thesethings

(It goes without saying, this was an amazing + generous post.)

A question for Patrick or anybody else about the following email advice in the post.

"Free tip from me: note what search term sent them to your website, put a variation of it in the subject line of the email, watch your open rate go through the freaking roof."

Did this mean just in general to let search terms inform how you write email, or that the list segmentation is that specific for any opt-in list member who happened to come by search?

Not earth shattering, but I posted this 'coz I've seen a few suggestions that the Gap logo launch + reversal was planned social media genius. Nope. They sincerely launched that new logo as part of something bigger that's been in the works for at least a year.

Doh! Thanks. I should have linked to that :D (Everybody, check out this amazing, constantly updated (!) book that Zed wrote.)

Full disclosure: I have no professional/ financial affiliation with Codelesson, though I am friends with one of its founders.

Posted this since I've seen so much praise for Zed's Python book here on HN.

Thanks so much for jumping into the thread.

As a former systems person, I thought of all the ways I could divine that an account was related. IP address of course came to mind, but I dismissed it, because so many networks use NAT, etc. (Especially at high schools, there must be so many accounts with the same IP. But I get that the student goes home at night...)

So you're basically saying this SRE made an educated guess. It does make me feel better about that part :D

Much of my professional life is evangelizing Google Apps. I know and advocate the party line about security. And I have experienced the customer support staff who have access when helping me troubleshoot. (I'm glad they have access.)

I guess I just assumed/heard that SRE's weren't involved in troubleshooting user stuff, as they were in deep disk i/o, networking, performance stuff. (Translation: was hoping they couldn't access user stuff.)

As for internal auditing, it would be cool if there was an alert any time user data was accessed that didn't have a corresponding trouble ticket.

Thanks again for jumping in the thread.

I'm going to temporarily put aside what this guy did (which is really bad, but people with bad intent aren't common), to discuss what this tells us about Google (which is about The System, and cause for larger concern).

If anybody from Google can (anonymously if necessary) step in and answer questions, it'd be great.

* Different gmail accounts. Google knows they're all you.

In the original Gawker story, this caught my eye:

"...pulled up the person's email account...[and] a list of other Gmail addresses that the friend had registered but didn't think were linked to their main account—within seconds"

Keeping separate Gmail accounts is how many protect against "Google knows everything about me." In fact on Google's "What Google knows about you" page, it never crosses accounts (unless you've manually connected them). This story basically tells us the "What we know about your account" page is a bit misleading. Of course most folks in IT know it's a bit naive to think one could never figure out that different gmail accounts are related. But it was interesting that Google pretty formally knows the relationship, but doesn't tell you right where it should.

* SREs, and their level of access.

It's not so much that I care is a specific group has lots of access. I care that not that many groups do in total. This story makes me concerned that actually many groups have lots of access. Despite the "elite navy seal" vibe presented in the Gawker story about SREs, I'm now thinking that many, many teams have this kind of access. (Previous to this story, I was led to believe that SREs were quite low level (not in importance. but in nature of responsibilities. Very performance oriented, having little reason to have access to an individual user's data.).

Please feel free to jump in and correct this, Google peeps. It would make me feel better.

* What this does for SaaS and web apps in general

I love Google Docs and sincerely believe that most web apps that allow across-the-net collaboration are good for us. And are preferable to The Old Way. I want people to TRUST their stuff to Google (and Github and Amazon, etc).

I hate security FUDers who love to derail conversations of great possibility with some far out scenario, "Can my enemy see my Google Docs?!?!"

I'm way less worried about a few creeps who work at Google (they work everywhere...) and more concerned about laissez-faire access processes.

Thanks for organizing this, and streaming it. A friend and I are watching some of the talks from Portland, Oregon.

Sidebar: the intro mix before the first speaker (Chris Wanstrath ) was perfect for the event. Groovy/dubby, but subtle. We were going to skip through it, but actually listened to all 50 minutes. http://www.justin.tv/startupbootcamp/b/269855690

heya Kyle,

This is great. Just signed up. I am familiar with the Seinfeld calendar. (Though not because I've seen it on the show, but it was explained to me in some other geek GTD blog/system/something.)

