29 karma · joined November 8, 2007
We're planning on improving scrolling performance soon, it's definitely a priority for us to improve our performance for large datasets.
As for the linking, we definitely want to do more to help you normalize your data. We can also infer column types to help with the import process. Doing this type of thing on paste is an interesting idea.
We have some ideas for how to make it so that you don't need a primary column. One thing that you can do now is make the primary column a formula, and then reference other columns to generate a key.
They must leverage basic cellular technology in pretty creative ways. I can't imagine these farmers would have advanced smart phones with data plans. Is this all done through sms? Does anybody know more about this system?
Android could potentially have a large impact in developing countries. It could provide open source location based services on cheaper handsets. All it needs is a good distribution system (like app store).
My guess is that this "fantasy" storyline is autobiographical. The dude probably had a bad breakup and got over it by sitting in his basement for 3 years making a great game. I feel like drugs may have played a small part in the design as well.
In any case, this is still an incredible breakthrough. It hasn't taken them too long to move this technology from the microwave spectrum to the visible light spectrum, so progress may be fairly quick. Especially considering the huge amount of money the military is probably sinking into this for obvious reasons.
Here is some of the original metamaterial invisibility work on the microwave spectrum: http://www.ee.duke.edu/~drsmith/cloaking.html I actually worked in this lab for part of a summer writing a ray tracer to test these concepts. Maybe I should have stuck with this stuff...
I don't think that this site accounts for the high probability of FAIL inherent in any startup. Probably just assumes that the company will continue along the growth path of previous SUCCESSFUL startups that were included in their historic data.
Japan telecom companies were able to adopt 3G technologies much quicker than other places for this reason, and this technology became commonplace before it did in other countries. So mobile computing has had more time to develop and permeate their culture.
In any case, it's probably good that mobile internet in the US is developing more slowly and cautiously around the open internet instead of the carrier's content.
While their base ticket prices may seem incredibly low, they make their profits by tagging on extra "service fees" that appear on their website after you've begun checking out. For example, a few years ago I remember I had to pay extra for "baggage insurance", which ensures that your bags do eventually make it to their intended destination and don't get lost, something that is usually implicitly included in the original ticket price of other airlines. The UI of the Ryanair website stresses the importance of this baggage insurance with a popup window. Other airline comparison sites probably have decent UIs that don't push these options to the extent of Ryanair.
They also go to great lengths to cut any cost. I've heard that employees are not allowed to charge phones at work in order to save on energy bills. And from my experiences, their employees really don't seem to have any sort of customer service training. Or maybe they're just grumpy because Ryanair treats them so poorly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair The Criticisms and Complaints section is actually pretty interesting.