silverlight

A little OT, but I was actually thinking about the in-app subscriptions policy the other day as it applies to SaaS. I know that there was some email floating around that was supposedly from Steve Jobs saying it didn't apply, but I was curious if anyone out there has had an app rejected (or accepted, for that matter, since the policy took effect) for not accepting in-app purchases of subscriptions. We are thinking about beginning work on a companion app to a SaaS product. The app would be free, but step one is signing in to your account on the SaaS, which is not. There is also no free tier. We cannot afford to give Apple a 30% cut of our subscription price, so we are not planning on offering an in-app subscription purchase option. We would like to include a link that opens a page to the main site in a browser for those who don't already have accounts, although I know that is explicitly forbidden for apps that fall into the subscriptions category.

Any thoughts? Just curious what our chances of rejection are for something like this in the current "climate".

Regarding the "How am I charged" information: just curious, why did you decide to go with that setup (an "piggy bank" that you fill and then are deducted from one day at a time at a set rate) instead of the more standard "We charge you $30 monthly at the beginning of the month" practice? Easier for you on your end? Or do you think the customer gains a benefit from it? Just curious (Note: I'm not someone who's thinking about buying this and held back by this practice, just a curious bystander).

Agreed. Right now this is technically "Search for static BLOG sites". If you had the ability to scan simple HTML files as well, it could work for any HTML site, even if it weren't a blog site (or another site type that has a time-ordered list of posts in an RSS feed).

We actually just got 55 Mbps down / 5 Mbps up from DOCSIS 3.0. I can't imagine needing anything faster in the future, but I'm sure in 10 years I'll think it's slow as molasses.

One thing I don't understand (and I have no experience in this arena so forgive my ignorance): why is there no mention of a court order, warrant, etc? Is it really just enough for an officer to sign their name to this form and get this information? Or is that something that's not in the scope of this document, it's just assumed that officers will know they need some sort of warrant to access this information?

I think this is an awesome implementation of what can be a tricky concept.

Out of curiosity, what percentage of users use their Google accounts? Facebook accounts? Have you noticed any trends in terms of "serious" users (e.g. higher plans, more likely to convert to paid users) using a Flowdock account vs. their Facebook or Google?

I've always thought that Facebook/Google sign in worked well for free sites or "lightweight" sites (e.g. ones my entire business doesn't depend upon), but I'm curious how many people use them effectively with a site like this that's more "vital".

Can I ask, is any of this going to speed up SVG rendering as well? I noticed that it mentioned "GPU Accelerated 2D Canvas". I'm working on a web app that utilizes the Raphael JS library and SVG heavily, choosing that over Canvas. So, should I have chosen differently? Is Canvas going to get a lot faster vs SVG? Or will these speedups aid both?

I always wondered where the 37 signals came from:

"Mankind constantly analyzes radio waves from outer space in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Since this analysis started, almost all of the signal sources have been identified. 37 signals, however, remain unexplained."

...a little more out there than I would have thought.

I like it! Went ahead and signed up. Will try and post some content.

I will say, I'm not quite sure about the whole "not giving beta folks any credits to start with" -- especially since it costs credits to create channels, and you NEED people right now to start creating channels and submitting content. Maybe give beta users 150 credits to start or something? (Enough to change your profile name and create a channel or two).

Also, I was able to create a custom profile name even though I had no credits (my account now has -30 credits). I guess that would be another way to do it (letting beta folks go into debt), although I think spreading some credits around to start is a better idea.

Finally, is there not a way to "filter" my home page? Right now it's not really an issue since there's not much activity on the site, but eventually if for example the Android channel starts blowing up and I don't care about Android -- how do I get activity from that channel not to show up on my home page?

Looking forward to trying it out!

It would probably inspire more confidence to at least name the charity that you are planning on donating the money to. Donating to "Egypt" is great, but a lot of folks these days are wary of donation sites (like this one) that tend to spring up after major disasters without a clear plan of action. We've all been a little too burned by the Haiti charities that took a 40% cut off the top of all donations[1].

Also, you say "100% of sales" -- does that mean you are essentially eating the cost of the t-shirt itself? Or do you mean "100% of profits"?

[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2010/0114/Wyclef-Jean-Yele-re...

I would consider open sourcing the tool then selling your time as "the" expert. Resig's never hurting for jQuery consulting work when he wants it, I'm sure.

I wouldn't consider open sourcing it a net negative at all. You will get it out there, and as more "advanced" users start to use it and sing its praises, you will have more than enough to keep yourself busy helping out those who are too pressed for time or just have money to burn, or just can't figure it out on their own.

By not releasing it open source, you will have a much harder time branding yourself as a "proven" performance expert.

Compare these two "resumes":

"Original author and lead developer of the PerfPlus open source project, used by thousands of developers worldwide to benchmark and improve their applications."

vs.

"I'm a new college graduate with a few references and a custom tool I wrote that's worked well in a handful of cases."

