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zoudini

32 karma · joined October 29, 2009

zaki [dot.] rahaman [at] gmail
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zoudini··on Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.
OpenTable doesn't really have an official API. Urbanspoon has been touting Rez as an alternative but same story there. Will definitely let you know when we're ready for primetime.
zoudini··on Why are restaurant websites so awful? Because of restaurant culture.
Building something you might be interested in as far as wait times...
zoudini··on Jonathan's Card
Link seems to be broken. What did it point to?
zoudini··on Google Prediction API - Google Code
I think it has something to do with this submission's mentioning it (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2776254)
zoudini··on Users of my iOS Game Teach Me a Lesson MIT Didn’t
Personally I'd love to see replays of "impossible" scores. Similar to the speed run videos for games like super Mario on YouTube
zoudini··on Why does HN timeout so fast?
What browser extension do you use?
zoudini··on Dayta is free, forever (and now for web too)
Great news. Any plans on open sourcing or providing hooks/API (would love to be able to create automatic loggers to avoid manual data entry).
zoudini··on Ask HN: Who Is Hiring (For Freelance/Part Time Remote Work) February 2011.
I'm hiring. iOS and/or backend. js gurus welcomed as well. E-mail is in my profile.
zoudini··on Why seed camps like Y Combinator haven't produced any startup with $100M+ exit?
Hey tzm, wanted to contact you about something. Could you drop me a line at my e-mail (zaki.rahaman@gmail.com)
zoudini··on New Simplegeo Products: Introducing Context & Places
I had some ?s regarding Context and using it in my app. Could you e-mail me (check my profile).
zoudini··on How Hunch Built a Data-Crunching Monster
In practice though, is the degree of connectedness really ever that high? I was under the impression that many real world phenomena (from social networks to biological interaction networks) exhibit small-world phenomena and you tend to get more well-connected subgraphs that are connected by important hub nodes. So it would seem to me like applying some careful heuristics (and keeping track of important bottlenecks/hubs) would still allow you to do computations in chunks.

Would love an expert on the subject to chime in.

zoudini··on Is OpenTable Worth it?
this gets at something i am working on right now
zoudini··on Is OpenTable Worth it?
Having found several restaurants with no OT availability to have reservations available upon calling, I think this is the case.

I'm pretty sure a lot of restaurants set aside a certain amount of tables/times as OT inventory.

zoudini··on The dumbing-down of programming (1998)
I've always wondered, if we ever reach the Singularity or a cliched Minority Report like reality, what would the layers of software look like?
zoudini··on Rollover image on your website? That will be $80,000 (please)
could you comment on the feature?
zoudini··on Show HN: Portrit.com - My Visual Facebook Experience - Use Key HN
I forgot to say, awesome work and I like the visual look and feel and it does feel snappier than the real FB but still don't see why I should use it... maybe I don't "get" it?
zoudini··on Show HN: Portrit.com - My Visual Facebook Experience - Use Key HN
If I try searching for a friend by using their last name (easier in this case), it starts to match the name in the autocomplete but drops out once I've typed the full name for some reason...

also probably not a typical use case for names, but I do have FB friends that go by their middle names although their facebook profile has their full name.. can't search for them using middle name in autocomplete search

zoudini··on Say goodbye to IKEA (video)
I didn't mean to hate on IKEA. It'd be awesome if they adapted/improved on some of these designs.
zoudini··on Say goodbye to IKEA (video)
yea I know, I was in a rush and I didn't want to give the impression that I was astroturfing with a title like "Resource Furniture: Awesome space saving furniture"
zoudini··on What happens when you give homeless people a prepaid credit card.
Yea, what about NYC?
zoudini··on Ask HN: Please review my webapp http://cineight.com
I found the some of the terms confusing... "My Recommendations" I thought would mean movies that were recommended FOR me not BY me. Also Movies To Watch is ambiguous and same for Movies filtered. The tooltip popups when you mouseover help but the button names should be self-explanatory. Also, as far as the UI/UX is concerned, maybe color-coding them would make the buttons more 'intuitive'.

Also, while I understand the primary aim of your site is to let users manage their lists/recommendations, this feels a lot like 'expert-mode'. I myself would love an 'easy-mode' wehre I could get my automatic recommendations from other sources (implementing your own may recommender is probably not worth it at this point and would suffer from a cold-start) but ALSO be able to manage them at the same time (recommend to friends/filter/etc).

Also, maybe this may work well with a Facebook/Twitter integration (like tweet that I just watched such and such movie).

Also, as much as game mechanics have been played out, I think it would definitely be useful to have a system for ranking/rating people who make recommendations. You could create experts (if you want to rip off 4sq et. al, you could make people experts by awarding badges for things like watching 10 horror movies or making 100 successful recommendations that people watched).

All in all, I think it has the beginnings of a good product.

zoudini··on Ask HN: How to foster hacker culture at my school (Cornell)?
Yea for sure! Maybe around Winter Break or some time when people would be free! E-mail me (check profile)
zoudini··on Ask HN: How to foster hacker culture at my school (Cornell)?
whoops... meant to say I AM an ALUM who is back in Ithaca...
zoudini··on Ask HN: How to foster hacker culture at my school (Cornell)?
I'm curious about the YC event for Cornell alumni (link?) and meeting up/hearing about your research/projects. Check my profile for gmail.
zoudini··on Ask HN: How to foster hacker culture at my school (Cornell)?
I should clarify... I'm not an alum who's back in Ithaca. I am working on my own projects but that's not really my motivation for wanting to do this. It's more encouraging others to be involved in similar types of activities. Rhodes Hall (where the Theory Center is) is mostly the realm of grad students. Thanks for the encouragement.
zoudini··on Ask HN: How to foster hacker culture at my school (Cornell)?
I was planning on doing that, but how do you go about attracting the right crowd (or any crowd at all for that matter)?
zoudini··on Ask HN: What's up with all these services charging $10/$15 a month?
About how much does this actually end up costing/employee? And how many actually take advantage?
zoudini··on Ask HN: How to foster hacker culture at my school (Cornell)?
sidenote: I did not know this but pg went to Cornell. I wonder what it was like for him then?
zoudini··on Ask HN: anyone doing an interesting fantasy football startup?
I'm actually working on something to address what I think are the major weaknesses of fantasy football as it's currently played. In the process of setting up a good scraper with an API. E-mail me if interested.
zoudini··on Rare Sharing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer’s
From my understanding of the article, the research they're referring to has to do with biomarkers (which aren't always genetic) and brain scans. If you go to the ADNI site (link: http://www.adni-info.org/Scientists/LinksForDataCollection.a...) you'll see that it is indeed possible to download some anonymized data and scans with less stringent approval. So, maybe basement hacks are indeed possible.