An audio message improved our conversion rate by more than 50% - <AUTHOR> https://genius.engineering/you-have-to-hear-it-to-believe-it-how-audio-messaging-improved-our-conversion-rate-more-than-50/ <comment><USER2> Well, the voice tells you that it is a 3 months free trial, the text tells you nothing.

Actually it is worse than that: The voice tells you what happens if you press the button, and the benefit to you (you will sign up to listen to 50 million songs, first 3 months are free), while the text on the button tells you something that is not going to happen (it says you will hear the whole song, but you won't hear music when clicking)

</comment><comment><USER3> "NOTE: All the numbers in the description below (other than p-values) are for illustrative purposes only. The actual numbers are proprietary."

In other words: useless.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Note: All the numbers in the description below... are for illustrative purposes only. The actual numbers are proprietary"

</comment><comment><USER5> Good example of "track the exact thing you care about" and beware of misclicks by users!

</comment><comment><USER6> Oof. That domain.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Apple provided us with a workaround"

It's good to be an Apple partner.

</comment><comment><USER8> "How we pivoted from being our own business to surviving as an ad platform for someone else's"

</comment><comment><USER9> Given that my browser window is open, when I click on a link.

Then I see a cookie privacy notice; then I see a request to allow notification from website; then I see request to disclose location; then I see banner advertising; then I see subscribe to our newsletter popup; then I hear subscription trial message.

When I close the given browser tab, then I see a popup dialog confirming that I want to leave.

The web is getting sadder and sadder...

<comment><USER10> And then, this gem from the article:

> _After all, you can close your eyes, but you can't close your ears._

<comment><USER11> But think of all the free value!

I do like how they first keep stressing how much this is in the interest of the user (free value, great deal, etc etc) only to talk about "not subjecting the user to more advertising" in the last sentence of that paragraph.

Which narrative is it now?</comment></comment></comment>


[Personal bookmark] some nice WebFonts - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/fonts/#ChoosePlace:select/Collection:Dosis|Patrick+Hand|Lato|PT+Sans|PT+Sans+Narrow|Ropa+Sans|Patrick+Hand+SC|Gloria+Hallelujah|Capriola|Love+Ya+Like+A+Sister|Loved+by+the+King|Maven+Pro|Oxygen|Special+Elite|Yanone+Kaffeesatz

<comment><USER2> Is it me or is there about 10-12 sans-serif fonts (Lato, Open Sans, Noto Sans, Merriweather Sans, Roboto, Istok Web, Oxygen, PT Sans, Source Sans Pro, Gudea, Varela) -- which are all lovely modern sans-serif fonts -- but are _incredibly_ similar? Are they based on one another, or just similar in modern sensibility?</comment>


When to use var in Java 10 - <AUTHOR> https://www.lewuathe.com/when-to-use-var-in-java-10.html <comment><USER2> Another benefit is it removes a lot of otherwise unneccessary imports.

I think var should be used anywhere where the righthand-side expression is clear. Compare var str = new String(); to var waat = HERE.be().dragons("purple");

And with Spring-like classes like 'StaticFactoryBananaMakerBuilder', declaring the class makes it less readable.</comment>


Using Email Yak To Provide Bidirectional Email In Your WebApp - <AUTHOR> http://www.bennadel.com/blog/2294-Using-Email-Yak-To-Provide-Bidirectional-Email-Communication-In-Your-Web-Applications.htm <comment><AUTHOR> _"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." -jwz_

If you don't want your app replaced, enable it to read email. Parsing email is generally a clusterfuck. But I found out that it is really easy with EmailYak.

</comment><comment><USER2> Glad to see more companies jumping into the receiving email market. In my experience, it's been incredibly difficult to set up a website that can actually respond properly to emails, though Lamson has helped a lot.

<comment><USER3> Partly as self-promotion, and partly because it might be useful to someone, here is a link to what lamson is:

<http://lamsonproject.org/>

and a series of blog posts I wrote on setting up a simple lamson server:

<https://github.com/drewbuschhorn/lamson_gcal_example#readme>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does this compare to SendGrid, Mailgun, and Amazon SNS? Any notable features that make it an improvement or would convince me to switch?

<comment><USER5> One thing I think that differs between these is most only do 1/2 of email -- sending. Mailgun and a few others do two way emails.

<comment> old-gregg Disclaimer: I work at <http://mailgun.net/>

Sending is actually 1/3 of email. The other two are receiving and storing. :)

Even sending by itself is such a complicated beast that only a select few allow customers to do it properly, and to _properly_ do sending you must have receiving end set up as well. Your deliverability goes up when you allow replies to the sending host. ESPs see replies as participation and it makes a difference. That's why we keep preaching: No more no-reply emails.

Another elephant in the room is spam. If you silently accept everything coming to your MX host, you're asking for it. That's how some email platforms do the receiving end. GMail can get away with this because they employ a small army of PhD's to deal with spam. To have manageable volumes of spam, you've got to be able to generate SMTP bounces for invalid addresses. The list of things to do in order to receive properly goes on and on. Hooking up incoming SMTP traffic to a Python function is the _easiest_ part of receiving mails.

Long story short: if email is critical to your app, you have very limited options. Roll your own or sign up for Mailgun, which is basically a Gmail-like back-end which makes your application look and feel like a _real_ email server to other ESPs, not a mass sender of $0.0001 emails. Mailgun also has other advantages like automatic cleanup of garbage MIME bodies - this always hits you hard in production, and standard MIME parsers for most languages won't cut it.

<comment><USER6> I really wish Mailgun.net was a nicer website. It's terrible of me, but I just can't take Mailgun seriously with such an.... amateur website, I just can't accept that it's a legitimate company. Postmark on the other hand (and mailchimp etc.) have really nice websites, it makes me want to use them.

<comment> old-gregg Agreed 100%. We've been slacking on the web design fronts. Check out the design of our APIs instead! :) We invested all our attention to the queue, to maintaining high traffic quality and the parsing engines.

Check back soon and I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have only just looked at this service, but it may be exactly what I'm looking for. I see a lot of advice against operating your own mail server, and while SES might work for outgoing you're still screwed for incoming. Thank you for this, I'll check it out more!

</comment><comment><USER8> Can we use this as a comments system? For example, a blog would have an email address and leaving a comment would basically send an email to the address, and then it would be displayed as a comment beneath the blog entry. The benefit would be that we can use email spam filtering on the comments. The email could be sent either from the user's email address or you could send it from the application's email address to itself.

<comment><USER9> I've thought about implementing something like this; but, I keep coming up against two different arguments:

1\. I think there's value to having people come to your site. Not just for traffic, but to keep them involved and aware of changes to the site.

2\. Content being posted in the email can be far more complex than the content being posted in a simple Textarea. There's a nice dependency on the clean input of a textarea and a form submission. With rich email clients, you just need to take more care.