I have an idea for a visual aid that might appear in two places on your site for folks who might not know the basic idea behind the Seinfeld calendar, and for those who do know it, but might want to an incentive on their Streakly page:

A visual of a calendar week with a streak (or 2, or 3) through it.

This would appear on the front page, and in another form, on an individual's Streakly page.

I realize you probably already something similar to this already sketched out (along with many other features). So as you were, take your time!

I respect the MVP process :D

For sure. That's why I made my "long tail" reference. (I'm geek first, female second. :D)

The Long Tail taught us that the single most popular thing still has less people into it than not into it.

You were probably joking. But just in case somebody from another country is reading this (and missed the reference):

I am female, and have never read a Harlequinn romance novel. None of my female friends have read them, either. None of my older female relatives have read them either. (I'm not saying some people aren't reading them. Just that they're like daytime soap operas: Cheap enough to make, and popular enough to survive, but not necessarily relevant.)

Must be something wrong with my friends and me. Lately many of us have been crushing out on guys who work at coffee shops.

But my point is this: There is such a thing as sub-culture. This means not everybody likes the same stuff. To put it in start-up terms: it's the long tail... of attraction.

This is 2010, people. :D

#dowatchalike

I'm seeing something different in terms of corporate sales. You're right, the BES is a "global"/centralized project and cost, usually negotiated with an org-wide discount for devices. But every Blackberry device for each individual employee is usually an as-it-comes decision, spread out over departments. And at that level, the Blackberry is very much in danger.

Why?

* Within months of Apple announcing iphone Exchange compatibility years ago, it was enabled at every corporation that I know of. (It only takes one VIP with an iphone to make IT jump to make it happen. It's not just an iphone thing, it happens all the time with all sorts of edge/marginal technologies.)

* As for non-VIPs: even Blackberry companies have a cell phone purchase program for non Blackberry devices. This usually involves a preferred carrier and device set (that has a company-wide discount). But it also includes an "exception" program where companies will reimburse part of the cost of whatever device an employee chooses. These programs were not invented for smartphones, but just simple phones. But they sure are being used for smartphones at this point.

* Newest: What I'm seeing on the ground is this: Due to tighter budget scrutiny, fewer and fewer corp-bought devices (of any brand) in general, and employees not even bothering with any employer stuff at the purchase level. And then seeking partial reimbursement for their bill. It's less and less common for the employee-chosen device to be a Blackberry.

This is part of a larger movement of the consumerization of business technology. And employee phones is a part of the larger BYOPC movement. A primer link is here: http://darwinmag.com/article/597485/BYOPC_Could_Make_Sense_f...

So she doesn't have to stan herself out, I will. (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=stan)

Lately... She's a Javascript/ front-end developer (co-creator of Twistori + everytimezone for example), business thought leader type (did i just say "thought leader?" Sorry.), and co-founder of the SaaS service http://letsfreckle.com. But none of those things would get much as much attention as they do if it weren't for the fact that she is an amazing user experience/ interface maker. These skills make the things she works on (from books to slides to web form interactions) really friendly and fun.

(I have no professional affiliation with her. But full disclosure: We are Twitter friends. #realtalk)

(Long comment here. Hear me out :)

When you see a Big Corp logo on a small-ish SaaS company site, it's not the whole company using it. Just a small team.

Even when a plan says "unlimited," I can promise you multiple people in the same company are buying overlapping services. Why? Because folks want their own username/password/account management. (Plus they probably aren't even aware somebody else in their giant company is using it. I can pretty much guarantee they aren't IT-driven purchases. Not that they shouldn't be.)

As somebody else pointed out, employees can buy pretty much anything up to $1000 without approval from a higher up.

When things truly are being used by an entire large company, (driven by IT) they usually have some sort of account management/identity system that can hook into the company's own system (almost always Active Directory). Things like Google Apps or Salesforce, where you really don't want overlap (because you want to manage groups and permissions) have this capability AND don't have tend to have unlimited plans. (Unless specifically negotiated, you pay per seat.)

(In the future, OpenID or whatever evolves from its principles may replace it. But in the enterprise, SAML/AD/LDAP is kinda it for now.)

SaaS offerings that talk to these systems and are sold to Fortune 5000 corps typically start at $250,000. Somebody much smarter than I has outlined this strange enterprise price gap ( < $1000 or > $250,000). It was possibly Joel Spolsky. It's not a crazy theory, it's real. (As somebody else in the thread pointed out, anything above $1000 requires approval and lawyers, and is a really expensive for you as a vendor to deal with this for anything less than $250,000).

