need to do screen sharing, video conferencing, etc...there is no leaving the environment - and it all gets tracked.

5. You may be able to fairly track time if Slack can measure your time in the channel and decrement the available funds accordingly. Just make sure you're only in the channel when you're either actively communicating or researching on the user's behalf.

6. Once the user's account hits a predefined threshold, issue a warning and suggest that they replenish their account in order to continue the conversation. Clicking the link or interacting with the bot would replenish the account via a charge out to Stripe. Tracking ticket is updated.

7. When the user shifts topics (after you satisfy one request and he moves onto the next), give a bot a command that updates the ticket by closing the last request and opening a new one. Of course we're getting a bit nuts with this level of tracking - but I think it will be valuable to keep them all separate as I am sure you get a ton of repeat requests. Hopefully you'd be able to trigger an email to the user with a full transcript of the exchange.

8. Eventually the user will be done asking questions and may likely have a balance. Even if the balance is zero, retain the private channel. It serves as a searchable log of the interaction and is a mechanism for the user to come back and reengage with you.

9. You may optionally add some public channels covering the topics you provide advice on. This may be useful to keep your users occupied while you answer questions as your day progresses.

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It's important to note that this is only worthwhile if the exchange between you and the customer is more discussion-oriented versus one-off answers to specific questions. Simpler interactions would remove the value Slack adds - and in that case I would fall back to a ticketing system you're comfortable with that has hooks into the payment engine you're using.

:-)

I'm actually beginning a project to launch a vertical social network. Please kindly include me if your product can be leveraged by private networks. I'm looking at both hosted platforms and managed software.

I am at tom [a] thegrif [dot] net. Also @thegrif. Thanks again! :-)

Coinbase is legitimate. The vast majority of the company's Bitcoin stockpile is stored on hardware encrypted offline hard drives.

I think Coinbase could thwart off a targeted attack, with the worst case being an interruption in service due to DDoS. It is far more likely that an individual account is compromised by an attacker who learns the user's password. Coinbase mitigates the impact of this scenario by:

1. Forcing all accounts to use two-factor authentication

2. Providing users with a vault that provides additional security options. It's meant to hold the bulk of a user's BTC, similar to a savings account at a traditional bank. Withdrawals are subject to a 48 hour delay and can be configured to require multiple co-signers.

The time delay accomplishes two things. One, it prevents an attacker from instantly draining a compromised account. Two, it provides Coinbase with ample time to retrieve the BTC from its offline storage (it's a sign that they're telling the truth about their massive offline storage strategy).

More info on vault can be found here: https://coinbase.com/vault

I am interested in UX and design opportunities within open source projects. Would be happy to talk, share my background, and see how I may be of service. tom [a] thegrif [dot] net :-)

Focus on conveying your strengths as an engineer and less on the languages you have hands-on experience with. I've always hired developers based upon their strengths as a problem solver - not necessarily their experience with a specific technology.

Passion for the product goes a long way - make sure you convey it in cover letters and interviews. Put together some blog posts discussing enhancements you'd recommend to their products and see if you can attract their attention using social media. You'd be surprised how effective that is :)

Your best bet is to use OTR encryption over XMPP or another messaging protocol of your choosing. Also configure clients to use SSL/TLS.

You can learn more about OTR here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging

You will actually be using a different client on your iOS devices compared to OSX. Just use the same account/protocol and you will be fine. On MacOS you will probably want to use Adium. On iOS use ChatSecure.

This will likely be against local zoning laws in residential areas. Usually they have very specific rules about what can and cannot be displayed on residential property.

Even if there are no rules on record for the municipality, nothing stops a motion being passed that would outlaw advertisements being sold on residential properties after the fact.

Assuming you can get around the above, I would solve the cold start problem by first focusing on a single geographic market. Small, local businesses are more likely to purchase this type of alternative/non-traditional advertising - and they'll want to be able to market in their specific towns.

I would also make sure that you provide some sort of science in terms of how the advertisements are targeted. Agencies will look for that. For example, an agency ad trafficker is going to want to market in neighborhoods with mean household incomes in line with their target audience.

It depends.

If your startup is focused on providing a service that is truly innovative and not being done today:

-you may be able to sacrifice on craftsmanship in order to get the MVP out the door

-the fact that you are providing a new and novel service will buy you some time to get the design straightened out.

-it will also give you a mechanism for collecting feedback on the product, including customer criticism/praise and usage data.

