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plusbryan

3,028 karma · joined October 10, 2006

Solchange.com sol at electricfox.com
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plusbryan··on Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone
For me, it'd be about guest access. Sure, you could give out your codes, and then change them later, but that's a pain (with the Schlage products at least).
plusbryan··on Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone
Having taken a lock picking course, I can say that one lock is approximately the same security as two - even after 15 minutes of instruction, with the right tools I could unlock most any standard house lock in moments.

Home door locks are a deterrent more than anything else, so I'd opt for convenience.

plusbryan··on Lockitron: Keyless entry using your phone
Looks great, but I'm reticent to replace my mortise-style door lock. Maybe future versions will support this type of lock? Other than sizing considerations, I don't see why not.
plusbryan··on Taskbox - Turn your inbox into a task list
I like the idea of merging tasks with emails - but if I can make one suggestion: I don't think I'd ever hit an auto-reply button that said "I'll get it done. It's now in my Taskbox." Unless replies are customizable, this sort of self-serving superfluous information would turn me off to the product.
plusbryan··on Making Progress on Star Trek Physics
It would make more sense to me if he put a PDF/kindle copy of the book on that USB stick.
plusbryan··on Grove.io shutting down
When your favorite restaurant closes down, do you demand they post all their recipes?
plusbryan··on Grove.io shutting down
Companies are shut down for a variety of reasons, and entrepreneurial success is often equal parts idea, luck, and hard work. Leah has built several popular products with loyal followings - which is more than a lot of us can say.
plusbryan··on Snailmail Photos To Friends With Facebook’s New Postcards Feature
Max they store is 2048px on a side, which is plenty for a 4x6 print. That doesn't mean that all of Facebook's photos are stored at this resolution, as I believe the max size was increased relatively recently.
plusbryan··on Snailmail Photos To Friends With Facebook’s New Postcards Feature
Ship API literally just launched, so the sky's the limit. Mailing a postcard is as simple as hitting two methods (upload and create). After running Sincerely for a little over a year, we've definitely witnessed how meaningful getting something in the mail can be.

Our Ship Library partners have done some interesting stuff: http://dev.sincerely.com/partners

plusbryan··on Snailmail Photos To Friends With Facebook’s New Postcards Feature
Hey, Bryan from Sincerely here. If you want a similar integration with your app or service, we have a simple web api: http://dev.sincerely.com
plusbryan··on Get Exec to Volunteer for Charity on your Behalf
Brilliant! I'm sure this concept will really appeal to all the overworked but socially conscious professionals out there.
plusbryan··on Announcing K9 Ventures II – A $40M technology-focused micro-VC fund
Awesome news Manu, congrats!
plusbryan··on ZeroCater (YC W11) is Feeding Silicon Valley
Reading this article and this thread taught me that there is actually competition in this space. We've used ZeroCater at Sincerely since the beginning and have honestly never considered switching. They are that good.
plusbryan··on AirBnb's new site design
I love the new wishlists and how you're featuring people's lists on the home page. Probably a nice lightweight way to get people engaged with the site.

Some feedback - when I'm on a wishlist, it's actually pretty difficult to navigate to the listings themselves. I click the listing name and see a pop up that really only has one call to action - the "Save to Wish list" button. The listing name links just link you back to the wish list - in fact, the only way to actually view the real listing is to click the price tag. Maybe I'm missing something, but if I see a listing that looks interesting, I'd like to be able to view the listing and possibly book it.

plusbryan··on Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend
This is the way to do demos - easy enough for a non-coder to use, but it explains and shows the internals for more experienced developers. Nice work!
plusbryan··on How to Apologize
Finally some context!

Without the context of the list above, I kept reading "Women:" not as a perk in a list, but as a declarative. I kept wondering why people could be offended by them saying that women were permitted beer.

Now, I see.

plusbryan··on Sparrow for iPhone
100% with you here - the latest version of Sparrow has some serious bugs that cause among other things, kernel panics. Previous versions have seen silently deleted messages, and other such nonsense. An email client should be, above all, reliable.
plusbryan··on Inside Stripe
Micropayments support would be wonderful
plusbryan··on Applications open for Y Combinator's summer 2012 funding cycle
I'm happy to offer feedback on your application as well. I was in the YC summer 2006 batch, currently a cofounder of Sincerely. You can reach me at bryan-at-sincerely
plusbryan··on Why we shut down a product that was $75,000/year profitable
Something doesn't add up here. It's like they bought a house, started renting it, and when being a landlord got boring, burned it down.

When you start a service and sign on customers, you take on a responsibility to keep that service going. Even if that means selling it or passing it on when you can't carry the torch yourself.

plusbryan··on Poll: Will you move your domains from GoDaddy today?
The thing that surprised me most about this whole situation is that so many tech-savvy people use Godaddy. Their spammy marketing and variable pricing screams bush-league to me. I'll forgive my dad for using them cause he doesn't know he had options, but for something so fundamental, how does anyone trust them?
plusbryan··on Please Donate to the Internet Archive
I had the pleasure of meeting brewster through a free event I was putting on some time ago. He is a remarkably generous man, in all senses of the word. Donation sent.
plusbryan··on RIM Takes $485M Hit Over Unsold PlayBook Tablets
"Despite its troubles, the PlayBook is not going anywhere, RIM said."

If that's a direct quote, it's an unfortunate choice of words.

plusbryan··on Dwolla: transactions under $10 are free
Agreed. Without knowing anything about Dwolla first, it took me a fair bit of time to even realize they were ACH-only.
plusbryan··on "Curiosity" - Launch 7.30AM EST (Live)
Is this the simplest sequence of events and machinery they could come up with the achieve the landing? There are a lot of motors, sensors, and propulsion engines that could fail.
plusbryan··on BankSimple invites first customers; rebrands itself as Simple
I'm curious about this - it's one of the reasons I love banking with Schwab. No fees for ATM use, even internationally. I rarely need cash, but when I do, it's really convenient that I can use any stinky old corner ATM.

I ask honestly: what illusion am I missing?

plusbryan··on FaceCash Files Formal Complaints Against Stanford, USC, Pomona, and AAU
What a frustrating situation. Best of luck fighting for the cause of less regulation.

My advice - keep fighting the good fight by building and trialling your product in other states and countries. As unfair and unjust the law may be, there's no reason for you to sit "idle" when you could be building, growing and learning. If you're successful, it'll be all the easier to convince the state to license you.

plusbryan··on Noca - Payments Simplified
Bummer. 99% of our transactions are $1, and so far PayPal is the only merchant that supports this.
plusbryan··on Astronomers discover planet made of diamond
In other news, De Beers makes a surprise investment in SpaceX.
plusbryan··on Apple phasing out developer access to the UDID in iOS 5
One thing that Google did well when building their platform is integrating permissions into the install process. Like Facebook's OAuth permissions, users understand how to interact with this. Don't care about ads tracking you but want more features that rely on tracking? [x] Allow tracking.

If Apple took a page from their book, they wouldn't need to take such drastic action, but instead let developers decide if users want the features that require those permissions.

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