Websites Prep for Google's 'Mobilegeddon' - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/04/20/websites-prep-for-googles-mobilegeddon/?mod=LS1 <comment><USER3> This is somewhat to my annoyance, because I frequently find mobile-friendly pages less friendly on mobile than desktop pages.

Specifically, mobile-friendly typically disables zoom, so that zooming can't be used to choose text size or to scroll through the page at a higher rate. Instead, everything is reduced to a kind of very long ticker-tape, where if you're deep into the page, you need to scroll many, many times to get anywhere.

Alternatively, you get a page broken up into expandable sections, like mobile wikipedia, where it's very tedious to visually scan the page. Wikipedia is one of the best examples of a site where I prefer the desktop page on mobile.

Another issue is limited functionality. Sites with complex forms typically present a hobbled or otherwise limited, basic mobile experience.

<comment><USER4> " mobile-friendly typically disables zoom"

That's just a stupid choice made by (so many) web developers. I checked a sampling of my own sites with Google's tool and they all passed as mobile friendly, but none of them disable zooming. (HN fails, of course.)

<comment><USER5> I disable zoom to prevent IOS and Android from zooming in when a textbox is focused. How else can I prevent this?

<comment><USER4> Why do you feel you need to prevent it? As a user I'm pretty sure I'd rather just zoom back out if I want to, or use a browser that didn't do this if it really bothered me. But not having the option to zoom is annoying.

<comment><USER6> As a front-end dev, I'm really curious about this. If you're using a native mobile app, do you expect the UI to zoom in on text inputs as well? Is that a common UI behavior?

I've always been a fan of moving mobile web towards the standards and behaviors of native apps which generally did not require zooming to get tasks done.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it does happen on some text inputs, it tends to depend on relative size (for example, I recall zoom in landscape but not necessarily in portrait, etc.).

Generally I welcome it, because I can click on the teeeny input field and have it come "closer" to me for editing then get out of the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Two thoughts:

First: I find it worrying that Google has enough power to dictate the direction of the internet is such profound ways. Remember when people would get up in arms when Microsoft created de facto standards?

Second: Doesn't this change only effect 'mobile searches' ? Reading the blog post [1] that is how I interpret it. I think the article could make this more clear.

[1] [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.es/2015/02/findin...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.es/2015/02/finding- more-mobile-friendly-search.html)

<comment><USER9> This is what happens when your search engine monopoly also has a mobile OS.

Frankly, I hate most mobile sites. For most sites I just use an app or deal with the desktop site. On a 5" android phone, desktop browsing isn't bad. Its a shame companies with great mobile apps but non-mobile sites will be punished by this, yet half-assed responsive design sites will be rewarded.

I wish google would use its muscle for good once in a while. How about lowering the rank of sites that have all those in-page pop-ups? Or refuse content until you log in with a facebook or similar account? That's stuff real people complain about. The mobile stuff seems to have been taken care of for the most part and, frankly better, via Apple's approach of convincing everyone to buy an iphone and sites having to either serve them via apps or via mobile themes via customer demand.

Google's heavy-handed approach is pretty concerning. If users and the market aren't dying for mobile sites, why is google unilaterally forcing them down everyone's throats via the completely unrelated pagerank system? If sites are of poor quality, people won't link to them, and pagerank will work as designed. Google is just making modifications to help sell its Android product.

Sadly, this won't lead to some mobile renaissance (we already had one and its working fine). We're just going to get a lot of "SEO-optimized" crappy responsive design that will be a checkmark on a list of requirements no one really gives a shit about. Good mobile sites are hard. Get ready for the cookie-cutter mobile half-assery that will limit content, break functionality, etc just because everyone is chasing that precious pagerank value.

Not to mention, its not 2008 anymore. Everyone has a mobile site. Those that don't probably just can't afford one, like very small business and other edge cases (applications that are only used on desktops for niche needs and have no need for mobile). Google is just pissing on those least able to move swiftly in an ever changing technological world.

<comment><USER10> Google didn't create the switch to mobile, they are years late to the party. Apple initiated the mobile smartphone revolution. Now billions of people are coming online, many of whom never ever had a desktop with internet, especially in developing companies.

This is a disruptive change, and it is undeniable reality. Even if Google didn't change the mobile search ranking, eventually non-mobile ready sites would lose traffic from frustrated users picking alternatives that are mobile optimized. What would happen is, mobile users would say "man, Google Search sucks, every time I search for a site, it gives these horrible, slow to load, hard to use sites on my phone" At some point, a competitor, possibly even Apple, would release a mobile-ranked search engine.

Maybe they'll be a button to get the desktop results even on mobile, or maybe "Request Desktop Site" in the mobile browser will give you Google Desktop search. But to blame Google because you're going to eventually be forced to update your site is just laziness.

It's not Google who brought this on, it's your customers. They've changed their access patterns, and if you want your business to thrive, to you need to follow your customers. Sometimes that even means native apps in app stores.

I'd say this is a good wakeup call and really, Google took way too long to seriously target the mobile Web. Chrome only recently got Add to Home Screen and Push Notifications, two of the biggest things missing. We're now 8 years post iPhone (2007). The fact that Search ranking is just now, almost a decade later, targeting mobile friendly means Google was seriously lagging the usage patterns of most of the world.

<comment><USER9> I find it very hard to believe that people are blaming content on search engines. If a site doesn't look right, I blame the site. I also find it hard to justify that even if they did, that somehow Google has a responsibility to unilaterally police the web via pagerank punishments.

<comment><USER11> It's not that people blame Google for the site looking crappy, but they do blame Google if the top search results aren't useful -- and that includes the site being unusable. Google also makes a huge amount of its revenue off of pay-per-click display advertising, and if it's referring customers all day long (through organic search) to sites that don't convert, then it's bad for everyone.

This is nowhere near the first pagerank modifier based on site performance -- it's well-known that Google penalizes sites that are slow to load, because users click away from those sites more frequently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if this means Hacker News rankings will go down (considering it's almost impossible to read on a mobile device). That aside I think this is a great idea; the rank changes are limited to mobile search only and provide users with better results.

I'm only curious how they make the determination as to what site is or isn't mobile friendly. Is this programatic (I would have to assume it is) in which case how do they determine this? Some sites can make a good mobile site but they do it in an assbackwards fashion (e.g. using JavaScript only for resizing and reflowing); would those be counted? Does it require CSS device selectors or anything similar? I feel like it has to be a combination of things but would really like to know what.

<comment><USER13> For what it's worth, Hacker News works just fine on Windows Phone (mobile IE). I'd say it's one of the easier to read sites because it's ready in an instant and not busy adding layers 10 seconds after initial render, loading myriad JavaScript files, and injecting social media assets from third-party sites after I've already scrolled two pages down.

<comment><USER14> It loads fine in android too, it's just incredibly fiddly to click the comments link without clicking the story and you have to zoom to click the correct one of the up/down arrows. I'm pretty sure I've dished out a fair few down votes quite contrary to my actual intention over the last couple of years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I updated an older website last month that was built on a static 960 grid and converted it to a responsive layout by doing the following:

* Split the framework's grid CSS from the actual website styles.

* Used media queries to conditionally load the framework's grid.css only on larger devices and load a dedicated mobile.css on smaller devices.

The mobile.css focuses on improving the mobile experience by increasing the spacing of elements, converting display properties to "block" (where appropriate), and hiding extraneous design elements (ideally, this should be done on the server prior to downloading), collapse the navbar into a slidedown "hamburger" menu, increasing font-sizes and clickable area's on links.

Google's Web Fundamentals for Multi-Device Layouts ([https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/layouts/?hl=e...](https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/layouts/?hl=en)) and Mobile-Friendly Test ([https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile- friendly/](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/)) were very helpful.

<comment><USER16> I would love to hear more about how you did this: _collapse the navbar into a slidedown "hamburger" menu_.

Can you point me to any resources for doing it? Thanks.

<comment><USER15> Sure. In the default desktop page, the navigation menu is a traditional horizontal navbar (a styled unordered list).

* When the media query for mobile devices is triggered, the mobile.css is loaded which, among other things mentioned above, hides the navbar and overrides the previous styling in the embedded list with: .navlist li { display: block; margin: 15px 0; text-align: center;}. The new CSS changes the layout of the navlist to a centered, vertical list.

* Another div with an id of #mobilemenu (hidden by default in the desktop css) is absolutely positioned in the top right corner of the page. That div contains a small hamburger menu png icon.

