fratis

This is really well done. :) Textbook hierarchical explanation.

I had a conversation with some family members recently in which I explained (in much less detail) how the web works, and I found that they were having trouble grasping exactly what web pages are.

After some hemming and hawing, I was finally able to construct a simple analogy that rang true with them: web pages are files a lot like Microsoft Word documents, the major difference being that you usually use one particular kind of program to read them (browsers) and another kind of program to create them, whereas with Word, the reader and viewer are the same thing.

When I worked in a mall, I'd get accosted by these guys on a daily basis (on my way to lunch). I developed the perfect response to their inevitable "Hello, sir! How are you?"

"I'm doing great! So well, in fact, that even Dead Sea products couldn't improve my day!"

I respect what the Bootstrap developers have built. It is robust, it looks good, it is opinionated, and it seems to just work. And it's EVERYWHERE.

And that's my problem with it: I feel as though every new web application I visit is built with Bootstrap, barely customized (if at all), and lacking any soul or personality – not because Bootstrap doesn't have personality (it does), but because its impact has been diluted by the number of sites that use it.

Take this 'inspirational gallery' for example. With few exceptions, every screenshot looks almost exactly the same: light gray background, white containers, Helvetica, black toolbar on top, Bootstrappy buttons. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that most of these screenshots came from a single application.

My point is this: tools like Bootstrap are great for rapid prototyping, but if you're not doing heavy customization, you're forsaking the opportunity to create an identity and personality for your product or page. So be wise: customize!

When I was doing research on this for my startup a few months ago, we found that Braintree easily beat Stripe on price. This is just icing on the cake.

Braintree's not as glamorous (I think), but if you're doing a large number of transactions, Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢/transaction is quite high.

Ah. Fair enough. Thanks for the tip.

Folks who've used tour things like this: how do you detect if it's the first time your users are using your app? Do you make a db query every time they log in? Do you use cookies? Cookies seem unreliable and a flag in the database seems a waste of resources.

Thoughts?

Right off the bat: why use Silverlight instead of non-proprietary technology?

It's a cool idea. Think of it as Study Abroad for hackers: you're doing what you'd be doing at home, but in a new place with new people, enriching yourself personally and — because there'd be other hackers there too — professionally as well.

I built http://ipsum.me, an ipsum generator for web developers, with placeholder functionality for those dozen <li> tags in your mockup that you'd like to fill with a list of names.

Did your grandfather set it up himself?

I disagree. Nobody outside the tech community knows that Google Voice exists, let alone how to use it. This has solid branding (esp. the name) and good messaging.

The price might be a little high for what it's doing, but if the idea is to eventually phase out your landline number, this could be a good way of doing it.

This article is barely readable.

The block quotes throughout don't make sense. They are extremely confusing. Further, not only does the article NOT describe strategies contrary to those "wandering on the internet," it trots out trite platitudes as though they're new and interesting. Bits like "So be an adult, and show your interest." aren't merely juvenile and shallow, they're also obvious and unhelpful.

How did this make it to the front page?

This is a sensible list of new rules. This is a quintessential exercise in changing user expectations and behavior. This is great UX, especially in a platform-type environment in which the platform managers aren’t always able to curate the content created by the platform users.

Ope. Looks like I was actually off by a fair bit. :P Here's the actual list, from http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/155631525:

Pickled garlic. Cottage cheese. Peat-smoked salmon. 6 bottles of white wine. 3 pairs of socks. 3 hula hoops. Snorkel. Dry ice machine. Email Sophia. Skin-toned cat suit. Paul Newman film. Elk sausages. Megaphone and director's chair. Harness and ropes. Barometer.

I read this book well over a year ago, and I still remember nearly the entire list of items he used as an example in the book. The techniques described really work, though the book is more of a memoir than a guide.

Here's what I remember, for the record: pickled onions, cottage cheese, peat smoked salmon, six bottles of wine, three pairs of socks, hula hoop, scuba diver, dry ice(?), Sofia Lauren.

I know there are a few more, but I think I covered a pretty considerable number of them.

This is cool, but I'd like to be able to fork one of my own lists. Consider this use case:

I'm a freelance web developer, for example, and there are twenty things I need to do on every project. I could create a master list of things that need to get done, then simply fork that list every time I start a new project, which will inevitably have a unique set of other items to be completed.