... of course, maybe that's just me being intimidated about thinking about the whole workflow in a different way than I'm used to.

<comment><USER8> What about Still providing a simple text box, but the action upon submit is sending an email. It needn't be from the commenter's email address, it could be from a separate email address "comments" or perhaps a separate adress for the individual post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I didn't know people still used ColdFusion in 2011.

<comment><USER11> _raises hand_

Can't say I love it but it pays the bills; you'd be surprised at the number of companies that still use it to a degree. Thankfully, CF these days is much improved compared to when I first heard about it many, many moons ago.

<comment><USER12> Same here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It might be interesting to compare with mailgun too, one that I recently heard about.</comment>


Moved to Columbus, Ohio - Help me connect with the startup scene - <AUTHOR>

I just moved to Columbus, Ohio (my girlfriend is attending OSU for her PhD) from Boston. My job is remote, so I don't need a new job.
I was fairly active in the startup scene in Boston and I'd like to get to know entrepreneurs, hackers, VCs, companies and events here. What/who must I go see here? I know in Boston I'd have a pretty long list for people.
Anyone have any advice? My lunch and drinks calendar is wide open. <comment><USER2> Tibbon, I'm in Columbus and while I don't know that I'm really _part_ of the startup scene, I'm working on it. If you want to meet up for lunch or beers you can email me at stansbury.mark at gmail.com or find me on Twitter @markstansbury.

I think you'll find that Columbus doesn't have much of a startup scene compared to Boston, but it could be worse.

I'm trying to get a few people together to watch the first OSU football game on Thursday night if you're interested. Grandview area. And before the game I'm planning on going to a tech-startup meetup sometime between 4:30 and 7. That could be pretty interesting and I'd be happy to meet up with you and head over if you'd like.

Let me know.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm in Columbus as well, working remotely for an interactive firm in NY (<http://f-i.com>). Not in the startup scene per se, I'm in the same realm.

I can't recommend any people in specific (my personal network is not local), but here are some links to get you started: <http://www.techcolumbus.org> <http://www.columbusunderground.com> <http://www.meetup.com/techlifecolumbus/> <http://www.techlifeohio.com/>

Feel free to email me, the address is in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the links. Following up with you via email right now.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How long to wait after initial pitch to TechCrunch? - <AUTHOR>

After your initial pitch to TechCrunch and no response from them for couple of days what would be the best course of a followup action? Do they normally acknowledge the receipt of these pitch emails? How do we make sure if they have read the email or for some reason it directly went to their spam folders? Do you think pitching to them again would be a good idea? <comment><USER2> TechCrunch's audience isn't all-encompassing.

If they didn't respond and you have a stellar product, just contact their chief competitors. I'm sure they'd love to profile you.

GigaOM, TheNextWeb, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, etc. Tech news isn't all about TechCrunch.

That said, I think the best feedback loop is just a simple "Show HN: Here's my project." I'd say that not only are we super friendly, but we'll actually give you back feedback, suggestions, complaints, and advise like no other.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention the writers of Techcrunch, etc. read HN and frequently source stories from here.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm aware of it but since it looks like they don't even acknowledge the receipt of the email pitches it kind of confuses us to wait and see or just completely forget about it and move on. That's when I thought of asking how long to wait till I move on to HN (since I don't want to piss them off if they really intend to write about it later and it's just a matter of time).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you don't hear back within an hour or two assume they're writing another riveting non-piece on Quora. Eg,

Question On Quora More Important Than Other Startups

<comment><AUTHOR> At least acknowledging if they've got the email or not would go a long way from the one who sent that email and eagerly waiting for a response (positive or negative). But...

<comment><USER5> Would you rather have them spend hours replying to thousands of e-mails from companies they don't want to cover? Or spend the time covering more companies? I know it sucks not to get a response, but that's the way they operate.

My company will never get covered by any of the major tech blogs even though it gets way more traffic than any other startup in the entry level jobs/internships space and is profitable. They don't like writing about content plays, so I've moved on and sought out publicity from other places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would wait no more than 48 hours. Closely re-examine your pitch and headline, etc. How can you improve it, before your next step.

ASK: What is different about you're doing? What is the "hook" in the story you are proposing? Is there something different about your founding team? You might also survey the news over that period of time. If there was a big story then naturally, your story got buried. That's a good reason to try again. If it was a slow news day and you still got passed, it will be a hard second sell. Definitely try the other outlets - and I'm not just talking about the blog media. Self-publish. Publish here on news.yc or anywhere. Don't be discouraged. It adds all up, somehow. The lazy way to do PR is to think that TechCrunch -- and you're done.

You must be very proactive and very aggressive. But most of all - you must be adding value with your news. Why should people be interested in this "news?" If you can't answer that, then think again or try again when the product is ready for that.

One trend that I have seen a lot of success with - having a well thought out supplementary content. Videos are great. How about an infographic or slideshow? Sometimes that's better than a video. These things are more work and resources, but the supplementary content is usually welcomed and almost always posted.

Contact me ( through my profile) if you are really stuck. Probably can't help for a few days, but I feel for you people on these things. I was a reporter and the line of thinking for me is basically instinctive. Happy to help when I can.

My experience: <http://scr.bi/gN9Xvk> <http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexalee>

</comment><comment><USER7> Do your pitch here instead! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do it very soon. I know Show HN is very effective and gets a lot more contextual feedback than just visitors.</comment></comment>


A Woman's History of Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/a-womens-history-of-silicon-valley-feea9279d88a#.dg3g331rt <comment><USER2> The article makes good points but if that isn't the most awkward title...</comment>


Andrew Yang Is Full of It - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/business/2019/10/andrew-yang-automation-unemployment-freedom-dividend.html <comment><USER2> Slate is suggesting trade deals are responsible for more job losses than robots and therefore Yang is full of it.

However, the last sentence says, "By prophesying imaginary problems, you ignore the real ones."

But finding reasons people are losing jobs _not_ due to robots does not mean robots aren't taking jobs.

It's a mathematical fact that robots are taking jobs. Container ports are being automated and hundreds of longshoremen are laid off at each port. Robots in factories.

At the end of "American Factory" (spoiler) coming...

the solution to the problem of "lazy" American workers was, you guessed it, replacing them with robots.

It isn't just factory work either. It isn't just blue collar work. The internet and technology and automation is replacing absolutely everyone.

There will come a day when it'll be almost impossible for a human to find work. I believe companies will just stop hiring them. Pretty much all the "human" work will be done by independent contractors who will be able to command very high salaries.

The article mentions how low wage truckers will drive the trucks in the cities, but I don't think they'll be low wage truckers. I remember learning about river captains who are flown out onto large ships when they need to navigate up river. They're experts and command very high wages to move the ships. It takes much experience to learn now to pilot ships through shifting river bottoms and curves.