* jQuery is used to capture the click event and toggle the mobile navigation menu: $("#mobilemenu").click(function () { $(".navlist").slideToggle(500); });

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, am I right in understanding this to mean that Google will change how they rank sites, adding (more?) weight to a site's mobile-friendliness, even if queried from a non-mobile machine?

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me at first, and doesn't seem to be what's necessarily best for users.

If I search for something on my 1920x1200-pixel desktop, I don't want Google to prioritize results that display well (and thus might contain less information) on mobile screens.

So I guess (and hope) I'm wrong, and it's just me reading badly, or poor reporting. :)

<comment><USER18> It's explicity limited to mobile search:

[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding-m...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding- more-mobile-friendly-search.html)

> This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide [...]

<comment><USER19> True.

Though: we speculate that it may eventually come to affect all searches - <USER2> mobile-friendliness becomes more pervasive (and hence as non-mobile- friendliness becomes an outlier), we anticipate that they may prefer a good mobile-friendly result to an equivalent non-mobile friendly result even on the desktop.

The main user-centric argument for this is the increasing amount of multi- screening (i.e. returning to the same page on multiple devices) as well as sharing a link via email or social (where the recipient is highly-likely to open it on mobile at least some of the time).

<comment><USER20> Yup CTR on mobile would help the domain overall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd love to just permanently change my user agent on the iPhone so I don't have to deal with stuff like this.

The iPhone was designed to read full sized sites and I think it works great. I hate mobile sites.

<comment><USER22> Changing your user agent won't do a darned thing.

Modern mobile-friendly designs use CSS media queries to change styling based on screen dimensions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> That makes sense to me. Sites really should be designed to look good on mobile then adjust them so they also look good and function well (often with additional, lower priority content) on larger displays.

For a few years I have used Bootstrap as a starting point, and as a refresher I am taking the edX Bootstrap class right now. The course emphasises a mobile first approach. In addition to making web dev easier I also really like Bootstrap because it is so common that users instantly know how to navigate and use a site. A nice way to show content.

</comment><comment><USER24> I still hate websites tailored for mobile devices. I can't believe Google is encouraging companies to do this and penalizing those that do not. Almost every single website that I go to that I notice is different on mobile is different is ways that frustrate me to no end. Off the top of my head I can't think of a single website where I prefer the mobile version on a mobile device over the full version on a mobile device. I'm not saying they don't exist, just that they are extremely rare.

</comment><comment><USER25> The tooling provided by Google is extremely frustrating to use -- as a developer on a large content site where we are taking this seriously. I can't believe that they will simply apply your "pagespeed insights" score to your search ranking, they must have much more nuanced scoring mechanisms.

For example, their crawler seems to not understand picture elements at all, and they're penalizing us (6 points) for offering retina options at all (saying that we need to resize the images).

</comment><comment><USER26> I've been looking for information on how Google is determining mobile friendliness.

That is, are they viewing your site with a mobile agent (that reveals itself as being on mobile), or are they using their present setup and judging your site by its characteristics such as font size (etc)?

The reason I'm curious, is that a lot of sites do on the fly adjustments for mobile based on the client signature. Others prefer to use the forward to mobile m.whatever.com approach. I almost have to assume Google is smart enough to take all of this into account and to spider sites via a bot made just for mobile.

<comment><USER18> [https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile- friendly/](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/)

[https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile- sites/refere...](https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile- sites/references/googlebot)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have a huge aversion to mobile sites. It's like consuming the Internet through a straw. I want to be able to zoom out and see the overall structure of the page with a pinch of my fingers! My eyes and screens have retina resolution, so I don't mind small fonts. The worst is when you have to scroll all the way down to find the link to the desktop version, or when the site depends on the device-width in the viewport meta tag so that the "request desktop version" function has no effect on iOS. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER28> What I don't get is this. Isn't Google supposed to rank websites based on the predicted relevance of the result for the user's query? And what would the ( _supposed_ , as it is clear from many comments) mobile friendliness have to do with this?

Would a website that contains less reliable information, or more confused content, or that is less popular among the users themselves, be ranked higher than a better one just because it scales down nicely on a small screen?

<comment><USER29> Google ranks websites using hundred of signals with different weights. I bet a more relevant website is always going to trump less relevant ones, regardless of how mobile friendly they are.

<comment><USER28> But if a more relevant website is always going to trump a less relevant one (where for relevant I mean: contains the answer to the question the user has submitted) - then what is the effect of bumping mobile friendly websites? None, it would seem - unless there were two websites perfectly identical in every respect _except_ for mobile friendliness, a case that must be pretty rare.

<comment><USER29> If A and B are identical in all aspects except for mobile-friendliness (A > B), _most users_ are going to like A better than B, given that information is laid out in a more easily consumable format on mobile [1].

User satisfaction not only depends on getting a relevant answer, but also how an answer is presented. Their degree of importance is where the weights come in.

[1] Otherwise, why would anyone build mobile-friendly websites in the first place?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Modern" "mobile-first" web design boils down to "Powerpoint in a browser".

While there are of course relevant use cases, I have a hard time considering them primary... But as usual I'm afraid I am not the target audience...

<comment><USER31> Entire "modern" web design, whether mobile or not, starts to look like a "PowerPoint in a browser" \- with expected lack of any essence. The web is ruled by marketers now. But, like you, I'm probably also not the target audience...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Anyone else bothered by the fact that the format is being placed above the content? If I were cynical I would say that google has given up on trying to find good content and have retreated to optimizing over things they can measure. Sure, if there are two identical data sources then give me the pretty one, but if some horribly ugly website has exactly the knowledge I'm looking for it had bettered show up first.

</comment><comment><USER33> In order to appease Google's new mobile friendly algorithm, business owners and web designers have been rushing to "convert" their websites as quickly and cheaply as possible, without thinking about the usability factors required to make a website truly mobile friendly.

\- You get mobile websites that serve massive graphics that take forever to load on mobile.

\- You get mobile E-commerce websites with usability disasters during checkout.

\- You get responsive websites with key visuals scaled down to minuscule promotions

\- You get websites with less information and content available on entry

\- You get to play hide and seek with hamburger navigation

\- You get hosting companies offering free utilities and low cost services to convert website to mobile "point and click"

\- You get websites where the full version is still more friendly.

Sure, a high quality mobile website can be a great way to improve key performance metrics. Businesses typically see increased conversation rates, decreased bounce rates etc. with their mobile users.

But only when the mobile website is done "right".

With businesses rushing to get this done ASAP there's a good chance it's not being done right - even if they still get that shiny green checkmark from Google.

And if the "full website" is performing just fine with mobile users, what's the rush to offer a separate version?

Google said so I suppose. Even it means a less friendly website.

<comment><USER29>
      - You get mobile E-commerce websites with usability disasters during checkout.

To be fair, I think going through desktop-version checkout process on mobile is very much worse. If an _e-commerce_ company can't get its checkout process right, then it deserves to lose customers.

<comment><USER34> At least when I use the desktop site I am confident that all of the site's functionality is available, and that the interface is _probably_ not just broken and unusable due to bugs, which is surprisingly common on mobile websites. I guess people don't test mobile websites as much, and the increased dynamicity of mobile layouts and diversity of behavior among mobile browsers increases the probability of bugs...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is this the death of m dot sites and associated redirects?

<comment><USER18> Nope, though I'm sure many would love that, and many more would benefit.

The provided Mobile Friendly Test does not penalize redirects, currently: [https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile- friendly/](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Kinda lame and not in line with what made PageRank so successful. Google should "not be evil" and have the decency to be as neutral as possible, allowing legitimate clicks and backlinks to judge the relevance of a website. If people can't stand websites that aren't tailored to mobile devices, they will simply leave and find another. I personally don't mind viewing a 20-year- old website through a little mobile browser if the content is satisfactory.

If they are to change anything in this area, they should simply put a little distinguishing checkmark by a mobile-friendly search result, but leave the rankings unchanged. And this should obviously be the case only when a user is on a mobile device.

<comment><USER37> > _If people can 't stand websites that aren't tailored to mobile devices, > they will simply leave and find another_

Yes, and the fifth time in a row I have to do that I stop thinking "these are shitty websites" and start thinking "this is a shitty search engine".

Search engines are inherently not neutral. Why should a spammy site, filled with ads and ripped-off content from different sites, not score higher if it has higher PageRank? Because, again, that's not what you as a user wants. That's far more important for what a "good search engine" is than some idea of neutrality based entirely on how many other sites link to a page.