Tangent:

If you're a SaaS developer and want to sneak into the enterprise, get into Google Apps Marketplace. If you hook your app into Google Apps, any company already using Google Apps can use your app with a little less work (for them) than if you were just a regular web app.

As of summer 2010, there are about 30 Million Google Apps "premiere"(paying or enhanced) users.

Actually, I've read some very moving accounts by people who are nomadic with kids.

This is a worthwhile point to chew on. While I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the new Google developments, they said something I sympathized with in their blog post this week:

"...we urge you to take your views directly to your Senators and Representatives in Washington."

(http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/08/facts-about-o...)

I felt like they were saying, "Help us out here folks. It was hard enough to get to this watered down policy."

Again, I'm not defending their end proposal, but we do need to spend equal energy presenting our case our representatives as we to Google (when it comes to policy).

twss stands for: That's What She Said

Ah, thanks for the rapid reply. (HN is so cool :).

I think the Posterous set-up is what confused my sense of the relationship.

Yeah. You're not the only one saying this. Tweetmeme uses Backtype data, right? (At least when used through Posterous it seems to.) Also, on Twitter's blog, it says Tweetmeme is now "pointing" to the Twitter button. But it's not totally, otherwise we couldn't get our counts like we are.

Great job, just registered. (Heya Northwesters, I feel all alone as a blue dot in Portland. Seattle? Portland? Eugene? I know you're out there. Represent!)

I'm pretty ignorant about financing. I have a question for finance folks:

This company is about 8 years old, profitable since day one, and made 58 million last year in revenue.

I never hear about companies getting such a cash injection at this stage in their lifespan. Perhaps I'm just primed for "things are different now" stories after reading Fred Wilson's recent post on the topic ( http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/07/some-thoughts-on-the-seed-fu... tl;dr : "While many businesses require a lot less capital to start, they don't require less capital to grow.").

But even by a new We Need to Grow yardstick, it seems Atlassian is mature.

What do you folks think?

Though I still use and enjoy Posterous (as well as at least two of the tools they criticized in this campaign), this entire campaign has bummed me out.

I generally am against defining yourself oppositionally, but concede it's probably hard to avoid when the other side is doing it, too. But the competitors weren't doing it.

Not only did the campaign not match the feel of the market (users were not being zero-sum about their publishing choices, competitors were talking more about their product and communities than competitors), it didn't match the feel of Posterous. Having read and listened and enjoyed what little I know about the founders, it didn't match my picture of their real vibe.

Most of all... probably everybody on this board agrees... feature lists are over as compelling marketing. What does the product help me do? User experience is what wins. (exhibit A, iphone... it redefined the entire feature phone market that came before)

And the funny thing is... Posterous's user experience is awesome. They didn't even have to go the feature route. It really is "dead simple" (their original catchphrase) to use. When they used that phrase (not that they invented it, but they use it really well), it stuck in my brain. I repeated it to others. Posterous totally had a marketing gimmick nailed and working: emphasize the experience and the easy angle.

All their feature comparison charts have felt totally disingenuous. For every X a competitor gets for something Posterous has, they usually have 4 things Posterous doesn't. I mean, making WP look like it less features than Posterous??! What an unnecessary risk of credibility.

Posterous people:

I LOVE your product. I use it alongside WP and Tumblr (Tumblr is social and has conversational hooks built in. I've never compared the two.).

Your campaign really bummed me out and disappointed me. I guess I just don't think it's the real you.

Your experience is awesome, and you keep adding new features. I have no concerns about your product, and will confidently recommend it. Just don't indulge the feature troll. We've come so far in an industry. Feature lists are for dying enterprise companies trying to make us feel better about software we hate using.

Go back to the OG Posterous flavor.

Your fan in Portland,

Andy

I have two Ubuntu boxes I'm using today, one Hardy, one Lucid. I'm getting the usual paywall/regwwall pattern:

If it's a same-day article, I can click through. If it's older, I have to login, or do the search-through-google-news-trick, which lets you click-through w/out paywall/regwall.

I'm using Chromium and Iceape.