Agreed. I use them as well, and they've been great from day one.

Short anecdote: I have an Icelandic (.is) domain. Iceland's NIC has very strict rules regarding DNS records associated with an Icelandic domain. dnsimple's support team got the problem resolved within a few days. I can definitely see myself with them for the long haul.

As much as I just loathe saying "I told you so," I direct your attention to this prediction 55 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4174622

Totally. :)

Ahh, yikes. Sorry. I should've been clearer.

I didn't mean (though it certainly sounded that way) that it's necessary for the reader to know your gender. Looking back, in fact, I realize that I weakened my position by even mentioning it (especially in the vague, imprecise way that I did).

I brought up gender because it was confusing (and I, along with other readers here, felt misled) when you – very casually, I might add – mentioned you were engaged to the CEO, up until which point I'd been under the false impression that you were a man.

So, to answer your question: no, you wouldn't have needed to inform the reader of your gender if you had an ambiguous name because what's really important here is not that you're a woman but that you're engaged to the CEO. Whether you're a man or a woman is irrelevant: all that is relevant is that you have a close personal history with the guy you're negotiating with, a fact which, again, completely skews the context of the article.

A tip for people writing on corporate blogs: let us know who you are up front. Whether there's a byline under the title or a short intro sentence/paragraph preceding the article, knowing who you are gives the reader a way to frame what your story.

Because the tech industry is so heterosexual male-dominated, when I read that the author was engaged to the CEO, I first assumed I had misunderstood, then I thought the author was a gay man. Only upon reading further did I find that the author was a woman.

That confusion could've been cleared up in the first paragraph in which Michelle writes, "I’ve picked up quite a bit just by being around our CEO, Kyle, for the past few years." Why not tell us here why she's "been around" Kyle for so long? Further confusing the point, she mentions later that she's "friends with all of the founders." And engaged to the CEO might've been a helpful addition.

This kind of information completely changes the context of the advice – negotiating with a stranger is a completely different dynamic than negotiating with someone you (I assume) share a bed with.

That's just wrong. According to a test – admittedly somewhat unscientific, but good enough for our purposes – done by developer Benjamin Mayo and vetted by TNW, third-party apps only contribute to ~25% of twitter's activity. Tweetbot is in the upper echelons of that 25%, but it's not even in the top 10 overall.

I'm sure they do well, but they definitely don't have a monopoly.

Sources: http://benjaminmayo.co.uk/how-many-people-use-twitter-s-own-...

http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/07/23/only-an-estimated-2...

But THE ECONOMY.

Alternatively, maybe soon – with the small iPad filling the $249 price gap – Apple will finally kill the iPod Classic and cut prices on the rest of the line. They've been manufacturing the lower quality retina display for the iPod Touch for two years, and costs must be down significantly.

Combine that with falling costs for flash storage, and I could see them going down to $150-$250 for the Touch ($150 for 16GB up to $250 for 64GB), $100/$125 on the Nano, and keeping the Shuffle at $49.

Like my mom always says, "Keep your poop close."

Sounds like a healthy relationship.

I understand where you're coming from, but I feel as though you might be evaluating the ad's concept and not its execution.

The Apple Store is clearly an awesome value add (I even hesitate to reduce it to merely that), but I don't think these ads do a great job communicating that.

They're simply not focused: the schtick muddles their message, and dropping the names of various pieces of Apple-specific software (Keynote, iMovie, Garageband) makes them even harder to follow for folks who don't use Macs already (and probably for some who do).

Add in the (according to some people, though I don't see it myself) subtly condescending Genius, and I think you've lost both the audience you're looking to reach in addition to the one you already have.

That's fair. Though I do have an explanation.

I was, many years ago, an Apple retail employee. After that, I worked as an Apple Certified Technical Consultant. Referring to Apple as "we" is a old habit that manifested itself in a moment of surprise.

I have a hard time agreeing. I want to like them, but everything about them – with the exception of one or two gags – is "good enough," not excellent, as Apple's been for so long.

Sorry if this is obvious, but to clarify: is that around 8 MB/s? Or did you mean 65 MB/s?