HOWEVER, if your service only provides incremental innovation/benefit over competitors - or you are targeting a demographic that heavily prioritizes design in buying decisions:

-you really should invest in the design of your product upfront.

-it doesn't have to be perfect and you should have no expectation of not iterating based on feedback

When making decisions about where to spend design money, always prioritize the resources that are figuring out how the app will work. The screens, controls, and logic of the app make your product. You can skimp on the visual design aspect of things if you need to - but make sure you nail the experience from a flow perspective.

:)

She may not be able to practice law in the United States, but I'm sure she'd be able to find remote opportunities where her experience would be useful. I'm sure there are many early stage startups that would accept the risk of her not being licensed to practice in the US in exchange for her prices (but she would have to limit her work to just advice).

I know I would be happy to know someone like this :-) I can probably connect her with a few people that may also be interested.

Those smart enough to realize that integrated webcams pose a security risk are pragmatic enough to just use a sticker. That said, I think your design is a good one - and doesn't detract too much from the aesthetics of the device.

There was a ton of work being done on Twitter after mh17 from citizens on the ground in Ukraine. I was working with one gentleman on investigation of a portion of crash-site footage that includes what appears to be the tail of a rocket or missile. The video is still online here:

http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/17/first-hand-account-o...

It is shown a handful of times, but the first instance is around 1:08.

It doesn't fit the scale of a missile fired from a Buk. The conclusion I made based on this and other evidence was that the footage was not genuine. For example:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtA5Hh5CcAAN28-.jpg:large

On the left is a still from the video above. On the right is a still from a supposed crash in Ukraine days earlier. All of that said, it's impossible to believe anything without being on the ground yourself...

I'm @thegrif on Twitter - you can see the back and forth by filtering posts that include #mh17.

Recruit a hands-on, technology-focused co-founder that can help you establish the infrastructure and foundation for your application. That will allow you to focus on the creative aspects of the game and running the business - and it will prevent easy-to-make screw-ups from compromising any success you may have on the horizon. :-)

Most of the other commenters have focused on whether the business is viable - but it may just be you need to try a different marketing tactic. Paid search is very difficult to turn an ROI on. I ran a search consultancy for awhile and I would tell people that PPC was a lot like blackjack - you can lose a lot of money if you're not paying attention or are new to the game.

The big players like themeforest are going to enjoy higher conversion rates off their paid traffic because (a) they are well-known and (b) they also rank well organically (there have been multiple quantitate studies examining the correlation of high converting paid search campaigns with high organic search rankings).

Try a few other marketing vehicles, get more data, and only then make decisions about what to do next.

I'm currently reading Touched with Fire by Kay Jamison. It's a fairly quantitative examination of the links between depression and creativity. Though it's specifically about manic-depressives, I think much of it is relevant to the article as the author describes himself as a writer, web designer/developer, musician and artist.

I was shocked even paging through the book when I first got it, jumping from chart to chart. Check these three out:

Showing Van Gogh's seasonal depression: http://xomf.com/rzbwz

Suicide rates of artists and writers: http://xomf.com/xysmn

Mood disorders in writers and artists: http://xomf.com/mxnqq

I think it would be easy for someone to say "oh but wait - this guy is a web designer, he's not sitting with oils and a canvas - these stats are irrelevant." They'd be wrong. Here is what Steve thought about the people who worked on the mac:

"These are the people under different circumstances would be painters and poets but because of the time that we live in this new medium has appeared in which to express one's self to one's fellow species and that's the medium of computing. And so a lot of people that would have been artists and scientists have gone into this field to express their feeling..."

(from the 1990 interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nMD6sjAe8I#t=16m25s)

I think there's probably more depression in our industry than people let on. TechCrunch recently did a post on depression in founders. Hell - I just commented on a HN thread of a guy working on an app to combat loneliness. It's a real problem, with a real nasty stigma, and I think it's important people start talking openly about it.

I think there will be different solutions depending on what is triggering the feelings of loneliness/isolation to begin with. I'm in a situation right now where I am out on medical leave from work - and I don't have many relationships outside of my professional life. It has been incredibly lonely - but rightfully so, because I went from having a ton of people around me to having literally no one.

I would imagine feelings of loneliness could also be more synthetic - not saying that the feelings themselves are fake or unwarranted, but they are brought on by more psychological conditions versus situations manifesting themselves in the physical world. I have experienced this type of loneliness as well - though it took on a flavor more of abandonment.

I'm @thegrif if you want to connect.

TG