Hacker News Reader

cinbun8on Erlang at Basho, Five Years Later

I like that they focus on the experience related to DBs and distributed systems instead of hiring engineers that can program in X. You can pick up a language relatively faster since you'll need to build the other skill slowly with real world experience.

cinbun8on Show HN: Get Voice / Text feedback from your mobile apps

Hi folks. Konotor is the result of seeing the kind of difference low friction feedback can make to help engage with your users to gain valuable insight on what your users like or don't like in your product. We were encouraged by the engagement we saw in our own product, and hence decided to offer the solution to other app developers.

We'd love to know what you think. If you'd like to use the service just drop your email on our site. Thank you.

cinbun8on Ask HN: Please review our product Konotor

Thanks josephpmay. I agree that we've not put in much work with respect to the site. There is room for improvement. I'll pass your comments on to our designer. We'll redesign the site sometime in the future and we'll take your inputs when we come up with a new one.

Thank you for writing.

cinbun8on Ask HN: Please review our product Konotor

You'll need to drop a library into your project and add a few lines of code. I'll send the details over to you shortly. We're still wrapping up the API and the documentation.

Thanks for the feedback about the landing page. We're trying to make the documentation and API as simple and clear. Thank you for your comment.

cinbun8on Ask HN: Please review our product Konotor

Awesome. We'll send you the details regarding the SDK to use pretty soon.

cinbun8on Ask HN: Please review our product Konotor

You include a library in your project and add a few lines of code to integrate it. It should not take more than 2 mins. We're still authoring the doc pages.

cinbun8on Ask HN: Please review our product Konotor

Link: http://konotor.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html

cinbun8on Our Journey To Empower A Thousand New Kickpreneurs

That sounds scarily similar to 'build it and they will come' :) Thanks for sharing that.

cinbun8on Our Journey To Empower A Thousand New Kickpreneurs

I took a look at the kickstarter stat page and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they have a 44% success rate at funding projects. I expected that to be much lower. Tech projects have a 34% success rate which still seems high to me, but it is interesting to note that this is the second worst success rate.

I would be interested in what makes a kickstarter campaign click. The other side of the coin which is equally important is to find out what makes a campaign fail and the lessons that come out of that. Could you please also interview some folks that were unable to reach their pledge and how they felt they could have amended their approach ?

http://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats

cinbun8on Learn Python in minutes

While I see value in a cheat sheet that helps you remember a language's features, using the words 'Learn X in minutes' is a bit stretching it. It takes a good few weeks to get comfortable building something in a new language.

This is a good cheat sheet.

cinbun8on REST Client for Google Chrome

The `Advanced REST Client` attempts to solve the same problem - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/advanced-rest-clie...

Like the others have mentioned here, there are a couple of tools in chrome that try to solve the same problem. Not that it is a bad thing. Has anyone used them all to summarize pros / cons ?

cinbun8on You can't impress developers

Developers and engineers in general develop an ego with time. They take pride in their work and are very protective of it. They also relish the petty mistakes that others make and scoff at them - 'pfft I could have used X instead of Y to do Z. Who uses Y anymore !?'.

For example, you can find this behavior when someone posts something about problem X and there is a minor grammatical mistake or an opinion that is expressed in the post that is unconventional. The comments section will zero in on that and miss the big picture.

cinbun8on PostgreSQL as Schemaless Database [pdf]

There is still some way to go to support better indexing of json fields, but I'm pretty excited about these developments. In the future you might see schemaless and schema driven data living side by side on postgres.

cinbun8on How I Fired myself: about loss, mistakes and getting your shit together

I'm happy for you. When you take something on like this it is a great asset to have someone for emotional support. After your girlfriend dropped the bomb this must have been harder to come by, which could explain why you were fooling around trying to fill a void.

You can still surround yourself with smart people while freelancing. It is just a little harder to do. You also appear to be scarred by the experience which is why you never want to do it again. Good luck with the new job.

cinbun8on Most popular JVM memory configurations

The post compares the Xmx setting of all VMs that use the free Plumbr. There is no way to know if these settings are used in production or someone just downloaded Plumbr for an evaluation. Most devs do not even bother to check how much memory their tomcat instances use, which would explain the size of the memory. They only ever tweak it when they run a load test or when the server runs out of memory.

These metrics do not really reflect the heap sizes used in production, so I would not conclude that java does not need much memory. If anything, those that use Plumbr in evaluation mode do not run their JVMs with large heaps. You do not need a large heap to cause a OOM.

