HectorRamos

Thanks for the followup - I'll check this out. I'm not sure how Tropo got the PR numbers, as Google Voice and Skype have the same issue - something about the local telecoms.

If anyone at Twilio needs help when dealing with the PR numbers/needs telecom contact info/whatever, send me an email to anything @ my username dot com

I've been using the TestFlight beta for around a month now (used iOS BetaTester prior to this).

I can't recommend them enough and will gladly pay for the service once they launch. It is very, very good.

The process used to take 10 minutes, now with TestFlight it's just 20 seconds, literally.

I see the same patterns.

I'd add this: when you receive the "your app needs more time to review" email, it seems like your app is bumped into a "needs supervisor approval" queue.

In my experience, it takes up to 24 hours for Apple Developer Relations to call you and explain the cause of the hold up.

I've seen this multiple times and it's always for some specific situations that are not explicitly covered in the guidelines - i.e. they need further clarification about copyright ownership, or maybe they just need to explain what needs to be changed in order to pass their review.

We've been experimenting with Twilio for the past few months, have some proofs of concepts up and running, but in the end it seems like we will launch with Tropo instead. We're based in Puerto Rico, which even though is technically in the US, we can't get local numbers through Twilio. It also helps that Tropo has TTS in spanish and other languages.

Would really love to see Twilio match Tropo in these regards eventually!

If your property is defined as retain in your header, you are claiming ownership for it and so it needs to be released in your dealloc method.

This is covered in the basic Memory Management doc http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/...

This isn't rocket science. The linked document takes all of 10 minutes to read and understand. If that is not enough, there are three years worth of WWDC sessions on memory management available on iTunes U (this year's are even free!). It's something as basic as learning a new language's if/else structure.

For reference, I'm a five year Java dev who has now been doing iOS dev for two years, and had no problem switching from GC to manual memory management.

Shhh, don't say that aloud here. You'll get down-voted. I thought Hacker News was about getting things done and kicking ass, not living the easy comfy life. Sheez.

This was a great show to watch live. Liked the discussion on creating a startup outside of the Silicon Valley bubble, building on top of the Facebook and Foursquare platform, and creating great company culture.

I wouldn't want anyone who doesn't want to work for Jason Calacanis, working for me, either.

We're small and we need to crush it, or die trying. Weak people can go work for a big corporation and be comfy.

Here's hoping that it works in Puerto Rico.

I'm sure BankSimple trusts Banco Popular :)

I interviewed for Apple a few months ago. I didn't get to the NDA signing part (I backed out because another opportunity came up during the process) but still wouldn't talk about the interviews I went through because I still hope to go back and try again someday (in the slim chance that our current venture doesn't work out).

The emphasis on culture reminded me of Zappos, but the ratio of Zappos funding to the acquisition price doesn't match the one from the story.

USPS works 24/7 actually (my girlfriend works in one of their regional sorting facilities).

Mail is sorted throughout the whole week, if anything we might see less hours being worked by the sorters on Thursday and Friday when the Saturday deliveries are sorted out.

Keep in mind only Saturday delivery is being suggested to be dropped out, that's the end-of-the-line. You still have to sort at all kinds of upper levels (does this piece go to a zipcode within this state, or one of our territories, USVI, etc? And so on, until they get to the local USPS PO, which is the one which would handle the local Saturday delivery).

(Not that this disputes anything you said, just pointing out that mail will probably still be sorted the same way its being done right now)

Awesome. Looking forward to this.

Writing a simple table view based app can be done in a night.

Making something that is actually useful, beautiful and performs well will take much longer. This is where things like writing the API consumer bits, handling persistent data stores and so on come in.

Then you need to polish it.

It's not so much about the language or framework as they are great once you learn them, it's just that the standards are set very high in the App Store (at least if you wish to be taken seriously).

An actual BankSimple employee might be able to explain it better, so I welcome any corrections, and I might be very wrong since I believe that only during the last two weeks or so is that the whole team has been built and started wholly working on the product, but this is what I knew about BankSimple from a few months back.

They are working on a great online front end, focusing on awesome user experience, while partnering with another financial institution (just one, or more, I'm not really sure) to handle the back end: all of the transfers, payments, ACH handling, and so on.

So basically you have this awesome online "bank" with a great web PFM but the business processes are actually being handled by an established brick and mortar bank.

There are many banks and they do one thing great - handle money - but many of them have awful web/internet teams. So in comes BankSimple, they solve the web part of the equation and partner up with one or more banks.

