falicon

Justin Jackson just released a book around this very topic "Marketing for Developers" -> http://justinjackson.ca/marketingfordevelopers/

It's full of great advice...but I think one of the key take aways is to "find a market" before you really "have an idea"...and he walks you through some really good ways to do that (using real world case studies of people that are doing it)

"Collect 500 emails and then email them about your startup"...that's specifically why I ended up building https://conversationlist.com (it helps you skip the step of collect 500 emails and just jump right to the email everyone you have a pre-existing relationship with step).

Amazing how well that old-school growth hack still works...

I've played with it and hacked together a very generic app just to see how it was...so I can say that I think it has much potential and an exciting future...but...

1. Amazon is still pushing out it's own ideas and features for it...they haven't fully released it to the wild west of developers (many have learned to wait until the dust settles before wasting time/energy on potential features that will be blocked or taken over by the powers-that-be).

2. The speaker bit is cool, but really it's just Siri in a speaker instead of a phone (very cool but not a "wow" out of the box)...it's the next gen. that I think everyone is really excited about and waiting for (when the SDK, and api access, is baked into more than just one stand alone speaker - that is, if/when it becomes the voice interaction for the internet of things; that becomes super exciting and interesting)

3. Not an adoption limitation, but I can say that having worked with the v1 of the tools for building on this stuff...it's still pretty clunky and painful. I think they (AWS) are adopting and upgrading that quickly...but there are some hurdles there as well before "anyone can build a voice powered/interactive thing" can become a reality (and that's the HUGE sensation IMHO)...

Agree 100%

Jerry always writes long, but solid, stuff...worth following on twitter too if your so inclined -> http://twitter.com/ganeumann

He's the most hacker-like angel investor I follow/read (and no he has never backed any of my projects...yet) ;-)

It's very rare that "going back" ever turns out well or as people hope (there are a few exceptions).

Keep in mind that you left for a reason...and the only thing you can really change is you...have you changed so much that you are missing it? That you can't move on without it?

My advice, as long as you have other reasonable options, take one of those paths instead...

I think the trick isn't so much in the down time (or the length of it)...it's in what you do with any free time.

Burnout is generally a result of getting stuck doing lots of stuff you don't want to the majority of your time...and generally very little of what you do want to be doing...

So in my experience you only get over burnout by focusing and rediscovering what you were truly passionate about in the first place (or at the very least what you are insanely passionate about now).

Then, once you can figure out what excites you, start getting small wins in that direction however you can...and before you know it, you'll be full of energy and near impossible to stop again.

This is neat. (but when using it, it kinda feels like I could get as good or better results with just Math.random & a large collection of words each assigned a random value)

Language comparisons are equiv. to religion comparisons...you aren't going to find a universal answer or truth, it's an individual/faith sort of thing.

That being said - all the serious math/data people I know love both R and Python...R for the heavy math, Python for the simplicity, glue, and organization.

A couple of people I trust with inside knowledge of the deal (sorry can't provide specifics, been awhile and I didn't realize that the selling price was not public knowledge when I posted this).

Cool - but do you feel like you are paying for the content or are you paying for the experience/environment that you listen to the podcast within?

My point was just that when people do pay, in their mind I think they are paying for the podcast itself...and don't really care all that much about the middle men (same basic thing with music really -- there are, of course, exceptions)

He also made close to a million on the sale of instapaperfeed to Betaworks...so yeah, he's def. not in the same boat as many independent devs...

Gotta respect Marco for all the success he's had with Tumblr, InstaPaper, (briefly) Peace, and of course Overcast so far...but I kinda feel like he is worried about the wrong thing/people here.

Who cares if other devs. or companies don't like his business model? Does that affect his users or potential customers in any real way? I don't think so.

Also - the patron model is super interesting and I'm excited to see people continue to play with and test it...but I'm not sold that it's a sustainable solution either.

The question to me is: Do people care enough to pay for podcasts? And for those that do, in their mind are they actually paying for the content or the experience/environment? What pain is this specific app itself actually fixing or removing compared to my alternatives?