Still, it is interesting to know what the Xmx settings are on these boxes.

cinbun8on Embrace, extend, extinguish: How Google crushed and abandoned the RSS industry

This has got to be a joke. Just because one company decided to shut their RSS client, the 'RSS industry' is now abandoned ? Tell that to feedly who just welcomed 500k users [1]. These were users that relied on google reader. RSS as a standard / service is not on square 1. It is inadequate in some ways and ATOM was supposed to fix that and was never really adopted as well as RSS. There are tons of aggregators out there that use RSS (and ATOM) to get all your news in one place. Use another client and move on.

1 - http://mashable.com/2013/03/18/500000-google-reader-users-mi...

cinbun8on Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

Why stop with Google Reader and Keep ? The article seems to suggest that just because Google pulled the plug on Reader that it will pull the plug on any product it releases. Yes pulling down Reader was a bad idea but this is an overreaction.

cinbun8on Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

True. But in this case you could post a stackoverflow question / answer to take advantage of the fact that it will be run on another machine.

cinbun8on Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

"If you like running arbitrary code in your browser, try it out." - O.O

cinbun8on I hate the news

It is ironic that 'news' of his death has attracted attention to this article.

cinbun8on Apple's Company Registration for its App Store is Awkward and Awful

My sentiments were exactly the same. OMG the f word :D

cinbun8on Ten Finger Touch Screen Keyboard

Most people have a hard time with typing stuff into an iPad as it is. While you can probably type easily with a concept like this, getting users to understand the chorded keyboard will be a major challenge. There are folks that don't even get swype and the dictionary keyboard. If you can get over that bump, the product has potential.

I would not hide the keyboard for any reason. It can confuse people pretty easily. If I try to click a button on a website and end up typing a character instead, it can drive me nuts.

Cool concept.

cinbun8on Show HN: Generate REST APIs for Existing Applications

I can see the pros and cons of the idea.

Pros

1. Expose your data through an API without writing much (any ?) code.

2. Time saving.

3. Since the API itself is fed by the framework, the opportunity for bugs is limited.

4. I can think of some people / businesses that would pay for this service.

Cons

1. I cant quite get why a service like this would limit its requests / month [1]. My take on it was that you are selling the transformation of the data into a service - as a service. I guess the calls / month is to also benefit from the value that your service adds to the data ? Number of calls made might not directly translate to value.

2. You are limited to relational models.

3. There are tricky conditional requests / data munging / orchestration etc that REST services are expected to take care of sometimes. It can quickly become messy if a client wants this. Is there a translation / conversion layer that can be inserted between the API and its caller ?

Some feedback...

1. Is there some way a developer can try this out before pitching it to a product manager or a higher-up ? There seems to be no direct way to do that. All plans under pricing are tied to money so some folks might be averse to signing up. Most devs just want to download and hack something out to show someone what a product is capable of. The dev can be your marketer within a company.

2. The layout of your site is neat. The call to actions are very specific and targeted.

3. I think your product has the potential to be awesome. Good luck.

[1] - http://www.emergentone.com/pricing/

cinbun8on Because of the storm we're pushing the YC application deadline back to Friday

Most popular answer this year for 'Name something you hacked'

- 'Submitted my YC application despite the storm' :)

cinbun8on Ask HN: Review my startup, drone.io

* Why are sign ups restricted to google+ and github ? https://drone.io/auth/login

* The layout of the pricing page is odd. Use the plan name as a column instead of a row. Most folks are used to seeing it that way - https://drone.io/pricing

* Do not start by showing the user a free plan. Users scan a page from left to right. Don't give them something they will easily choose right away.

* Get yourself a 'features' page that highlights what you offer in bullet points.

cinbun8on I created a little tool for presenting website mockups/designs to your clients

A Bootstrap styled, Markdown powered, Server-side language agnostic, database-less project / mockup presentation engine

If you can say that without losing your breath, 1-up to you :) 'The easiest way to share your project status' seems like a better tagline. I like the simple layout. The colors are pleasing and easy on the eyes. I would still use another tool to show progress since not all progress may be tied to a UI.

cinbun8on Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

This is what I understand 1 minute after perusing your website.

1 - This is some sort of a marketplace where you can buy and sell expertise. Kinda like a Air bnb for odd jobs. Reminds me of a similar startup that tried that, but I cannot remember their name.

2 - The landing page's layout is a little confusing. I clicked on a couple of links and landed on your about page[1]. When you have a 90 second video explaining what your product is, why would you not put that on a landing page ? The call to action would be very easy for me. Click on the video and know more about you.