Note that there absolutely be a balance here, but that seems to be exactly what is going on. This is just one more weight on the ranking, same as their earlier adjustment for site load speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> In some ways this makes perfect sense. Instead of saying it's penalizing un- mobile-friendly sites, you could say it's referencing mobile-friendly.

But, paradoxically, so many "mobile-friendly" sites are so much worse than their non-mobile selves.

</comment><comment><USER39> I found that when using my iPhone 6S I really do not want to browse "mobile friendly" websites. I actually prefer websites which do not have that.

For example, Google News is 10x better if it is not mobile friendly: I can see overview, with pics, etc.

Am I the only one?

<comment><USER40> Just depends on the site. Some mobile sites just remove all functionality. For example, the "mobile" version of a dealership site I tried to go to a couple of years ago didn't have _any_ contact information on it. I had to access the desktop version of the site to find out how to contact them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> And a million pointless SEO guys just got erections.

Every small business in America is about to get billed.

</comment><comment><USER42> What would make more sense than blindly prioritizing mobile sites is this:

1) Desktop-friendly websites appear higher in the rankings for searches made from desktop computers

2) Mobile-friendly websites appear higher in the rankings for searches made from mobile devices

<comment><USER43> That's what they're doing: [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/04/faqs- apri...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/04/faqs-april-21st- mobile-friendly.html)

<comment><USER42> I see, thanks. Makes sense.

To be fair, it was misleading that the WSJ article said "Google is changing its search algorithm Tuesday to favor sites that look good on smartphones."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I've been watching sites' traffic and mobile Google search rankings (just finished looking at over 100 site's Google Analtyics) and am not seeing ANY changes. Looks like it hasn't been rolled out yet, even though Google said it was going to be April 21st.

Confirmed with Gary Illyes from Google, it's actually starting to roll out today and could be weeks...

</comment><comment><USER45> There's a been a lot of geddons recently.

<comment><USER46> I've been looking for this comment :)

<comment><USER45> HN doesn't usually tolerate top-level joke comments, but I figured this would pass muster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> The announcement should have been made quietly and incrementally over time. Many small businesses do not like being dictated to by large ones (even if it may be in their interest).

</comment><comment><USER48> This should play out in an interesting way. There's a lot of niche ecommerce opportunities that are about to open up if this turns out to be as bad as penguin...

</comment><comment><USER49> All pages are mobile friendly, and 90% of mobile user all they do is facebook and instagram...

</comment><comment><USER50> Go Mobile or Go Home

</comment><comment><USER51> Meh, they said the same thing about pagespeed and it was meaningless.

It's against Google's nature to purposefully diminish their search results' relevance, ergo $$$ and engagement.</comment>


Meet the Columbia College Student Who Started a "Restaurant" in His Dorm Room - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/10/15/columbia_student_who_opened_a_restaurant_in_his_dorm_room_interviewed.html <comment><AUTHOR> > It's mostly students, but now anyone from New York—bankers, lawyers, people > who own restaurants, editors from magazines—it's quite funny how many people > have emailed me. You can't even make a reservation anymore. I am booked > mostly through January, and I cook for just four people a night.

I think it is quite impressive he is booked through January of next year. Other restaurants must be green with envy :).</comment>


Shoppers spent more money this holiday season than even before the recession - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/business/28shop.html?_r=1&hp

<comment><USER2> Seems like we're on our way out of the credit crunch recession. The big question now is if there will be an even bigger "state crunch" as certain countries and states have accumulated so much debt there's no other way out than to print more money. 2011 will be an interesting year. In fact, this will be an interesting decade!

<comment><USER3> This will be a most interesting decade.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_tim...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's called inflation, print more money but keeping the number of goods the same then prices rise.

</comment><comment><USER5> That's strange, because most of the people I know spent less this year than ever before. However, much more of it was spent online, which might be easier to track? Or perhaps the use of credit, rather than cash, makes it easier to track?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What have you purchased for Christmas and were you conscious about how much you were spending?

<comment><USER6> I purchased a video card (ati 5550) from microcenter and I chose it because it was around $100 dollars. I purchased it a few days after christmas since I got cash. I would have been more conscious if my phone was charged but I am enjoying my purchase.</comment></comment>


Water moonshot: solving utilities biggest problems with tech - <AUTHOR> http://georgehawkins.net/moonshot/ <comment><USER2> Interesting article. I used to market such a CIS system to utilities, and indeed we considered them to be the most conservative of all. Nevertheless, their needs are _very_ similar to those of energy utilities, but we found out how much they like to hear that water is different...

Despite the points made in the article, I still believe they are a bit too conservative, despite the nature of their product. I think it's mainly the fact that privatisation has hardly happened in the water sector, and the fact that many of them are still run like government bureaucracies. Just interact with the customer service of a water utility monopolist vs that of an energy supplier in a free market. A huge difference!

But it would have been interesting to try the approach he notes... Thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe there is an opportunity for innovative private companies in the "conservative" environmental, construction, etc sectors to have a similar approach where 1 large enterprise works with tech company to solve X and then other enterprises pay back the first co. Almost like corporate investment but product specific and tech co gets 1st big co reference customer, revenue and future customers. Coca Cola thru CC Founders is one similar model without the future customers paying them back.</comment></comment>


Hum - <AUTHOR> https://letshum.com <comment><USER3> Putting aside my own aversion to yet another opportunity to ramp up my continuous partial attention deficit, this strikes me as a solution looking for a problem.

One of my smartest friends noticed that when his support team answered emails quickly, the customer would treat this as an implicit invitation to shift the support thread into a support chat, via email.

They added a 3-hour delay before support sees any email, specifically to prevent threads from becoming chats. Note that phone support is also available; people with time-critical issues are encouraged to call in for immediate help.

The delay has been a huge success because people correctly assign priority to their concerns by selecting the medium. The back-and-forth is more focused and does not get off-track.

An unexpected bonus is that before the delay was introduced, people would often remember how one particular support rep helped them in the past and would hit reply on an old thread to pose a new question, unrelated to the original request. This was confusing (support people leave) and would mess up their issue tracking and happiness metrics.

After the delay, this behaviour went away almost completely and they didn't experience a statistically significant drop in incident satisfaction.

In conclusion, use email for email and use chat for chat. Email starts to feel like chat if you reply too quickly, and that's not a good thing.

<comment><USER4> You make some excellent points about using email in a support organization. To be fair though, Hum isn't designed to be used by employees in a call center.

Instead, Hum addresses a much more fundamental shift in communication patterns that is already in full swing. Conversations are getting shorter and shorter, and more to the point. Most teens I know never check their email. Many of them don't even have email addresses.

Hum combines some of the core organization elements of email, like threads and subject lines, with features that many people have come to expect from their more modern IM/text/Twitter client like instant updates, presence, typing indicators, @mentions, etc. It strikes a balance between the two that helps bridge the gap from email to a much faster and more productive medium.

<comment><USER3> About a year ago I started making a point of sampling all of the teens I found myself in conversation with — family dinners, speaking at high schools, friends' siblings — and asking about their email usage patterns.

While it's true that they don't use email as a primary communication medium (yet) it seems likely that this is because they also don't have _jobs_ (yet) and that it's currently easier to talk to their friends via Instagram, WhatsApp and Tumblr.

And yet they all have email addresses, because otherwise there's no way to access most of the stuff on the web. You have to sign up, and unless you're talking about a phone-centric app like WhatsApp, there's no practical way to avoid email.

Even if you can login with Facebook Connect, you still need email to use Facebook.

So, can we dispel the myth that "teens don't have email" please?

\----

As for my referencing a support operation delaying email, I used it as an example because I wanted to demonstrate that it wasn't a half-baked notion based on anecdotal evidence from one guy.

Meanwhile, conversations are most certainly NOT getting shorter. Each message in an exchange might itself be quite short, but the conversation itself really never ends.

Ask yourself what is more distracting: a long email or a series of 80 individual "short, to the point" texts, where each one vibrates your pocket and you have no idea when the next one is coming. You already know the answer. Often times you give up trying to do anything else and just stare at the messaging interface, waiting for the next message/fix to arrive.

Don't get me wrong; I use iMessage constantly and vastly prefer texting to calling people for most trivial things. But I also gave up IRC and ICQ (dating myself) cold turkey because eventually I was forced to acknowledge that it was holding me back in life. It was not more productive; it was incredibly counter-productive.

<comment><USER5> Wait....there's a myth that "teens don't have email"? Who are the jackasses that perpetuate this garbage?

<comment><USER6> Well, _cui bono_? Facebook, who wants to replace email with Facebook.

