jyothi

Wouldn't Google Now at some point do all of this ? I think I guess Shifu makes it a little more mutually controlled. It would be good if this learns over time on what to remind and what not. A pebble app integration would be nice.

It is digital and everything can be traced back - almost. But it is still the world of rich and famous. A similar & more severe penalty was lifted off the most popular Indian ecommerce site - flipkart. I remember meeting their head of marketing in 2011 who had no idea of the penalty which hit the site probably 2009-10.

As a user, yes I would like this site to rank up just so RG fans are saying they like RG result in google. But it is so unfair Google sends cryptic messages on webmaster for reconsideration requests but can entertain a direct call and lift off penalty. The least Google could do is to be transparent (fairness is hard)

Learning: Single Focus. Speed. We digressed a bit and we lost the game both ends a bit. Wish we had focused on one thing.

Happy Moment: We were 17 people and we went out for a trip from the company, stayed in a good resort, had a time-off. It made me happy to think back from where it started.

edit: going by what I said on the post - one liners. removed rest.

www.play-i.com would have been perfect. They just don't have it yet.

edit: From play-i => Using a tablet or other mobile device running compatible software, the child will be able to program his or her robot to perform certain actions. The bots are expected to cost under $100

This is a great initiative. But it might need way more customization and polishing and set rules before it can help founders with problems at hand or direction or anything that matters.

Good things where even VC meetings can't help:

1. Founders have better on the ground idea on petty things but important in a way and tedious to solve. eg. food in office or affordable monitors that are great, a specific case of an employee etc

2. Founders can relate to problems, help solve or collaborate in solving together. eg. technical issue in infrastructure or log processing say.

3. Boosts morale and can provide some light even after a week of bad sales or VC meetings. Some can even make you see the truth or accept it if the situation is truly negative

4. Business opportunities - VCs most always connect startups to pilot with portfolio companies and other startups. This can bring early clients and introductions

However I see some critical issues with this model:

1. People need many sittings to understand the product landscape, persona of the founder or the team to provide relevant suggestions or advise - which means either known people have to meet or it needs the same set of people to meet again and again

2. Moderation can be an issue. With known friends who are founders it is easy to converse & open up on issues - but with a random group it might become chaotic or a silent dinner.

3. The moment the meeting is unpredictable (not consistent week on week) in terms of value the zeal to attend would fade over time.

4. Given the unknown value of such a meeting you do not have a measure to value this time against a release you planned to do or an interview or even some mundane task at hand which has to be finished.

I am a startup founder in India. Given we lack the ecosystem even when VC/angels are involved it is only founder-networks to bank on here. These meet-ups have worked well only with founders who are friends/ex-colleagues.

Gates is finding a sample where (India) it is easy to implement solutions (knowledge of understanding, having a support system to solve the problems) and then take them to the larger audience. It is debatable if food & nutrition issue of India or Polio in India is comparable to problems in Mosambique or Brazil.

It seems like the basic problems of food, shelter, hygiene, health and education are basic needs and can be solved in similar ways across the nations without having to depend on govt policies.

I think this is a very sound approach. He should however pick a smaller geographical region than India.

For the benefit of people not from India: Aamir Khan is a super hero around here who is leveraging that popularity to spread a lot of influence on the society and predominantly accepted as the right thing. He has been part of many serious struggles here in India - He fought against raising a dam for River Narmada which would have displaced a lot of people and disturbed nature. - He supported an anti-corruption movement

His Satyameva Jayate was a very interesting TV show that brought to light many deep rooted flaws in our system - which were never discussed or taken seriously by the society. It would take many such runs to even get people to wake up and act.

Most of his recent movies (last 10 yrs) are strongly opinionated and have some social cause in them: national pride (lagaan, Rang de basanti), education & dyslexia (taare zameen par), corruption (sarfarosh)

So, here is a person who has been successful in waking up the Indian society and doing few things himself. I think Gates is meeting the right forces which are active here.

there is no best alternative as Google owns more than 80% of overall market. If you want scale you cannot ignore Google - hence the monopoly and inflation of bid rates.

the next best alternative which can bring 1/4th of google adwords traffic are bing adcenter, retargeting companies like adroll, vizury. Facebook & Linked Ads work for specific domains.

I think this is one of the simplest and powerful thought in building something. Just do something everyday.

oops. I need to check what is happening on the domain then. Thanks for the info

so true. just that if they superimpose then for sure you go into depression. Now that can be life changing.

Supporting a retweet or reply would be fantastic. Gives some kind of virality and sense of community for the vine yard :)

I got lucky to use this while it was in private beta - author is HN user webmonks. Would love to hear feedback on this.

I like this better than the way Twitter was integrated by Google on Search:

1. It is not inbetween search results. It doesn't distract esp since the plugin isn't smart right now to distinguish query as worth for "real time" results

2. It always gives the real time results. We had mild tremors couple of months ago and this would instantly confirm when I searched.

I don't like tweets from other languages crowd the results sometimes, but it is just as smart as twitter search :)

They must be seeing a large number of chargebacks which means visa or mastercard would be behind them to get this set right by the 2nd or 3rd month.

I wonder how they managed to have the site up for so long - may be some kind of a high risk merchant account provider who approved their payment gateway.

This has nothing to do with Facebook. They just picked the wrong marketing channel. How do you expect a "great" response for a packaging business (that too B2B) on facebook.