3 - Although you meant for people to click sign-in on the landing page, that action was not very obvious to me. You should look to prioritize 'Sign-up' not sign in. The fact that they are both green buttons that look alike does not help.

4 - Your key customer sign-up categories appear to be a buyer who gets services and a seller who markets his / her services. You might want to streamline signups to reflect that.

5 - The text overlay on the image is not very visible / readable. Have you considered switching the images to color on mouse-over ?

6 - Where is the submit button for 'Suggest a feature' under watercooler ?

7 - I don't quite get the watercooler part. Is it meant for users to share insights and that becomes part of the news ?

8 - What is your pricing ? Where can I see what cut you take and what I get in return ? What are people signing up for ?

9 - When I sign up, its not very clear to me that something happened on the screen. Its great that I am logged in, but the UI needs to do more to inform me about what just happened.

10 - A short tutorial on signing up would be great. The app asked me to add funds and I don't understand what for.

I like the idea. The presentation and the user flow could use a little work. Gather the feedback you get here and fine tune your site. Nice work.

[1] - https://www.workio.com/about/

cinbun8on [dead]

hmmm... this post is bewildering. Is there a particular API this is targeted at ? Some examples for each complaint would have been great to add more context. Lets look at your points...

I don’t want to build an application for your service.

I don’t want a relationship.

I don’t want to talk to any business development people.

I don’t want to read your developer blog.

I don’t want to participate in your “ecosystem”.

I don't recall any API agreement that dictates any of those. No one is forcing you to read a blog or change your relationship in facebook to 'in a relationship with twitter API'. I don't get this.

I don’t want to get an API key.

Fat chance. Some APIs need rate limiting / authentication. What do you have against obtaining an API key ? Its not that complicated. Most APIs provide BASIC auth or let you get OAuth tokens.

I don’t want to read your code samples.

ಠ_ಠ

What likely happened was that you were pissed with the API that someone provided. It had complicated requests where HTTP methods and simple structures alone were not enough to describe the request and to add to that you were given a freakin complicated way to retrieve auth tokens. You then decided to take it out on all API providers without providing enough context on your rant.

[EDIT] - formatting

cinbun8on Apple makes around 15% of its App Store money from developers

Who said anything about skimping on hardware ? My point was that you don't get the same horse power for price ratio on an apple laptop that you get from a Windows laptop. As for support it depends on your geographical location. You were able to get your mac air replaced thrice within 24 hours each time and I get similar support for my Windows laptops. It took me 4 days just to get a human being to respond to a problem I had with apple up-to-date support.

Developer time is more valuable than hardware costs hands down. The horse power that you can back in return for that hardware cost varies between apple and windows.

cinbun8on Apple makes around 15% of its App Store money from developers

I doubt apple makes a substantial amount from developers alone. Quoting [1] which is the research I believe rmah is talking about...

"Global Apple App Store revenue is set to increase to $4.9 billion in 2012, up from $2.9 billion in 2011, according to an IHS Screen Digest Mobile Analyst Commentary from information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS). This means that nearly half of the revenue generated by the App Store in its five-year history will be earned this year alone."

Those are some pretty strong numbers. Given that the number is projected, even with a generous error rate of +-20%, any revenue from developer fee will be eclipsed by 4.9 billion.

While the author's estimate that apple generates 15% of its revenue from developers is inaccurate, it has to be said that the entry fee to get into iphone / ipad development is high. I would know since I'm currently developing a product that works across iphone / android / web. Here are our costs thus far (excluding phone-device prices ).

Apple:

Mac Air 1200$

Developer account 99$

DUNS number 200$

Server certificate for notifications 175$

Android: Developer account 25$

Web: 0$ so far

Developing for apple devices is costly. For the same 1200$ that I could spend on mac air, I can get 2 powerful Win-7 laptops - ~ 500-700$ each [2]. Device fragmentation on android does require you to test on more devices, but there are services[3] that allow you to work around that problem. Besides, when netflix can release their app by testing it on a subset of 8 android devices [4], I don't see why that strategy is not good enough for others.

The author does have a point, but one that should not have been expressed as a percentage of apple revenues.

[1] - http://www.isuppli.com/Media-Research/News/pages/Maps-and-Pa...

[2] - http://www.dell.com/us/soho/p/vostro-laptop-deals

[3] - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1852248/is-there-an-andro...

[4] - http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/03/testing-netflix-on-andro...

[EDIT] - Formatting