tkiley

I don't think this is just another RSS reader. Here's why:

In a typical RSS reader, the relationship between the user and the content producer is more pronounced; the user proactively selects content sources and knows where each piece of content comes from; as a result, there is still a significant element of brand reinforcement.

The internet has discussed the economic implications of RSS readers ad nauseam so I wont go there. However, this isn't just an RSS reader; this site allows me (as a reader) to consume an amazing amount of content with pretty much no idea where it came from and very little inducement for follow-up interaction with the content creator.

In other words: Google Play is basically stumbleupon, except in Google's version, the "toolbar" takes up the entire screen. Google is redefining the transaction in a way that minimizes value for the content creators and maximizes value for Google.

If this catches on, I could see a lot of site owners crying foul over the fact that google is scraping the choicest bits of content w/o providing any page views or ad revenue.

Interesting that the EFF used the FoIA just to obtain a copy of this agreement. I would have assumed they could just bluff their way into the developer signup process and then refuse the agreement once they get a copy of it.

The madlibs form has a "sign in as guest" link, while the original sign-in form does not. The article doesn't specify whether a guest sign-in is counted as a conversion or not.

No. Read this: http://www.railstutorial.org/chapters/modeling-and-viewing-u...

+1 on the location. I currently live and work from an old renovated cotton mill in Dalton, GA. Only drawback is the limited population of local hackers and entrepreneurs.

This article has spent an hour or two on the front page with no discussion. I've always wondered what that means; perhaps in this situation, it means that YC's active commenters aren't active PHP developers?

Regardless, I think this is a pretty cool idea. It seems like a lot of effort to emulate what's (arguably) a missing language feature, but for those of us who are stuck in PHP for one reason or another, it's an interesting development.

This: http://votesimple.org/

I would like to see this kind of thing in the USA someday, but there are some pretty significant practical hurdles in the way. I think it's possible to design around the problems, but I just haven't had the time + energy to move forward.

My startup was rejected for YC summer '07. I launched it while working full-time for another company, built it to profitability over the course of a year and a half, and quit my day job in February of this year.

The at&t knowledge base article they are referring to was last updated on June 11; this isn't new.

Running elections is hard, but it's getting easier. If web, phone, and (limited/proxied) snail mail voting mechanisms were in place, we could reach out to far more Americans than a traditional congressperson ever does.

Good point. Votesimple has gone as far as it can go on an after-hours shoestring; to take the next steps (backers, detailed plans, some fundraising) I need to start dedicating a significant amount of time and money to the project.

This is a perfect example of why Votesimple (or something similar) is necessary! Americans should be up in arms over the opaque, back-room nature of our legislative process.

We can easily design a system that results in a "no" vote on last-minute legislation, and in the meantime, I believe the public backlash for last-minute legislation would be much worse with a system like Votesimple in place. Net effect: more transparency in congress.

I would love to have a third party in the US Congress! However, a more traditional third party in congress is probably pretty much impossible, thanks to Duverger's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law).

My hope is that this idea is off-the-wall enough to circumvent the forces that keep America firmly entrenched in the two-party system.

This is an excellent point: Simple majority rule is dangerous, and California is a perfect example. That's why we're not aiming to take over congress; Votesimple is designed to be a minority third party that happens to represent the interests of the American people directly.

If congress was 60% Votesimple, 20% Democratic, and 20% Republican, that would be bad. But what if congress was 2% Votesimple, 49% Democratic, and 49% Republican?

Exactly! Transparency is key. Our current legislative system is a convoluted mess that violates all sorts of principles of good design. For instance: The often-repeated of packing a bill with unrelated provisions to pick up additional support is positively ridiculous, and leads to inefficient government by design. I believe this would improve if citizens had a better opportunity and incentive to know and care what's going on in congress.

Good point. Members of congress are supposed to represent their voting district; unfortunately, this has fallen by the wayside, and now each member of congress represents a party, an army of campaign contributors and lobbyists, a set of political ambitions, and occasionally the people of the district as well.