<comment><USER7> I think Facebook have just abandoned that original strategy, though it's probably related to the WhatsApp pick-up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Given that I started using Slack (slack.com) last week, what in Hum would tempt me away from it? Slack fits pretty much everything I would want in team communication (being more or less private IRC with persistent history, full history searching, file uploads, etc), and has straightforward APIs and preexisting integration with assorted software and services.

The only thing I'm seeing Hum offer that Slack doesn't have any equivalent to is the email integration, and if I'm emailing somebody external to my team or company I'm not going to want to treat it like a chat anyway.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey all! Co-founder of HUM here, and happy to answer any questions you may have about it. We've been cranking away on this product for the better part of the past year and are very excited to be rolling it out over the coming weeks.

<comment><USER9> What's Hum's relationship with Email? Will it be integrated in any capacity? Also, not in a technical manner, but how will Hum be different than any other chat program?

<comment><USER4> Hum is able to both send and receive emails. People who receive stuff you send over email will be able to reply using the usual reply button, but it's not a full-fledged email client. The email integration is there to make it easy for folks who'd like to use it with their existing network of email contacts.

In addition, every Hum user gets an email address at letshum.com that they can use for incoming email.

<comment><USER10> This didn't address the question of how Hum will be different than any other chat program

<comment><USER11> Yeah, it kind of did.

Which chat program do you know can send a message as an email? And receive chat messages via an email address?

It seems the idea behind this, is that it's a "persistent chat".

<comment><USER12> Doesn't Facebook chat integrate with email in the exact same way?

<comment><USER11> No, because it only works with facebook... ?

<comment><USER12> Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't I open Gmail, send someone a message (@letshum.com or @facebook.com), and they receive it as a Hum or Facebook chat message? Then, they can reply to the message in their chat client as if it were a text, and it goes to my Gmail? That seems quite similar, and in both cases I can communicate using email, while my friend uses chat. This seems to be the underlying reason why both services give every user an email address, so I fail to see how this sets Hum apart from other chat apps.

<comment><USER13> Facebook has announced their intention to retire @facebook.com addresses, forwarding mail sent to them to the user's primary email address and making all chats involving @facebook.com addresses read only.

<comment><USER14> If I may, linkedin does allow users to correspond with each other using both mail clients or directly through their platforms. The part that I am not too sure about is how does Hum solve user problems that whatsapp/wechat can't. The gap I find as a user is that unless there are ways for Hum to integrate with the fragmented contact databases we have across the various social networks (i.e. my gmail, 1k+ linkedin contacts, facebook friends, twitter correspondence etc) and make my life easier, I may not venture and try yet another chat platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In Firefox, scrolling down the page below the cover image causes a Youtube embed of what I assume is the trailer to get stuck blocking a large portion of the content of the page.

<comment><USER16> Seems "we're not testing any platform except Chrome" is trendy those days <sigh>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why announce the product before shipping? I added my email to the list, but I probably won't remember what the product is when you finally release it.

The copy could use some work, you should be able to pare down a lot of the text. Also, you could increase the font size for maximum comfort. Why is the product name capitalized? When I see HUM I think "H. U. M."

<comment><USER18> > _you could increase the font size for maximum comfort_

Oh, god, no. It is very well sized as it is.

Increase your display DPI instead.

<comment><USER19> Oh, god, no?! That font size is absolutely tiny and my display has a low logical resolution (1440×900 on a 15.4 inch screen, that's pretty abysmal as logical resolutions go).

It should be double the size at least. Way too tiny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sometimes I wonder if dogfooding has gone too far. With respect to the OP, I see so many... products like this which seem very oriented towards the teams building them. Witness the example page. I'm trying to imagine another field where co-workers could conceivably feel unsatisfied with the level of real- time connectivity they have now. Ranchers? Astronauts? I can't think of one.

But I guess I'm something of a Luddite, with my flip phone.

</comment><comment><USER21> While the app looks pretty cool and I have no beef with the app specifically, introducing yet another IM app is just going to fragment the market further and cause more issues than it solves.

There are so many different ways to communicate currently, that soon we aren't going to be sure what app to best contact a particular person with. You've got Email, SMS, iMessage, Facebook (Chat), WhatsApp, Twitter, and those are just are some of the top ways.

Everyone has their favourites and because of this, communication is getting more annoying and difficult purely because of the diversity of choice. Its not helped by large companies vendor locking their customers into a specific way of messaging, fully knowing that not all of the people they contact are there.

I have a strong opinion on this yet I have no real solution.

Whats the chances of the top tech companies coming together to create and implement a secure open protocol and/or app allowing end users to message anyone regardless of platform? I guess its pretty bonkers.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, that exact thing already exists, it's called XMPP/Jabber but hardly anyone uses it. It's a shame. There is a federated chat protocol just like federated email, but it's businesses trying to lock in customers that is causing all of these communication problems.

In a perfect world Google, Apple, Mozilla, etc would just contribute new features to the codebase, and everyone could have their own client interfaces and do unique team apps etc

*Bonus points: Jabber chat protocol addresses are the same as email addresses, they are interchangeable. One less thing to list on your business card. Socially, this mindset would potentially shift into just being called an 'address' instead of assuming it's only for email.

I have noticed we're running into this right now with iMessage, Facetime etc in giving out an 'email address' to do connect doing something other than emailing.

<comment><USER23> Ironically, Whatsapp started out by using ejabberd — the XMPP server written in Erlang — as their main chat infrastructure, and then modified it to the point where it no longer implements XMPP.

<comment><USER24> And google talk and facebook chat both used xmpp, and are both(?) avoiding federation -- and both(?) phasing out even supporting xmpp clients.

For a little while I actually bothered using IM, as I actually had someone to talk to (most of my friends had facebook or gtalk -- and I could talk to them in the same interface I used for xmpp at work) -- and I could keep all the logs in one place (if I needed them) -- and it all supported secure texts (OTR).

Now all my friends have access to crappy html5 chat silos that I'd rather not touch with a stick if I can help it. The things are all but impossible to use in a sane way without having to use a mouse -- and even if I could use them, I can't aggregate the logs, keep them independently of whether or not I keep the account(s) and I can't have access to everything in one application.

Why would anyone use this or slack.com rather than setting up a jabber server? If you desperately want to restrict your choice of interface, you could always deploy a html5 jabber client, and pretend there aren't good native clients out there. I'm not sure why anyone would do that, though.

<comment><USER23> HipChat actually supports XMPP, if you don't want to use the native apps. Doubt it's popular enough that services like Slack will do it too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Generic chat UI, check.

Generic marketing copy, check.

Generic video with uplifting folky music and hipsters dressed like hipsters doing hipstery stuff, from sitting at a minimal wooden desk to surfing, check.

So what exactly does this bring to the table that we don't already have or does better?

<comment><USER26> I like the ring-shaped indicator around people's avatars to indicate not only that they're typing, but how much they're typing.

Interesting, but might be a little creepy in practice, I'm not sure.

<comment><USER27> I'm curious about the ring. How do you know how much of the ring to "populate" unless you know how much they're going to type?

<comment><USER28> I don't know how they do it, but I'd populate the ring with frequency, not quantity. Keydown Events per Second is probably pretty easy to track.

<comment><USER29> I'd bet it's the latter (with a character limit), since this really isn't that groundbreaking of an app...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why are there so many negative comments? And most of these aren't even constructive criticisms.

Do you have any suggestions to give the founding team? Any constructive criticism to offer? I'm sure they'd like to hear it. On the other hand, snide remarks provide hardly any value to anyone.

<comment><USER31> Looks like you're new around here. Welcome to HN, where the top comment for DropBox's launch was something along the lines of "this will never work".

<comment><USER13> Presumably the second highest rated comment was "less space than a nomad - lame" ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I accidentally upvoted this with my big fingers. Now, having seen the video, I wish I could take that upvote back.

</comment><comment><USER33> The application is quite nice looking, and I really like the @ integration/notification.

That said, I really hope 11MB splash videos on home pages doesn't become a trend.

<comment><USER34> Unfortunately, the video background trend is definitely a thing. Paypal's been doing it for at least a couple weeks and I've seen at least one other site doing the same.

This might even be worse than the old autoplaying music embedded on every page fad. Hell, at least you could mute it.

<comment><USER33> I hope you're wrong but fear you're right. I think this site: [http://threeringfocus.com/](http://threeringfocus.com/) is an good example of a way to create a cool animated splash without forcing an 11MB download on the site visitor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why are startups always out to redefine stuff that is working fine? Stop inventing solutions to problems that don't exist.

