samlev

I know PHP is horrible, but I use it, and so do thousands of other people.

Until there is something else where you can deploy a prototype by dragging a single file onto a server with a FTP program, then PHP is serving a purpose that no other language can meet.

So stop crying about how PHP is horrible; stop trying to fix what is obviously a broken language; make something else that can fit this need, and you will kill PHP.

The only reason why still PHP exists past hobbyists is because people who start businesses want a fast prototype, cheap hosting, and no fuss. It may not be ideal, secure, fast, scalable, maintainable, or anything else, but if it's making money in the shortest amount of time possible, with the lowest cost barriers, then it's a success.

Open Source. Sure, you don't get paid for it directly, but it can get your name noticed, and show people that you can code.

Either contribute to an existing project, or start your own.

Think of it as code busking.

Markov chain generator seeded off existing comments?

Going freelance isn't in itself a poor decision. Quitting a paying job without a steady stream of work already lined up is.

Start trying to build a customer base on the side. Once they're bringing in enough to cover your expenses with a reasonably healthy percentage over that, then consider quitting your regular job.

Freelance work is not steady work, so you have to be sure that you can cover your expenses with regular work before you should be thinking about dropping a regular income for it.

You will need to build up a steady base of regular clients, and build up word of mouth. If you're not a designer, then it becomes really hard for people to discover you in any way other than word of mouth.

tl;dr: Don't quit your day job. Work extra hours until you're earning enough regularly and reliably to cover your expenses, then consider dropping your full-time job.

One more reason why software patents are a toxic idea that should really just go away.

Yeah, I stumbled on to the payment plans. I'm not certain about the price points you've set there - it would ultimately depend on who your target audience is, and if they would be willing to pay $1200/year for 70GB storage and your current feature set (and branding, I guess).

It looks like you're trying to go after basecamp here - everything (interface wise) is as simple as possible, but it adds conversation and extra description to todos, which is an improvement over what they do.

I tend to have... Opinions... about project and task management software. I'll be happy to give it a go and pass on any thoughts/suggestions/problems that I have through the 'feedback' option.

How would you be monetising this? A 'per seat' option, a 'per project' option, or some other way? What are you thinking of charging?

#EDIT: Also, who do you see as your main competition in this field? Who are you gunning for? What frustrations with other software/solutions drove you to build this?

The short answer is "You get what you pay for". There are plenty of 'cheap' contractors who get as many jobs as possible, churning out bad code that kind of does the job. Most of these will be "copy and paste code" style contractors who only write a little bit of relevant code to make it look "right".

I would, generally, avoid any short-term developer who's charging under $50/hour.

The other thing to note about elance, vworker, etc. is that there are a number of companies in very low-cost places (such as India, Pakistan, etc.) who will then re-distribute the work to their own employees. They tend to produce very low quality work, and there have been some horror stories about these types of developers using the job to insert nastiness into your site for their own ends (why hack a site to insert your malware when someone will give you access and pay you for it?)

YMMV. Treat them like any other person you want to employ and check them out before giving them much access or responsibility.

You could probably hire a free-lancer to get most of this stuff going for you (there are plenty of sites around for hiring people to do small jobs).

Ultimately, though, you should look at trying to do as much as you can yourself. The better you understand your system, the better you can run your company.

Still, CDN and database optimisation isn't the first place to start. As I mentioned, look at YSlow, which should give you a few places to work on for optimising your sites.

As mentioned by someone else, depending on the technology your sites are running on, there may also be plugins/tools available to speed things up with little to no real effort.

Your first step is to look at a few simple tools that could give you ways to get perceived (and actual) speed-ups. These are your low hanging fruit, before spending time (and money) on infrastructure upgrades.

Look for a 'YSlow' plugin for your chosen browser (they exist for Chrome and Firefox), which can help you to identify things that are causing your site to appear slow.

After that, then I would look at CDN, and then I would look at database optimisation (many people just don't "get" indexes, and don't understand how much of a difference they can make), and finally code optimisation.