It's very cool that political scientists are doing studies about this. From what I understand, cognitive science ID'd this a long time ago.

They call it, "confirmation bias." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias)

Framed in this post: "If we believe something about the world, we are more likely to passively accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs, and actively dismiss information that doesn’t"

The point by both cognitive scientists and political scientists is this determination to believe something is completely sincere, not about deliberate deceit or spinning (though that does occur, it's a different phenomenon ). Anything that disputes your view is seen as exceptional circumstances/ invisible. "Yeah, but that's an edge case," "yeah but he went to Yale," "yeah, but she moved from France when she was 3."

We may even see it happening on our favorite news aggregator sites.

More reading (from cog sci perspective): http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/

Heh, I didn't check out her site. It sounds obnoxious. (And I see from your other HN comments, we share a distaste for another cheeseball who flaunts his/her appearance, w/multiple "in action" shots all over his/her website, who I won't give further attention by typing his/her name :D).

But I'm simply objecting to you using the word discrimination, and suggesting an average looking guy would not get this piece written. I even covered the "citation please" angle (not that you said that, but so many people on HN abuse that construct as a way to discredit pretty reasonable ideas, without having to provide a citation themselves.)

I'll take your word that she's pushing her appearance, just not that it's responsible for her coverage.

And my "proposed study" tone was maybe too snarky, I apologize. (I try to avoid that), I just had to give you a hard time about using "discrimination" and "average looking guys" in the same posit. Are we on the same site, seeing the same stories that make the front page?! (Said in friendly tone, poking as much as fun at myself for reading, as HN for posting 99% of its content about/by average looking guys, usually comparing Android + iPhone.)

The NYT Preoccupations column isn't about technology. It's about trends in the workplace/ jobs.

Disagree.

The NYT site didn't make it easy, but I just browsed about 12 months worth of this column(?) "Preoccupations."

Female and male profiles were about 50-50, and everybody else seemed pretty average looking.

Less than half the time is it a profile of an individual, the rest of the time it's a profile of a "trend" (This Hashrocket pair programming article that was on HN a while back, is from this same NYT column: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/jobs/20pre.html?)

All the rest of the profiles were equally as interesting-but-not-mind-blowing. (Though I'm less critical than you about the slow-news-day part. That's "slice of life" journalism. It's always like that, heh. In that regard, every day is a slow news day. )

I suggest a study: One where when a post's author/subject is a female, we count how frequently her appearance is brought up when it's not otherwise the topic of the post, versus when it's an average looking guy posting about how he organizes his email folders/ moved to git/ almost took VC.

Does that stuff get called a slow news day?

From my experience (read on), jobs illegal immigrants have get paid at least minimum wage (Not that this is livable).

Most illegal immigrants get a social security number through underground document-makers. They give that number to the employer (who knows it's fake, but acts otherwise).

I've befriended many Mexican immigrants, illegal and legal, and have even gone to a house that makes these documents. (It was surprisingly low-cost. )

Now this doesn't speak to your other point, about whether a farmhand job is livable for anybody. But my main point is: it's probably a legit job that withholds taxes and everything.

There is a large set of jobs that has a high-turnover rate for everybody who works in them. Overnight cleaning crews in offices, table bussers, farmhands... This turnover rate is high for everybody, legal and illegal, who works there. My guess is that the employers assume anybody who works there will leave soon, and it's not worth thoroughly vetting whether the ss# belongs to a dead guy.

As for my opinion on all this... I'm still working it out. I'm also biased, have lots of Mexican family on this of the border, and am admittedly sentimental about it. Ideally we can first focus on making any job livable, and THEN worry about who gets to have it.

Loved the Ferrari problem definition :) Had to tweet it. Didn't have room to credit you, but that was pithy summary of meaty problem.

I'm sure a lot of us can identify with have email related to both support/follow-up questions, and creative work (be it development/ design/ writing.)

There are times of day when I have the energy and mood to work hard, but not necessarily get into "the zone" required for creative work.

My own email/ task list is aligning more and more with specific energy modes, and less and less with any particular project/ person.

I'm getting way more done this way, letting my "mode" rule the roost.

Though techmeme is guided a by a human hand, I'm pretty sure much of its power and intelligence is via machine learning (for determining related stories, and their basic order).