I covet a congressperson who never acts based on future political ambitions or campaign contributions; it seems like this is a backhanded way to accomplish that goal.

Excellent questions. Yes, 1 member out of 435 is a drop in the bucket - the goal would not be to control the congress, but to give people a reason to care about the issues, and a reason to engage in discussion and debate that encompasses all sides of an issue, rather than gravitating to radical punditry and entrusting the entire decision-making process to politicians.

A friend derisively described this idea as "American Idol for democracy", and that rings somewhat true, but is it a bad thing? Wouldn't it be a good thing if the average American knew as much about the current goings-on in congress as they already know about the current goings-on in American Idol?

Hello News.YCers!

Today, I'm submitting an idea that has been growing in the back of my mind for some time. The American political system is broken, and it's high time we apply our hacker creativity and startup ingenuity to reverse the rising tide of ignorance and apathy that threatens to sweep away any remaining semblance of informed, rational political discourse in the United States.

The Simplevote website doesn't explain many of the details; I'm still working those out. There are a myriad of potential objections and pitfalls; some of them are easily mitigated, some less so. Please ask questions and point out shortcomings in this idea; feel equally free to suggest solutions.

I'm an entrepreneur and web developer by expertise; I'm currently the founder of InQuickER, which was discussed here a few months ago. Ultimately, I may not be the person to spearhead this concept and push it forward over the next couple of years, and I'm perfectly fine with that. However, I think it's time for this idea to become reality, and I can't help but commit my time and money to getting the idea off the ground.

What do you think of this?

Wow, that's pretty cool! Funny, though, the first thing I noticed: There are a TON of small issues in the website design that should be fixed (at least in FF3 on mac), and the poor attention to detail in the website makes me skeptical of the company as a whole. Does anyone here have firsthand experience with these folks?

I can't find any mention of this in medical news sources; it sounds interesting, but the fact that it's being reported primarily by general interest media leaves me a bit skeptical.

Another neat hack from Fabrice Bellard, the guy behind FFMPEG and QEMU. Granted, it's not technically "broadcasting" the signal because signal strength is so low, but it's a neat trick.

A few weeks ago, InQuickER was on the front page of News.YC. You all suggested 50 new hospitals for the service (thanks!), and this is how we're following up on your suggestions.

Some of the tools look like great implementations, but if I ever saw a website use the "expose" tool (http://flowplayer.org/tools/demos/expose/index.html), I'd be pissed. It doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose, except perhaps for a first-use help screen, and even then, it's disconcerting.

Rockin' idea. I was just looking for something like this to do some quick-and-dirty market research for my startup.

I don't have much experience with mturk, but my one concern would be that respondents may simply click randomly rather than honestly answering the question; do you have any data on how honest and accurate your responses are?

Yes, we do have the capacity to reprioritize patients based on symptoms. Patients who reserve a treatment time online are responsible for their own health until they arrive at the ED, but we do give the ED caregivers the capacity to communicate with the patient early on if they deem it prudent; this feature is generally used in the sort of situations you describe, where the patient's condition may be more serious than he or she realizes.

Bingo. Most patients fall into the general "low-acuity" category, which means that they are essentially seen in the order in which they arrive at the ER; this is the default case in our system. However, the ED caregivers do have the ability to change it.

Great idea! Right now we have a fairly small network of participating hospitals (3, to be exact), and engaging visitors who aren't in our current service area is a bit of a trick. I'll pass this one along to the designer for our next revision.

Because this is such an intensely localized service, expanding the network of participating ERs is pretty much the most important thing we need to do. We've made it a turnkey implementation for low- and mid-volume ERs, and there are some fairly compelling customer service and bottom-line benefits for participating hospitals.

Exactly. Originally, we experimented with offering this service to patients for free or for $2.99, but the hospitals were experiencing significant numbers of no-shows and bogus registrations; the $24.99 price point was actually requested by our pilot hospital as a form of data validation.

If we could find another way to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high, I would love to offer this service at a lower price point.