route3

I couldn't agree more with your final thought. I assumed there may only be one or two diverted flights in a day, and certainly a handful more during winter weather, etc.

I clearly remember when I finally let my initial prototype run on a laptop for a day and ignored it, an old HP laptop just chugging away parsing flight plan data, plugged in and running too hot in my office. By the next day I had > 20 diversions, with no notable weather, and assumed I had a bug in my logic.

Lots more to do here, including adding some weather details and someday predictive analytics. Thanks again for checking it out and the feedback.

Finally getting around to sharing my long overdue side project that I had started back in Jan 2021.

The data processing is handled by two EC2's running Java to parse the FAA's flight plan feed. Peak midday that's running about ~65msgs/sec, a reduced and manageable number because I'm filtering for major airlines only (no GA, no bizjet, etc). The cleaned-up and filtered flight plan data heads to both Postgres for storage as well as SQS.

Consuming the SQS messages is a Python app that's crunching flight plans and confirming each flight is still heading to it's original destination (thanks redis!). If the destination airport changes, the flight gets flagged and some add'l business logic runs.

Ultimately you get the frontend (Django) presented here with a sprinkling of terrible JS to get the map and some timeline data.

I've been hacking with the FAA's SWIM data feeds for a few years now and hope to start sharing more of the technical details. Happy to answer any questions or hear some feedback!

Good question. I haven't stumbled upon any, but it's possible they are out there.

The FAA offers a sample client. Depending on your level of skill, the hardest part might be the onboarding with the FAA which includes establishing a site-to-site VPN between your network and theirs. Once that is setup and some other networking is configured, you can use their Java demo client with the credentials they provide to get the hang of it.

The source of data is an event queue, powered by Solace, using Java's JMS standard. You can write a little bit of a Java to parse the incoming messages to get to the XML payload. Honestly I found that part to be the easiest and the Linux networking parts (as part of the VPN) to be the most difficult.

I wrote up a bit of a guide here, it's a little rough and high-level but I hope it helps clarify things a bit if you feel like working with these feeds/data.

http://www.route3software.com/faa-swim-getting-started-guide...

I don't think I've seen FlightAware showing aircraft tracks on the ground.

They do show taxi times for arriving/departing aircraft and I wonder if they are stitching that data together using the STDDS feed.

To give you an example, for an arriving aircraft you would get an alert of "wheels down", which is as literal as it sounds: a timestamped event when the aircraft made contact with the ground. In addition to ground position events (allowing the tracking you see here), you would also receive an alert when the aircraft left the tracked movement surface, i.e. transitioned to the gate/ramp area and no longer on an active airport surface.

(Pretty sure I have that correct, it's been awhile since I got back to my STDDS-powered projects. If anybody familiar with STDDS wants to chime in, please do!)

For the curious, all these "alerts" are JMS messages with XML payloads. Pretty much non-stop stream of data, incredibly fun if you're a developer+av geek. For FlightAware-style tracking without using any ADS-B you'll want to subscribe to the SFDPS feed. You'll get position updates every 60 sec for all airborne flights in the US, which last week amounted to ~40GB in my Postgres DB. You can request higher resolution reporting which is every 12s.

Pretty cool. For those wondering the source of the data, it is likely ASDE-X/ASSC streaming in from the FAA's STDDS SWIM feed[0]. The terminal and ground data is especially cool and not as common as the usual flight tracking you see of en-route aircraft.

I'm using the STDDS feed to build a rough "go-around detector" in AWS for approaching aircraft by monitoring each approaching aircraft glide slope and dispatching a SNS notification "if currAlt > prevAlt".

If anyone has any questions about this stuff feel free to reach out, my email is in my profile. The easy part (IMHO) is slurping in the data which only requires a couple small EC2's and RDS, ~$125/mo. The hard part is often the presentation and making demos like these fun and shareable.

[0] https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/swim/stdds/

HN'ers might appreciate learning the FAA has a developer-friendly program called SWIM [0] to help facilitate getting realtime FAA data (flight plans, weather data, etc) in to the hands of coders. I recently attended the SWIM Developer Workshop at the Volpe Center (near MIT) and really enjoyed it.

There's quite a bit to the SWIM program. The onboarding can be a bit tricky though and you have to know your way around site-to-site VPNs. I recently completed the onboarding process and am receiving live flight plan data -- proposed flights, en route, completed etc.

Would be curious to know if there are others on HN that are working with SWIM data or if there are companies that are hiring in this space.

