OpenAmazing

1) Change your name. Tweet + Digg sounds like a social media parody. Also, I don't think you can use the word "tweet" in your name without risking being sued by Twitter. And, if you grow, you may expand beyond filtering Tweets.

2) Your audience and customers are people that use Twitter for business - small businesses, marketing departments, ad agencies, etc. Take a look at other firms in that space (SEOMoz, Buddy Media, HootSuite and see how they do things. Right now your language is geared towards consumers that like Twitter. Change that. Your website needs to explain to a small business how you can help them make more money.

3) It IS a good idea. Social media filtering is a big problem. You are just selling it to the wrong people.

Don't forget touch. In the last 5 years we've moved from a world where most computer interaction happened with a monitor on a desk and a virtual mouse pointer. Now many consumers user smartphones as their primary computer - which they hold in their hand and touch with their fingers. This made the computing experience more emotional and personal and there the "experience" part of the software a lot more important.

Are you guys affiliated with http://www.backblaze.com?

If not, you should change your logo and website design fast. Possibly your name too.

@OpenAmazing

Was just reading your website and saw the Joe Vs. The Volcano clip. That's one of my favorite movies and I've never met anyone else that has even heard of it, much less quotes from it. We might have to be friends.

Tim Cook has an MBA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Cook

"Vidisheva isn’t just a pretty face..."

What's up with that?

There is no reason for the gym to make it fun.

As the article points out, the gym wants you to come once (not have fun) and then not come back - but continue to pay the monthly membership fee.

If the gym was fun, and every member came in regularly, the gym would go out of business. Their goal is to make the gym seem like something you should have a membership for (lots of high-tech looking machines and posters about health and attractive staff), but actually not fun enough for you to come more than a few times a month.

This is why there is a rise in the small group-focused workout clubs (that emphasize fun).

"We put cgi-bin in our dynamic urls to fool competitors about how our software worked."

Love it.

This is an amazingly insightful comment.

Everyone here should read this a few times through.

Adobe Air.

You would be surprised.

If you distribute software to non-programmers, check your stats for # of downloads started vs. # of applications started (or new users). My guess is that they are way off:

Most computer users do not know what a "Downloads" folder is.

I did almost exactly the same thing on one of my websites (screenshots showing the user what to click on to complete the download).

I started getting customer support requests complaining that the "Download window could not be clicked on and was stuck to the web page".

Turns out users thought that the explanatory screenshots were the ACTUAL download dialogs and they were trying to click the images in the web page. Oops.

Turns out I needed to resize the screenshots and discolor them slightly so it was obvious they were the REAL buttons to click.

Lesson learned.

Can you (or another SEO) comment on why the mini-site is better than just a blog post on their site? Don't they want the PageRank juice for their main site and not the mini-site? Or is the plan to redirect the mini-site at a later date?

Are you a female elementary school teacher?

"useful tools in securing budgets and coordinating teams"

This is exactly what Gruber is referring to. If crazy videos like this are being used to determine budgets, then the company is being led by fools.

Any manager that would watch this video and then declare "Yes! Build me that!" doesn't understand how products get made and should not be let anywhere near the Product team.

Actually, Apple spends significantly less on R&D than both Google and Microsoft. They spend, but not billions like their competitors.

http://www.asymco.com/2010/05/25/apples-rd-efficiency/

Careful. That makes you liable for copyright violations. Better to use the user's computer.

Slightly facetious with the HN == good parenting comment. But in general, if you are the type of person that likes to learn, problem solves and strives to improve, you'll do fine at parenting. "Approach parenting like a startup" isn't such bad advice. In general.

Dwelling type, of course, is immaterial. I was illustrating a group of people who have extremely poor judgement, children being only one of them (i.e. you shouldn't be renting a giant TV if you can't pay rent or provide for your children).

My wife use to be a social worker.

It is incredibly sad how many children are put in front of a TV all day. And not Sesame Street or even cartoons - but Soap Operas, Jerry Springer, Cops, Fox News etc. Picture a dirty trailer home, behind on rent, no job, fast food for every meal and a rented 52-inch rear-projection TV that is on all. the. time.

When health care professionals make statements like this, the bad parents are who they are picturing in their head. They know the good parents (like the ones that read HN) can make informed decisions for themselves. But the bad parents have to be told "absolutely no TV" because there is no concept of moderation.

The ad-to-purchase flow is the killer feature of this device.

(1) These are pre-loaded with your Amazon.com account (the one you bought it with). You don't have to sign in to it, it already knows who you are.

(2) The first ad I saw was a "local deal" for a massage near where I live (for Ballard, in Seattle). This is minutes after first turning on the Kindle. No data entry. I was curious what the user experience was so I opened the ad. There was a Buy button for the massage ($26 for a 20 minute massage). I'm working on an order path / checkout flow for work right now so I was curious to see how they did it on the Kindle. I clicked the Buy button (again, I have yet to do any keyboard data entry on the device) and... I had bought. "Thanks for your purchase" read the screen and my iPhone beeped with the confirmation email.

The Kindle comes pre-loaded with your Amazon account and everything is set up for one-click purchasing.

Genius.

(I debated forward the email to my wife, but just cancelled the order instead).

It's the comedians that always say it best.

Colbert's short little clip here (especially the very powerful ending) and the Onion's article are the two most touching pieces I've read on Steve Jobs.

It reminds me of the Onion's "Holy Fucking Shit" piece after September 11th. That did a lot to snap Americans back to reality and help us mourn.

Has it always been the case that the funny people are the best at helping us (group, nation, community) mourn? Or is just that, these days, the wisest and people (in media) happen to be comedians?

edit: grammar

Accept that it's more like taking someone that has a 10% chance of success and moving them to 20%.

Most of the applicants to YC have a near zero percent chance of success. With or without help.

Early adopters in any market are the people that have the most to gain and (more importantly) the least to lose by using your product.

For business-to-business products, the early adopters are often the underdogs (small or losing companies looking for any advantage against the market leaders).

For consumers, look for the hardcore fans of your market. The people that get an intellectual or emotional high from products in your space. Look for the crazy obsessed people.

Journalists are not early adopters (even ones that cover your market).

Don't forget the costs associated with creating an album. The studio time required to record the album s cheaper than it used to be, but still substantial. Some of them may have needed new instruments etc. The costs are higher than missed opportunity. They would have needed real cash in the bank to get started.

$76 billion dollars in the bank.

If Apple had announced they were going to spend it all to make Steve well again, would would have protested?

Somewhere in here is a lesson on the price of immortality.

Kinect?

(This is different from worrying about pages that “degrade gracefully” is a terrible idead in my opinion. If you’re not using JavaScript, you’re not using the web. Special considerations shouldn’t be made for you.)

That's the full quote. And I agree.

Whatever your business is, its doubtful that supporting browsers with Javascript disabled would help.

"Degrade gracefully" - at least to the extremes (no js, no css) is just bragging rights / pride for developers. I can't imagine a business scenario where this would be a legitimate requirement.

It is great to see a company get a lot of money, then put it to really smart / great use.

I love Skitch. It is one of the apps I use throughout the day in my normal workflow. It is just too easy to grab a screenshot, add a big red arrow pointing to the problem and then email that image. I love it.

I'm excited to see Evernote integration (another app I use every day).

let the businesses come to them

That will never happen. That's the fundamental problem with "local". Small businesses and mom-and-pop shops need to be called and convinced. They need their hand held. They aren't studying lean marketing practices or split testing their offers.

Look at the head counts for ad sales vs editorial for any local publication (newspaper, magazine, newsletter). If you want to sell to local businesses, you have to call them.