I don't think it'll be cheap when we need humans to take over.

</comment><comment><USER3> Jordan Weissmann writes a negative article about Andrew Yang and Elizabeth Warren and their respective economic plans bug includes no substantive analysis of either. Not worth the time to read.

</comment><comment><USER4> This notion that those blaming "trade" and those blaming "automation" are in conflict is silly. Both are true. Some things get automated here. Some things go overseas. Some of them get automated there. It makes absolutely no difference to the person without prospects.

Regardless, employment will get worse, but restricting trade won't help.

</comment><comment><USER5> If Andrew Yang is concerned with automation job loss, he can propose measures making it easier to live off grid and grow organic crops. Easing the transition back to people becoming more independent and less reliant on private sectors and governments for bread. Of course, Andrew Yang will never do this.

<comment><USER6> > live off grid and grow organic crops

Great idea! I will start right after we have millions of people doing this and not starving.</comment></comment>


How much will your first indie game make? - <AUTHOR> http://ramiismail.com/2012/07/how-much-will-your-first-indie-game-make/

<comment><USER3> It is interesting to note how the biggest earner (High Vaultage) is a straight up generic launcher game clone.

The general fault of indie game developing is the lack of proper motivation. Most just try to grab some money without real development team, and hope to live of it. Now, that can work, but rarely. Succesful attempts at that are succesful under many conditions: being meticulous with development, aiming for lowest common denominator gameplay, not trying to innovate and preferably clone popular mechanics, and having discipline to ship it. Examples: Cyclomaniacs, Burrito Bison, Kingdom Rush.

In my book, that's not indie, it's built on monetization from starting game design. And that's precisely why it fails.

The process at most sucessful indie games was actually quite opposite. Let's create something we want to play, and meanwhile or even just at the end of it, try to monetize. Or not even bother with it. Examples: Braid, World of Goo, Meatboy.

EDIT: Added some reference game titles.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for bringing this up. I would still draw the "indie" label at a small dev team, but those games you mentioned - at least Burrito Bison - <USER2> fun, and it has some interesting bells and whistles but at the end of the day isn't particularly meaningful - just press a button and sit back, maybe have a few interactions with it in-game, buy a few things, wash and repeat. They're still "indie", but perhaps in a whole different level of games, compared to Super Meat Boy or Braid...there is no way the intention wasn't to make something addictive that would monetize well. But, it is the Flash game market and to make a living off of that, that's what you have to do, I suppose.

Thanks for reminding me why I even do game development. Occasionally I get too wrapped up in marketing and the like...trying to think how I'll make any money off of it, and while important, what's the most important is the actual game itself (who would've thought?). Although to reiterate, I do understand why Flash games tend to usually be different in terms of intention - it's hard to deviate a lot from the formula and still manage to have food on your plate.

To add to stats, my first game sold for less than a thousand :P

<comment><USER3> I'm not trying to be judgmental. Like you said, you need to put food on the plate.

<comment><USER4> I know you're not - I just wanted to point it out for the audience who isn't as familiar with the Flash game market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Beside the point: why do the pictures lean when I mouse over them? Who thought this was a good idea? What does this accomplish?

<comment><USER6> This really tripped me out the first time I did it, I thought I had too much caffeine already!

Actually, I kind of liked it.. though I have no idea why. Gimmicky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Selling the game to a single, publisher-like entity through negotiation seems like a pretty old-fashioned way to do it and an especially bad fit for a low- budget indie game.

It would have been interesting to compare numbers if some of the teams would have thrown their project to e.g. Kickstarter or sold it directly to consumers via Steam or similar service.

<comment><USER8> If all of their other games are flash games like High Vaultage then it makes sense to use the normal sponsorship model. The only other real ways of monetizing in the flash industry include ads and non-exclusive licenses which generally both make considerably less than a primary or exclusive license of the game.

There is no way first time game developers could get their games on steam. If High Vaultage was their best game then they would be laughed away pretty quickly judging by how it scored on the popular portals such as Kongregate and Newgrounds. As an experienced flash game developer myself I have managed to make a game in a day that scored better on both those sites and probably also received more plays overall. In order for Kickstarter to work properly for a game you need to have a pretty huge following. First time developers have no following; so unless they strike a chord with the gaming community, it would be fruitless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it interesting that a portion of their grade is influenced by factors somewhat outside of their control. Just because they were unable to successfully negotiate a deal during the seminar doesn't necessarily mean it's a game that won't sell, they may just need another round of negotiations. Plus if the motivation was to complete negotiations for a good grade, then why not just offer the game for $1? Was there some kind of threshold they had to meet to be considered a "success"?

But it is an interesting concept. I've seen similar thoughts with web design courses; teach web design/development while building a website for a paying client.

<comment><USER3> On wholly another level, you're great.

The most awesome thing to do on that semester would be to create a game you love, and if it doesn't sell, sell it for a buck. Creative on so many levels.

<comment><USER9> Well, many people make games that they loved making and then release them for free. Money is not always the only factor involved.

But my comment is about the course itself, not the games they make during the course nor their emotional attachment to said games. The purpose of the course was to learn something about business and that hopefully results in a good grade. My question about the threshold is because, from what I read, it might be possible to learn something, make a good grade, and not make any money. So was making a certain amount of money a requirement to be considered a success to get a good grade? I see nothing wrong with my question or comment.

Your sarcastic response is not helpful.

<comment><USER3> Haha.

It wasn't sarcastic at all, I just applauded idea of passing the course by selling for a $1.

<comment><USER9> I apologize then, I totally misunderstood your post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Shouldn't the answer overwhelmingly be $0?

<comment><USER11> The median of the revenue of an indie game is definitely very close to 0.

What they've done here is pretty impressive, congrats to the organizers and students involved.</comment></comment>


How much should i pay for respected hackers to write programming tutorials? - <AUTHOR>

I'm owner of a site( Guchex.com )  that we have launched some days ago and we are reaching very respected bloggers to write on our platform, how much should i offer them to write. We don't have any idea. <comment><USER2> Do you have any idea how much it's worth to you?</comment>


MIT's artificial leaf is ten times more efficient than the real thing (Wired UK) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/28/artificial-leaf <comment><USER3> Unless this work differs completely from Nocera's previous work, the device relies on a conventional solar cell (with sub 20% efficiency if made from silicon as suggested in the press release) to provide current for electrolysis of water. Nocera's group focuses on developing low-cost, durable catalysts for electrolysis that can work efficiently at neutral pH. This would allow electrical energy (from solar or other sources) to be stored as hydrogen gas.

However, there are other ways to store solar energy once it is converted to electrical energy or chemical energy. The bigger impediment to large scale adoption of solar is the high cost and low efficiency of initially capturing the energy in each photon. Unfortunately, Nocera's interesting work does not address this much greater challenge.

