fratis

It's the name of James Bond's signature martini. The LLC's name, Q Branch, refers to the R&D wing of MI6.

I have a question for our Android-using brethren who've had the opportunity to play with Now. I've read a bit about it over the past few weeks, and I've been excited about a port to iOS, but now that I have it, I'm not sure how or if it'll fit into my life day-to-day.

At first brush, all I see is a weather widget. I know there's more to it, but where exactly does the magic happen? What have you done (if anything) to maximize its value?

Anywhere near the city? I'd be happy to chat over coffee.

The subject is an implied first person. (i.e., "I" or "we.")

I see this kind of omission as a way for cowards to avoid explicitly standing behind their request, both to diminish their own disappointment if the recipient says no or ignores them and to mitigate the chance that the recipient perceives their note as 'needy.'

Just my 2¢.

Wow. This was unnecessarily hostile.

Though I agree that the tagline's a little confusing, the first two bullet points ("Never ask for a friend's Wi-Fi password again" and "Sync passwords between your tablet and phone") gave me a clearer understanding of what they're doing here.

Irrespective of the quality of their explanation, your cynical assumption (read: projection) that in comparing themselves to Dropbox they're just trying to "seem disruptive" or to put on airs is disheartening. I don't know these guys, but why not give them the benefit of the doubt? Couldn't they be comparing themselves to Dropbox for another reason – namely, that Dropbox is great at syncing, and that, just perhaps, their app is great at syncing too?

Minutes are used for call forwarding and outgoing calls, yes. :) Thanks for the question. We're adding it to our FAQ shortly.

(Frank here, one of the co-founders of CallingVault.)

'Privacy' in the context of our service means two things, but in the comparison to GV, it really means that we'll never scrape your texts or voicemails for ad targeting or use your activity to build a profile of who you are.

It also means – and we share this with GV – that you can keep your personal number private by giving out your CallingVault number instead.

Frank here – one of the co-founders of CallingVault. Here's how we look at it:

We wanted to charge the lowest price possible for a CallingVault line, so we made text and minute purchasing a la carte. This way, you get the line (including unlimited voicemail) for $3.25/month and you add only the texts and minutes that you need. We think our rates on texts and calls (as low as 1¢/txt and 2.2¢/min) are competitive.

We're always looking to get our prices as low as possible without jeopardizing the sustainability of our business (which means never showing ads, never selling customer data in any way, and ensuring that we can be around for the long haul to provide the kind of support we do now) and our goal is to be as transparent as possible (except with our customers' information). Can you point me to other services that charge less?

I think I remember what you're talking about (pretty sure it was just called Bow and Arrow) and I think this is it: http://www.download-central.ws/Win16/Games/B/Bow-and-Arrow/

Further confusing the issue: inflammable means exactly the same thing as flammable.

For those interested in learning about the subject, here's a good place to start (in order):

Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics http://books.google.com/books?id=B0eB8mvov6wC&printsec=f...

Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology http://www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_3997.pdf

and, for fun...

Jacques Derrida, Differànce http://hydra.humanities.uci.edu/derrida/diff.html

He's using the jQuery Waypoints plugin to fire events when a visitor scrolls to specified points on the page. Probably that.

A UX guy's perspective, now that I've used the app a little:

* The "I want to explore..." box doesn't really scream SEARCH BOX at me. My first instinct was that it was a kind of "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. You might be able to make it a little 'searchier' just by getting rid of the all caps and left-aligning the text.

* Scrolling through the Places menu is pretty laggy (on my iPhone 4S, at least), especially when compared to scrolling through photos, which is lightning fast.

* I love the pleasantness of the copy/messaging in the app. When it prompted me to share, I couldn't help but tweet it. One thing you might consider doing for that menu in particular is making it a two-step thing instead of a three-step thing. Right now, you ask the user if they'd like to share, then which network they'd like to share with, then they have to do the actual sharing. Why not unify that first and second step into a single prompt?

* In the pane in which the I Want To Explore box has focus, the spacing/balance could be improved. One way to improve it might be to remove the Location Filter tag altogether.