I can tell you which one I'd be more willing to hire (if I had money :-)

I posted this as a question on SO as well: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4959487/best-way-to-captu...

Just in case someone comes across this later on Google.

I've been struggling with this for a little bit. I have a web application that I'm developing that needs to support keyboard shortcuts. It's basically a giant SVG element on the page with a toolbar at the top, and some popup windows. The problem seems to be always capturing the keys. As long as the user interacts with the SVG element, everything is fine. However, if they move their mouse over the navigation bar (for instance) absentmindedly, then press "Delete", there seems to be a good chance they will end up "going back" instead of me having a chance to see that keypress and intercept it.

Is there any reliable way that works in modern browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari) of capturing all the key events on a page, outside of using something like jquery.hotkeys and just doing:

$(document).bind("keyup", "delete", function() { });

Is $(window) better? Some other element I'm not thinking of?

The fact that you can use the backticks to run commands on the server itself is well documented both from a Ruby standpoint and a Heroku standpoint (several of their examples in their documentation use this method to execute a variety of commands).

As for using Python, like another poster said it's included in most Linux distros, and Heroku is really just running a Linux distro at the end of the day. I imagine that if you wanted to run a really simple script they wouldn't care, but I wouldn't build my whole app around it, because they can turn it off at any time.

Same thing here. I looked for a job in NYC recently, and I would have had to make over twice what I make living in the Midwest, and on top of that my lifestyle still wouldn't have been the same (e.g. renting vs. owning, public transportation vs. personal transportation, sending kids to private vs. public school, etc.)

I think if there's one thing the App Store has shown, given the right audience and marketing people will pay for anything that has value to them.

FYI, it keeps crashing Safari on my iPad when I try to visit the home page.

I thought it was telling that they linked to an article where someone discusses the shortcomings of App Engine but just linked to the main Heroku site.

Sweeping everyone else under the same rug (or attempting to) just feels like a "we're complaining about your Azure platform's shortcomings, but hey, we can still be friends, see, we'll try to throw everyone else under the bus, too".

Forget the holographic world cup fields, I'll take the automatic real-time translation earpiece!

If Japan really can invent half of the things that they feature in that video by 2022, I'm going to enjoy the hell out of my 40's.

No problem, and I didn't know if you were in the U.S. or not. In the U.K. I think they're called "Pawnbrokers"...

It might just be that the diet program itself is too niche...I've certainly never heard of it. I think if you were looking for blogs that covered the diet program, and only found a few (that were long dead), that should be a pretty strong clue that maybe there just isn't enough interest in that program to warrant an app.

Also, pawn-soft is not a great name for a company...I realized after going to the site that you meant a chess piece pawn, but at least for me the first thing I think of when I see pawn is a Pawn Shop, which has a lot of negativity associated with it in most people's minds. Especially on the Internet where a lot of folks are already wary of getting scammed, you might want to change the name to something else.

Yep, we got rid of it about 8 months ago. All of the programming we watch is, for the most part, available on the public TV stations (NBC, ABC, etc.), or on Hulu. I set up a Windows Media Center PC to DVR our shows on broadcast TV, although we could just as easily rely on Hulu if we were willing to wait a day or two to see the shows. We also have Netflix.

We are also serial Pay Per View watchers, but now that $5/movie is going to either Playstation Network or Xbox Live/Zune, depending on which TV we want to watch it on, for about the same price. We have also been known on occasion to pay for TV series on iTunes (such as Tudors) that aren't available anywhere else.

For sports, we have ESPN3, which is also coming to Xbox Live shortly.

We are a 2 income household making a 6-figure income, so it is most decidedly not that we can't afford it -- it is simply that we got tired of paying for something so worthless.

What would get us to come back? Reasonable, a la carte channel ordering. I would, for example, shell out $2 or $3 per month for Bravo and a half dozen other stations that feature content we actually watched. But we had 300 channels and I didn't watch 297 of them -- why should I pay for them?

Also, I've never understood why everything isn't just available on-demand (like Hulu). If I have access to Bravo, I should be able to see any already-shown episode of Top Chef that I want, without having "recorded" it -- that should just be part of the subscription. Live TV should only be used if you want to watch sports, or the premier of an episode. Makes no sense not to provide this and make your customers happier.

This is hilarious.

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for the reply.

So basically this is for those folks who are making real "web applications" -- meaning applications where a lot is happening on the client side, typically more of a "single URL/page", with dialog boxes and whatnot as opposed to a bunch of pages in the more traditional "web site" sense.

I have often considered trying out Cappuccino, but for some reason none of the websites I build end up being "web applications" in this sense. But I can't help but wonder if that's because they aren't, or if it's because I'm not thinking about them the right way.

