Bill Gates's new website: The Gates Notes

http://www.thegatesnotes.com/

by theycallmemorty • 17 years ago

194 80 17 years ago

thegatesnotes.com

pierrefar2• 17 years ago

This is doing the rounds on the net too:

http://www.thegatesnotes.com/robots.txt

It doesn't mention Bing. Amusing, and useless.

walkon• 17 years ago

Why is it useless (I've never worked with robots.txt)? Are the /css and /js files not large enough to bother skipping?

pierrefar2• 17 years ago

Useless in the sense it doesn't really need to mention Bing.

Blocking /css and /js makes sense because they don't add value in being crawled. Not necessary, but doesn't hurt.

Best practice: Always have a robots.txt file, even if it's empty.

mshafrir• 17 years ago

Look at the comments...

# robots.txt # # This file is to prevent the crawling and indexing of certain parts # of your site by web crawlers and spiders run by sites like Yahoo! # and Google. By telling these "robots" where not to go on your site, # you save bandwidth and server resources.

thwarted• 17 years ago

It's a cut and paste from some sample file, so this doesn't indicate anything much.

google search for the text in the comments ( http://tinyurl.com/ygtuanh ) has 49 hits, there would be more if I had not joined the lines together, I'm sure.

lolcraft• 17 years ago

Bing ignores robots.txt anyway: http://blogs.perl.org/users/cpan_testers/2010/01/msnbot-must...

javery• 17 years ago

Why am I not surprised that it is using both WebForms and Silverlight... I see that big chunk of viewstate there Bill.

kevingadd• 17 years ago

I honestly wouldn't have guessed. The layout is understated, the page loads quickly, and it's easy to navigate and read. I wonder if the site is based on some existing content management system, or if it's something custom. It would be kind of a cool surprise if it turned out that Bill authored the site himself for fun (but that seems unlikely).

netcan• 17 years ago

Why does it seem unlikely? It could be that he is using these technologies purely out of personal interest.

metra2• 17 years ago

Page doesn't load quickly at all for me.

robryan• 17 years ago

Well he does have a very large interest in the success of technologies still being a large shareholder. I prefer websites to use silverlight over flash, I think you like silverlight a lot more after using it, even if it is exactly very web friendly.

nailer2• 17 years ago

Silverlight does have some technical advantages over Flash on Windows (eg, event timing in Flash is still tied to frames on the back end), however it's just another old-style proprietary plug in we don't need these days. made even worse by the ghetto OS X and Linux versions.

Flash is the lowest common denominator right now, it's replacement should be HTML video or canvas.

neurotech1• 17 years ago

I'm viewing in Chrome 3.0 and haven't experienced any problems. I do not have silverlight installed at all.

Wouldn't that be ironic - If a large number of visitors were using Firefox, Safari & Chrome?

pbhjpbhj2• 17 years ago

I'd expect most visitors to be [so-called] technorati and hence less IE than other browsers.

ronnier• 17 years ago

Should have used ASP.NET MVC. It's wonderful. I'll never use ASP.NET forms again, unless I'm forced.

Raphael• 17 years ago

Such a childish signature.

JacobAldridge• 17 years ago

Yup, he'll never make it in the real world if he doesn't master this fourth grade handwriting course.

dnewcome• 17 years ago

I think that Bill can do a world of good by sharing his thoughts via a blog like this. Assuming he is candid and fosters real communication, that is. Sections like 'What I'm thinking about/what I'm learning' is exactly the right attitude.

Alex39177• 17 years ago

The problem is that Bill Gates only reads books that reinforce his existing beliefs. That's why he's so pro-KIPP, because he doesn't have any interest in authors like John Taylor Gatto. (Or at least this is what I heard from someone who had lunch with him recently.)

dantheman• 17 years ago

KIPP?

Also, I'ma huge fan of the Underground History of American Education (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/)

jister• 17 years ago

Just out of curiosity but how do you know this?

EDIT: I am not being sarcastic or anything.

zach2• 17 years ago

That's hardly unique to Bill Gates. People rarely re-examine what they presume to be correct, and when people call that a "problem" I tend to think that it just means "he's wrong and pig-headed." Which he may likely be, but let's at least speak plainly.

opoloqo• 17 years ago

would be interesting. too bad the comments are turned off.

sofal• 17 years ago

I dunno, I think that a comment section for an author as famous as this would just be a fire-hose blast of noise.

jmatt• 17 years ago

I was wondering why there wasn't more functionality too. I guess he follows the release early and often philosophy.

I saw that one of the people that Gates follows said this:

http://twitter.com/inafried/status/8000814417

unexpected• 17 years ago

Really pretty, really well-done website. (Even if it's going to get grief because it uses Silverlight).

moe• 17 years ago

I humbly disagree.