Also, why was the device tested for only 45 hours? It would have taken more than two days just to prepare the talk he gave. This almost certainly means that the efficiency started dropping and the experiment was stopped.

Anyone interested in this topic should check out the work of Michael Gratzel and others on photoelectrochemical cells, which are more deserving of the label "artificial leaf."

</comment><comment><USER4> If this is as good as it seems to be, why is the focus purely on the third world? Unless I'm missing something, this could bring cheap and extremely environmentally friendly energy to developed countries too.

If it's purely a case of "they need this more than we do", why not either just license out the technology to companies who can use it, or develop it themselves for developed countries. Either way, they could take the money raised through that side and use it to help bring the technology to third world countries. I can't see any downside of pushing to get this kind of technology widely used _everywhere_.

<comment><USER5> Earth receives about 1.3 to 1.4 kW per square meter from the sun (and that's _before_ the atmosphere absorbs and reflects a huge chunk of that) - which is effectively an upper bound on the energy that can be produced by any solar power source. A playing-card sized device is going to take more than a day to produce a day's worth of electricity for a current developed-world lifestyle, even if it were 100% efficient.

<comment><USER4> Solar panels are already good enough that they are used in developed countries such as USA and UK. Are they perfect? No, they cost too much, and they don't generate enough electricity, but they are used none-the-less.

By the sound of it, this new creation would be more efficient, either in price, electricity generation, or both, than traditional solar panels - <USER2> that wasn't the case, why on earth would any project use them in third world countries, when they could instead use solar panels.

So, based on those two facts, surely anyone who would be using solar panels ought to look to be using this product in the next few years? (And, depending on how much better than traditional solar panels it is, possibly more people/companies would want to use it than are willing to use solar power right now.)

<comment><USER6> >>Solar panels are already good enough that they are used in developed countries such as USA and UK. Are they perfect? No, they cost too much, and they don't generate enough electricity, but they are used none-the-less.

Does no one follow energy news, except for oil prices and the Polywell project?! :-)

Many estimates talk about soon reaching "grid parity" in large parts of the world. If this leaf isn't good enough, there will be some other solar variant soon.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity>

It seems to go faster than this prediction from 2009: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8386460.stm>

(Kurzweil argued in 2008 that solar energy will take over [http://www.livescience.com/4824-solar-power-rule-20-years- fu...](http://www.livescience.com/4824-solar-power-rule-20-years- futurists.html) )

<comment><USER7> BTW one reason that Grid Parity is a moving target is that one of the input costs to making solar power is energy. When energy (hydrocarbon fuel) becomes more expensive, instead of making solar power cheaper in comparison, it has no real effect.

Instead, regular power becomes more expensive, which makes building solar power also more expensive, and the net result is a wash.

<comment><USER8> That seems weird. That would imply that the lifetime energy capture of a solar panel is roughly equivalent to the creation and installation energy cost.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't seem weird at all, I think. Solar just barely passed breakeven in the last decade, unless you factor in subsidies. I notice that for a random zip code in Maine, <http://bpsolar.cleanpowerestimator.com/bpsolar.htm> shows that absent federal and state subsidies, you'll save only about $4600 over 25 years with their default settings. It's phrased as saving $36K, though, due to subsidies and interesting presentation. :) But BP Solar really wants you to buy solar panels, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is "photosynthesis"[1] the correct term? Seems to me that "photolysis"[2] would be closer (although readers would get the gist of the former more quickly).

<\pedantry>

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photodissociation>

<comment><USER11> I agree. Photosynthesis would be to split carbon dioxide, release oxygen, and use the carbon to _sythesize_ some organic compound.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > MIT's artificial leaf is ten times more efficient than the real thing

This doesn't surprise me, to be honest. Organisms have evolved to be fit enough to survive, and efficiency above a certain level might not affect an organisms fitness (or might even affect it negatively).

<comment><USER13> Engineering beats evolution, every time.

<comment><USER12> Horses for courses, and all that.

<comment><USER13> Well, it's not just a difference in optimization goals; it's a difference in methodology.

Evolution optimizes by using heuristics and stochastic search--piling crap on top of crap, and obfuscating into oblivion.

Engineering optimizes by finding elegant mathematical solutions.

Sorry, getting off-topic. I guess I'm just bitter about not being a robot.

<comment><USER14> Evolution "optimizes" for a lot more constraints. It needs to be self-healing, and work for a long time without any outside maintenance and monitoring. It collects its own energy, and competes with (unpredictable) other organisms for nutrients and sunlight.

Good luck engineering a system like that. Elegant mathematical solutions are great, but only exist for limited, well-defined problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15>
        Provide every house on the planet with an artificial
        leaf and we could satisfy our 14 terrawatt need with
        just one gallon of water a day.

One gallon of water a day, in case we are talking about freshwater, is waaaay to much.

In case you haven't noticed, there are regions in this world with a freshwater deficiency (precisely those third world countries which would benefit from something like this), and one gallon of water per day is enough for 3, even 4 people to drink per day.

The article doesn't make it clear if this can function with salt-water, which would be more difficult. And if it cannot, this is not bio-friendly or cheap for that matter.

<comment><USER16> Maybe it's possible to make this a closed circuit by channeling the "burnt" water back into the solar cell. This way, the daily water consumption could be brought down to (almost) zero.

I guess that this would need distilled water anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> On a lighter note, this is what Dilbert/Dogbert have to say on new "green" breakthroughs.

<http://dilbert.com/fast/2011-03-29/>

</comment><comment><USER18> "Nocera's leaf is stable -- operating continuously for at least 45 hours without a drop in activity in preliminary tests -- and made of widely available, inexpensive materials -- like silicon, electronics and chemical catalysts."

So semiconductor grade Silicon is readily available and easily manufactured in a third world country? Or will they have to buy the finished product from first world countries? If they do, where do they get the money? Unless they can build it themselves - and it doesn't sound like they can - how will it help them?

</comment><comment><USER19> Lets wait until this has some peer-revied tests and they can claim a certain output in KWh for a sunny day in California or some region of Africa.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it my impression or this device produces energy and water? It apparently works with seawater and, since its exhaust is hydrogen and oxygen that will be recombined in a fuel cell, the end result will be solar power and desalinated water.

I believe this alone is almost more interesting than the power output.

</comment><comment><USER21> By what definition of efficiency? I'm sure a leaf costs much less energy to produce than one of these.

