matthodan

Has anyone ever successfully sued a company for sleep deprivation? I know investment banks are notorious for requiring junior staff to work without sleep, lest they lose their bonus (or worse).

There are a bunch of paid ways to promote an app, but I've focused on what I usually do to get free exposure:

1) Post a 'Ask HN' post to get some feedback

2) Search for blogs that discuss the problem your product solves, then comment on those blogs (don't spam!)

3) Email the tip lines of each of the major tech blogs

4) Submit your site for inclusion in site directories (e.g. webapplist)

5) Contact sites that rank highly on your target keywords and see if they'll link to your site

6) Search Twitter for people who have the problem that your product solves, then refer them to your app

7) Post updates to your personal Facebook / Twitter

Here are some of my thoughts (sorry, I wrote them word vomit form):

1) Concierge services -- Early space travelers will undoubtedly be wealthy and have numerous needs, from planning how to get them from their home to the nearest Spaceport, to scheduling training exercises to prepare for their trip.

2) Airport logistics -- Virgin Galactic is already planning 3 flights per day at the Spaceport America in New Mexico. Spaceports will get busy and technologies to manage busy spaceports will need to be developed.

3) Online booking -- As providers emerge and flights become more common, people will want to look online to learn about the various space travel offerings that are available to them (and price shop).

4) Freight/science travel -- While tourism is clearly the sexy side of space travel, it stands to reason that there will likely be a significant industrial need for this service.

5) Maintenance -- Space travel wears heavily on the equipment involved. As more companies offer private space travel, new services and technologies will be needed to maintain their fleets.

6) Post-flight -- Early civilian space travelers will belong to an exclusive club of thrill seekers that have similar interests. There are countless services that could be targeted at this group, from private club memberships, follow-on adventures.

Working link: http://momentapp.com

How about a service that took annotated source docs at commit and automatically updated a hosted public-facing documentation reference?

1) Read everything written by PG: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html

2) Find a co-founder.

3) Apply to Y-Combinator: http://ycombinator.com/

4) If you don't get into YC, apply to one of these: http://launch.is/blog/2010/12/16/complete-list-of-incubators...

Do you think people would be interested in a full git workflow (i.e. you maintain the docs via a git branch that you push to the service)?

I hear you on Sphinx-- definitely looks like a great tool, though I haven't used it before. Do you know if Rails has something similar?

Also, would you use sphinx to generate end-user docs (like the kind you find publicly available on Heroku, Twilio, SimpleGeo, PayPal, Hoptoad, etc.) or just internal docs? What level of control do you have over visibility of docs (i.e. can certain docs be private and others public?)?

Yup. You can sign up here:

http://www.facebook.com/about/messages/

Interesting perspective-- so, when is it appropriate to not offer SSL/HTTPS? Is it generally okay to skip SSL/HTTPS if a site isn't mission critical or financial-focused? I only ask because on Heroku and other platforms, there is a fixed cost to offer SSL (with a custom domain) that over multiple sites could add up.

The prof's home page states: "Important Note: I have chosen not to participate in any social networking environments." http://www.bus.ucf.edu/rquinn/

It was probably more work to memorize the test bank than to study the material as normal... It's ironic that those who memorized the test bank probably know the material best.

Nearby Friends is no more cyber stalkerish in 2010 than Facebook was in 2005. Don't you agree?

I just added each friend's Facebook check-in history. Click on a friend's photo to view history and other details.

I programmed this little Facebook app (Nearby Friends) last night to show your friends' recent Facebook Places check-ins on a Google Map. Let me know if you have any problems using it-- I've hopefully fixed all of the major bugs!

I just threw this together for fun. Basically it takes your friend's recent check-ins and plots them on a Google map. Obviously, I'll need to add more features to make it useful... If you hover your mouse over a point you will see the person's name.

Thanks for the feedback! We'll have to devote some resources towards reaching out to the academic population.

We'd love to help you get started! If you have any trouble adding your datasets, please send me an email at matt @ datamarketplace.com and I'll make sure they get added asap.

You should be able to browse the data that is available without registering by clicking on "Buy Data" in the header. We make people register when they request a dataset because we want to be able to let them know once we've found their data.

We're working on an API that will allow sellers to programmatically refresh their dataset to keep it up-to-date with the source. We're also working on a search and filtering system that ranks datasets based on when they were last updated.

If users want it-- definitely. We'll need to see how many people contact us with these types of requests.

Let's talk! I like where you are going with Webscaled-- maybe we could work together. Shoot me an email me when you get a chance: matt @ datamarketplace.com

We're working on it :)

This is an interesting question that we've been giving a lot of thought to lately. We hope that it won't be a big problem, but if it is we will need to implement public EULAs and a dispute resolution process.

In terms of multiple purchases, we suspect there will be some datasets that are more popular than others. A list of Wal-Mart stores for example could be useful to a number of different people, such as investors, real estate developers, business planners, marketers, etc.

Data Marketplace can help people who are looking for data connect with people who are able to collect it. One of the problems with all of the data online is that it is in too raw a format to be useful. Someone must scrape/combine/clean the data before it can be analyzed. By connecting business people who maybe don't know how to scrape data with programmers/aggregators who specialize in it, we hope to make it a lot easier to find useful data.

We want to be as transparent as possible about who is selling the data. Ultimately, it will be the reputation of the seller that determines how 'trustworthy' the data is (and how much you should be willing to pay for it).

Pricing is set by the provider, but we don't mind haggling. We're trying to build a community around buying and selling data tables, so if the price isn't right, that's good feedback for the seller.

Here are a couple that came to mind:

1) Constructive feedback -- I want more, now :)

2) Web UI technologies -- progress, but at a snail's pace

3) Web APIs -- bring down those "walls"

4) Internet-driven TV apps -- why not?

I'd love for a bunch of the YC founders to review my application-- I feel like I've spent the last several weeks getting every smart person (including YC founders) I could find to read my application. Who knows, maybe one of the YC founders will see something that piques their curiosity. It'd be great if this process generated constructive feedback or a partnership opportunity.

A minute or two of mind share from YC founders sounds better to me than 30 seconds from the YC partners.

Interesting to see that they put their logo in the center instead of the top left-- I think it's a little distracting, but maybe this will become a new trend.

I started a cafe while I was in college, which is still in operation today (4 years later). I no longer own or manage the business, but it's exciting to grab a brew there when I visit my old campus.

Looking back, that cafe gave me a huge insight into leading a creative team-- we had 7 very active employees-- and taught me to to appreciate the less glamorous side of starting a business-- like staying late to clean up or restocking the shelves.