sga

True. It's like a ghost town in there. #failwhale

I'd suggest a Comp. Sci. and Statistics combination.

I get the desire for differentiation, it's important otherwise why would someone choose your product over another. I think it's key though to better understand the words that your competitors are using to describe the problem/space coupled with the words that consumers are using to describe the problem/space. Understanding this word-scape will help you to better craft your on-page copy along with identifying the words that best describe your unique value proposition.

I'd also consider studying/contacting the twitter followers of your competitors. That would be a direct method of identifying solid potential leads.

Who are your competitors? Can you give me links to at least 3 of them?

I agree with the sentiment regarding the keywords. I tried for a few minutes to read your on-page copy and distill your products keywords but found it difficult. It could be that I'm not familiar enough with the space/problem that your service addresses. I'd be inclined to identify your competitors and the keywords for which they rank. If a set of keywords can be identified I'd then use Google Keyword Tool to determine a set of keywords to target (i.e. those that you have a shot at ranking well for).

Can't attest to anything about this company but I remember reading about it here on HN: http://www.hellofax.com

You might consider at some point in the future (when the backlog of essential work dies down) doing some testing on the impact of displaying the dollar symbol versus the pound symbol in the screenshot of the app. Or better yet based on ip show a screen shot with the currency symbol that is most likely to be applicable.

Best bet is to replace x÷y by x*(1/y) as division is not commutative while multiplication is commutative. Therefore 48÷2(9+3) => 48(1/(2(9+3)) => 2

"I would work from home sometimes and have days off pretty much anytime I like (within reason)."

I would strongly suggest that you get the working from home piece in writing and I'd also have the amount of vacation specified in writing. It's important for you to be able to point to a contract and not just a verbal discussion should you need to. You want to be able to enjoy your vacation and not feel guilt or pressure not to take it.

Where are you located in Canada? I'm in Guelph.

I realize Excel is fairly ubiquitous and can get certain jobs done but I can't help but cringe at some of those IF statements and the maintenance that must go into some of these sheets.

If you find you've reached the Excel Ninja level you might want to start checking out some other tools. I'd suggest Python.

Either way nice write up. I'm sure people will find it very useful.

I really like the design of the site.

When I visited http://3pics.me/1 my first response was to click on the text that said "Click to vote for pic X!" as opposed to clicking on the pic itself.

I see you implemented the changes. Hope it helps.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

I'd replace your title tag:

(original) <title>Quiz Cafe - Download, print and play in a matter of minutes. | Free Quiz Questions - Free Quiz Packages - Free Printable Quiz Questions</title>

(proposed) <title>Free Quiz Questions and Answers - Download, print and play quizzes in a matter of minutes. | Quiz Cafe</title>

---------------------------------------------

Free Quiz Questions 27,100 gms (USA)

Free Printable Quiz Questions 320 gms (USA)

Free Quiz Packages 0 gms (USA)

Free Quiz Questions and Answers 14,800 gms (USA)

quiz questions and answers 135,000 gms (USA)

---------------------------------------------

gms - global monthly searches

If you haven't already I strongly suggest you run (not walk) and read everything patio11 has written about SEO and bingocardcreator.com.

I see there is a ton of longer tail traffic on 'xxxx quiz questions' where xxxx is a host of things e.g. science, bible, thanksgiving, christmas, sports, etc...

It's in his profile. Visit http://reflect7.com/

The following article from seomoz speaks to this:

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/title-tag

Highlights:

- "70 characters is the maximum amount of characters that will display in the search results"

- "Place Important Keywords Close to the Front of the Title Tag"

- "Leverage Branding. Many SEO firms recommend using the brand name at the end of a title tag instead, and there are times when this can be a better approach. The differentiating factor is the strength and awareness of the brand in the target market. If it is a well known brand, and it can make a difference in click-through rates in search results, the brand name should be first. If this is not the case, the keyword should be first."

Based on this you should keep the branding at the end and work on the up front content of the title tag. That content should be based on keyword formulations that are relevant to the page and targeted towards formulations that you have a chance of doing well with.