</comment><comment><USER22> Seemingly every other month, someone comes out with a "solar power breakthrough". This has been happening for the past 30 years and they never seem to follow through. I believe it when I see it for sale at walmart.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm guessing the substance he is using is Melanin. I've already heard of something like this. Mexican scientist, Dr. Arturo Solis Herrera, when studying the properties of melanin, discovered that this substance is to the human body, what chlorophyll is to plants. He achieved alternative energy generation using self-renewing photoelectrochemical cells which separate water into hydrogen and oxygen and then bring the atoms together again. Check it out!!! [http://www.energiaadebate.com/Articulos/noviembre2007/imagen...](http://www.energiaadebate.com/Articulos/noviembre2007/imagenesnov/Solis.pdf)

<comment><USER24> No, it's not Melanin. It's a cobalt oxide complex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How are these reconciled? Optimism?:

Re: previous artificial leaf: _It was also highly unstable, and had a lifespan of barely one day._

and

 _Nocera's leaf is stable -- operating continuously for at least 45 hours without a drop in activity in preliminary tests_

<comment><AUTHOR> The previous artificial leaf and the current one are different things.

<comment><USER25> But 45 hours and one day aren't that different.

<comment><USER26> Being at ~100% after 45 hours and at 0% after 24 hours are quite different.

<comment><USER25> Since you're intent on belaboring the point, it doesn't claim that one is at ~100% and the other was at 0%. More significantly, if the assertion is that one is more stable, don't you think it would be more compelling to demonstrate its operation for, say, a month? Or did they build this one leaf 45 hours before issuing a press release?

<comment><USER27> "Lifespan" implies that at the end of the period, the old leaf died. There would be no other reason to use the word. The submitted article also mentions _45 hours without a drop in activity_ , implying 100% at the end of 45 hours for the new leaf without any kind of assertion about a lifespan for the new leaf. The linked ACS release doesn't discuss this, either.

Grant him the point. Truthfully, you're splitting hairs, and it really isn't worth arguing about, especially since this entire thing seems dubious without proof.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cannabis: Silicon Valley's hot new sector - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/e5c83bfe-3bae-11e5-8613-07d16aad2152.html#slide7

<comment><USER2> I see there's a lot of emphasis on distribution and delivery, but it will only take one high-profile "teens ordered 3kg online, fell out of window en masse" story to bring a lot of scrutiny on this aspect of the market. Not radically different from the repeal of Prohibition, but with smartphones this time.</comment>


An Uber Experiment: connecting entrepreneurs, investors, and ideas using Uber - <AUTHOR> http://viewthevibe.com/exclusive-uber-investigates-toronto-driver-who-filmed-passengers/

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting idea coming out of Toronto that's getting publicity. Some of the best conversations and business connections get made when like minded individuals share an Uber ride. I can imagine this could spin in to something really interesting in Silicon Valley.</comment>


A smartphone retrospective - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/980434663 <comment><USER2> I clicked on the link expecting a smartphone retrospective, but instead got "iPad will rule"... At least it was short.

\--

It needs to be pointed out that the Treo/Blackberry form factor was not the only one - or even the dominant one, globally - before 2007.

The all-touchscreen phone was pioneered by Ericsson starting in 2000...

Ericsson R380: <http://www.geek.com/hwswrev/pda/ericr380/index.htm>

Sony Ericsson P900: <http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_p900-544.php>

Nokia has been making "micro-laptop" style smartphones since 1996: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Communicator>

The standard phone keypad is still the world's best-selling smartphone form factor since 2002: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7650>

A company called MyOrigo introduced a buttonless touchscreen smartphone with accelerometer controls in 2003: <http://www.mobileburn.com/review.jsp?Id=547>

IMHO, these devices ought to have a place in any smartphone retrospective.

<comment><USER3> Where were all the finger-based touch screen back then? Do you remember how many people said it wouldn't work, because either someone tried it or failed, because it didn't have a stylus that was "clearly better", or because it didn't have a hardware keyboard?

Look at the current market?

You want to bash Apple, feel free: there's hundred of reasons to. But at least give credit where credit is due. The Apple iPhone did revolutionise an industry, and a LOT of tech "experts" and geeks said it was going to fail and it was a toy. Now it's just "one of many".

<comment><USER2> Where's the Apple bashing in my reply? Where did I not give credit?

I was just trying to say that a "smartphone retrospective" ought to include some more information than merely: "Well, we had the Treo, and then 2007 happened."

\--

Btw, do you notice that your "it didn't exist before, and people said it wouldn't work" line of argument applies equally well to the devices I mentioned...

1996 / Nokia: "Who wants a small laptop crammed inside a phone?"

2000 / Ericsson: "A phone needs real hardware keys. This touchscreen stuff won't work."

2003 / MyOrigo: "Sensors on a phone? That's useless."

Are these innovations worthless?

<comment><USER3> True, point taken (and I upvoted you as an apology). However your post still came out as a bit of a "Geez, Apple wasn't that special", though admittedly then I went a step too far and just assumed you were posting some anti-Apple stuff. Sorry for my prejudice.

However a few things to say. The Nokia messenger was imho awesome, but it did not caught on, and eventually Nokia itself killed it (only to revive it many years later).

I thought the Ericsson P800 (correct?) was great, and I still do. However I also think it's representative of part of the problem too: Ericsson didn't feel like losing anything, they crammed it with everything imaginable. It had a touchscreen (for a stylus) but you could use it with a keyboard. Why? It didn't seem like they believed it that much. Sure, you may say the problem was that the OS at the time could not allow you to do everything with a stylus, but then the question is: why didn't Ericson worked on that? They had control of the whole system!

MyOrigo, I admit I never heard of it.

So yes, apologise and I never meant to say that Apple is some kind of genius of the tech world, and that nobody else innovate: there's a lot others too, and there are a lot of problems with Apple products too.

But I think Apple has a tendency to play harder, to really take a bet. For the iPhone (as before the iPod) they shopped around for just the right piece of tech, often discovering some small startup nobody had heard of until then. Maybe they would change the interface (like the clickwheel). They would get a whole software stack on top of it, just tuned for that specific product. They would spend ages polishing it, and most importantly if they think a technology is better, they would have no problem neglecting any alternative.

Think back at other companies. Why they don't do that? I would imagine if Ericsson found risky to add a touchscreen, the idea of spending many years perfecting such a phone, creating the right OS, using the right tech, removing some stuff... just maybe to release it 3 years later after spending a _lot_ of money, and finding they failed would be a huge loss.

Apple seems to take these bets (and to be honest sometimes they lose too). I think that's why the iPhone was really much more of a discontinuity than previous smartphones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Huh? Before Apple all smartphones looked like Blackberrys? I could show you 100 popular non-keyboard-having pre-2007 devices, starting with the PalmPilot a decade before the iPhone. Besides, a lot of people still use and like the Blackberry form factor considering they're still the number one smartphone.