[0] http://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/swim/

In 2012, YC invested in a company InstallMonetizer[0] which, from my understanding, helps align software products with bundling other installers for additional revenue.

[0] http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/installmonetizer

Comments from previous discussion (8 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8108855

I agree that this is a tactic that preys on the less tech savvy folks, and share your continued astonishment that reputable companies would engage in these drive-by toolbars/extensions that are bundled in installers.

YC has invested[0] in a company called InstallMonitizer[1] that appears to help developers and advertisers connect in the pay-per-install marketplace.

[0] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130115/17343321692/why-ar...

[1] http://www.installmonetizer.com/

Sadly it does't seem like a practice that will go away any time soon. I'd like to do some digging around on developer forums and see if any folks have shared their experience and would be able to comment on the amount of extra revenue that they see from such programs.

Soon!

Migrations[0] are being included in Django 1.7 which is currently under development. For those unaware, Andrew Godwin, the author of South, ran a successful Kickstarter campaign[1] the fund this effort to incorporate migrations in Django core.

[0] https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/migrations/

[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema-migr...

Yes, this is surprising. Twilio has a reputation of being awfully transparent -- they had a billing systems issue back in July and handled it quite well, IIRC. They also do a great job with their developer evangelist program.

I wonder if someone has created a pricing matrix/table that updates and compares the SMS/voice API providers. For example, I know Plivo is slightly cheaper for SMS, domestically (USA). A price comparison table might make a good holiday project :)

Although I understand this wouldn't help your case. As you pointed out, the SMS provider would have already increased rates by the time you could be notified of increases.

> But that's bad, right?

I should hope not. I'm trying to think of a situation where a developer wants to document a process (ANY process. In this case: building a profitable product) and it would be considered "bad".

> That's why success-story books sell, but you don't see a lot of "will-try-to-do" books.

This is a blog, not a book. Will-try-to-do blog posts are incredibly healthy exercises for the author/do'er and usually provide helpful content for the readers (if the author follows through and documents his or her thought process).

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here, and (to me) your comments and tone sound dismissive. This fellow has nothing to sell -- it's an exciting endeavor that the author wants to document.

I wrote up a blog post a few weeks ago that covered gun.io, matchist, hackerlist, ooomf, etc and a few other more niche job boards.

I hope to keep it updated as sites come and go (so if you have a good experience with another site/job board, let me know!)

http://www.gethourglass.com/blog/sites-to-help-launch-your-f...

There are quite a few sites/services out there that are catering to the more "seasoned" developer that isn't particularly interested in the race-to-the-bottom jobs found on elance and similar sites.

Sites like gun.io, matchist, ooomf are some good examples. Google those and you'll undoubtedly find a few more.

I covered a handful of these sites on a blog post recently: http://www.gethourglass.com/blog/sites-to-help-launch-your-f...

If you end up using a service that I didn't cover in my post, shoot me an email (if you don't mind). I'd love to keep that blog post updated and evergreen.

Slightly off-topic observation:

2 results for: django > Books

46 results for: rails > Books

Can anyone speak to the demand, or lack thereof, for Django books and educational material? Do large(r) technical publishers not see a viable market for Django books?

I read Two Scoops Of Django (on vacation, no less) and would love to see more books on Django best practices.

Have you looked at Mailgun? (YC alum, now Rackspace)

(disclaimer: I did a guest blog post for them, but that was a result of me being a happy customer before they even contacted me)

They have lists, webhooks/reporting for tracking opens and clicks, HTML support, unsub notifications, etc. All accessible via the API. Poke around the docs and trial, sounds like it could be what you're looking for.

Your comment is unnecessary and I'm shocked that's sitting high on the comments page.

Trivializing the amount of effort and energy this fellow put in to producing/developing this cross-platform mobile app because you disagree with...well, I still don't know what your issue is with the quotes you pulled, care to share?

Read the last line of pg's comment from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5521286

You might have felt better after posting your comment but you also gave up your chance to add something constructive to the discussion. To paraphrase pg's reaction, it makes me embarrassed for HN when people include projects in their blog profile and this is the sort of response they get.

This is great. Spinning out a consumer-friendly front end to the Zencoder API has been in my sparkfile for too long. I even shared the same idea with HN[0] because I know some bootstrapper is going to make a killing if they can pair it with Stripe and push it out the door in a weekend.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5274117

A co-founder of Zencoder even replied to my suggestion mentioning that there's a market for it.

