jsavimbi

You're right. When you fire someone, experience layoffs or people quit in disgust, the best thing to do is to let it go and if some negative publicity comes back at you, the best thing to do is to kill them with kindness, especially when you were actually trying to retain said employee. Which I assume was part of the buyout deal. Yes, the employees, especially the engineers, are company assets.

"Shay is a great engineer who we were unfortunately unable to retain. I'm sure he'll do well wherever he lands." Would have sufficed as a tweet. One comes across as not being pricked by the story and if he's actually the weakest guy on the team and ends up hired by a competitor, you win.

A CEO is always recruiting and promoting, even to employees. To use the petty language that he did only weakens his position amongst his team and outsiders interested in the company.

> My point has nothing to do with background color and legibility

If you build something that people can't use, you've wasted your time. That search box on the left is useless unless someone a) understands how Heroku works and b) knows what they're looking for in the first place. Reviews? Ratings? I guess they work for Hotscripts.

Heroku add-ons are for people who already understand the architecture of their app, not necessarily some guy looking to add something on for the sake of it, hence the obvious pricing. You have to know the audience.

> as readable as the text on heroku

Not exactly a paragon a legibility.

If you're going to pick a dark background, choose a color for the text that will actually contrast and be legible for the widest audience possible, not a shadowed, slightly lighter version of the background.

In essence, this "alternative" does absolutely nothing to improve upon Heroku's version. It's also worse.

Why don't you add a thanks to Heroku for hosting their images for you?

Nice try, but you've only copied their design, removed the polish and added a bunch of unnecessary bollocks to the thing.

Also, people need to read the content, hence their visit to the site. If you're going to insist on using a dark background, at least make the text as bright as possible and remove the text shadow.

In theory, you do not but until Apple perfects the technology, we'll just have to wait.

I won't debate the merits of Bitcoin as a currency replacement as it is not needed, traded nor quoted in the financial markets. And by financial markets, I'm referring to the little club that certain banks and hedge funds have going between themselves, not the service your buddy operates from his apartment.

The only thing they're sorry for is the quick, efficient and brutal backlash they were rightfully subjected to. All the "we wanted, we decided, we aimed" self-centered nonsense only solidifies the belief that it's all about them and they're unable or unwilling to understand why people are upset when being known for having a loose atmosphere at their events was what they really wanted in the first place.

And when I mean loose, I'm referring to the immature and douchebag activities best represented in the bro-party video genre. In retrospect, they should've doubled-down on stupid and pitched the event as being just that, instead of employing the guise of a hack-a-thon. Although it would've gone a lot smoother for them, it's obvious they would've failed there as well due to their incompetence, but at least they wouldn't be known as a couple of liars for some time to come.

Oddly enough, this blog post must be hard to find, as their website makes no mention of their catastrophic implosion.

> So you built your business entirely relying on third-party services.

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Neither Twilio nor Stripe are in the same business line as RollCallMe and thus are offering services, and thus not competing, therefore they have an incentive to keep prices down in order to attract more customers. I cannot speak for Stripe, but Twilio has lowered their rates in the past and does a wonderful job in regards to both technology and customer service.

Yes, there are no technical barriers to entry into this one-service industry, aside from knowing a Rails person who can wire up the app, but time-to-market, initial pricing and the potential for add-ons that can engage more users and augment the revenue streams give them the advantage. Choosing Twilio gives them that advantage.

Not a rock-solid app by any means, but one that's needed and doesn't compete directly against more mature and properly funded platforms.

Great idea. I wish them good luck.

Well, it looks like @sqoot was unable to weather the storm and has now pulled the event from Eventbrite.

> perhaps even servers at restaurants

what a tool.

Does it work on iPad?

It's a zoo.

That was really cool, thank you.

> you are completely ignorant to the contributions that skilled businesspeople can make to a startup

In this case, can you please list the contributions that you think were made by the non-technical, strategic members of this team, and why you think they should share in 80% to 90% of the company vs. the 10% to 20% that our esteemed colleague who actually built the feature did?

And I call it a feature because a one-page that tracks your likes and posts them to your timeline making very basic use of Facebook's API is a feature, not a startup and it certainly isn't a going business concern that may turn a profit large enough to grow beyond its current MVP.

Bandpage.com very well may be a product, but what we have here is a very basic implementation of the API and nothing else aside from a horribly-conceived design. I won't even mention the uselessness of the so-called awards or even ask what prompted the use of Disqus for a Facebook app. I guess those were all consuming business decisions that took a year to hash out.

tl;dr: Exactly what value did the layperson add to this thing?

> Facebook-based link-sharing games are loser projects you need to avoid.

Can I be any more clearer and constructive to a young developer looking to break into the industry?

Okay, maybe I should've added that if you need the money, feel free to do the work but don't go putting your name on it and make sure get paid up front.

