route3

I'd love to hear any advice regarding improvements to site & page structure for SEO and marketing purposes. To give something back to the community that has taught me so much, use coupon code "HACKER" when you checkout.

Simon Sarris [0][1] is a regular contributor to HN and he knows the canvas element pretty well. He also contributes/answers many canvas questions on Stack Overflow. I don't know him personally but he comes across as a nice fellow - perhaps you could shoot him a tweet or email if you need some help.

[0] simonsarris.com [1] @simonsarris

SEEKING WORK - Remote (New Hampshire, United States)

I have a full-time job doing .NET web development but I've really enjoyed learning Python & Django over the last few months and I'd like to get some more experience. If you are in need of a freelancer for junior-level Django work, please email me (in profile).

That's so funny, just last night I started sketching out a plan to tackle this problem, API and all. I have experience (and, oddly, a passion for) solving email-based problems.

I couldn't find your contact info, but mine is in my profile. Please get in touch, I'd love to talk about this more.

From the TC article:

"Bridge, a technology that enables real-time communication between any server, any device, on any platform. Bridge is essentially an API that developers can use to avoid the complexity of building real-time messaging into their applications, and help push more data faster between servers, web browsers, mobile phones and other devices."

Sounds very similar to Amazon SNS, which Amazon describes as

"...a web service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and send notifications from the cloud. It provides developers with a highly scalable, flexible, and cost-effective capability to publish messages from an application and immediately deliver them to subscribers or other applications. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers."

Right now their website doesn't have much information so it's difficult to determine how they plan to differentiate themselves from existing platforms that (appear to) solve the same problem.

Here's to hoping that an OEM or software/solutions provider implemented some sort of local disk encryption before deploying to the field.

I have an amazingly similar pattern at the moment. The lunch time walk while at $DAYJOB is perhaps one of the most productive 30 minutes of my day. The combination of fresh air, getting the blood moving while walking and some caffeine is perfect for thinking over ideas. Do not neglect this.

I posed this question to HN for motivational purposes: how awesome is it when you aren't balancing full-time $DAYJOB and full-time hacking. When your startup is profitable, steady and you can finally go fishing at 11am on a Tuesday simply because you can.

Demonstrable revenue boost? I'm not convinced, although I'm not a restaurateur. My argument: those annoying pagers/buzzers keep the party tethered to the establishment, which means that the guests are likely to

a) Sit at the bar and order a drink b) Sit in the waiting area and read posters/chalkboards about upcoming events, happy hour specials, gift certificates/loyalty programs, etc.

Either way, the restaurant comes out ahead (especially at the bar, where alcoholic beverage margins make every restaurant owner smile). I wouldn't be surprised if a restaurant saw a decrease in drinks purchased if customers were allowed to freely wander beyond the range of those pager devices.

I honestly have no experience with warehousing and fulfillment, but the inner hacker in me loves to think of cool applications for barcode scanners, sensors, some nifty Arduino/RFID projects, reporting and even "Smart Promo Distribution" where you could warned that the ZIP code you're about to send that Red Lobster gift card doesn't have a Red Lobster location within 50 miles

You're right through...cool hacks aside, the physical act of retrieving an item from inventory, packaging, labeling and shipping has its own drawbacks.

Storage fees are fair, I think. Think of the value: before even paying the cost to the carrier (USPS/UPS/FedEx) you've invested time and money in to that label printer that never works right, consumables such as ink/paper/packaging, your time packing these promotional items and God forbid you run out to get coffee when the UPS guy swings around to pick up!

On a small, manageable scale, it sounds like an awesome operation for a programmer/tinkerer.

Interesting point.

I don't want to take your example too far, but I would be more interested the labeling of my product which reaches 100% of potential ketchup buyers (assuming their eyes scanned the shelves) not just the 0.0001% who might be using ZipList AND decide to snag your brand as opposed to the brand they usually buy.

Reading about how an application like ZipList raised $2M is surprising to me. I'm not angry or jealous (I'm happy for those involved, for sure) but it seems like a product someone would do for university project or something similar.

Every recipe website I've been to has a button to print a shopping-list style ingredient list. I'm used to seeing numbers like $20k revenue for a popular shopping list app, not $2M in funding.

I'm new to this startup world, so please correct me if I'm missing something.

A group of investors pooled $2M together and invested it in ZipList. They are expecting that the company (in just a few years) will be worth quite a bit more and likely sell to a larger company. The investors fully anticipate making back their investment plus considerably more. Is that correct?

Does this seem a little much for an application that manages your shopping lists? To repeat something I've heard oh-so-much here on HN, are they really solving a problem?

>>I'm keeping the business small by design

Fantastic comment, thank you for taking the time to speak up. "Small by design" is exactly how I feel about starting a business.

That last sentence is a great statement. Larger operations can be complex and at some point it you might wake up one morning and not look forward to managing your business. That is not what I want to happen.