Sweet app. Downloaded and ready to use tomorrow in NYC.

One thing: kerning. The 'A' in the wordmark is in no-man's land! T and G are friendly letters, and I'm sure they'd be more than happy to snuggle up on that A.

As much as I truly, truly loathe criminals of any sort, lionizing vigilantism, especially when the self-appointed avenger threatens violence, is misguided at best and dangerous (read: deadly) at worst.

Please, if your phone is stolen, don't chase down the thief yourself. It just isn't worth it.

This app isn't meant to be used in the subway – it's meant to used before you go down into the station. All the lines supported in the app have signs in their stations with the same live schedule information.

I responded to this on the other post regarding the Poke app on the homepage:

Sure, it's like SnapChat, but isn't that always the dynamic in this industry: the Feature Qua Product (simplicity, focus) vs. Feature Qua Feature (integration)? Some folks, like those who use Buffer, for example, simply prefer tightly-focused, standalone apps while others prefer ones that do more, that integrate many features into a (sometimes) cohesive product a la HootSuite. Personal note: while I'd have been tempted to compare them to Apple or Google in the past, Facebook's turning out to be a lot more like Microsoft for the web, appropriating features or buying companies to Do Everything, even if they're not the best in each vertical.

Sure, it's like SnapChat, but isn't that always the dynamic in this industry: the Feature Qua Product (simplicity, focus) vs. Feature Qua Feature (integration)? Some folks, like those who use Buffer, for example, simply prefer tightly-focused, standalone apps while others prefer ones that do more, that integrate many features into a (sometimes) cohesive product a la HootSuite.

Personal note: while I'd have been tempted to compare them to Apple or Google in the past, Facebook's turning out to be a lot more like Microsoft for the web, appropriating features or buying companies to Do Everything, even if they're not the best in each vertical.

Structure, Sign, and Play > Why's Guide, hmm?

;)

I love sports for precisely the reason you don't.

Generally speaking, I'm militantly rational. My rational brain is engaged in perpetual combat with my powerful Italian-American emotions, and I feel as though even if I win most of the battles, the war will never end.

Except in sports. I love my Mets, Devils, and Giants (screw basketball) with the heat of a thousand stars. My rational brain recognizes the utter absurdity of it, but I simply don't care. It's fun almost because it doesn't make any sense.

In a way, being an avid, emotionally invested fan of something so insignificant is practice for the very real emotional ups and downs inevitably experienced in 'real' life. Sports instruct us both in how to react to traumatizing events (in a safe, controlled environment) and in how to feel, how to attach ourselves emotionally to something.

Completely separate.

Are you guys part of H&FJ's secret web font beta, or are you using Archer on the web in violation of your license agreement with them?

(Serious question. I want to know if they're accepting applications. Still eager to get Gotham on my site.)

You're twisting the analogy in a way that clouds its real meaning.

The point is that authorized service shops are provided with the training to perform repairs on these things, so whether the display/glass is glued to the body or not, people are going to be able to take their machines to a shop, have it repaired, and receive it back in working condition. The iMac, if we're following the analogy in an honest way, doesn't have its hood welded shut. (Because iMac mechanics can, in fact, repair them, even if it is more difficult.)

Further, as far as the user is concerned, breaking out a heat gun is just as inaccessible as buying a Torx screwdriver (they don't own one, I promise) and suction cups to pull the glass and display off the old model. They're going to a repair shop or an Apple store 99% of the time.

Yet mechanics continue to make excellent livings changing oil, repairing transmissions, and replacing brakes. Not because car companies conspire with mechanics' unions (are those a thing?), but because consumers don't want to or don't know how to do those things themselves.

For a massive percentage of Apple's customers (and customers of other computer makers as well, I'm sure), the same applies. The wailings of a handful of nerds, despite their volume, will never change that.

This is awesome. I'd love if the developer would add (even if it were optional) Command+[ / Command+] functionality to indent multiple lines at a time.

I like the changes and new features quite a bit. My single quibble is that you can't use the MiniPlayer when iTunes is in fullscreen mode.

