plusbryan

Padmapper.com puts listings on a map, and includes a lot of useful features like remembering listings you've already viewed.

OT, but that's gotta be the first progressive-loading GIF I've seen in like ten years. In fact, at first I thought it was an animation.

Without knowing much about the mechanics of acquisitions of this magnitude, how plausible is it that AT&T made the offer simply to prevent Sprint from acquiring T-Mobile and creating another competitor? I mean, if they're pretty sure the FTC would block them anyway, if they set a high price, they've just made it harder for Sprint to attain their size.

Oh crap. There goes my unlimited tethering.

> He's only working about 7-10 hours a week as far as I can tell.

A bit of advice: It is very difficult for business people to assess the contributions of engineers and vice versa. This story may repeat itself.

OT, but is the PayPal bashing necessary? I know everyone loves beating up on PayPal, but for a big company they do still bring some innovation to the space - take their micropayments service (https://micropayments.paypal-labs.com/). How else can I process a $1 payment and only pay 10¢?

That's some nifty navigation you've got going on there.

Is that a trick question? Yes, I am in favor of a development ecosystem that doesn't aim for $0.

Apple probably should have made XCode free regardless, but his point struck me as the most likely reasoning behind Apple's decision to charge for it.

It's doubtful that today's parents need to be convinced of such things. Not only is $99 cheaper than that piano of yesteryear, it also has a significantly higher rate of return.

I agree: They are charging to set an expectation for consumers and app developers that quality mac apps should not be free.

Right, but who bought them that mac?

I'm not sure if this applies to Xcode, but at least with Coda, even if you purchase it outside the App Store, it has an 'Installed' label and presumably gets updated through the App Store as well.

> Should everyone with non-normative views be forced into silence?

Absolutely not, and I agree with you. But help me out - isn't the root cause of all the examples you list a lack of information? Case in point of many: don't people in general become less bigoted the more educated they become?

Call me a naive idealist, but I wonder if the information barriers erected by people to protect themselves, are, on a wider scale, actually what keeps bigotry and hatred alive?

Zuckerberg isn't a saint, so I'm not suggesting that there is any altruistic motive behind his moves. I'm just questioning if greater transparency is inherently a bad thing.

I find it rather ironic that I'm hesitant to comment on this thread because I disagree with the strongly opinionated majority. Therein lies a paradox.

This will not end well.

I'm not sure if I would choose to showcase an expedition to Antarctica in 1915 in color.

They give you 1099's, taxed as regular income.

Thanks for sharing. Your insights & warnings have been most helpful.

Ghostnet, Anonymous.... the world is really shaping up the way Neal Stephenson imagined it...

There's actually a whole category of individuals that do this for a living: business counselors/mentors. This is a lot safer than going with a friend you both know, and they don't cost much.

Airline baggage fees are good for you! Here's why: They are the a la carte portion of your ticket.

If consumer groups succeed in limiting airlines' ability to charge such fees, airlines will need to figure out other ways to monetize your travel, some that may be more difficult avoid.

I agree. For such a capital-intensive business, the airline industry is extremely competitive. Airlines operate on the slimmest of margins, which is why they have to be clever about how to extract value from their customers (commercials on takeoff, credit card offers in-flight, baggage fees).

It would be helpful for a hipmonk flight search to expose these fees to the user, for a more comprehensive total flight cost.

WooMe probably didn't start out this way. Desperation can do bad things to good intentions.

I appreciate the transparency of this post.

I love these stories. Must feel great to have a real impact on real customers. Keep it up!

You're right, I misspoke when I said "innovate" - what I meant was, Amazon's goal is to create reliable base-level services for the developers of the world. Whereas a Sendgrid might provide unsubscribe management and fancy graphing, I don't see Amazon adding on additional services like this.

The thing is, Sendgrid et al will continue to innovate in terms of feature set, and AWS never will. And that's a good thing: They focus on the absolute core of a product need - and let providers like heroku or dropbox grow like a vine on top of them, providing things people want.

You think that's complicated? Boy, back in my day, we didn't have no fancy "management console" or "tabs". Why, you had to play with your AWS services by hand! And you liked it.

Does anyone know the story behind the two "Co-Founder Emeritus" titles on their team page?

http://www.qwiki.com/team