<comment><USER36> You mean the problem doesn't exist for YOU !

If everybody thinks like you, than an iPhone was never invented ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Sounds like Google wave, but a little less intense and a lot more lean.

<comment><USER38> I had the same thought.

Team i was on at the time made a concerted effort to use wave, and we were just starting to be pretty productive on it when google axed it.

\- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This reminds me of google hangout featureset. Better UI on top of it, though. Nice work, Hum!

IMO, the fundamental challenge of feature-based "utility" apps like this is that big players will eventually implement the most useful pieces of it, and slowly erode your market share until you are worthless to the average consumer. The best play for these guys long term is to get acquired before the OS people take their features.

</comment><comment><USER40> It appears that you're targeting corporate users, am I right? I would guess that individuals would probably just use something like Google Hangout or e-mail or some other chat client.

For many corporations, I think one of the biggest issues is having their internal chats hosted in the "cloud". Maybe I'm assuming too much here, but i'm guessing all of this is happening on your servers. I'd highly recommend allowing people to deploy this service on one of their own servers and also providing some sort of security guarantee. Then some of the bigger companies might be willing to move to it, and I could see how this would be a joy to use over IM/e-mail/IRC/maybe even HipChat?

Anyway, good luck on your product. Hope your launch goes well! :)

<comment><USER41> Well, the main 100-pound competitors are Google and Microsoft. Google is cloud-only, Microsoft offers self-hosted and cloud solutions.

I would generally agree that the biggest market is probably for self-hosted solutions.

I'm sure there's a big market here, but companies have been reinventing the wheel here since the days of AOL. What the world really needs is for something like XMPP to gain traction and actually work in a federated way with email addresses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> There's some elements that remind me of Moped ([http://blog.moped.com](http://blog.moped.com)), which has since been bought and shut-down. It's actually quite more enjoyable to keep this stuff out of your inbox, and if you really wanted to, you could use Moped as your email client. I don't use Hangouts, but doesn't that require other people you send messages to to also have Hangouts etc?

Disclaimer: I wrote the Mac client for Moped.

</comment><comment><USER43> Google Wave 2.0?

<comment><USER44> It's got a lot more focus than Wave had at launch. Wave's big problem was that it introduced so many new features at once, in one product. No one could figure out what to do with it, and it was very confusing.

This looks much more focused, although its unclear what it offers over Hangouts or FB messenger. The only feature it seems to add over facebook's product is a focus on conversation subjects versus social groups.

<comment><USER45> Was that Wave's issue? I thought it was that it was a solution in search of a problem.

Which does make me wonder what problem Hum is solving. What group is saying, "X is really painful for us"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I've decided to ignore all messaging "apps" unless they're based on open standards. If they believe current open protocols (email, jabber/xmpp, etc) are insufficient for their needs, they can propose a new one, but please, make it open. Otherwise, I doubt they will become the next email.

<comment><USER47> I'd like to see an organizational com platform built around App.Net. Or maybe there already is one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I don't get the need for a subject line. You're always going to read a message from friends. They can screen the first line of the first message if they want. If I want to start up a new conversation with a friend group, it should just tack onto the last conversation with that friend group.

</comment><comment><USER49> Why to use this over Flowdock? Flowdock: Group chat for teams. Integrates with GitHub, Jira, Trello.

www.flowdock.com

</comment><comment><USER50> I honestly can't understand what this app is trying to do. Is it an email client that uses @mentions to involve other people in the conversation? Is the "chat" part of the app here just a UI feature? Or maybe other protocols are supported as well?

</comment><comment><USER51> I wonder if the same idea can be adapted for online forums. Think - <USER2> like standard PhpBB, but with each thread being its own IRC channel with full archive. Has anyone seen anything like this done already?

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's an idea: when I visit your website, let me _choose_ whether or not I want to watch a video. Don't just play a god damn video in the background. Too much emphasis on flashiness over substance.

</comment><comment><USER52> Feels a lot like what Google+ should have been - the mishmash of Google+ features point to some of the ideas in Hum, but lack any "here's how you should use it" sense.

</comment><comment><USER53> Minor tip when embedding YouTube videos, as with the 'Watch the HUM Trailer' video - add rel=0 to the URL to prevent 'Related videos' from appearing at the end.

</comment><comment><USER54> Am I missing the differences between this and HipChat?

<comment><USER55> Even if it did resemble HipChat (not sure I agree), did you have a point?

<comment><USER54> No, I'm just looking for differences. After reading the features I was struck that each one reminded me of HipChat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> What about security? Are chats encrypted over the wire, and in storage? What's the underlying protocol - XMPP/Jabber?

</comment><comment><USER57> Hey Hum team, I've been waiting for months. Any Exact launch date to announce to the audience?

</comment><comment><USER58> i don't feel like this is significantly different from whatsapp. at least not yet

</comment><comment><USER59> A little off topic, but I wonder if Hum was developed using Meteor.js?

</comment><comment><USER60> Bam! I got a solution.

Hey! you too, it's cool.

Hmm! come over, now let us find a problem.

</comment><comment><USER61> I don't understand what this is.

</comment><comment><USER62> What's the business model?

</comment><comment><USER63> Ho hum. Another chat app.

<comment><USER64> this is my favorite comment

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Are there any startups these days that don't include words "features a beautiful, simple design"?

It's web 3.0's blink tag.

</comment><comment><USER66> Looks like another closed communication system that won't work for me until all my friends DL the app - and they won't.</comment>


Amazon Invests in Ruby Hosting Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/13/amazon-nea-invest-in-rails-hosting-startup-engine-yard/

<comment><USER2> I hope this brings more support for ruby to Amazon EC2... I'd much rather hear about an acquisition rather than an investment, but maybe this is just the first step? Is that likely?

<comment><USER3> Exceedingly unlikely. EC2 will never be EngineYard. EC2 is when you want a raw box to configure how you want without having to deal with the capital involved in buying machines which will depreciate and such.

EC2 has great Ruby support - as good as any Linux distribution has. What you want is for EC2 to become managed hosting rather than having to administer the box yourself. Managed hosting is expensive. If you want managed hosting, you can't get EC2 pricing.</comment></comment>


Did Roger Ebert Destroy American Film Criticism? - <AUTHOR> http://mensnewsdaily.com/2010/08/23/did-roger-ebert-destroy-american-film-criticism/

<comment><USER2> This is an article bashing Ebert and siding with contrarian "intellectual" film critic Armond White. Here's what Armond White wrote of Toy Story 3:

"But Toy Story 3 is so besotted with brand names and product-placement that it stops being about the innocent pleasures of imagination—the usefulness of toys—and strictly celebrates consumerism."

Let's pick apart his argument. I'm guessing that for White a movie in which children grapple with adolescence and sentimental value over their childhood belongings is celebrating consumerism. In my book celebrating consumerism would be a movie about a child not being able to decide what new toy to buy at Toys R' Us. Consumerism, at its worst, is about companies convincing you that your old stuff isn't good anymore and to forget it and to buy the new stuff. Toy Story is about just the opposite. But you wouldn't think that right away for the seductive allure of agreeing that a popular movie "celebrates consumerism."

My point is that Armond White takes big words, in the tradition of French literary and film criticism, drops them in to troll and get attention, and then sheepishly backs off when you try to scrutinize what he says. This is the same school that brought you "the author is dead" and "writing precedes speech." There's nothing for White to defend here. His way of doing criticism is a house of cards.

<comment><USER3> It's not really picking apart his argument when you "guess" at what he answers in the review. He writes, "As...Tom Townsend (Edward Clements) tries fitting in with East Side debutantes, he discovers his toy cowboy pistol in his estranged father's trash....evok[ing] childhood, lost innocence and Townsend's longing for even imagined potency." That's very much what it is to grapple with "sentimental value over...childhood belongings." No where does White accuse that movie of celebrating consumerism. It also seems to me that a 3D movie is very much about "buy[ing] the new stuff."

That the movie 'endorses' toy recycling and passing on the toys to other people, does not mean that fundamentally it escapes its consumerist message. The want of more toys, even if recycled, is still a message of consumerism. Having one last play with the toys as they're passed on doesn't fix it. That the film isn't "consumerism at its worst" doesn't mean it's not fundamentally consumerist. The message isn't "Maybe I didn't need so many toys as a kid because I'll grow out of them," the message (as it relates to consumerism) is far more, "As long as I pass things along, I can buy as much as I want."

