HN user
Hey hnnh44,
Good eye. I should have caught that one. I've updated the post to indicate the correct numbers (which was more like ~35 million units in 2017) and added an editor's note about the mistake. Thanks!
For Mashable's Follow introduction video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbLazF5KxUc ), we used Epipheo: http://www.epipheostudios.com/
That's a good point. My brother -- who until recently ran a small non-profit -- last year had a grant to build a new website and put out a RFP to a bunch of local and national design firms. I think at times he was overwhelmed with the responses and utilized me to sort through them. I spent a good deal of time going over the proposals with him and helping him understand the differences between WordPress and Drupal and PHP vs. Ruby and what sort of features he actually needed on his organization's new website.
In the end he told me that I could probably make a living doing consulting like that strictly for non-profits. There is definitely a need for that sort of guidance.
I think that's where orgs like NTEN can help, and maybe this site could also act as an information clearing house and community for those on the non-profit side to learn about what sort of technologies are available, what they need, what's possible, and how to get it done.
Clickable link: http://coderswhocare.org
It's admirable to attempt to collect free resources and organize them in a way that provides a natural progression for subject matter mastery, but essays and lectures does not a college education make. For that you need teachers and peers to discuss the information, to frame it and present it in ways necessary for different types of learners to grasp it, to evaluate your understanding, to challenge you to think about things in new ways.
For most people, just reading the information or watching lectures won't bring you to the same level of understanding (certainly there are exceptions to that rule).
Don't get me wrong, it's great to organize these resources and make them more available for people who wouldn't otherwise have access, but it bothers me to imply this is the same as a college education. Ultimately, I think that just devalues the work that teachers do.
Whether the term is semantically correct or not, "group buying" is how most people have been referring to those types of sites (either that, or "daily deal site" -- though even that, one could argue, is incorrect, since many of these sites have deals that last more than one day or present more or less than one day or present multiple deals in a day).
Your point is valid, I suppose, but the accepted nomenclature is the accepted nomenclature.
It seems to me that all of those arguments could be applied to Woot, which did quite well before Groupon. They're at least following a once-proven model.
(Woot has always had a tacked on community, but so does Groupon.)
Brilliant! And fitting, since baby carrots are already the sort of "junk food of the carrot world." At least, insofar as that they're the lazy alternative to buying and cutting your own damn carrots.
(Baby carrots are just big carrots that have been pre-cut and marked way up. Info here: http://www.wisebread.com/baby-carrots-the-frugal-idea-that-i... ... which also brings to mind the semi-related issue of America's aversion to non-"perfect" produce. That's one of the reasons small, local producers have a hard time selling to big grocery chains -- they can't afford to cull their produce of the "ugly" carrots, tomatoes, peppers, etc.)
I don't think I'd say my premise was that this was "simply" a budget problem. I was just saying that calling it a teacher shortage is a poor choice of words to describe the current problem -- we don't have a shortage of qualified teacher candidates, we have a shortage of capital necessary to hire them.
The education system and the problems therein (i.e., issues affecting student success) are certainly far more complicated and nuanced.
Shortage doesn't seem like the right word. That implies that there are more job openings than applicants, which simply isn't true. According to the New York Times, this is one of the weakest job markets for teachers in decades: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/nyregion/20teachers.html
The applicant pool is plenty well stocked, so there is no "shortage" of teachers. What there is, perhaps, is a shortage of qualified teachers in the classroom. In other words, due to budget cuts, layoffs and position cuts (i.e., not hiring a replacement after someone retires or quits), there are not enough employed teachers to adequately teach all the students in the states with a so-called shortage.
But there are plenty of qualified people looking for teaching jobs -- more than enough for current openings and then some. So what this is, is a money problem. There's no teacher shortage, there's a budget shortage. We're not allocating enough funds to adequately fill needs in schools across the country.
Or at least, that's how I see it.
If 7 female founder is reflective of the Y Combinator applicant pool, and the only thing YC is doing to structurally to "keep women out" is to favor founders who have coding skills, then the issue appears to be that there aren't enough competent female coders.
Rather than a band-aid solution (e.g., creating a separate model of startup incubator that plays the types of jobs women currently do), if we want true gender equality in the tech space we should hit at the root: getting more women interested in tech. So instead of "XX Combinator," how about more programs designed to get young girls interested in science, math, coding, and entrepreneurism -- the supposed ingredients of a successful YC applicant.
That is, it seems to me that funding a whole bunch of startups run by people who may not be technically qualified to succeed simply because they're women isn't a great idea. Instead, the better solution is to devise ways to get more women interested in the things necessary to succeed (in this case coding and design skills+) and help them develop those skills.
+If you believe the apparent YC philosophy that technically adept founders are better positioned to succeed.