I have used: Trac, Redmine, Basecamp, Trello, FeatureZen, ActiveCollab, and a few others (including in-house trackers that I helped to build).

They vary wildly from far too technical for clients to use (Trac, Redmine); to too rigid to handle fast moving tasks (Trac and Redmine again, ActiveCollab); to too simple for complex/long-lifed/complex tasks (Basecamp, Trello).

FeatureZen is a pretty new addition to the stack (made by someone here at HN) and it's showing promise, but it's still very young.

I also came across sprint.ly recently, and thought that it looked interesting. I've put much thought into making a task tracker that fits "the real world" (whatever that may be), but every time I think too hard about it, I baulk at the size of the task.

In short; find something that suits your style, use it. If you need something different, don't be afraid of using two things for different situations. It becomes a bit of a nightmare to manage, but if it's just you, then it's easier to keep on top of it.

As tempting as it might be, no. I would never do this. Not only is there an issue about professional trust, but it's a vulnerability that you're deliberately building into a system.

I know that it's hard, but if you suspect that a client isn't going to pay you, don't do the job. There's no point in 1) doing the project and hoping (if they don't pay, then you're not only not getting that money, but you're losing time that you could have spent looking for more reliable clients), or 2) wasting time building in vulnerabilities and then charging the client for the privilege.

If you realise after you start a project that a client may not pay, talk to them about it (in writing/email), and either cut off the project then (once again, no point throwing more time at a bad client), or take them to court (even just small claims court).

Cool, but I couldn't close the java 'ScreenLeap' dialog without using chrome's task manager to kill the java plugin.

(I'm running Ubuntu 11.10, and chrome 16.0 if that helps)

Also, I feel "No downloads, installs" is a little disingenuous - just because it's not installed as a full-time application doesn't mean that it's not downloaded or installed.

In terms of commercial experience (i.e. stuff I've been paid for) I've been working for about 5-6 years now.

Most of the commercial stuff that I worked on was private/backend stuff which can't be shown without permissions and passwords, sadly. That is one of the reasons why I built MICO - so I could show off my work.

MICO is one of (and the smallest of) four major applications that I built with ExtJS (http://www.sencha.com/) as a front-end/interface

Clickables:

My website: http://www.samuellevy.com

Open Source project: http://www.samuellevy.com/mico

EDIT: My Resume, because that's probably important, too: http://bit.ly/wnOV2Q (Last updated Aug, 2011)

Every time I hear the term "kill-switch", it instantly lowers my opinion of the developer. Something about it just irks me.

I have seen some rather shady people, who would probably pay for this type of thing, but those people are very, very unlikely to be offering a real, viable alternative.

You could probably use/utilise the services which let you run code (like http://codepad.org/).

Not perfect, but it would let you do the job of "executing code" without needing anything more than a browser.

I think that the major problem that many people (myself included) have with the music and film industries is that they actually show very little interest in supporting, nurturing, or rewarding the talent that they rely on. The call to "kill hollywood" isn't a call to wipe out these large companies on principal; it's a call to bring in a new breed of companies which give everyone (artists and consumers) a better deal.

The real problem is that people have been beholden to these monopolies who very obviously don't have their best interests at heart. We are now, thanks to internet and unprecedented levels of connectivity between people, in a position where we can (with a bit of effort, admittedly) take back some control and build something better for everyone.

So that's how I see it. This isn't a knee-jerk reaction to SOPA/PIPA/ACTA (at least, not entirely). This is a call for people to make the world a bit better before the incumbent powers that be destroy our chance to.

I'm not sure what's meant to be there normally, and a google on the topic seems to only bring up a french house music DJ, who's website is davidguetta.com, not davidguetta.co.

Clickable: http://pastebin.com/ATdDUStd

And yet pay tv, netflix, itunes, amazon and countless others manage to survive in the face of free-to-air tv, radio, and pirates.

Stop thinking that the USA is the world, and what works there will work everywhere. Outside the US, availability of digital content is a wasteland.

Let's take this metaphor a little further, then.