Whether or not a movie should talk about consumerism responsibly is certainly an open question. But "guessing" what White thinks when he gives you data, or saying that because TS3 isn't the WORST consumerism it's not consumerism, is disingenuous to the argument he makes. And Armond White's criticisms are useful as a reminder that films, even Dreamworks ones, can aspire to something higher. Does he sometimes go overboard? Probably sometimes. But the above is certainly not 'picking apart his argument'.

Ebert most often asks, "Will this film entertain?" White seems to ask, "Is this film good?" He concludes his TS3 review, "When a movie is this formulaic, it's no longer a toy because it does all the work for you." I have to say I liked TS3 because it did all the work for me, and did so with excellence. But its excellence at delivering on fundamental plot arcs does not mean we shouldn't sometimes ask for more from what we watch. And White reminds us to keep asking.

(To see White displaying his talent more cleanly, check out his review of Eat, Pray, Love: [http://www.nypress.com/article-21533-pretty-woman-with-an- ap...](http://www.nypress.com/article-21533-pretty-woman-with-an- appetite.html))

<comment><USER2> I don't see how a movie review can be founded an argument so vaguely articulated. What does it mean to "celebrate consumerism" if not glorifying the purchase of things while simultaneously discarding the old irresponsibly? That doesn't happen in the movie! Where is consumerism bring celebrated? Where is the movie doing a bad thing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ugh. Guys like these are the reason people get drunk at cocktail parties.

Roger Ebert and his peers fulfill a perfectly useful role: telling most people whether a Friday night movie is worth their limited time and money. He is not Plato. People will not be reading about him in 800 years. Nobody has ever suggested as much.

If you want to sit around in the dark, drinking expensive wine and trying to pick the deepest meaning out of obscure indie films while secretly enjoying your pervasive superiority, that's fine. But pretending that Roger Ebert has single handedly destroyed your precious little past-time is utter bunk.

</comment><comment><USER5> I never understood how Ebert became so popular. I remember (years ago) when he lambasted Cheech and Chong's "Up in Smoke", thinking that he just didn't get it. The movie was about two stoners in a van making stoner jokes for a stoner audience. That's what it set out to do, and that's what it did. You can't properly critique a movie without taking in context what the goal was - something he consistently failed to do.

</comment><comment><USER6> So basically you can be someone who provides insight to 99% of the population who doesn't want to delve into the neuroses of "film criticism", or you can be a self-important blowhard who seems to mostly talk to himself in the dark. Most "film" is not cinema, and not art in a "deep" form. It is entertainment. To pretend that it contains more meaning than that is nothing but mental masturbation.

<comment><USER7> That's kind of like saying that Bill Nye the Science Guy delves as deep into science as 99% of the population can appreciate, so any scientist going deeper than that is a self-important blowhard. And as for your second sentence to the end of your comment, I believe that is a statement of an axiom with which Armond White would adamantly disagree. If you're entering into this discussion with different axioms, the discussion is pointless.

<comment><USER8> How many scientists go out of their way to bash Bill Nye as a hack who damaged American science?

<comment><USER7> That's not analogous because Bill Nye, unlike Roger Ebert, has not become the public face of pure excellence in his field.

<comment><USER9> I'm under the impression that most people think "film critic" is a guy who writes a paragraph for a newspaper saying whether or not a film is entertaining enough to see, and that was true before Ebert showed up. I don't think White's field has a public face at all.

<comment><USER8> I think people who would use the words "film critic" know that Roger Ebert isn't one. Most people would call him a "movie reviewer."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ebert's reviews are useful because they relate, roughly, to how normal, thoughtful people watch a movie. They aren't an academic exercise in critiquing Art. Most people outside of academics in the field of critiquing Art aren't interested in that.

</comment><comment><USER11> FWIW, Ebert wrote "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls".

[http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19...](http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19700101/REVIEWS/708110301/1023)

</comment><comment><USER12> tl;dr: Roger Ebert is undeserving of his success and we're very bitter about it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I couldn't get past the first "sentence". Don't write the way you speak.

<comment><USER14> Not sure why your being down-voted. I had to re-read the first few sentences at least four times before I could understand what he was trying to say. It was a horribly constructed opening that almost made me abandon the article.</comment></comment>


We Work Remotely – New Job Board from 37 Signals - <AUTHOR> https://weworkremotely.com/ <comment><USER2> I've been searching for a remote job for the last few months. This site comes in really handy. Listing remote jobs isn't new (for example, Authentic Jobs has a clear call-to-action to filter them), but focusing on them is interesting.

What I've learned so far is that a remote job is not exactly what I thought it was. Considering the mostly globalized state of the web (and even the internet), I thought "remote" meant you could work for _anyone_ from _anywhere_. As a French web designer planning on moving to a foreign country, I thought I could apply for any remote job quite easily. But most remote jobs actually mean remote but _within the US_. Or, work from home 3 days per week, and 2 days at the office. Or even, work mostly from home but come to the office once per month.

It was probably naive from my part to believe I could get a remote job easily. I thought working in a field as connected and open as the web would provide me lots of opportunities.

Anyway, I ended up forgetting about remote jobs and settled for a job in either New York ( _very_ difficult btw) or London (more likely to happen).

<comment><USER3> This, and why this new site might be a little frustrating to use. I search for 100% remote work, no office visits, no timezone restrictions. Not having that info right on the main listing means I need to click each one to read what the restrictions are

<comment><USER4> The timezone restriction is a much bigger deal than most people probably anticipate. This depends on the company, of course, but unless the work is something that can be performed largely self-sufficiently, it's entirely likely that you'll either end up working overlapping hours at your own inconvenience, or you'll get stuck doing the work no one else in the team/company wants. Even if a large corporation this is a major problem. Speaking personally, I employ about 100 people and the biggest team locations are in Chennai, Guadalajara and Huntsville. Each of these sites has a local senior manager/director and -- with the exception of Chennai -- multiple product owners. I have a few guys working from home remotely (DB supervisor is in New York, architect and one of my senior managers are outside Glasgow, a couple of guys are in SJ, and an architect/lead dev in RTP). I sit in a small sales office in RTP with no one from my team, and I work from home all but a handful of days per year.

I only go into this level of detail because what happens next is potentially of interest. When you have a mix of WFH'ers and office staff, unless they are leaders -- either technical or management -- the WFH'ers get shafted. They are left out of meetings, usually inadvertently and usually ad hoc meetings, but this can have a huge impact on morale and productivity. They are assigned less critical work because the team and leadership often feel less comfortable not having local failover in case of emergency. This may be an organizational failure, but it is a common scenario and one any remote work candidates should be aware of when they interview. By far my highest performing teams are the ones where everyone is co-located, but ymmv.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Browsing through these jobs is enough to kill your faith in humanity. I don't think I saw any I'd want to work for regardless of salary.

Cases in point:

 _We 're looking for a younger developer ... There will be no compensation for this job_

[https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/20](https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/20)

 _You will be working with interesting people, namely me._

[https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/10](https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/10)

EDIT: I take back the initial statement, there are a lot more postings now and some of them are pretty good.

<comment><USER6> And here's another fine example:

 _You love Macs, open source software and tools, and cringe when you hear the words .NET_

<comment><USER7> _You love open source software, but not enough to use an open source OS_

<comment><USER8> I mean _technically_ OS X is an open source OS with a closed-sourced windowing system built on top of it.

 _I hate myself for posting this comment_.

<comment><USER9> _Your dark troll side has spoken_. I'm not even sure that that's technically correct, it's probably not possible to get the same kernel by compiling Darwin. I would be surprised if Apple kept pushing new feature into the open source kernel.

<comment><USER10> They do keep adding stuff to the open source portion, but you're right that there's plenty of closed source code running on a stock OS X kernel. This is loaded in as kexts, so the mach_kernel binary itself is open and reproducible. Drivers for anything vaguely recent are all closed, as are any security related things (crypto, firewall, sandbox, quarantine, etc.) and a few other odds and ends. Recompiling the kernel is entirely doable [1] (and occasionally useful for kext development), though running a kernel with literally no proprietary code will be quite a lot of effort. (and various important bits of OSX userspace will cease functioning)

[1] I've personally had success with the instructions at [http://shantonu.blogspot.com/](http://shantonu.blogspot.com/) \- not that Apple has accepted any of my patches...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not to whizz in anyone's cornflakes here, and we're happy the 37 signals guys have come around, but StackOverflow Careers has had remote specific job listings for a really long time. If you're interested we keep a decent number of them running pretty much all the time [http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?allowsremote=true](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?allowsremote=true)

<comment><USER12> Unless I'm mistaken, something's not quite right:

[http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?searchTerm=C%23&allows...](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?searchTerm=C%23&allowsremote=true)

ironically does not include:

[http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/34229/full-stack- web-d...](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/34229/full-stack-web- developer-stack-exchange)

<comment><USER11> [status-no-repro] [http://imgur.com/i9Ix4EN](http://imgur.com/i9Ix4EN)

<comment><USER12> [status-reopen] [http://imgur.com/zZRveUH](http://imgur.com/zZRveUH)

<comment><USER11> Where in the world is ryanjshaw? (Where are you accessing careers from? We might not be advertising in your area.)