The article is flawed, but his profile still doesn't seem to play by the rules. When I go to facebook.com/zuck there is no option for me to request adding him as a friend. In normal privacy settings you can specific that either everyone can add you as a friend or only friends of friends. I have two mutual friends with Mark Zuckerberg.
So either his profile has some additional privacy setting (i.e., to only send out, not receive, friend requests) or something else is at play (like he has hit the friend limit -- I'm not sure what that looks like, to be honest).
I think it's probably naive to think that just because it exists, people will flee Facebook for this new alternative. Diaspora may have garnered some geek attention and raised an impressive amount of money... but it has 3700 backers. Let's be generous and say each of those backers actually represents 100 people (i.e., only 1% of the people interested in this project were willing to give money to make it happen).
That means Diaspora has 370,000 users right off the bat. Impressive? Yes. But even if those 370,000 users all also quit Facebook and delete their accounts (doubtful, imho), that's still a drop in the bucket compared to 450 million. Most Fb users wouldn't notice any change in their social graph, certainly not enough to leave Facebook.
Further, Diaspora's pitch is great at getting tech geeks like us to fork over money, but it includes nothing that real, mainstream users actually care about (that is: talk to your friends, share photos and videos, play games... and maybe, just maybe, control your privacy). Think about who the average Facebook user really is. They're not people who know or care what the term "data portability" means, and Disapora loses them as soon as they use the word, "node."
In reality, Diaspora is like Identi.ca or Diso. They're great ideas on paper that we (tech nerds) may love, but mainstream users could care less. They go where their friends are, and right now, their friends are on Facebook. Facebook might eventually damage user trust enough to make people want to leave, but a pitch about data portability and open source is not going to get them to switch.
I like it, but two thoughts.
1. Though the effect of panning along the picture is cool, its also somewhat jarring.
2. You're covering up faces on a couple of the staff pages with the content box... might want to flip the images (so the face appears in the right side) or find a new image for those team members.
Or how about, "If I get this position, what sort of budget can I expect to be working with and what will I be expected to produce with that budget?"
I like your footnote idea, though I think it seems fairly unnatural for casual communication. To me, short URLs seem like the more user-friendly solution.
I'm also still not sold on the dead link problem for two reasons.
1. You're already relying on one site (in this case Google) not to go down or change its dynamic URL patterns. Certainly adding another layer increases the chances of a dead link, but any time you link to something on the web you're taking a risk of sending someone to an error page.
2. Most instances in which you'd use a short URL -- such as email -- are for instant communication in which the recipient is likely to visit that link in the next day or two. In other words, you wouldn't link to a short URL in the body of your web page or blog (something with more permanence on which you want to be sure the link works months or even years from now), but for email or Twitter messages, which are generally fleeting and timely, that matters less. As long as the link works right now then all is good. If the person visiting the links wants to save it for later, they'll more than likely bookmark it, cutting the shortener out of the loop anyway.
I disagree with that statement. Even before the rise of microblogging, URL shorteners were helpful in certain situations.
Which URL would you rather paste in an email for readability's sake:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Oak...
or
In context, the recipient should have no problem anticipating the URL's end point (i.e., you probably just wrote something like, "here are some directions to my house:"), but using the shortened URL makes the email much more readable and prevents any potential screwy scrolling issues that might be caused by an ultra unwieldy URL borking their email software.
That's just one non-microblogging use case for one site that spits out very long dynamic URLs -- there are many use cases for many sites.
TinyURL, et. al. certainly did (and continue to) solve a problem, imho. And they've become even more useful for microblogging sites like Twitter, on which character limit constraints (which essentially defines that type of service) require that URLs be shortened.
[EDIT: I know HN auto truncated that Google Maps URL, but it is a 355 characters long -- and most email software (my use case) wouldn't auto truncate the URL in the same way. So readability would be negatively affected for the recipient by using the long URL instead of the short one.]
Actually, here's what MG gets wrong.
The Twitter story was this: "BULLETIN — REPORT: FAMED GOLFER TIGER WOODS SERIOUSLY INJURED AFTER CRASH NEAR FLORIDA HOME."
And the CNN story (30-45 min later), was this: "(CNN) — Golfer Tiger Woods was injured in a car accident near his home, Florida officials say."
When all was said and done, which was more correct? The answer is CNN's. Woods was not "seriously injured," he was treated for facial lacerations and was, quote "fine," according to his agent (http://twitter.com/darrenrovell1/status/6121135958).
Twitter might win on speed, but CNN ultimately won (this time) on accuracy. They knew about the Woods incident as soon as everyone else did -- to think they don't watch Twitter like everyone else would be silly -- but they likely spent that extra half hour doing what no one on Twitter does: actual journalism (as in, checking sources).
(Note: I'm personally not a fan of process journalism, something that MG's boss avidly promotes... report first get the facts later is a sad future if it is indeed the future of how the news is disseminated, imho.)
