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Barnabas

192 karma · joined June 15, 2008

Web/UX developer in Seattle, WA
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Barnabas··on What happens to your bike after it’s stolen
If you have a nice bike, take a moment to register it: https://bikeindex.org/
Barnabas··on With genetic testing, I gave my parents the gift of divorce
Gattaca was very prescient and thought-provoking movie, one of my favorites. The story described a future where individuals are allowed or denied opportunity based on a genetic test at birth. I think the point was that technology cannot predict or limit the human heart.

That same idea applies here too. This article illustrates that there will be other, nuanced perils to bioinformatics besides rewarding genetic lottery winners and punishing losers. Genetic testing is a powerful tool that should be used wisely. Of course, it will be a bumpy road until society settles on what "wisely" means.

Barnabas··on The Facts about LinkedIn Intro
Agreed. The third party to defend against is not only an intruder to LinkedIn, but LinkedIn itself.

If there are "misperceptions" about Intro, let us include LinkedIn's own misperception of how some of us view account security.

Barnabas··on A Bouncing Ball To Make Danger Zones Safer
My favorite part:

> Bounce Imaging is planning to sell an emergency responder version for about $1000, a military version for something under $3000.

Because, you know, military.

Barnabas··on Chute (YC W12) Launches A Twilio For Photos
You know that product {X} has arrived when it's assumed to be so mainstream that is's being used to describe functionality {Y} in sentences like "it's like {X} for {Y}".
Barnabas··on Tell HN: RAM Requirements are going through the roof
For Chrome users on the dev channel, try http://silentorbit.com/kiss/
Barnabas··on How to Make It on Craigslist
Went to check it out. Pretty. I didn't see anything but yet another "create a login" screen, no sample of what the email looks like. Closed tab.
Barnabas··on This photograph is free
Matthew 6:1-4
Barnabas··on Backend-as-a-service for web apps?
I was looking at kinvey.com mentioned in the comment of the article while researching an alternative for Adobe Publish at work. Their 1-2-3 explanation on the home page is compelling, except for the 1 part. Yes, one should have the option of creating or extending a custom model, but why not have a library of pre-built solutions? "Here's our e-commerce starter kit, it's got a cart, products, customers, tax tables, and inventory management. Also we built an awesome back-end and some integrations with these payment processors." If you're building a BAAS, why not pick three or four common web-app types and make the models for them.
Barnabas··on Poll: Did you transfer your domains from GoDaddy today?
I transferred to namecheap.com over Bob's Elephant hunting controversy some time back. Now that doesn't seem like as big a deal in retrospect.
Barnabas··on The Great Cul-De-Sac Problem And How To Alleviate It.
Cached by ViewText: http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.chrisnorstrom.com...
Barnabas··on Hiring via API
This domain is blocked by my work firewall as "pornography". Too bad.
Barnabas··on Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the redesign he refers to but does not link to is this: http://andyrutledge.com/news-redux.php
Barnabas··on An Open Letter To LulzSec
I wonder if this is jedburg of reddit. I only say because he said "reigned" in his goodbye post today, and this pastebin said "reigned" too, when they both meant "reined". Also the writing is very similar. Similar number of sentences (48 vs. 54) and words per sentence (15 vs. 12) too. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, or it's a glitch in the matrix.
Barnabas··on The Ulam Spiral of Primes
Of course it's interesting. There's no such thing as an uninteresting number. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox
Barnabas··on Twilio Launches Roll-Your-Own Google Voice
I transfered my Vonage number to Twilio, it is awesome. http://barnabas.tumblr.com/post/652187572/vonage-twilio
Barnabas··on Voicemail for Hackers
Hi, I don't speak for Twilio but as a developer I've used their system quite a bit in the past and enjoyed it lots. Haven't yet used Tropo, but I think it's really interesting. Sorry for necroposting, but I just found this via search.

Twilio isn't indefinitely free for developing like Tropo, but they do give you $30 credit when you sign up, which goes a long way towards pre-production testing. Twilio can do international outbound calls, but as you say they don't yet have international inbound.

Twilio and Tropo both have a REST API. The main difference here is that you reply to Twilio with XML and Tropo uses JSON. Although proprietary, either one is easier to use than VoiceXML IMO.