If you think about it, it kinda sounds like what Mint could be if they were more than an aggregator and closer to an online bank.

That's actually what BankSimple is trying to solve, right?

The problem with enterprise is, like I said, they have so many regulations and tight tolerances, they are not very startup friendly.

However, if Wesabe was bought by Intuit and in turn Intuit offered exactly the same product that Wesabe already had, the banks would easily pay $10,000 a month for it just based on the name.

For reference, Wesabe was around $2,500 for their most expensive enterprise plan, which was very inexpensive when compared to having Intuit add your bank to Quicken for $10,000 a month.

I was previously the system architect for a financial institution who attempted to use Wesabe's PFM integration in their website.

I had some exchanges with Marc and he was great and helpful. I was taking a big risk on signing up with Wesabe so I conviced my superiors to give me one month to set it up, and a second month to run an internal pilot and then decide if we would launch the PFM integration to all customers.

Unfortunately we ran into some issues, that were minor in my mind, but my employer being in the financial services industry they have a very low tolerance for risk when working with customer's financial data, so they called off the Wesabe integration within two weeks into the first month.

This was for the enterprise Wesabe product, mind you, and was around six months ago so I guess Wesabe was already in its last run anyway, but I guess not having a stable enough MVP for their enterprise customers might not have helped much.

I wish you great success in your next endeavor, precipice!

So have you touched the PlayBook yet? Is the OS actually at that level as of this moment? At least that's what you're implying there by saying you're interning at RIM.

I've been eyeing YC for a while and this post has convinced me to apply.

I quit my job three months ago and have been doing consulting work in order to generate enough runway to finally dedicate ourselves fully to our own product.

I think we will be done with all of our current gigs by november, so the Winter YC cycle looks VERY attractive right now. We have a couple of ideas, and it seems like we might have enough time to get started on them before YC, but still be flexible enough when the cycle starts.

Interesting read, but he lost me when he said astronomy was useless, a few paragraphs after he talked about how professors would feel immensely insulted if anyone called their subject boring or useless.

How is that different from anyone else not born in the US? They also have a 'home' and established business relationships.

My favorite quote is actually a footnote:

"If doing a startup is like rolling a boulder up a hill, then working at Goldman Sachs is like rolling it down the hill: you just have to stay out of the way of the boulder."

I won't get into the murky waters of iPhone vs. Android - usually these end in both sides calling the other fanboys.

I will say that I tried to get into JavaME development and had a few leads (back in 2006 - 2007) but it was such a nightmare to test on many devices and know which would work, that I got out of that business.

When the iPhone came out and set its own terms, I sighed with relief. Yes, its closed and has its issues, but I really like knowing that there are rules and as long as I play nice, I will be able to distribute my app in that platform and it will work perfectly in all devices. I have an iPod Touch running 3.1.3, a 3G, 3GS and iPhone 4 (all bought on launch and kept them as I upgraded) on iOS 4.0 and 4.1, and an iPad on 3.2, where I can quickly deploy and test and be pretty much sure that the application will work across 95% of iOS devices.

We haven't turned our back on Android development, but we tread that soil lightly. I could perhaps have various devices on 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 to test, but then even that is not enough as the screens vary, carriers add different enhancements and the hardware is different for each device. Before Android users gang up on me, keep in mind that I am not criticizing it from an user's POV. Rather, as a company doing mobile app development for clients, it is a very risky endeavor to sign a contract that includes Android app development for these reasons stated above. Also, since I am already an iPhone user, having all these devices around for testing is a given - I would have to invest some more to gather various Android devices in addition to the G1 we got two years ago when we were thinking about offering services on both platforms.

I wouldn't call my previous job "high paying," but it had a good enough salary. I could've stayed for years and save enough to live a good middle class life.

I've since left and joined a startup, I'm making slightly less and with less benefits but I'm definitely having more fun and learning 10x as much working in a small very early stage startup versus a corporate 100+ year old company.

Yup. I think I learnt a lot in these four years, sometimes I look back and wish I had focused on startups earlier but I realize I still had a long ways to go back then.

I finally quit this past May and joined a former co-worker on his new startup, so it all worked out in the end.

Wish I had realized this and kept trying instead of settling for four years as a corporate bank system architect.

I see it in my city, too. BBM is very popular with the high school and college crowd, so they all seem to prefer ANY BlackBerry over an iPhone, their argument being that they can't use BBM with out the BB.