Hacker News Reader

shovelon Ask HN: What newsletters do you read every day or week?

Any specifics? If you could only read one for the rest of 2017, what would it be?

shovelon Ask HN: What are your motivational quotes?

The 3 most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary. -- NNT

shovelon Ask HN: What macOS email client do you use?

I've been using Airmail for about 2 years now and I like the markdown mode.

But right now, I'm testing both Polymail and Nylas because they both have these specific features that Airmail lacks (and that are deal-breakers for me):

- inbuilt open tracking - templates / canned responses - rich contacts (like Rapportive)

I much prefer a desktop client than the native web interface for email.

shovelon Ask HN: What simple tools or products are you most proud of making?

Thanks for making this. I use it to stop myself trying to score dopamine hits on Facebook.

shovelon Ask HN: What simple tools or products are you most proud of making?

Brilliant. I'd love to see a way to embed the timers on a webpage.

shovelon Ask HN: What simple tools or products are you most proud of making?

Great project. Especially launching from 0.

Have you considered adding a Celcius option for us quirky Europeans?

shovelon The Bankrupt Irishman Who Created the Dollar Sign

Some more HN discussion about this - Why Is the Dollar Sign a Letter S?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9017986

shovelon Reconsider

Let's start using this one http://www.bootstrappers.io and support the makers.

shovelon Ask HN: What is your best side project / passive income in 2015?

What are you most successful side-projects / passive income sources in 2015.

Previous incarnations:

2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107588

2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094402

2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6661536

2012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4639271

EDIT: added whitespace for para.

shovelon Ask HN: What newsletters do you read every day or week?

Did you get my twitter DM last week? Otherwise try marc*letterlist.com

I'd love to talk

shovelon Ask HN: What newsletters do you read every day or week?

Thanks for the suggestion. I've been toying with that idea, it's definitely worth exploring.

shovelon Ask HN: What newsletters do you read every day or week?

Thanks for the great list of letters here. I'll add your suggestions to Letterlist (http://letterlist.com).

A side-project (& newsletter) I'm working on to curate and share the best newsletters).

shovelon Ask HN: What newsletters do you read every day or week?

>Some newsletters are pretty great. I would reconsider them given much improved curation. Not sure where others are at, but for me at least, it's an opportunity for somebody.

I'm actually trying to solve the problem of curation and discovery at Letterlist.com. It's amazing that there isn't really a great way to find the best newsletters yet.

I'm curious - what is the biggest barrier stopping you from subscribing to newsletters? Is it solely the curation issue?

And as for podcasts, it's a great question - I started a new thread (Ask HN: What must-listen podcasts do you subscribe to?)

- OP

shovelon Ask HN: What must-listen podcasts do you subscribe to?

I'll start:

This Week in Startups

Startups for the Rest of Us

The Rocketship Podcast

Serial (one off)

Joe Rogan Experience

Bulletproof Executive

Tim Ferriss Show

A16z

Product Hunt

Kalzumeus

Product People

shovelon Ask HN: What newsletters do you read every day or week?

My guess is that a lot of us here on HN probably use a feed reader (I use Feedly). But that's because we're outliers with a technical persuassion. Most people don't have the first idea about rss, but _everyone_ uses email.

I'd suggest there are 2 advantages to starting a newsletter:

1. You can plug your rss feed into the newsletter and broadcast your new articles via email for those who don't use rss.

2. You can email other updates, news, surveys etc that you don't publish on-site.

Email also opens up the discussion because your subscribers can respond any time. It's like the original social network.

shovelon Ask HN: What newsletters do you read every day or week?

Thanks - this is so valuable. I plan to collate these in the same way so you just saved me a ton of time.

shovelon Ask HN: What newsletters do you read every day or week?

And of course, all or Peter Cooper's curated letters: https://cooperpress.com

shovelon Ask HN: What newsletters do you read every day or week?