So no one will buy a netbook in 3 years? Apple fanbois are just ridiculous.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. Here's the phone I had in 2006. It even had an onscreen keyboard that I often used for knocking out quick replies to emails or SMS messages. Heck, it even did copy & paste and MMS :)

<http://www.mobiletechreview.com/cingular-8125.htm>

Aside from a few extra buttons it looks pretty similar to today's iPhone, and very similar to Android and WP7 phones. Apple certainly did a great job of refining all the elements and introducing capacitive touch screens, but to suggest they invented the form factor is just bullshit.

<comment><USER6> They didn't invent the form factor, but they were the first to make it good enough to become successful. There's been tablets around for two decades, but the iPad is the first to achieve widespread success outside of niche markets. Even Apple had the Newton which they killed off (imagine how the world would look if Apple was the one with an old, stylus-optimized mobile device OS in 2007).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I made a graph <http://chris.smeder.com/essays/3_stevejobs.htm> when the iPad came out that describes the public's reaction to Jobs' product decisions and then how they feel a year or so later about his decisions. The point being people have such little faith in some one who has made the tough but right decision so many times.

For example:

\- removing the arrow keys from the original Mac [http://www.asktog.com/columns/082iPad&Mac.html](http://www.asktog.com/columns/082iPad&Mac.html)

\- removing the floppy drive from computers

\- making the iMac not upgradable (this made so many people angry). Yet few care that most computers, laptops, bought today are not upgradable.

\- non removable battery

\- Expensive, no wifi (lame)

\- less features than the competition

\- no flash

\- iOS instead of Mac OSX

<comment><USER3> I agree with your argument, and I upvoted you for that.

But that graph? Seriously???

A bit of a Job's fan? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article is wrong on multiple counts: 1) The iPhone didn't take off because it had no keyboard. It took off because it it had a decent web- browser. 2) Smartphones were a niche device in 2007. And generally were considered products that were severely lacking. The WinMo UI was considered a dog before the iPhone ever appeared. 3) Laptops aren't a niche product and generally aren't considered dogs. In general no one is looking for a laptop replacement, even amoung those that bought iPads.

<comment><USER3> To answer your three points:

1) Hindsight is always 20/20 right? People were predicting that the no keyboard thing was such a deal breaker than together with the no replaceable battery, it would make the iPhone a failure.

Obviously nobody here it's arguing that the iPhone is better because it doesn't have a keyboard: hey, if you could have your cake and eat it too, why not? But the point is that you need to make compromises, and by removing the keyboard Apple bet that the inconvenience was going to be more than made up by the advantages. Apparently they were right.

2) Yes, they were considered to be lacking though not as much as you think. In fact, many people complained about the iPhone because it couldn't do everything their smartphone could. Also knowing you have a problem, and knowing how to solve it are two hugely different things.

3) The point was about netbooks. Many people bought them as a secondary computer, to carry around, browse the web, etc. The iPad may or may not be a netbook replacement, but it is not being considered as a replacement for your main computer.

Apple had the balls to take a bet (as did Asus with the original netbook, imho) and won. Now suddenly it was obvious, not a big deal, etc.. etc...

<comment><USER8> I disagree with your answers, but maybe in subtle ways.

1) The no keyboard thing was a deal breaker. But Apple did something no one had seen before. They introduced an exceptionally good onscreen keyboard. Miles ahead of the competition. They insight Apple had wasn't so much that we could just get rid of keyboards. It was that they could create a decent onscreen keyboard experience. To me, that is fundamentally different.

Replaceable battery? The only people who cared about that are pundits who have to nitpick about everything. How many people do you know that have a backup battery. I think I literally know nobody who does.

2) My point with #2 was that smartphones as devices were considered to be extremely flawed. Satisfaction with their smartphone was very low. This would make it easy for a better device to effectively change the whole landscape as no one really had a high satisfaction device.

3) OK, I probably just read netbook as laptop.

I do think you underestimate how big of a deal it is/was. Apple revolutionized the smartphone industry. My argument against the article is I think they did it via software, not by form factor.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I think we kind of agree.

Re: #1 personally I think the reason why Apple could make a good onscreen keyboard is because they tried, and tried hard. I don't think there was any secret sauce: it's kind of the only thing you can do if you decided to go full screen

As for replaceable batteries I am with you... though when you read these sites it seems like everybody does mind.

As for point #2 I think the point the author was making is along your same lines. Just that he feels netbooks have also got very poor satisfaction rates (and I actually think studies have shown that, unless you really know what you are getting or are a geek).

As for hardware vs. software, I agree the secret sauce of Apple is in the software, but they also have a solid hardware, and in the hardware they often need to take the tough choices that others don't dare take.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> More than anything else, the article was a wonderful display of the power of well-placed graphics to make the point. Using the vertical axis as time, they're implying a wonderfully straightforward visual pattern of an apple singularity vs a reactionary pulse (horizontal axis) of the industry. Really smacks you in the face.

<comment><USER10> If anything else, this article is a wonderful display of the power of misleading graphics to make a point. For comparison, this was my first smartphone in 2002 (5 years before the iPhone):

[http://www.mobilemag.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/05/image_56...](http://www.mobilemag.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/05/image_56834_superimage.jpg)

<comment><USER11> Styli suck pretty hard. Can you point to a comparable capacitative screen phone that predated the iPhone? I'm sure there are probably a couple, but most of those probably had some serious shortcomings which Apple's did not.

<comment><USER12> Styli seem to work pretty well for Nintendo with their DS. Much easier to see what's going on without a finger in the way. Sold over a 100 million of them and made ridiculous profits too, which seem to be the Apple fans' metrics of choice when it comes to success these days.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the stylus is really that bad. In fact it may be better in some situation. But if you really think it's so great, then let me ask you this: why does no smartphone now come with a stylus?

I am not saying that finger is better. But Apple believed it was better and worked with it. Personally I think it's an alternative. But why has everybody followed Apple like sheep? Can nobody else think with their own brain?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting retrospective presentation. But I have two quibbles with the stated facts. First, some pre-iPhone smartphones had touchscreens, but required a stylus to be effective. Secondly, tablets weren't being ignored pre-iPad. They just weren't being done particularly well, outside of a few industry-specific verticals.

BTW, these aren't the first instances Apple changed the design norms for the mobile industry. Anyone remember what laptops looked like before the PowerBook 100? Moving the keyboard forward towards the screen to make room for the trackball provided the rest of the laptop manufacturers the template for laptops that continues to be used to this day.

We benefit because we have room to rest our wrists between typing spells.

</comment><comment><USER14> What's the serious shortcoming on the netbook? That it has a keyboard, that I can run any software I want to, and that I can get unlimited 3G from any provider I want?

Yeah, that sucks. I'm trashing my netbook _right now_!

<comment><USER15> yup. Try reading your netbook in portrait orientation. That keyboard comes really handy then.