Marco has proven he's amazing at building experiences and environments people love...and I think he can continue to do very well down that path...but without owning/controlling/providing the content or the 'talent' on the client side he'll never break out of being just one of the middle-men in that part of the ecosystem (and thereby evaluated and paid by users as such).

I just released an update to the UI...would love to know if it's more pleasing for you. Thanks!

Sorry ;-)

Thanks - very valid points...but the idea of the service is to make sure I can quickly/easily know about the things people are recently talking about (regardless of quality). The quality journalism that alerts us to the big breakthroughs and interesting stuff requires a more serious investment in resources I think ;-)

To move through archives just add the date to the overall url...example for Aug 21st -> http://knowabout.it/08-21-2014

Good point - my orig. motivation was just to get a quick list of stuff I'm too busy to catch (because I'm off coding during the day)...so I cared more about things making the list than I did about the actual position on the list...but better grouping (like others mentioned) and better scoring (also mentioned by a few) is probably worth some time/focus...so I'm adding it to the list. Thanks!

Good point - I'll work on getting better context into each link. Thanks!

love it - will def. work on better grouping. Thanks!

awesome ideas - will work on implementing. Thanks!

That is a great suggestion...I think I can probably do at least some basic parsing to determine how many different people are commenting (vs. total comment count)...and I can probably do some basic keyword filtering counts too (checking for common flame/spam words and scoring on that)...worth playing with for sure! Thanks!

Great suggestion...I'll think about the best way to implement this (without driving up the costs/processing too much). Thanks!

At the moment the site mostly just monitors HN and reddit for new (tech related) posts that are getting a lot of comments in the past 24 hours...but if people find it useful, I may expand to monitor more sources (and offer a daily email digest)

...and confidence gained...confidence that you have what it takes to track down and acquire the knowledge you seek. Confidence, cultural exposure, and life experience are probably the most important 'soft skills' hopefully everyone pulls out of their 20s (higher ed or not) :-)

I believe the intent of college is simply to help you figure out 'how you learn' and expose you to more options and more of the world than your "high school life" did.

No college is going to give you a magic bullet of knowledge that ensures happiness or success...but every one will give you an opportunity at unique experiences and resources (and if you go the school route - take as much advantage of those as you can).

It shouldn't be about earning a grade or messing up and losing a grade...it should be about your dreams, hopes, and ambition...about what you want to get out of life and how you develop those tools, qualities, and skills to get it.

If you've figured out code and tech is your passion and you've figure out how you personally best grok it...then you're already years ahead of most university students ;-)

I think it depends on your intent behind the API. Are you trying to create something that makes the developer/user/world easier and better or are you trying to keep your system perfect, clean, and done the right way?

If it's about opening up to the larger world so that more things can be built and accomplished, you want to make it as easy as possible to use and understand across the board.

You can be as strict and stern about RFC specks and rules as you want when building your thing...however, the more rigid you are, they more you'll need to be operating from a position of power from the start or the more you'll struggle to get real adoption (and to be realistic, most of us are not really releasing things from a position of power)

It's the combination of idea + you that creates the value for a given idea...and that value is always relative to how valuable the 'you' in that equation really is (and keep in mind that value is always relative)

I agree that the HTTP methods, when used properly, express the action...the problem is A. not everyone actually follows that properly and B. the HTTP method isn't always immediately obvious to people working with the service (i.e. newbie devs.)

Having the verbs in the URI is not DRY (so that kind of sucks) but really it's not very damaging either...and so I believe the upside of (human readable) clarity outweighs the downside of a tiny bit of redundant expression.

In the end, unfort. because so many don't follow RFC 2616, devs are forced to read/pay attention to the documentation for a given service anyway (at least that's always been my experience)...so in a perfect world, I would agree verbs are the methods (and not needed in the URI)...but we are a ways off from a perfect world still...

Most people prefer what they already know (learning any new system or process is always frustrating because you are attempting to map concept rather than learn concepts - square peg, round hole).

I prefer (and use) git myself, but it took awhile (and much of my developer/friend network to go first) for me to commit to the switch from subversion...my main issue was that subversion worked well enough for what I needed/wanted at the time. I didn't really switch until it became harder to work with others because of my subversion use and easier to work with others if/when I adopted git.