Here's an eclectic list to get started:

Company intel: http://mattermark.com

Hacker Newsletter: http://www.hackernewsletter.com

Curated design links: http://sidebar.io

Minimalism: http://nosidebar.com

Daily news and culture: http://nextdraft.com

Random pub trivia: http://nowiknow.com

Curated design and dev: http://mergelinks.com

Metal trivia: http://www.skulltoaster.com

Music mixes: http://noonpacific.com

Front end dev: http://hackingui.com

shovelon Ask HN: What are the best product landing pages you've stumbled upon?

> those are just as valuable as thought-out opinions

Totally agree. And early data says you might be right.

I set up a split test on Optimizely with 2 more variations and both beat the control:

Control SEX UP MY INBOX 35% CTR

Variation 1 DISCOVER NEWSLETTERS 61% CTR

Variation 2 GET STARTED 58% CTR

Variation 1 is winning so far (74% lift, 79% significance). I'll keep it running because right now it's skewed toward HN traffic, and we're a weird bunch here - we seem to behave differently to everybody else

Anyway, thanks again for the feedback. Looks like you're onto something.

shovelon Ask HN: What are the best product landing pages you've stumbled upon?

Great perspective and a fair point. Thanks for the feedback.

I recall that just before I published the site, I decided to change the CTA from the boring placeholder I had to something more playful and human. It was the first thing that came to mind It just seemed like a fun idea. It worked so I kept it.

Reading your comment, I'm tempted to try something more conventional but it's too easy to be skewed by responding to a single data point. It's edgy so it's bound to be polarising (I've also received positive feedback on the very same text).

I might run a split-test to get some data on it.

shovelon Ask HN: What are the best product landing pages you've stumbled upon?

http://letterlist.com

Disclosure - I created and own this site. But it's worth listing here because I know that it performs extremely well (conversions typically above 50%).

I'm obsessed with simplicity the design is really the natural conclusion of minimalism, i.e. virtually no design, nothing superfluous and a simple CTA.

shovelon Show HN: Letterlist – Discover Amazing Email Newsletters

Some of the best content never appears online but in the secret world of our inbox. So I made this little site to share some amazing newsletters. Enjoy :)

shovelon Show HN: I made a website recorder webapp you can use to create screencasts

Definitely a sweet idea and I can see some great use cases for onboarding new users to a site by demoing functionality. Really like how it just gets to work and outputs the vid without making me make any decisions. I'd love to see a gif output (maybe that could be one of your premium features :)

EDIT: Just cross-posted to PH. http://www.producthunt.com/posts/websitecast

shovelon Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

Interesting that Joel's post only had 1 comment back then - nobody really cared about it. I wonder which of the posts from this thread will end up following Buffer's trajectory.

shovelon Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

I publish Hackerpreneur Magazine. It's a free app in the Apple newsstand and revenue is from subscriptions (in app purchases).

http://hck.co/mag

shovelon Atom

Same here. As well as Time Machine. Just in case Dropbox ever breaks.

shovelon Apple Reports First Quarter Results

I've always been amazed that AAPL trades at such a low PE multiple. Can you help me understand why?

shovelon Question: How do I build a discussion board in the HN Style?

Sacha also created a very decent course (Discover Meteor) that goes through the process of building such a site using meteor.

// No affiliation.

shovelon Bitcoin Reaches 1000 USD

Thing is, the fact that this is still newsworthy in the tiny HN community means that it's on the bleeding edge for people in the real world. I was talking about bitcoin to my workmates the other day and none of them had even heard of it (I've been following it since the Wired article in 2011).

While it's clearly too late to be first, second isn't a bad place either. Just that the arbitrary line is the sand is higher. You can still ride the wave created by the early adopters (who took on the initial risk and validated the entire ecosystem).

As an aside - it would be interesting to see the adoption curve for BTC as compared to Paypal (probably the last disruptive financial platform) and whatever else preceded that (Western union, gold, seashells?).

Nonetheless, I share your pain of not having invested more at the beginning, but that's just the nature of any speculative investment / bet.

shovelon Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?

Looks great. Would you be kind enough to hook me up with an invite?