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wouterinho

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When we started out with our company, RescueTime was one of our "competitors": more or less the same technology, but different use cases (discovery vs productivity). I would often find Joe having the same issues and posting in the same support tickets are I did.

I have always followed them since and think they actually have a very relevant product in this world of ever increasing interruptions. My condolences.

We also had the same issues with (trying) to publish an extension to the Safari gallery: long waiting times, unclear communication, publishing without notification, etc. Besides that, the move towards the requirement of Xcode does not bode well for managing a multi-browser codebase in JS.

Google and to a lesser extent Mozilla are doing way better on this and seem way more experienced in handling the extension ecosystem.

Trackers 10 years ago

It is funny how things change when you use the physical world metaphor. There was a campaign recently by the Dutch regulatory agency that made people aware of the implications of allowing permissions in "free" apps.

They made an (anecdotal) video by promising a free cup of coffee in exchange for your contact list on your phone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYXM56YJWSo (Dutch unfortunately)

Quality of content in this way can be measured in these micropayments + refunds instead of points/votes. Down with clickbait articles and up with good content.

By the way, I also fit the target audience: not buying newspapers, but I have added money to my Blendle account and spend it every now and then.

I am wondering about the economics though: the traction seems good, but is it enough to really add value for the publishers? I'd love to see more numbers on this.

As a company you're constraining yourself so much by requiring Dutch if you want to hire good people. I know many companies that still do so. Better for the rest of us!

One thing I noticed: Dutch people can switch pretty well during "work" discussions, but during lunch or social events, the switch is harder and you have to remind people to speak English.

The Ceefax-like service in the Netherlands is actually a much-installed iPhone/Android app. The limitation in information you can provide provides for a short, to the point, "curated" overview of things happening.

LeakedIn 14 years ago

Interesting implementation, but won't this eat up a lot of bandwidth and cause a high S3 bill?

LeakedIn 14 years ago

I'm wondering about the legality of this. If you take an (assumed) stolen dump of sensitive data and turn it into a webservice, could you get in trouble?

I considered it, but seeing as it was out in the open already and Steve's later remarks, I decided it would not make much difference.

Werner Vogels did an on-stage interview recently at the Kings of Code conference in Amsterdam. A question from the audience was: "Does the Amazon shopping site run on AWS as well or on a more private/shielded AWS-cloud?". Werner answered that they use the same infrastructure as everybody else and that they could not justify doing anything else. It gave me tremendous trust in the AWS platform.

Taking a break and stepping back is vital not only for your mental stability, but also to stay in touch with all the "normal" things that are happening around you.

Tweetbot 15 years ago

I believe some companies have made agreements with Twitter which allows them to use Twitter in their name. I don't think Twitter does this anymore.

My friend Jurg co-wrote this book. Werner Vogels of Amazon wrote a foreword and I've pre-read parts of it, it's a great introduction to AWS.

Also, it's the O'Reilly deal of the day: the coupon code "DDPAZ" gives you 50% off and a final price of $13.99 for the e-book.