There are effective two modes of advertising on the internet: 1. where the user seeks (search ads etc)

2. you push the ad on the consumer (content ads, facebook ads as of now)

#1 is clear and has a good enough match always.

To be on #2 - you got to appeal well to the audience. Facebook works wonders for food, travel, gifts and more. All things that qualify for impulsive buys. It is important to understand the marketing channel.

That is an excellent point you bring up there: remote workers are very close to being deaf. There are so many things you feel like expressing - small things not worthy of a call or an even an email - a chat works but still not the same effect.

Being a remote worker is like being both deaf and dumb.

I hope one day we would have the Cisco tele presence affordable in small offices too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQpBPUbNJcM&feature=fvwre...

A correction on the title: beats Flipkart in traffic numbers only. They are doing a lot of aggressive marketing and the surprising part is it is not just online ads. There are bigger things in India which tip-off traffic. A big learning for all sites.

And then there are creepy ways of getting there too like babylon.com

there are google cookies everywhere. And ofcourse some sites have advertising enables. So I guess google is in a very good position to do some smart estimates here.

(What I am not sure is if google is allowed to publish such trends and traffic data)

it was either Sergei or Alexey. Brenstein btw

yeah i noticed the "son's interview" part in first read itself - it was amusing O(n) solution for who the friend is.

Sometimes a 509 Bandwidth limit exceeded helps!

AWS can actually do a setting for max bandwidth per hour or so & alert early if there is suspicious activity.

The last line in that article is a killer

In his pitch to potential new hires, he tells them to check Pebble’s Kickstarter page at the beginning of the phone interview to see a live tally of investments.

“After we stopped talking,” he said, “I told them to refresh.”

When I viewed kickstarter page it went from 28,369 to 28,493 backers in less than 30 minutes with atleast $20K added in those 30 minutes. This is incredible.

edit: I think it was probably more money - $50K in 30 min. Did not note the old $ number - just an estimate

and they have a patent for this one http://www.google.com/patents/US6820800

An electronic calculator having means for enabling a user to input a calculation, characterized in that the calculator has a mode of operation in which the user is required to input additionally at least one estimate of the result of the calculation before the correct result of the calculation is displayed.

most of the ideas posted by you are revenue models through advertising (where the real value of the user base is not extracted) or with more cumbersome product ecommerce tied with shipping which you don't want to do.

I bet you have these other ideas too - just wanted to point out that if it is an expensive hobby why not keep it as close to heart while making money too:

1. Sell amateur music and published albums of artists on the site.

2. Get musicians collaborate to create a Virtual Learning Environment

3. Let musicians get a private space to blog and evangelize their music to the visitors of the site for a fee. Support reviews, rating etc

4. Let musicians collaborate and organize music tours through the portal.

5. Let fans connect to their favorite musicians - ask questions, get autographs or learn music for a fee

Just some of the ideas to keep it close to music

there was a recent blog which dealt with rationality behind such high absurd evaluations: http://continuations.com/post/19000949472/a-rational-interne...

4. The winner-take-all nature of network-effects businesses in which the dominant business can be an order of magnitude more valuable than other competitors.

So it is entirely rational given the Internet environment to see a dramatic stretching of the valuations for market leaders with network effects. It does, however, not bode well for aggregate returns for the venture capital asset class:

1. In a race to pick the winners ever earlier, valuations get stretched even for companies that have not yet proven that they really have strong network effects and that they will be the leader in their respective market.

2. These stretched early stage valuations will lead to depressed returns in a large number of companies and will also make many of these companies harder to fund. There will be more of these companies and more capital invested in them (in aggregate) than in the winners.

A sudden burst of donation for a philanthropic organisations isn't necessarily as useful. They would rather be happy with a constant stream of money to build their efforts and to be able to plan for things. So dividends work out very well I guess.

Yet given this is one feasible way for startups (who can't take out dividends) to engage in philanthropy kudos to the team and idea.

they are different - both perspectives are important to understand HN community. At what age or when did you start coding vs how long have you been coding ?

Pause, Relax & Recharge.

This happens and in a way it is good that your co-founder is going strong and doesn't need a break too. You badly need to recharge yourself & this has to be time well spent cautiously and consciously chalking out what you do during your break. A hackathlon or doing some sales for a friend can charge you back it need not be necessarily travel or rest. In effect you need to do something very different from the type of thinking that you do everyday (note different in thinking not the work type).

Also give yourself a break from all the headaches on your current startup - consciously keep away from talking to anyone on the team or checking out updates (positive updates are probably fine)

If you are the type of person for whom physical exertion works free up the mind - go for a hard trek or run or swim.

As far as your depressed nature, cofounder resentment etc - you might be blowing it out of proportion right now given you are not able to contribute effectively or thinking too much.

so you just think this does not need an explanation. That definitely sounds like paypal.

Update I digged into the transactions a bit and understood this: The autosweep on my account got reversed & paypal was still showing balance in USD in my account. The reversal of autosweep took 3 hours and in that amount I lost 300$ out of $4804 in currency conversion.

Then I initiated the transaction to transfer to the bank myself but only for $2402. If they had some retries on the auto-sweep there is a chance their system got into some deadlock state in that time period. Their customer support cannot comprehend this & have no idea about Bank Regulations or about policies. They are treating this as if there is a small glitch on facebook while throwing a sheep.

edit: removed transaction details