<comment><USER13> I'm in Australia and see the same results as ryanjshaw.

<comment><USER14> UK. I see different results to both -_-

[http://i.imgur.com/vR5X36t.png](http://i.imgur.com/vR5X36t.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not a professional developer but I would be very interested even in low- salary junior developer job in Ruby. But most jobs posting I see require excellent knowledge of _virtually every technology out there_.

I wonder how many developers are excellent at:

* UNIX admin (setting up _sql + nginx + unicorn on BSD /Linux) _ Rails/JS/CSS3/HTML5 * TDD * Excellent Closure and/or Scala * Virtualisatin/scaling/concurrency (put another dozens of varying subjects here... and you're spot on).

I mean, I do linux/unix setup/admin writing firewall rules, setting services for FUN at home since 2000 and there's _nothing_ I can't do given a little bit of time some documentation and a guy to ask a few questions if I get into serious trouble.

But saying I or everyone else is a _master_ in all these things, seriously?

My gut tells me that most companies want the miracle-man or don't know what they are looking for. Hope I'm wrong.

<comment><USER16> My favorite is this one from FogCreek...

Incredible coding skills. Your friends and coworkers describe you as an "animal."

...A little intimidating ain't it? Not sure what an animal developer truly is.

<comment><USER17> > Your friends and coworkers describe you as an "animal." You don't shower, > you have a thick covering of fur, and you growl at strangers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _a track record of getting stuff done_

I wonder how one can prove to have a track record of getting stuff done. If we exclude hobby projects / open source contributions, I have no idea how I could show any kind of track record. I'm not allowed to talk about the projects I do at work, for example, and I don't have time or motivation for hobby projects after work.

<comment><USER19> That's the same Catch-22 situation I'm in. I'm trying to find work and eveyrwhere I look it's "We want to look at your Github profile and open source contribution!" Fuck. I don't have any of those because I mostly code at work and if I do stuff at home it's very unprofessional and only for personal use. I don't have time to contribute to open source and frankly I don't even want to but that doesn't make me less of a good programmer. I love my job but when I'm at home, I have other hobbies and interests.

<comment><USER20> I ask applicants for a Github link, but it's not nearly as big a deal as you might think. Some people have interesting work on github. Others don't, but have something else to show instead. I'll look at whatever a candidate sends over (within reason).

And open source contributions are a lot easier to make than you might expect, when you consider non-code contributions. Opening an issue on github for an open-source library is a great signal. A well-written bug ticket tells me:

1 - You write enough unique software to encounter bugs in other developers' work (i.e., you're not just duplicating the same CRUD work everyone else is)

2 - You understand how to identify common tasks in your application that should be delegated to a library (and don't try to just re-write everything yourself)

3 - The details in the bug ticket show that you understand what information is relevant to solving a problem and can communicate with other developers.

Those sorts of contributions should be possible in most work environments, as part of your normal job responsibilities.

<comment><USER21> Submitting an issue is often much more appreciated as a project maintainer than a big code dump pull request.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There are a few complaints here about remote jobs not really being remote (eg. contrained within US borders).

We're looking for a remote Growth Hacker, and we really do mean remote... [https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/142](https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/142).

You can be anywhere in the world, you can work whenever you want. We even just expect 30 hours p/week, with full-time pay.

I know this comment is self-promoting, but we're a small bootstrapped and profitable startup from Australia. It's not easy to get the word out... so am taking the opportunity here.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER23> It'd be nice if remote working opportunities didn't come with national borders. The border-less nature of the Internet and knowledge-based work doesn't seem to require geographic location and yet due to complex logistical restrictions most of these job postings are US-only.

Kind of a weird place to be.

I wonder if there's some kind of hack that could allow small companies and startups to get around the policy issues without getting various regional governments upset with them.

<comment><USER24> It's not even governmental stuff; one of the sticking points we have is our payroll package, which doesn't support foreign places like "Wyoming", "other countries", and "Indiana."

The same issue probably applies to our health insurance plan - it's only useful in the U.S. and would also be expensive to change.

<comment><USER13> A health insurance plan isn't much of a perk for many countries outside of the US that have universal health care.

In that scenario I wouldn't care if that was only available to in-country employees, the same way that I wouldn't care about missing out on perks like catered lunches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is a more general comment about job postings in general - Why are salary ranges so seldom listed. If you look at a lot of leading job boards even the company name isn't listed (recruiters).

Isn't salary a basic piece of information that every job listing should have?

<comment><USER26> They keep it hidden for several reasons, though in reality they boil down trying to pay you as little as possible.

-They hope to wow you with the position so you'll accept a pay lower than you wanted. This doesn't work when the salary range is listed up front and is so low you won't bother to respond.

-They're going to base their offer on how much you make now. This works when you're trying to move up in your career, they can offer you a little more then you make now but not as much as if you're already getting paid well. Again, they lose this position if they're up front with their range.

<comment><USER27> Good points, but personally, I have never played along with the "We'll pay you just a bit more than what you are making right now".

When the question "How much do you make right now?" comes up in an interview, I answer "How much I make right now is irrelevant, here is how much I want if I'll be working for you" (said with more tact, obviously).

<comment><USER22> As a hirer, I'll always ask what they make now. But I'll also ask are they happy with that salary.

There's no point using it as a basis if they are not, but if they are, it's a good starting point.

<comment><USER27> > As a hirer, I'll always ask what they make now.

How would you react if the candidate gave you the answer I typically give in this situation? ("my current salary is irrelevant, here is how much I want")

<comment><USER22> I'd be fine with that. It's used as a discussion point to arrive at a salary the person is happy with. If your original salary isn't one you want to base it off, that's ok.

<comment><USER28> That's admirable. It's unfortunate that a majority of the money discussion folks in HR will end the conversation if a candidate doesn't give a current salary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Missing from these job posts is "WHat's in it for me": There's largely no mention of compensation in any form on most of thes e job postings. Most don't even mention the office culture or expectations beyond the fact that the company's virtual and they want good engineers.

</comment><comment><USER30> <Groucho Marx Impersonation>Are you workin' remotely, or remotely workin'?</Groucho Marx Impersonation>

</comment><comment><USER31> Get a job from the 37 Signals site building a competitor to the 37 Signals site.

[https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/8](https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/8)

</comment><comment><USER32> Too bad there are many 'remote but inside the US' jobs posted. Anyone got a clue why that is?

<comment><USER33> Probably to ensure a good overlap, timezone-wise. [http://jobmote.com](http://jobmote.com) usually tags those with 'US-only' or similar.

<comment><USER34> I like that one better, thank you.

Would be interesting to know if it is because of timezones as West Coast would work very well for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've had the hardest time finding a remote + part-time programming job. I have a day job, but want to work extra during the evenings as well. Basically, two jobs, but the second one being part time obviously.

I've tried craigslist, indeed, SO, even HN who's hiring. I send off to anything that looks like it might work. Have had zero success.

I can only assume it's a non-desired position. Who wants to give a programmer access to their codebase/databases while no one else is around? :shrug:

<comment><USER36> I think the main reason you're not finding anything with your approach is that in the event that a team needs someone to work a few extra hours a week in the evening, they hire someone they know personally, like former staff since they don't want to train someone who will only work a few hours a week. If you want to find work like that, my suggestion would be to pitch projects to companies.

For example, "Hi prospective company, I'm using your iPhone app and it really needs an update due to x and x reasons. I specialize in updates of this type; here are some past examples of related work I've done. I think we can strike a deal that really improves the app at a price that makes sense for both of us."

<comment><USER37> That's some great piece of advise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I love the concept, but as a developer working on non-web technologies, it's discouraging to see that this practice is less common outside the world of web dev.

<comment><USER39> Yes. I'm still waiting for some day, when C++ and REMOTE appear within one job posting in Who is Hiring threads...

<comment><USER40> There have been a few, like Suitable. Definitely rare, though.

<comment><USER39> They don't respond to emails. I tried several times.