I'm not speculating on what intentions the two non-technical people on the team have as when I see one year's worth of work from lightbulb to launch manifested in that weekend project of a poorly conceived website, I already know they have no clue what the next step is and therefore it's a waste of time to even think about it. It's a couple of dudes trying to find unsigned talent through clicks measurements on Facebook.

Didn't see that movie. Was it any good?

> I obviously needed to find someone technical to build the website, whether a freelancer or a cofounder.

Two jokers drop out of Goldman Sachs after a very short employment stint and hire some kid to build them a Facebook-based link-sharing game that targets emerging artists who have no money on the most garish website I've seen in quite some time and all he gets credited with is Lead Engineer. Not even Mr. Lead Engineer.

If non of the above doesn't embarrass you from turning down below-market deals with non-technical, inexperienced dreamers than nothing will. You need to recognize that your skill set is a finite commodity and the more time you spend on loser projects like these, the less in-demand you become. On the other hand, everyone knows that you'll do almost anything for cheap and you'll end up as the "coder dude" while the co-founders debate the merits of shitty internet-generated logotypes and branding as they plan their trips to SXSW.

tl;dr: Facebook-based link-sharing games are loser projects you need to avoid.

I really like mine; they're solid. You can order them and have them sent to a shop without any obligation to buy.

> I am not a designer

Then why would you even be talking about Bootstrap, let alone criticizing it from a design point of view?

You can take any past, present or future "original" concept and build it with Bootstrap. You do understand that, right? You are not limited to the default theme. If you're lazy, lack talent or interest then yes, your website will look pretty much the same as those of your peers, but then you can only blame yourself, not a CSS framework.

It doesn't. Sounds like there's a lack of imagination in that article or they're alluding to the inevitable result that people who possess neither the skills nor interest in making a visual customization of their site will leave it standing on the default theme, populating the web with a lot of sameness.

If it makes it easier for people to communicate faster, than I'm all for it.

> Harder to be original. Because we all start with the same base.

That is so not true. What is easy is to use the basic theme to build out a prototype of your app. Customizing will always be harder, but then again, it's been hard to build out a well-designed site since the very beginning.

To say that it's hard because it comes with a default theme is to not understand.

Well, since the Warby Parker peeps will probably get around to reading this, I'd just like to mention that I love my SALT Topher's and will probably spend another $400 on another pair of SALT's for my spring wardrobe this year as well.

Responsive design works wonders for text-based websites like newspapers and blogs. The new Boston Globe sets the bar with it. Doesn't work very well when you're developing dashboard or other data-driven applications. You're going to have to build the mobile app at some point so might as well start sooner than later. In the mean time, responsive design will bridge the gap.

I never understand why people feel the need to spend time trying to advertise what they want out of and Apple product. The company doesn't care what the customer wants. They simply make things that sell and discontinue those that don't. The iPad 3 will probably outsell 1 and 2 combined, and they know this already. And they know that as long as they keep making improvements to iOS, every other platform/manufacturer is simply copying them and are one or two generations behind with no insight as to where Apple is headed.

Also, one would be surprised at the number of people out there taking pictures with an iPad. It looks weird but you'll get used to it eventually.

Looks interesting. I will download and have a look.

Could you just tell me why Griswold's opinion on the benefits of illegal immigrants over [African-American implied] welfare recipients as they apply to the US economy is subject matter for Hacker News? Relevance?

Wait, don't bother. Econlib/Cato/Griswold/Koch sell kooky theories to the unintelligent to mask their war on poor people. I don't actually take them seriously.

So, illegal Mexicans shouldn't be on the right-wing agenda this electoral cycle, or am I missing something?

> it is totally possible to move your image editing online

That's insane from both a time and horsepower standpoint. Online image editors are one-use fringe case stops of convenience.

Thanks for the tip, but hopefully they'll use the 75% of $9.99 and apply it towards making a better product.

On Facebook (not exactly a paragon of usability) it's there. Also tab around the page. Links are also highlighted in light blue.

Maybe it's my own view, but when a designer circumvents or subverts basic, conventional browser functionality it signals they don't know how to design for the web or they care more for their particular design than they do for the user's ability to process and react to the intended functionality.

Lightboxes are a dishonest metaphor for popups.

There's usually no indication within the content that what you're clicking on, usually a link, is in fact not going to take you to a separate URL where you can complete your business, which is conventional, but it in fact going to change your visual experience by [poorly] applying an opaque [non-universal] overlay to your content and present you with a form, content, media in a format that is completely unnecessary to the experience. In the case of the author's preferred third-party plugin, it adds an additional four steps to your experience: 1) activate overlay, 2) resize viewport to content, 3) present content, 4) user-activate close button.

All for content that is preloaded with the page. The author seriously thinks that inconveniencing the user with added steps and amateurish functionality at the moment of conversion is a good idea, but you can browse the code over at their webpage to get a feel for what they think is acceptable advice.

The author-suggested solution takes four to five times longer without even making a server call. If that isn't ignorant, I don't know what is.