Tropo has an amazing number of nice voices you can use to read off text to the caller. Twilio has just "male" and "female", last time I checked. On the other hand, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see where Tropo could play an MP3 to the caller, whereas there are lots of ways to play recorded music or messages to the caller with Twilio. As far as recording, you have to give Tropo a place to send recordings, whereas Twilio will store the recordings for you. Twilio also has tons of API methods to access data, like list all your recordings, call logs, and so on. I don't see that for Tropo.

Hmm, this is getting long. I think a comparison blog post is in order. I love the fact that there are at least two smart, highly motivated companies in this space. I hope Twilio and Tropo push each other to greatness.

Barnabas··on Sorry. We Messed Up. (Zendesk responds to pricing criticism)
I was curious about the Recurly blog post you mentioned, so I looked it up. Here's the URL for anyone else: http://blog.recurly.com/2010/03/new-pricing/
Barnabas··on Google Webfont Directory
Interesting, it appears to be serving @font-face fonts with browser-specific stylesheets. Firefox gets a tag with src: local('name'), while IE doesn't. More details here: http://code.google.com/apis/webfonts/docs/technical_consider...

This server-side logic makes it more than just a font-face repository like I initially assumed. If you feel like rolling your own and not using Google's, you can easily download font-face kits from fontsquirrel.com.

Barnabas··on The Facebook Cull
I think there's some irony in only allowing comments with FB connect.
Barnabas··on Amazon introduces new service: Simple Notification Service
Or do it right now with Twilio: http://www.twilio.com/sms/
Barnabas··on [dead]
Truly ironic. http://calacanis.com/2004/12/28/rss-abuse-whats-fair-use-and...

Disclosure: I used to work for Skweezer. What a difference six years makes.

TLDR: Jason didn't like our mobile optimizing proxy because we were "stealing" his content. He banned us from all his Weblogs Inc. properties.

Barnabas··on Ask HN: I need a brainstorm on how to collect several thousand quality RSS feeds
Have you considered using the PostRank Topic API?

http://www.postrank.com/developers/api#topic

Barnabas··on Toppcloud and Django
I really really hope that toppcloud takes off. I strongly empathize the itch that provoked its creation: deployment sucks, and a generalized Google App Engine would rock. Using Django to demonstrate how his project isn't just academic is a great move. Good job Ian.
Barnabas··on Decimated: What if Napoleon hadn’t abolished decimal time?
The very end of the article mentioned hexadecimal time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal_time

I like the idea of the 16-hour day, the 256-minute hour, and the 16-second minute. It makes at least as much sense as the divisions we have now; more in certain circumstances.

Barnabas··on Tell HN: Check out my app, RunMeLater, Web Service for CRON Jobs/Scheduled Tasks
For ideas on how others have done this (including business model and pricing), check out http://www.webcron.org/.

Ah, this site takes me back to an online ballot box stuffing incident earlier in the year...

Barnabas··on Ask HN: Rate my startup idea "Be Caller Nine"
Awesome idea. As for how, with the Twilio API I think you could do the transcribe bit.

http://www.twilio.com/docs/api/2008-08-01/twiml/record#trans...

Barnabas··on Ask HN: Review Bitme.me - rank urls with Bitly
Nice and snappy. I like that in a web app, so kudos there. Still, YSlow gives you a C for not gzipping or using a CDN. Personally, I see no real reason not to use something like Google's AJAX library hosting (http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/) for your JQuery stuff, unless it's super custom.

Not clear on the significance of the numbers next to each link. Is this clicks in a certain time frame or ever? It will take repeated visits to see how often items get off the front page, so too soon to tell how fresh everything will be.

I think this is a useful idea because with all the RSS noise, it's nice to know what's getting attention. I doubt that a one-size all list of sites will continue to serve a wider audience though, like some kind of Techmeme. What about letting me give you my OPML and you weed out what is most interesting according to bit.ly? What about weighting clicks for domains based on their overall traffic to avoid the Mashable effect?

So, keep it up. Nice work!

Barnabas··on Goo.gl: Making URLs shorter for Google Toolbar and FeedBurner
Is that really possible?

Google "how to stop using Google" -> "Did you mean 'how to stop using Bing'?"

Barnabas··on Easy Framework: all-in-one HTML/CSS front-end starting point
Links please. I'm interested to hear of other projects like this, where you get HTML + CSS + JS all ready to customize. 960, Blueprint, and YUI aren't quite the same. This is a front-end starter package, not just another grid system IMHO.
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