<comment><USER14> Try using your iPad as a skateboard. The lack of wheels really comes in handy then!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A large number of smartphones still have keyboards because it is a faster way to type. Maybe this will change with advances in speech recognition, but most people I know type much more on their netbooks than with their smartphones.

<comment><USER17> Speech recognition will never make the need for good text entry go away simply because people do not want to speak their private thoughts out loud in public.

<comment><USER18> In addition to that problem, typing is faster than talking; writing and speaking are for many people completely different modes of thinking with their own voice and diction; going back and editing is too awkward and difficult with speech recognition--for instance, adding this very phrase after typing out much more of my post would have probably been more effort than it was worth, as would have been reorganizing this ugly block of text into some sort of list; talking out loud takes more energy and dries out your mouth; dozens of people in an office together can all type without bothering each other very much; people with funny accents, speech impediments, very bad colds, or who have lost their voice can type more easily than their voices can be transcribed even by a skilled human transcriptionist, much less a speech recognition engine; there are fundamental complications with speech recognition, such as capitalization, punctuation, syntax, use of proper names, neologisms, and other terms unfamiliar to the engine, as well as distinguishing commands to the speech recognition engine from speech to be recognized and transcribed, and all of these complications can be easily resolved in any arbitrarily user-defined fashion whilst typing--for instance, my choice to write the bulk of this post as a single sentence consisting of multiple independent clauses strung together with semicolons would be more difficult to implement in any speech-recognition engine; and finally, many people who learned the language from books more than from speech don't even know how to pronounce certain words they have only seen in print and would have their vocabularies reduced tremendously if restricted to speech recognition--as an example, it wasn't until college until I learned the correct pronunciation of the word "albeit", a word which I have seen far more often in print than I have ever heard it said out loud, reflecting my earlier point about how people's spoken diction often differs from their written diction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wish there was a way to ban Apple fanboyism from HN.

<comment><USER20> Oh yeah, if only were a way to ban those that don't think the same we do. Only talk with those that have the same beliefs...

<comment><USER19> I am willing to discuss Apple, but fanboyism is not really conductive to dialogues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not to take away from Apple's brilliance, this is a gross oversimplification; it's simple as that.

<comment><USER3> Well, I'd be surprised anyone read (or would write) a 500 words article on the last 5 years of smartphones and assume it wasn't a gross oversimplification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been waiting a couple of years for a netbook with an ARM processor and a non-Windows OS. I don't think it's a coincidence that those features apply to the iPad and people think it's a big jump forward.

Just as with the iPod and iPhone the story is just as much about what others were actively fighting against (mp3 support, freedom from carrier interference) as what Apple positively stands for. That doesn't take anything away from Apple becuase they bucked those trends, it just makes me sad that we had to wait for someone with their clout to enter the Market and shake things up. What about the many markets they don't bother with?

</comment><comment><USER22> This article claims that a double standard exists. I disagree. I think that the iPhone isn't so great "because of its lack of a keyboard, its non- removable battery, its lack of expansion slots or ports, and other hardware features..." I also think that the iPad isn't so great because it's "not capable enough because of its lack of a keyboard, its non-removable battery, its lack of expansion slots or ports, and other hardware features..."

</comment><comment><USER23> The future is clear, no keyboards!

<comment><USER24> I meant to upvote, but touched the down instead!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Where's the Newton?

</comment><comment><USER26> I like fatter keyboard with feedback on my netbook, pretty please. Also, get rid of the caps lock and make the keyboard symmetrical.

Make the monitor detachable while you're at it.

<comment><USER27> Would you like some cheese with your whine?</comment></comment>


Post-Medium Publishing - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/publishing.html

<comment><USER2> I think pg has missed the ball on this one as well.

Publishing as an institution is not going anywhere. Publishers serve many functions. For one they act like a content filter, whereby they screen artists and select only the ones they deem talented enough to throw their weight behind. People generally do not have the time to visit every lounge act or download every yahoo's demo tape online. In this sense publishers are like a brand, and while people's consensus of "the music industry" might not readily distinguish between different labels currently, I bet that's where the music publishing business is headed.

Another institution of publishing is the advertising/exposure angle. Publishers will pay for the tv spots, radio commercials, etc. to get exposure to the artist. They will distribute material to the radio stations, which in turn have a vested interest in playing high quality content and also don't have the time to download every yahoo's song off the internet. In this sense radios are much more aware of the particular branding aspects of music labels.

Finally, another institution of publishing is mentoring and resources. If you sign to a major label, you get access to choirs, instrumentals, singing coaches, song writers, and various other industry veterans. You have high quality sound studios to record, etc.

The main reason the music industry is feeling a tight squeeze is not so much that people don't want to pay for content, it's that people are paying for content differently. The music publishing business' backbone is record sales. The industry was structured around having one or two hit songs on a record being enough to sell a quarter of a million units. With itunes, you can download just the hit songs for a fraction of the cost. All of a sudden your profit margins just went through the floor for a sizable chunk of your customer base.

That doesn't mean the institution of music publishing is going away, it just means they will have to get operationally more efficient if they want to maintain their profit margins.

The music publishing industry would truly feel threatened if online crowd sourcing was a viable alternative to discovering new music talent, but even then I believe their role would still be valuable. Also crowd sourcing on the internet has largely been unsuccessful for discovering new artists, last.fm is basically the billboard top 200 remixed.

Also the bit about publishers selling content and equating that with information is way off. True, people will usually only buy information which makes them money, but music is very different. People will buy it because it makes them happy. Same with buying movies, books, etc. It's a completely different metaphor, and in fact the marketing adige is people will only buy things which make them healthier, happier, or richer.

Also, the bit about publishers selling formats, this is also slightly off base. If anything publishers take advantage of formats due to perceived convenience. CDs cost more then cassette tapes because for one thing the format was developed by the music industry so they had complete control over pricing. For another thing the format had a built in convenience factor which customers simply were willing to pay for. With iTunes controlling the internet distribution channel, publishers are not in control to set the prices like they used to.

Also about books, I agree Kindle will of course be superseded, but is the Kindle itself important or again is it the _content_? Notice Amazon also releases a Kindle Reader for the iPhone with access to the same content. Do you really think there will be a point where people can no longer be bothered to pay for books? The book industry has largely been unscathed by the digital era and I don't see a reason why that would change any time soon.

Newspapers is a whole other ball game. The industry is changing due in large part to the speed that information spreads. People don't subscribe to papers because all the news they need is online, available instantly. The main audience for newspapers has traditionally been the informed customer, and these people generally are having internet and know where to find information online. That's why your friend doesn't want your New York Times, and why less and less people are subscribing. The newspaper concept though is similar to the content filter of music publishing, in that newspapers are brands which have vested interest in maintaining their integrity. They also have access to a wide network of trusted reporters from all over the world. Again this will be a case of the evolution of a business model, but newspapers as a whole have a much harder struggle due to the evolution of information on the web. Newspapers should be discussed in an entirely different light from music IMO.