Digital content isn't exactly like a hot dog, so let's assume that you could design a magical hot dog which, once created, you can copy many times with no other costs. You have an unlimited supply of hot dogs, and each one of these hot dogs, being an exact copy of the original, can also be used to magically make more hot dogs.

Now I'm not saying that this hot dog is free - it cost a LOT in R&D to produce this hot dog, and you invested a lot in it. The other thing is that hot dogs go with buns, and there's sadly no magical buns in this universe. Each and every bun has to be created, and costs money.

So you set up your hot dog stand, selling magical hot dogs with non-magical buns. You charge a premium rate because you're the only guy in town who managed to make a magical hot dog of this quality, and with it's unique flavour. Besides, the buns are still costing you money, and they have to come from somewhere.

Now you notice some guy has found out that the magical hot dog you sold him can make new hot dogs at no cost, but they don't have the buns attached. As a response, you start baking the hot dogs into the bread - it makes it harder to get the hot dog out, and you think that that's the end of it. But the guy realises that with a bit of effort, he can get the hot dog out of the bread too, because what's the point of a hot dog if you can't get at it? Baking the hot dog into the bread is costing you even more, and making it harder for people to get to the hot dog.

Soon you have some people coming up to you and asking if they can have seeded bread, or maybe gluten free, or maybe they just hate bread and want it on it's own. Some of them want to buy just your hot dog and put it on their own bread. But if you start selling them hot dogs by themselves, won't they just start handing out free hot dogs to all their friends? That would be a disaster! So your answer is no! Hot dogs come baked into bread, and by now you've convinced the mayor to make it illegal to take your hot dogs out of the bread. People should just learn to love your bread!

So how's the guy who took your hot dog out of it's bread going? He's still giving away hot dogs for free, and what's worse is that he's telling everyone he gives one to to give them away, too. It's costing him nothing to do because he doesn't have to pay for bread. Sure, some people are still coming to you because they actually like the bread, but mostly the people coming to you are asking about bread-free options, and are still willing to pay. Most of the people going to the guy who's giving out hot dogs for free never bought anything from you, and some of them don't even eat the hot dogs. Sure, you see a few of your old customers going to him instead, but mostly the people going to him either never came to you, or (after tasting the free hot dog) later come to you to buy a genuine one in bread.

The point isn't that the guy giving away free hot dogs isn't a jerk. He is. The point is that you're stubbornly refusing to let people pay for a hot dog how they want it, in a way that costs you less (because you don't have to adjust the price for the bread - you just have to cover your costs, rather than incurring new ones).

You're doing this in an attempt to stop people doing what they're already doing. People don't want to rip you off - they just want to be able to pick their own bread.

To break from the analogy now, I was happily a pirate because it was difficult for me to get what I wanted how I wanted and there was no technical reason why it wasn't available. Sure, if I wanted all my movies as flip-books, then there's a technical reason why that doesn't make sense, but there's no technical reason stopping me from getting them as digital media files.

If I'm looking for music from a band, I will always try to find a legal channel to obtain it first. If I can't find one (and these days, it's getting pretty rare), then I'll probably pirate it. Sure, some people will pirate it anyway because they feel entitled to it, but the point is that many, many people have no problems paying for content so long as they can get it how and when they want it. This type of availability of content is pretty much what TPB seems to be about for many people. It's not about screwing content producers - it's about freedom of choice.

Anyway, that's my take on it. I know that there are people who will always choose to steal rather than pay, but most of society would happily pay if only we were allowed to.

Youtube and vimeo probably weren't originally designed as "distribution systems for the little guy", so much as "I want to share this cat video/student film". The point being that they weren't meant to be a distribution system any more than a DVD in and of itself is a distribution system. They're a type of media which makes the work of distribution systems easier. Blogs were, at the time, the distribution system, and youtube/vimeo were a new, easy to use media that made distributing to a wide audience easier (no more 'codec' issues, etc.)

The fact that they have become distribution systems in their own right is a testament to the fact that content creators will always create, and will try to distribute their creations in any way that they can. People will often use something counter to it's original design, and it's smart companies that can recognise that use and restructure their operation around it.