I'd love to be able to relegate iTunes to its own Space and have the MiniPlayer float around the Space I use for development, etc. When I want to do basic navigation (beyond what I can do with my keyboard), I'd use the MiniPlayer; when I want something more, I could swipe over to the fullscreened app.

Maybe in 11.1.

In my (very recent) experience building a relatively complex [1] mobile web app [2] as a first-time web-app-for-mobile developer, I learned a few important rules, so to speak, about how to make the app feel as native as possible. (If you check it out, let me know at frank at callingvault dot com if you have any issues. We're in beta, and we love when tech savvy folks test.)

The rules:

- Most of the browsers on Android (Chrome's good, but it's not available on anything less than 4.0) suck pretty hard, and you'll almost definitely have to do a few weird hacks to get everything to work well (read: at all, sometimes).

- Use transform-3d for any animations in browsers that support it. No JS required for detection – you can use media queries [3]. For browsers that don't support it, you can fall back to jQuery's animate method [4] or standard CSS transitions.

- Avoid using fixed positioning in your CSS unless it's absolutely (no pun intended) necessary. It's not well supported in many mobile browsers, and you might end up creating more work for yourself down the line (i.e., hacking for Android and older versions of iOS). If you can figure out how to use absolute positioning instead without completely fubaring your layout, do it.

- If you're using divs that don't move (i.e., fixed- or absolute- positioned ones), use -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch; to enable inertial scrolling within them in iOS and other browsers that support it. If browsers don't support scrolling at all, you'll have to either implement your own scrolling solution from scratch or use one of the many decent ones available on the interwebs.

- Try the simplest solution you can think of first and go from there. Sometimes it'll work better than you'd expect.

1. http://callingvault.com 2. http://m.callingvault.com 3. @media all and (-webkit-transform-3d) {} 4. http://api.jquery.com/animate/

Your comment reminds me of a segment of Urbanized, the documentary [1], in which a young woman, Candy Chang [2], creates a simple system for enabling citizens to voice their opinions on what should be done with vacant buildings in varying states of disrepair.

She created vinyl stickers that read "I Wish This Was", under which is a blank white space (resembling the My Name Is stickers common to networking events, etc.). She affixes a grid of the stickers to the building/scaffolding/whatever along with a Sharpie, and folks passing by write their suggestions on the stickers.

For me, what makes her idea so incredible is that the suggestions are made in context; they're not discussed at a town hall meeting miles away from the location, they're not submitted online in a fancy web app, and they're not handed down by local government among suggestions for hundreds of other plots.

It's great that OP is asking on HN, because I think (s)he'll get some great responses here, but the best place to ask might be in the space itself, in the company of the folks that make it more than Some Bookstore In Massachusetts Ripe For a Pivot.

Why not host an event to discuss the future of the store? Send invitations to professors and post flyers for students at local universities and see what happens. It can't hurt, right?

1. http://urbanizedfilm.com 2. http://candychang.com/i-wish-this-was/

Any chance you'd consider making book sales a smaller part of what your store does in favor of other sources of revenue? One of the few things brick-and-mortar shops can do that Amazon still can't is bring people together, to Be A Place. You can.

A few ideas to consider along those lines, either individually or as smaller pieces of a larger concept:

- Become a hacker/student-centric coffee shop that enables freelancers, et al, to work in a less frenetic environment than Starbucks

- (Not sure how big your space is, but) Build a small stage (or not) and host local singers and poets as well as professor and/or student talks

- Become a resource for finding hard-to-get books and charge a premium for it

- Host book sales, etc., for the local universities where students can buy/sell from each other, then give a small discount on books students are searching for but can't find at the sale

Not sure how intent you are on maintaining the store's identity as a Place That Sells Books, but you have a lot of options, I think, if you want to go in another direction altogether – or even partly.

When I was doing IT consulting before starting my company, we used to contract a great Florida-based company called AppRiver for hosted exchange (plus IMAP and POP, naturally) for some of our clients.

The service was excellent, and their customer support was even better -- always extremely friendly and very responsive.