I'll bite, I'm in Canada tell me about what you're working on? Based on your personal site and Funky Monkey it's tough to discern what you might be up to.

You can get most of the way to an MVP with base Drupal, a couple of user contributed modules, and some custom views.

http://drupal.org/project/votingapi http://drupal.org/project/vote_up_down

The redesign is much better than the original! The proposition is clear and I like being able to interact with it.

That said I don't think there is sufficient value yet to compel people to fork over cash, given that your target audience is likely able to throw up a static page with an email form rather quickly. Or perhaps the value prop. does exist and I just don't see it, in which case I'd suggest that you focus on making the value prop. more clear.

I would find the service more compelling if you provided some analytics re. visitor information (where/when they came from, bounce rate, etc.). And/or if you were able to aid in the promotion of the "coming soon" page (not sure how ... maybe advertise coming soon pages within the network of coming soon pages .... or profile the coming soon pages and then the launched service i.e. early seo help).

I like the concept of "the most popular move for the day, voted by the group, will be taken as the group's move".

It would be interesting to use this concept in a game where the set of possible moves could be ranked in order of best move for that turn such that the users could see a distribution of number of votes versus this set. In this way you could see the quality of the groups choice and compare it to the best choice and your choice (if they were different). This would also lend itself to user scores. Not sure which game would lend itself to this.

Also you might consider number of votes as an alternative or additional progress trigger. For HN vs Reddit set it at 100 votes per side. If you don't hit the limit it switches on a per day basis, but if you do hit the limit it switches immediately. Not only would this potentially speed the game but it also could create a sense of urgency to get your vote in to have it count.

I noticed that when I follow: http://boulder.usehipster.com/explore

I'm presented with the text 'Here's what popular in Boulder today:'. Seems you're missing an apostrophe s on the word 'what' or just 'what is'.

The best thing to do is to start along the path (as there's no magic bullet):

1. Pick a language (python, ruby, php; if you know someone that programs well with one of these choose that language)

2. Learn to program with that language (if you chose python, here's a good free book to get you going: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index)

3. Don't gloss over steps in whatever book you've chosen. Actually get the scripts running on your computer.

4. If you're getting an error or something doesn't make sense, search http://stackoverflow.com/

5. Once you feel comfortable writing scripts, buy yourself a cheap shared hosting service (I've used Dreamhost but there are others. If you know someone who programs choose what they are using.)

6. Download putty and/or use a web based ftp client. Interact with your server, get comfortable writing scripts in whatever language you chose.

7. Choose a framework (look here for candidates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_f...).

8. Get the framework installed on your server and do the tutorial and get whatever toy app they specify up and running.

-> somewhere in there it would also be useful/necessary to dabble with HTML, CSS, SQL (w3schools is a reasonable enough place to start)

Now you're good to go ... build, build, build.

Shared hosting on Dreamhost. Reasonably easy to get setup and going. It's just a sandbox right now.

I see the same as JamesDB. I'm in Canada.

Ctrl-click or Command-click is the answer.

B.S. Report by Bill Simmons

The author of this post submitted it 45 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1869264

Interesting how the luck of getting noticed on the new page is so important to getting engagement. I wonder if in this case it's the difference in titles.

Don't give up on the idea and don't lose motivation if your idea is already out there or if it 'seems' to be patented (assuming you feel strongly about the idea). I would be shocked if aspects of your idea and the method by which you implement your idea doesn't change between now and when it is built. As such, your search at this time may not be completely relevant to the product you ultimately create. I would advise you to build whatever it is you're building while keeping in mind that it may be patentable. Given the potential for patentability down the road I would not freely discuss the details or 'secret sauce' of the idea (discuss what the app will enable but not how it does what it does). Depending on where you intend to file for a patent, public disclosure will either initiate a count down (at the end of which you must begin the patent filing process) or make it so that you can't patent the idea.

I often email urls to myself.

Your use of the word 'unfounded' in your front page copy is not correct.