riskish

I'd like to edit my Q now, but I can't. :)

Maybe start looking for specific problems that need solutions and start building them.

start.

I appreciate the comments. After thinking about it myself, I have decided I am going to write a list of successful startups/companies that I admire and why. Perhaps this will give me insight into which idea I would like to succeed the most/gravitate towards.

Looking to find other HN'ers running sites dedicated to ruby on rails.

Design: In a sea of web app splash pages from the past sixth months, your simple demo site is somewhat refreshing to me. With that said, I think you could improve a few things. The demonstration of the app could be more clear by making it linear (horizontal or vertical) as opposed to the 4 images -- which is kind of confusing at first..maybe arrows would help. I like the photo with the hand holding the iphone at the shelf, and the purple scheme :).

Idea: I may be biased, because I love these apps and think this space is ripe for innovation (shopkick/stickybits), but I really like your idea/concept. One issue I see, however, is that a player in this space is indeed ShopKick and your name, ShopSideKick, is very similar. Since your concept is pretty unique in scanning shelf barcodes instead of the product, why not own it with a completely different name/brand/concept? I know they work with Best Buy as well, so there are a lot of small similarities that can be immediately drawn between ShopKick and ShopeSideKick.

Also, since you have an application that is the "first" to do shelf scanning instead of the product, maybe it would be wise to put more emphasis on this unique ease-of-use in stores compared to other apps out there now (when promoting to businesses and consumers).

Hope thats helpful...

I will second railsforzombies.org, I really liked that one.

I would also recommend tryruby.org for a quick, interactive primer on the syntax.

In addition, #RubyOnRails is very active on freenode, so you can always come and ask questions.

I think this is a coincidence. It would be quite an unethical service to let users search for possible domains and then steal them before we have a chance to register them because they identified it as being valuable.

That's not to say they don't register and own their own, but using your entries as a gauge to see if they want to register something is pretty unethical for a registrar I'd think, even for godaddy :).

I have found these books to be very influential in my thinking on web startups and building things in general:

1) Hackers & Painters - PG

2) Smart & Get Things Done - Joel Spolsky

3) Rework - Jason Fried

4) Getting Real - Jason Fried

5) Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston

6) Joel on Software - Joel Spolsky

These are by far some of my favorites.

oh. I wanted to do something with this concept, see here: http://www.alittlecity.com/yc/lemonaidstand.jpg

awesome execution, I really like it.

hey, i'm in dallas too. we should connect.

Cool. I like the idea, I wonder if there are other services that could use better display and benefit from a similar service. Are you working on versions for other platforms besides S3?

Are you looking for freelance UI design? Or wanting to see a good example?

Cool. Do you mind sharing how much s3stat pulls in?

Can you build iphone apps?

you mean disconnecting?

Well, maybe you can work on some new iPad applications using the physics and the gyroscope for the new iPad (or iPhone).

The physics kit used for angry birds is Box2D: http://box2d.org/ perhaps you could build an app for fun at the intersection of your interests, on a mobile device. Best of luck.

true. whenever Im building, (I know php and mysql), I always can get stuff to work, and make it work decently well, but i'm never sure if i'm doing stuff properly. I barely ever create OOP functions and hierarchies, etc. Does anyone else ever feel this way?

stephenou,I'm aware of this short-sight. However, I am building a start up and putting a lot of resources into it. I do not want to plan for scale, per se, but I wanted to see if there were rough points I could actually keep in mind when developing, as opposed to just building a prototype. I'm used to use hacking things together with php and mysql, so I wanted to try to be a little more formal this time around.

thanks, I've added it.

Hi there, my email is in my profile, I'd be interested to hear more. I imagine you would need an initial splash web site for the app.

thanks

email me with details about the project, name, etc. my email is in my profile.

I've posted another thread with the details:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1904562

bpedro, hi there. I have added a link to my portfolio (it's an older version made with weebly) to my profile.

yes I am, I know how serious hacker-news entrepreneurs are, so I would be thrilled to help. please send me some details, is this a casual gaming site like playfish/zynga? also, are you needing design for the website or the games themself? you can discuss here, or email me. I've just added my email to my profile.

Pete-

Thanks for the comments, I think you are probably right. Maybe I'll change my post to a "free design offer" for a hacker-news start up that is needing one for their prototype, and then test on my own... Any takers?

=)