The fonts are microscopic here and when I increase the size to something half-readable then stuff gets pushed out the right side. (on the section-overview pages that is)

I also found this sidebar on the right of the articles very distracting. Don't throw unrelated content at me while I'm reading.

delackner• 17 years ago

This is one of the few sites I've browsed on a Windows machine that made me instinctively think "oh the fonts look like crap because someone designed it on Windows and didn't think about Mac usability", since I'm usually on a Mac. That the fonts look nearly unreadable at any size on a windows machine is hilarious.

fronx• 17 years ago

Some notes on the design: IMO { The navigation feels a little fragile, maybe because of the small font size and delicate lines. But it's also quite original, especially the "view by topic" branch. The right column (only visible on some pages) could easily be mistaken for advertising, possibly because of the tiny sans-serif type. Overall the style and copy gives a personal, likable impression. }

thinkbohemian• 17 years ago

No favicon

dskhatri2• 17 years ago

Just confirming.. built with Microsoft technology :)

http://builtwith.com/?http%3A//www.thegatesnotes.com/

terrellm• 17 years ago

The .ASPX extension in the URLs led me to make the same assumption

vinhboy• 17 years ago

// Workaround for a bug in ASP.NET Ajax Beta, you don't need this in the final version

and this is also kind of funny: <!--[if lt IE 7]> ...

thenduks• 17 years ago

Several typos on the front page... I guess it's just another blog but, I don't know, I would expect Bill Gates to put his stuff through some proper proof-reading.

ra• 17 years ago

Lulz:

clofresh• 17 years ago

I can has rss feed?

rudin• 17 years ago

First twitter and now a website?

Looking over the content on the site I was depressed by all the philanthropy and environmentalism. Not that these aren't good things but I think Bill has been so successful at building software and corporations that his time would be better used teaching people these things.

Imagine the articles and insight we could get if he would convert into someone like Paul Graham.

staunch• 17 years ago

I'm as much of a believer in the power of entrepreneurship as it gets, but I disagree. Having his brain power, management ability, and billions of dollars directed towards helping humanity's least fortunate is just about as optimal a situation as I can imagine.

whatusername• 17 years ago

actually, I completely disagree.

What Bill was truly good at, was hiring smart people and getting them to all work towards something big. Putting a computer on every desk was a big goal. Eradicating Malaria and the other things the foundation is working on are big goals. And to be honest - I'm impressed by the way he is going about it.

This site isn't about him resting on his laurels - looking back at the success he had. This is the posts/information on what he is working on now. So it wont have the deep insight that he would have about software/corporations. But the fact he is applying that insight to Philanthropy and to the world of NGO's is fantastic and I applaud him for it.

onoj• 17 years ago

Totally agree - and also at the very least I rest comfortable knowing that such a large amount of wealth (Most of Buffets' empire also) is bookmarked to at least try and do good. Not somewhere else (ie: funding weapons)

nazgulnarsil• 17 years ago

rich nerds are the best hope for major change IMO (a rather randian outlook I admit). humanity is currently stuck in a quagmire of democracy and egalitarianism that doesn't seem nearly as beneficial as it would have us believe.

retro• 17 years ago

As much as I'd like his feedback on my Twitter clone, I'd rather see him continue to work on extreme poverty.

mcav• 17 years ago

Do you think he's actually writing/doing all this himself? (vs. having an intern or something like that be his social media face)

tibbon• 17 years ago

I'm sure he's got some other people doing stuff on the site (code, server, etc), but I'm likely to believe that this is indeed him writing the content. Maybe he's got someone proofing it, but Bill like most of us probably find something nice about writing out your thoughts and interacting with people through a blog.

pbhjpbhj2• 17 years ago

Doesn't validate for HTML or CSS and has to include IE specific fixes for proper display of PNG.

Wish he'd had to code it to spec for himself.

sjs382• 17 years ago

No RSS feed? :/

blintson• 17 years ago

<tin-foil-hat>

He could be doing all this because he wants to run for office. The site frequently refers to Gates in the third person, it's kinda structured like a lot of political candidates sites.

</tin-foil-hat>

zyb09• 17 years ago

Microsoft for President!

dskhatri2• 17 years ago

In the introduction note, Bill says:

"I take a lot of notes, and often share them and my own thoughts on the subject with others through email"

Besides email (which isn't that great if you don't have GMail style threads), I wonder whether he and other prominent personalities use a closed discussion forum to engage in discourse about interesting topics like HN does. I can understand why he would be hesitant to comment on a public forum like HN.

That said, it's great to see people like PG, DHH (and others) mix with the no-names (or future-names) on HN.

rmason• 17 years ago

I think Gates should turn comments on. People should be registered, perhaps using Facebook/LinkedIn credentials.

I do agree he needs to be exposed to opinions outside his comfort zone.

pmorici• 17 years ago

I find this line from the greeting letter a bit odd, "It often feels like I'm back in school, as I spend a lot of my time learning about issues I'm passionate about." Didn't he drop out of college to start MS presumably because he felt like the things he was learning in school were a waste of his time?

metra2• 17 years ago

What about elementary, middle and high school?

projectileboy• 17 years ago

I don't think that's accurate - from interviews, speeches and his own writings, he's always sounded complimentary towards his Harvard experiences; it's just that starting Micro-Soft was the right opportunity at the right time, and he grabbed it.

hrabago• 17 years ago

There's no conflict there. In an actual school, you're not the one setting the curriculum. This involves a lowest common denominator of a variety of subjects, some of which you'll never apply. I imagine that now he's spending his time studying things he's interested in and likely directly related to things he's doing or trying to accomplish.

intellectronica• 17 years ago

It's amazing how the design of the website almost cries "don't read me".

Bill Gates's new website: The Gates Notes

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