(If you're a hardcore wantrepreneur, here is your idea. Now go forth and build the bootstrapped SaaS biz you always wanted. Send me a link when its done, I know some people that would probably use it. Seems I can't ever find a spare weekend to build it myself)

>> That's just bad business advice.

I'm no MBA or startup guru, but I don't often hear "Founders in very early stage/prototype stage should avoid interacting with their users". Early stage interaction is critical to the success of the product.

>> Having a dedicated person to do it is actually more productive than the founders themselves doing it

If the goal is to get to know their audience needs, and iterate the produce development quickly, then dev-to-dev feedback is absolutely critical. Now is probably not a good time to clog the feedback filter by adding another human to the mix.

You can spend 30 hours working on your product backlog of features that haven't been vetted, or you can spend 30 hours getting to know your audience and discover that NSCoreLibFoo gives people the most trouble with push notifications.

What would convert more: a homepage hero about the three new features you dreamed up OR the fact that PushLayer can fix everything that sucks about NSCoreLibFoo (which half of your audience hates with a passion as you discovered).

Lots of useful information here and kudos to the author for composing a well-written post: summary of the issue, "here's how we fixed it" (with code samples) and concludes with some caveats/things to watch for. (Reminder: quality content like this is how inbound marketing works)

IMHO the official Django docs are some of the best you'll find anywhere of any open source project. My suggestion, though, is to read and re-read and make sure you gather all documented information about $YOUR_TOPIC before formulating your own game plan. For example, here is the chapter on handling static assets in Django:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/static-files/

There are a lot of relevant links on that page that are worth following if you want to make sure you a) get the picture and b) know how you want it to all come together for your project.

Lastly, on the topic of storing assets: if you want to offer a Django-ready library for your new cloud storage startup/setup, consider writing your own file storage handler

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/custom-file-stor...

Between ZenCoder and the encoding services that AWS released, someone needs to expose easy video encoding to non-developers. It's easy for us to wire up these services for our needs, but Joe Marketer can't.

Here's what he see when he searches: a large amount of spammy looking sites offering downloadable software of questionable origin (and ability). Five minute trial versions. The actual download page has twelve other download buttons for affiliate links and products. It's awful.

He just wants whatever-file-type he was given to work on iPhone/iPad for this upcoming ad campaign.

Bootstrap + filepicker.io + Zencoder + Stripe.

A year of urlbox would be $120.

Suppose Sue Webdev bills at $60/hr. and needs something like this for a clients website. She's never heard of webkit2png before, not sure if she has PyObjC 1.1 installed and can't seem to find installation instructions for Windows.

Will Sue be able to create her own urlbox clone in two hours?

Lots of good takeaways from this post, some of which might be a bit hidden or subtle.

If you're launching your e-book, SaaS app, online course, etc. you'll need to build a reputation based on trust and value. Think about it: how many people will find themselves on your landing page, looking at some of your app screenshots and click on your big fat "Sign Up!" button because "Wow, I've only known this company existed for 3 seconds but here's my credit card!". You can do better!

In this case, a free guide to "Designing Forms That Convert" is a great example of educational and valuable material. Nathan gets your email address, you get some information you're interested in receiving and everyone is happy. If you educate people like this, frequently and with valuable content, you'll have their attention when you're ready to sell them something that they actually need.

(Patrick McKenzie earned a reputation in the HN community over the years by sharing what he's learned. Sharing == educating. When he's goes to sell a ~$500 video course on email [0], he seems to do pretty well.)

There's a reason why Nathan's CovertKit plans include thousands and thousands of emails. That's what you should be doing: sending emails and keeping a dialog with people who know you and your work. You don't have to pitch your SaaS app in the footer of every email, but it's important that you become an authoritative resource for the market/audience that you're working with. You'll likely have much better success selling to them.

Final point: writing good copy and valuable content is important and is what is going to make you money, not your perfectly refactored dashboard code. Are you a mediocre developer? Enough to handle CRUD and a few extras? Good. Now to get to work on your writing skills.

[0] https://training.kalzumeus.com/lifecycle-emails

Blog post author, here.

As I shared in the post, Mailgun (YC W10) solves a very difficult problem and does it well. Backed by a top-notch team.

Happy to answer any questions here or use the email address in my profile.

During the holiday break I spent some time learning about EXIF data and subsequently released Exif.in[0], a simple HTTP API for viewing EXIF data inside images and requesting EXIF-stripped copies as well.

If you're a developer who needs to occasionally inspect EXIF data from user uploads, please check it out. Contact me if you have additional questions, I'm happy to help.