The problem isn't that only the big guys get into the cinemas - in a free market, that might still be the case. The problem is that the little guys can't get into the cinemas, no matter how high the quality of their product. The only way that they can is by bowing down and paying fealty to the big studios who didn't actually contribute anything to the production.

The problem that the big companies are encountering now is that new media has been showing up which works without their tightly controlled distribution methods. Want to make a TV series? You no longer have to sell it to a studio or be stuck on some form of local station. You can distribute it yourself, to more people than the traditional methods would ever allow, and you can do it easier. The problem that the studios have is that you no longer need to be on a TV show or in a cinema to get seen. They're not entirely irrelevant yet, but they're no longer the only way to view content.

The problem with piracy is that people are taking the job of distribution out of the hands of the people who either created or paid for the rights to distribute it. It's a big blow for companies that add no real value other than distribution, which is why they're claiming massive losses and jobs lost. They can't reconcile the idea that you can make as much money (if not more) by selling the same product at a lower cost to a wider audience. The pirates saw an opportunity and stepped in. Once the big companies can figure out how to adapt their business models to meet what consumers actually want, they'll start to make a profit, and everyone will be all the better for it.

The last thing that this opening of the market (and that's what this internet revolution is) means is that quality will increase. Once distribution isn't a case of "You get what you're given, and you'll thank us for it", then the producers of content will have to start competing not in price but in quality for the consumer's dollar. People can pick what they want to watch when, now. They don't have to catch it at the cinema or have to go without until it makes it to DVD. To make them want to watch something at the cinema, then the product actually has to be worth watching at a cinema. If you want someone to pay money for your DVD box set, you have to make it worth spending money on. If there's something getting produced which you can get for cheaper, in a way that's more convenient to you, then the content would have to be amazing to get you to pay for the more expensive option.

Anyway, this has been a long, rambly rant. I'm hoping that I didn't cloud issues too much, or tangent too often, or outright contradict myself. Every word I wrote, I meant at the time I was writing it.

There are some movies and TV shows being funded now without the 'majors', but the funding model hasn't really figured itself out yet.

See Pioneer One for a self/crowd funded 'TV' show which was released under the Creative Commons licence (and distributed legally via pirate bay, etc.). Sure the quality isn't 100% top notch, but the point is that it's starting. It's slow, but the ball is rolling now.

Funded by isn't the same as created by. Granted, without these companies there to throw massive amounts of money at writers/directors/actors, then we probably wouldn't have much of the content that we do today (at least not how it is). That doesn't mean that culture can't exist without them.

Anyway, these companies (on the music side in particular) love to talk about the "poor starving artists", but fail to change their own habits to give those artists a better deal.

They aren't content creators. They're content funders and distributors, but the content would still be created in some form without them. In this sense, the pirate community does actually perform one of the actions (distribution), and seems to perform it much more efficiently than the big companies. They just haven't got the 'funding' part figured out yet, but when they do, that will truly signal the death of the majors.

(P.S. No, it won't - nothing will truly kill them, but it will at least give them genuine competition)

It would be difficult to do properly, unless it just cached only what you were looking at.

Most links in HN are to external sites, so you wouldn't want to be caching them on your phone. Then there's the amount of traffic to HN meaning that you would be caching massive amounts of data only to get mostly unusable links, and some comments about them.

I agree that it would be nice to keep reading things after you go offline, but I think the technical side of it would be prohibitive.

Or "this has been fixed in a newer version".

If you find bugs, then you find bugs. Just make sure that the bug hasn't already been reported, and that it is actually a bug (not just you expecting something to behave differently - the unexpected behaviour may be intentional, or at least documented)

Other than that, though; bugs are bugs, and waiting to submit them to spare a developer's feelings doesn't really help anyone.

But they're not offering to create websites for businesses - they're just offering the tools and making it easy for businesses to create their own websites.

There is much in that transcript which is inconsistent and even contradictory to any available information on the "Getting Kenyan Businesses online" site.