It's outside the scope of this topic, but I can't help but ask: "How do you know when a website becomes a web application"? Is it the scope of the problem (trying to do "one thing", e.g. edit a photo, vs. presenting an entire web site full of information?) Or is it truly just a preference thing? I can only think that as projects like Node.js gain prominence, the lines will continue to be blurred...

I'm a little confused about what the best-case/ideal scenario is for this.

As an example, I am currently working on a project that has a basic profile page. So on the server side, I have my nice OO representation of a Profile object, complete with properly defined public and private variables, a slew of functions, and a save() function that validates saves the data to the database.

When I display that page to the client, I have a PHP view which takes the data from the model and then renders it. In the view, I do currently use jQote2 to do some basic client-side templating where appropriate (for example, displaying all of the friends of the profile's user).

Now, the Profile page features the ability to edit profile fields. There is jQuery involved here. Currently, I just have a function that is called when the "Save" button is clicked that gathers up all the various data from my input fields and whatnot, and sends that off as JSON to be saved on the PHP side of things.

Is this someplace where Backbone.js would make sense? Would I then have to have a representation of my model both in PHP and in Javascript? And my PHP view would contain several Javascript sub-views? And when I do save the model on the Javascript side of things, am I then just executing database queries on the PHP side, or am I re-loading the model, changing the attributes, and then using the PHP model's save() function?

I guess I'm just confused as to where this fits into the grand scheme of things. There's a part of me that certainly likes the idea of data binding and having smart re-rendering of parts of my pages based on when models change, but I'm just unclear on how this fits into my existing PHP MVC stuff.

Okay, I know a lot of other folks have already pointed out the fact that just throwing up a Facebook/Twitter login might be a bit harsh. I would listen to them. But in addition to that, I would question that rather liberal policy you have taken with what, exactly, you have access to in my Facebook/Twitter account.

I didn't actually try to sign in with Twitter, but I noticed at the bottom you post a disclaimer saying that if I sign in with Twitter, I will start following you. WHY? Is that necessary to the app running? If not, that seems like a pretty bad way to increase your follower count.

I did try to sign in with Facebook, but immediately canceled when I saw you wanted access not only to my News Feed and Friends (which I fully expected), but also to send me EMAIL, access my Facebook account WHEN I'M NOT USING YOUR SITE (offline access), and POST TO MY WALL. At least the last of those, posting to my wall, I can get behind should I choose to do an action on your site that warrants it (e.g. I like something on your site and want to share it with my friends), but you should be approaching this from a standpoint of asking me for the only the permissions you need to get me started, then following up with further requests for specific permissions on an as-needed basis.

Especially since your entire site revolves around people logging in with their other social networking accounts, your site should respect those accounts. Not ask for permissions right off the bat that are going to scare away potential users who have no idea what you're going to use the permissions FOR. If I like an item and I get a request to allow your application permission to post to my Wall, that makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense is that I have to give you permission to send me email through Facebook just to access your site at all.

My 2 cents, but hey, you already lost at least one potential user. Get that fixed and I think you increase the folks who actually proceed through the front gate by several fold.

Any way you could break down the specific IE versions?

A couple critiques for the front page:

- Change the wording on your "Call to Action" button. The fact that you can jump right in and start editing without filling out a form is great -- emphasize it, don't hide it. Saying "Sign up, it's free" makes me think I'm going to be filling out a form, creating a username, giving out my email, etc. It should just say "Try it now for free" or "Jump right in" or something along those lines.

- The screenshots of example sites should most decidedly either open up larger, or open to the actual live sites on which those screenshots were taken. If I knew better what the button did (see above) I might not have cared as much, but I always like to see what the creators consider some "ideal end results" with their product. A tiny thumbnail is just not going to cut it in that regard.

EDIT: Okay, going back, I see now the button actually says "Start Now, it's Free". I don't know why I thought it said "Sign Up", but I guess if nothing else it's worth noting that an actual "user" went to your site and misread the button. I don't know if that means it still needs to be changed, but at any rate, it happened. :-)

Indeed. And from what I've heard, iStockPhoto has a ridiculous process that you have to go through to get approved...I think they are basically so "full" of submitters, if you aren't already in the system it's hard to break in. Maybe focus on that? (Not saying offer terrible pictures from just anyone, just saying that maybe their site has gotten almost too big...maybe there is a glut in the market.)

Something else you might consider doing is good integration/importing. For example Flickr has a check-box where you can easily "offer your photo for sale on Getty images"...while you probably can't get Flickr to add a box for your site right away, use their API to allow new users to easily import some or all of their Flickr photos right into your site for sale.

Perhaps also consider offering a mix of high-quality free and paid photos. For example (again using the Flickr API since I am familiar with it to some degree) there are a lot of amazing photos on Flickr that are license Creative Commons, meaning they are free for use in non-commercial works. Maybe go through yourself and find a few hundred really high-quality ones and offer those alongside the paid ones on your site, categorized and tagged.

There are definitely opportunities to be had, it's just a question of finding them.