[0] http://exif.in

Yes, just posters. We've been asked about expanding in to labels before but we're happy sticking to screen prints for now (currently it's successful enough to make it worthwhile and it's a fun side business, but no plans to take it further).

You aren't alone though, the need for label/promo materials has been mentioned a few times over in the homebrewing subreddit.

I like your enthusiasm and I'm similarly interested in build small niche sites and tools. A warning, though: the effort isn't in the product development or coding, or even the idea. The real work is promotion. Suppose you build "Flash Card Maker". Who is going to pay you $25 for it? How will they find you? Will you be able to market to them?

Bingo Card Creator: a ton of SEO work. Patrick himself has admitted that BCC isn't much more than a random number generator, so how is it making him $40K/yr? Long tail SEO, paid content writers to whip up semi-templated pages and non-stop optimizing. If I he handed you the source code and all his product/audience knowledge, you would still be so far behind. It's been years in the making.

Amy Hoy: Her product empire is all about appealing to the right audience. In her case: freelancers. She was a freelance web developer. Her SaaS app is a time tracking tool...for freelancers. Her online course is for people who have the desire to escape their current situation and build profitable products. Who has that burning desire? Freelancers tired of chasing their next client. Freckle isn't making six-figured a year because it was a damn good idea that was the result of brainstorming. She knows her audience, can speak to them and understands good copy writing. Freckle has also been around for quite a few years. Let me ask you this: how do you even know Amy Hoy exists? Hint: it's not because she invented time-tracking tools.

I've been in your shoes. I've thought, for a long time, all I needed is a simple product and a Bootstrap'd landing page and I'd be making a cool $80K/yr. If it was that easy, wouldn't everyone be doing it?

My advice is to build something (anything!) and try to market it. Try to sell something. Try Google Adwords and A/B testing. See how far you get. If, after six months, you haven't sold anything try to understand why and what you could do better.

Final remark about marketing: Amy Hoy is selling a course for potential bootstrappers/single-founders. Patrick McKenzie sells $XX,000/week consulting for small/med-sized SaaS shops. They often post and have their content submitted here. Can you spot the intersection between the HN audience and what they are selling?

Congrats on launching and shipping! Just a note: your landing page is still a little confusing as far as what File Mess can do.

Are you using Context.IO[0]? I just (re-)discovered their platform earlier this week and definitely makes it easy to get started if you're hacking an email processing/automation system (which can be significantly profitable in the B2B space).

Mailgun is another great email API platform. I built and launched imgpage[1] just a few days ago and couldn't have done it without them. Had a few questions, Mailgun support was fantastic.

[0] http://context.io

[1] http://www.imgpage.com

>This is essentially a one-line blog post and is basically just spam.

I've often thought about what makes 37Signals blog, Signal vs. Noise, so popular and attractive. What's interesting about their blog is that they never post about managing projects or how to organize your contacts. You know, the problems/solutions related to their popular products. This is an important lesson.

(Visit http://37signals.com/svn/popular -> Ctrl-F "project management" -> 0 results)

All too often, startups dedicate time/money to a blog with post after post about the problem that their software solves or a very closely related subtopic. What 37Signals does is blog to their audience. Who is their audience? The Fortune 5 Million, or the millions of small, profitable businesses out there.

When these millions of companies and businesses need project management software, they're going to look to the guys that have been teaching them all along how to run a hip, cool business that operates counterintuitive to more "traditional" business rules (see Rework). The majority of people who punch in their credit card number for a Basecamp subscription don't know what Ruby on Rails is. Believe it or not, they know of 37Signals from posts like this.

If you're a business owner, growth hacker (sorry...) or blogger looking for more page hits you should have a simple text file that contains the fears, desires, wants, needs and emotions of your audience in both personal and professional contexts. Write so that your audience knows you understand their feelings and emotions. They'll keep coming back for more. And if you're done a fair job of aiming your audience scope, a majority of your blog visitors will be interested in what you're offering.

Launched my first physical product business last week: Hoppy Press [0].

I'm not shipping heavy components (opposite, actually: 12.5 ounces/~350g) so I don't have much advice for you on that front. I would like to share one lesson that I learned so far: the costs of shipping the actual shipping/packaging supplies was a bit more than I estimated. 40lbs of Kraft paper doesn't ship free.

Right now we are only offering USPS for shipping. We looked in to Amazon Fulfillment which is priced appropriately and would be good for a "hands off" approach. However, we like being able to include hand written notes and other gestures when we ship to our early customers.

Good luck!

[0] https://hoppypress.com