Prototype vertical farms. It's my new obsession.
The UN projects that arable land will decline to 1/3 acre per person by 2050 (down from 1 acre/person in 1970). I'd buy up a few old mill buildings (they're all over New England, where I live), and convert them to combination indoor farms using hydroponic or aeroponic growing systems, living space (for farmers), and retail space (to sell the food to the community and offer sales space to other local farmers).
I'd use the roof for combination solar, additional green space, and rain catchment.
The real question is: Why are we getting vaccines for this flu? It's a lot less deadly than previous seasonal flus. Why the concern?
If that were true (and I'm not sure it is), we have vaccines for the seasonal flu every year...
I'll grant you the second point, though I think you developed it further in once sentence here than Carr did in his piece. (By which I mean to say, the correlation between that observed phenomena and the rise in emphasis on citizen journalism may be valid, and would have fit with the topic Carr was editorializing on, but he didn't do a very good job developing that supposed link.)
But to the former, I don't think Carr was trying to say citizen journalism is bad, but I do think he was trying to say it often fails us. Unfortunately (for his argument), the example he picked was one of a citizen's voice (not a citizen journalist's) being amplified by a mainstream press that had failed to properly vet those reports. So that failing was with the traditional media, rather than new media, imho.
The problems with Carr's piece are:
1. That he points out a problem with mainstream journalism (failing to vet sources), not one with citizen journalism, as he says. (Note: citizen journalism has that problem too, but not here.)
2. His definition of "citizen journalism" is far too wide, in my opinion. Moore isn't a citizen journalist. She's just a person who happened to be talking to her friends about an event as it happened.
If we accept the "everyone is now a journalist" definition that Carr seems to use, then journalism becomes something of very little value. Journalism is removing the signal from the noise, and his first example (Moore) demonstrates a failure on the part of trained journalists to do that properly.
His second example (the video of the Iranian protesters death) is tragic, but again, not a failure of journalism or journalists. It's a failure of human decency, perhaps (and one that's certainly debatable)... but that's another topic altogether.
Actually, that's $60k-120k/yr ;)
But it is an encouraging way to look at it: if you're a one person team, and you can keep your expenses pretty low (storage, bandwidth, credit card processing, etc. + cost of living), ramen profitability can come with just a hundred paying customers. That doesn't seem like such an overwhelming out of reach goal, even in a crowded market.
This seems like someone being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.
Kevin Kelly never said getting to the level of true fans necessary to earn a living was easy. He also said that 1,000 and $100 were oversimplifications for the sake of making his point (i.e., what people will spend on your work and how many people you'll need to do that each year to live will vary widely from artist to artist).
The point was he was making, as I read it, was that artists can make a comfortable living in the long tail by attracting and catering to (that's the key part) a group of die-hard fans. It's labor intensive, but it can be done.
A friend of mine is a niche musical artist who makes a living playing small shows, selling t-shirts, and putting out one new album per year. He lives comfortably (though by no means lavishly) and has a lot of fun. His MySpace page says he has 12,000 fans, but his shows usually have 20-50 people, and often, the same people will go to every show they can reasonably drive to, will buy every one of his CDs, and purchase any new t-shirts or stickers (or whatever) that he makes.
In other words, he found his group of true fans, and he caters to them by making music and merchandise he knows they'll want. In return, they buy his shit and he makes a living.
I haven't tested it out personally, but Prefinery might fit the bill: http://www.prefinery.com/
I think their free plan accommodates 50 testers.
You could also set up a private forum which would allow you to post new versions and allow beta testers to leave and discuss feedback.
Cuil has one of the best privacy policies on the web, at least from a readability standpoint: http://www.cuil.com/info/privacy/
Using plain English (not legalese) and keeping things short and to the point seems to be an effective way of making privacy policies more user friendly. By making them so obscured by legal language that they're inaccessible to most readers, you're just guaranteeing that they won't be read. Which isn't doing anyone any favors. Keep it short, keep it simple.
Another great privacy policy, is Bill Monk's: https://www.billmonk.com/about/privacy
They use user-friendly plain English, keep things relatively short (though not quite Cuil-short), and they provide a summary of the key points at the start. That's all very helpful for users, imho.
Something Awful should get points for their privacy policy, as well: http://www.somethingawful.com/d/feature-articles/website-pri...
It's written just like anything else on their site -- with a liberal dose of humor. But that's perfect for their core audience and makes it instantly readable and easy to understand (for the people whom it effects, at least).
Zuck wearing a tie? What's going on...? I was led to believe he only wears t-shirts and sandals at all times.
I would second this. Some of the features look really intriguing -- like the uptime graphs and the global visualization -- but I want more info -- like how often my site is pinged and from how many different locations.
Clickable: http://nimbu.net/
Huh... I thought the characters on "Big Bang Theory" were fictional.