197 karma · joined May 19, 2013
^^^ This is so true.
For anyone thinking of bringing on a business partner, I highly recommend the book “The Partnership Charter” — it does an excellent job of taking you through the things you really need to address before you just jump in and get to work.
So instead of “02/01/2015" and “01/01/2015 - 01/31/2015” use “2/1” and “1/1-31” … or even “Feb 1” and ”Jan 1-31”.
I assume that under payments they would normally have some other description other than “Payment #1”, “Payment 2”, etc. - otherwise that is a waste of space as well.
We do a very poor job in general of teaching emotional skills such as these in schools.
For some, that may come naturally … for others, it may be something that they need to work on. But it’s not about smiling and nodding while they talk about themselves … it’s about genuinely being interested in them as a person and caring about what they have to say.
You do have to configure things and set them up a bit, but it can do SO much more than just window management.
Just throwing another option out there…For me, Keyboard Maestro is one of those must-have programs like Alfred or Hazel—totally changes how you do things.
But then you have ones like .photography and .international — seems 12+ letters just for the domain name extension seems overboard.
And then you have the completely absurd ones like .blackfriday — I don’t even begin to understand that one.
It’s really going to come down to the masses and how they are received by them. Confusion about a gTLD vs a .com may not even be an issue because SO many people just type stuff into Google. Yes, every time.
I think the shorter ones will take off faster, but xenophobia.international does have a bit of a ring to it though
The webmaster needs a copy of Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” … http://brad.me/1pot03u
Seriously, so much this. I cannot even count the number of emails I receive along the lines of “We’re happy to let you know that we have launched macaroni.io" or some other crazy name that tells you nothing about what the product or service is.
Just take ONE sentence at the beginning of these emails to remind people what you do. Especially if they are not already users of your site and your goal is to get them to become users / customers.
That right there is one of the worst feelings in the world. I imagine that everyone on HN just felt it with you as they were reading it!
Totally agree that the higher-ups were responsible for not putting better roadblocks in place to prevent this type of thing from happening.
Because literally with the press of a button you can make the video playing on your iPhone or iPad appear on your HDTV.
Because you just plug in the Apple TV and hook it to your wireless network and it shows up on your iOS devices instantly as a recipient for video and music streaming.
No setup. No confusing configuration. It just works.
It's the same reason that Apple was the first company to really get video calls to work. Other vendors and phone companies tried to get video calls to work...and some of the tech crowd certainly made use of it. But Facetime was the first video calling system that made it ridiculously easy for non-technical folks to use.
When wireless routers first came out almost none of them defaulted to having security. Unless you were fairly technical minded, you simply left the defaults in place. Not because you were clueless, but because you trusted that the manufacturer must know what they are doing...and you certainly don't.
Now they all come with security enabled, plus, users have been educated as to why they should use it. They don't need to know how it works-just why it is important and what it means to them.
Same thing goes for enabling HTTPS on websites, adding two-factor auth to your email, having unique passwords on different sites, etc. Part of the responsibility of users' cluelessness falls on us. We need to find better ways to communicate to the average user, who has a minimal understanding of technology, in a way that is meaningful to them.
This is true, but it is something that you can factor into your employment decision. That is, deciding whether or not you want to be employed by a certain company.
For most of them it's not a matter of them not wanting to learn or being too lazy to learn. It's that they don't know that there is something they need to learn.
They don't know that it's an option. They don't know that it's possible. They don't even know that it is something they should consider.
It's simple to everyone on HN, but even simple things are not obvious to everyone that uses a computer or mobile device. One of our users just a few weeks ago did not know how to copy and paste text. Not didn't know the keyboard shortcuts…Did not know how to do it at all!
Instead, the user printed out the text I had requested him to copy/paste, scanned it in, and attached the image to a reply email.
You do what you know how to do.
I've always thought this CSI clip was amazing too…
“I’ll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic…see if I can track down an IP address.”
"Sure, but that doesn't work with my iPhone."
"You shouldn't use an iPhone either."
Best program I have bought for OS X in a long time! Amazingly useful and I know I have barely scratched the surface.
Leeeeeeeeeeerooooy Jenkinnnnns!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU
/goddammitleroy
So true. The privatization of jails in the US seems to be the root cause of this. Private jails want to increase profits, so they lobby for “3 strikes” laws that play well for politicians who want to seem “tough on crime”. The end result is a lot more people in jail, but without the reduction in crime and certainly absent of actually helping people stop their drug habits.