Although, I landed a really great remote C++ job in 2012 from Who is Hiring thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> One thing they should make clear on the website is who is actually allowed to apply for these positions. I'm in China and applied many times for "remote jobs", just to discover that the position was for US citizens only. It's rarely mentioned on the job ad, but I think it should.

</comment><comment><USER42> Interesting that most of the backend jobs look to be for Rails. I wonder if there's a correlation between Ruby/Rails developers and a more liberal policy to remote working...or if it's just because Rails shops are much more likely to flock to a 37signals site.

<comment><USER43> I first saw it because I follow Jason Fried on Twitter. I suspect that those who follow 37 Signals closely are probably more aligned with the Rails ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> At the bottom of the page: "REMOTE - the eventually-bestselling book about working remotely."

Cheeky.

</comment><comment><USER45> The arrival of Jason and David's book, Remote, is fantastic and I can't wait to read it. I think it is crystal clear that, if done properly, many people would lead much happier livers if they had the ability to choose where they worked from. People could still collaborate online with colleagues, probably lead healthier lives, be more productive, and be judged based on execution rather than whether they are at their desk earlier or later than others, even if they are just sitting there on, Faceboo or Reddit…. or HN ;-).

There are many companies of all sizes that support employees domestically and internationally working remotely. IBM, HP, Kaplan, The US Government, a number of major insurance companies, and many other organizations hire remotely. This gives access to a much broader talent pool.

Also, "The Congressional Budget Office's estimate of the entire five-year cost of implementing telework throughout government ($30 million) is less than a third of the cost of lost productivity from a single day shut down of federal offices in Washington DC due to snow ($100 million). - See more at: [http://www.globalworkplaceanalytics.com/telecommuting- statis...](http://www.globalworkplaceanalytics.com/telecommuting- statistics#sthash.ObzDiT5b.dpuf")

I've always found it time consuming to filter through all the crappy jobs when searching for good opportunities that allow you to work remotely. I'm actually working on creating a curated search experience specifically for jobs in all industries where people are able to work remotely. We're not quite set to launch yet but for anyone interested in staying updated I'd love you to register here. [http://klearsearch.com/](http://klearsearch.com/)

Feedback from this community when we launch would be really great.

</comment><comment><USER46> Everyone and their mother is making a jobs board: StackOverflow, JSFiddle, Github, Techcrunch, now these guys...

<comment><USER34> They had one before already and sold it.

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3196-sortfolio- lives](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3196-sortfolio-lives)

Edit: sorry, yes, my brain got mixed up. I used to use Sortfolio going through lists of agencies and checking out if they have vacancies open.

<comment><USER47> That's not their old job board, this is: [https://jobs.37signals.com/](https://jobs.37signals.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Jobmote is another resource for remote positions: [http://jobmote.com/](http://jobmote.com/). I currently work 100% remote from the midwest and couldn't be happier doing so.

</comment><comment><USER49> I don't understand why you all are so salty about this, it seems pretty good to me. Some decent jobs here, which is really more than I can say for some other job boards.

</comment><comment><USER50> I've been reading their primary job board for a long time, and looking at this site I realized that I do miss seeing the cities listed.

It may seem paradoxical but I did like to know at a glance where the company was located, among other reasons for the fact that it communicates the likely salary (if they're in a small city and I'm in a large one, for example).

Otherwise it looks good (if top-heavy) and it's always nice to see remote opportunities.

</comment><comment><USER51> Not for those old dogs called project managers... like me.

<comment><USER37> Not surprisingly since they kinda pooh-pooh on managers in the book: "We believe that these staples of work life - meetings and managers - are actually the greatest causes of work not getting done at the office". More context will tell where they're coming from, but they don't acknowledge the importance that great managers acting as leaders have in a project. I still haven't finished the book though.

<comment><USER51> Yes, and I remember when I was reading their other title: "Getting Real", and they make a point about being the "anti-MS Project" company. It's like educating people about your convictions by not telling who you are, but who you aren't. Looking at the quote you pulled in, it's clear they are holding the "anti-manager" flag now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> It will be interesting to see if this will span across other roles too. I work in controlling and I could see me helping out a few companies/startups remotely.

One interesting thing for me is having both part-time and remote. While I see many startups might not need a full time finance/controller, I think many could use a part-time one.

</comment><comment><USER53> I suppose remote working is only going to increase. The technology is in place and the only real issue is trust.

Here in Hong Kong, thanks to special offers, 1000 Mbps broadband is only slightly more expensive than 30 Mbps, crazy! I collaborate on a project with a partner in India every day and the experience is quite smooth.

</comment><comment><USER54> Our two cents about remote working: "Remote 101 - your community doesn't stop just because you're on the road" [http://blog.mention.net/remote-community- management-101/](http://blog.mention.net/remote-community-management-101/)

</comment><comment><USER55> Nice! Could use more postings (only 2 android gigs?), but I am sure that will come with time and publicity.

From a UI angle, though, why is everything so big? I had to zoom out two stops in firefox to fit a reasonable amount of content on the screen and make it look 'normal'.

</comment><comment><USER56> I've been using [http://couchcoder.com](http://couchcoder.com) to find remote work for a couple years now. It has a much better filter than this site. They use a complex algorithm to syndicate remote jobs from all over the web.

</comment><comment><USER57> Remojobo.com is currently doing a good job in this space. (no affiliation, just a happy user)

</comment><comment><USER58> I wish that I could use more criteria for filtering. It's great that they make it so easy to post jobs, but as others in the thread have mentioned, that results in a lot of jobs that aren't really exciting.

</comment><comment><USER59> I was surprised to see a StackExchange job listing, as they have their own job board [https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/60](https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/60)

I like that.

</comment><comment><USER60> Interesting that they have their normal Job Board - [https://jobs.37signals.com/](https://jobs.37signals.com/) to focus on the new one.

</comment><comment><USER61> After just finishing their REMOTE book, I feel like this is the next natural step.

I hope some higher quality companies begin listing on this job board soon, however.

</comment><comment><USER62> Just a plug for our startup: Floobits. Helps you work remotely if you're an engineer. All of us work remotely at Floobits. :)

</comment><comment><USER63> Doesn't seem to handle timezones very well. I see some posts from tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER34> Would be nice to filter out all those that require you to have US visa.

<comment><USER64> This can be considered to be a niche opportunity for one or more people to start a business with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> In the title, s/37 Signals/37signals/.

</comment><comment><USER66> Thanks for this job board, very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER15> The website doesn't load...

</comment><comment><USER67> any jobs for a first-year university students

</comment><comment><USER68> Hi, I'm with Scanbuy's HR team. As I'm researching talent to work remote I found this site and wanted to put Scanbuy www.scanbuy.com on your radar. We're the leading global provider of mobile barcode solutions. We're presently hiring Sr. Web Application Engineers & SDET Testing Engineers. If interested, I'd love to connect and share our full posting: firstname.lastname@example.com. Scanbuy is in NYC - I am too and we're open to hiring folks from anywhere in the continental US who's eligible to work for any US employer.

</comment><comment><USER69> I want to get paid in bitcoins.

Search results: zero.

</comment><comment><USER70> I knew it was too good to be true, there's a CAVEAT - when you click 'Copy Email Address'or even just click on the email address provided - you get a nasty bug that deletes system level files and directories from your OS. Seems like someone has hacked it already :(</comment>


Ask HN: Declaration of variables in C++ best practices - <AUTHOR> Hi, I recently decided to read over the C++ tutorials @ learcpp.com and found in their examples that they are declaring and assigning values to variables as they are used. Years ago when I began coding it was common practice to declare all variables(and constants) with comments at the beginning of the script rather than in the middle of the script as they are needed. Is there a good reason why this practice is not encouraged now? Or is it still best practice to declare up top? Maybe they are just doing this for the purpose of the tutorial to make grasping basic concepts easier? <comment><USER2> Declaring vars at the top of a function makes it easier to see at a glance how much stack memory will be used. But beyond that I don't see any advantage.

</comment><comment><USER3> C, up through, C89, required variable declarations at the beginning of a block. C++ allowed them to be declared anywhere. This was popular enough that it was added to C99 (along with // comments). There are some cases (references and objects without default constructors) where declaring at the start of a block might not be practical.

Best practice? Shrug. Declaring variables anywhere was a conscious decision.</comment>


What Is Cloud Vision API? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eve8DkkVdhI <comment><AUTHOR> Google make it easy for you to use image analysis, and easier for them to gather more data. The value of deep learning is in the data not the actual algorithms/libraries. Still, a cool API.</comment>