<comment><USER3> last.fm has the very long and thick tail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My book went to press yesterday. The publisher did a whole lot more than just printing it, though. In fact, that might have been their easiest to replace function.

I think publishers will be relevant at least as long as published data is respected more than something I slap up on my website. Seriously, the wikipedia page on me can now be written without getting deleted for non- notability!

I never expected to make any money off this book (my co-author said "Literally, thousands of dollars!" when asked how much he expected to make.) so really, I chose to go through a publisher because editors and layout people have real value, and because a 'real publisher' adds a lot of credibility, which is my primary goal anyhow.

That is an interesting problem: without the publishers, who will function as the givers of credibility, the gatekeepers? Who will wikipedia cite?

edit: This is an example of a business model where the content is created for free and subsidized by it's side effects. I'm after a reputation, which I will then monetize through my regular business activities. I'm happy to essentially give away the time I spent writing this (hopefully useful) book.

In this case, my interests are mostly aligned with my readers; if the book isn't generally considered to be useful, or at least correct, then I don't get the reputation I wanted.

On the other hand, I could have done the same work, and hired editors out of my own money, then put the result on line. I would perhaps have reached more readers, but I would not have the added credibility of going through a gatekeeper of quality. And would I have been able to hire editors of the same quality? the clincher for me is the credibility, though. Until we have a better gatekeeper, I imagine this will keep authors using the biggest-name conventional publishers they can.

<comment><USER5> First, congratulations on your book.

Second, _That is an interesting problem: without the publishers, who will function as the givers of credibility, the gatekeepers? Who will wikipedia cite?_

This is an excellent question. But already some publishers are more respected than others. O'Reilly is generally well known in the publishing world and everything I have read from any of their author's has been of reasonably high quality. While others are hacks that will publish anything almost anything at all with almost no editing (and if the author is willing to pay, many will publish absolutely anything at all with absolutely no editing.)

Maybe some evolution of publishers will continue primarily as fact-checkers and editors of the information, and then make money through a combination of advertising or convenience aggregating.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. I'm ridiculously excited.

Yes, that's very true, and probably the single largest reason why I went with no-starch press rather than just distributing a pdf or the mediawiki. (well, that and it was no-starch who approached me, not the other way around.) Heck having copies printed probably wouldn't be that expensive, if I printed up a few hundred at a time. (I have access to cheap labor, a machine shop, and ebay. Tell me I couldn't bind a book myself.) They are a tier down from O'Reilly, but worlds above self-publishing, in terms of credibility.

I wonder if you could use the same incentive that we use to pay authors (which is to say, personal credibility and authority) to pay gatekeepers? I mean, there's nothing inherently expensive about doing it, you just need a person with good sense, good ethics, and a reasonable knowledge of the subject matter at hand.

<comment><USER5> _I wonder if you could use the same incentive that we use to pay authors (which is to say, personal credibility and authority) to pay gatekeepers? I mean, there's nothing inherently expensive about doing it, you just need a person with good sense, good ethics, and a reasonable knowledge of the subject matter at hand._

I somewhat doubt it. There are two problems: 1\. Even with authors, you can only get certain types to do that. Many technology books are written by professionals with a day job and they often are more worried about some combination of contributing to the community, improving their resume, getting personal recognition, etc than they are about money. This is not true about professional authors.

2\. To be effective, gatekeepers need to already have credibility and authority, so that is probably not the best of motivators for them. Also, someone needs to do the grunt work of fact checking and grammatical editing. Many people consider writing to be fun, but few consider fact checking fun and fewer still consider grammatical editing fun.

<comment><USER4> Hm. See, well, at least in the technical publishing arena, this is the case 'cause we already get paid a lot more than all but the most famous authors. Your average writer of non-technical books is probably going to make very little money, and the bar to get a non-technical book published, I think, is higher than a technical book, in terms of writing skill. (a technical book, if technically correct, can

editors and fact-checkers, from what I understand, make less than half what a competent computer janitor makes.

Both these facts would point at people willing to do editing, fact checking and writing for less than what they could get doing other things. (assuming that the attributes needed to be a good editor or author are not a lot more common than the attributes required to be a SysAdmin.)

Now, there is a lot of difference between doing something you like for not very much money, and doing it for free, so you might be correct that people won't do it unless there is at least some money, but I see evidence that people will do it for less money than they could get doing other things.

as for the 'chicken and egg' part of the credibility issue, you are certainly correct if the same gateway/content producer relationship as we have now continues, but there are other models, like the model hacker news and other aggrigators use. If creators 'publish' content themselves to the 'net, then the 'gateways' just link to the content they find credible.

Now, the question is "how does the aggrigator decide what links are worthy?" there are many ways to do this, but I suspect the best may end up being subject matter experts running small aggrigators that cover their own interests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are two major effects going on that are hurting publishers.

1\. Consumers don't need companies to move content around for them so much anymore. When companies were in charge of this job you could control them with things like copyright laws. Now you can't.

2\. Advertising is being turned upside down. A lot of advertising is/was probably really over inflated anyway, companies paying a lot for ads that don't do much for them. The move online exposed publishers to more competition & easier scrutiny. The online move may have made ads less valuable too. It's complicated and opaque. Advertising always has been that way. When a business model is built on advertising, you have two points of failure: People stop reading, advertisers stop advertising. Either one kills the whole thing.

Since these two things happening at the same time but aren't really related, a lot of people are going to understand things wrong. Lately a lot of journalists that are normally smart when covering politics or wars are covering 'The Fate of Publishing.' They are misreading a lot of things. Their interest was sparked when cheques started bouncing and their articles are an insight into the kind of mistakes smart people with a vested interest are going to make.

<comment><USER7> _"... When a business model is built on advertising, you have two points of failure: People stop reading, advertisers stop advertising. Either one kills the whole thing. ..."_

Excellent point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Give music away and make money from concerts and t-shirts."

David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame) has some very interesting remarks on the difficulty of doing this here: [http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2009/08/080809-edinburgh-so- ho...](http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2009/08/080809-edinburgh-so-how-does-it- work-on-the-bus.html)

Quote: "In the past, live shows were viewed as loss leaders to sell albums"

The article (like everything on Bryne's blog) is interesting throughout, and well worth reading.

<comment><USER6> I think people misunderstand this recommendation a lot of the time. It doesn't mean that concerts are actually more lucrative then records ever were. That would imply that the record industry of the past 50 years was stupid because concerts and t shirts were always available to them as a way to make money. Concerts are a less good way of making money then records were but records are a worse way of making money relative to the past. This is a trend. Records are getting worse all the time. At some point, it makes sense to switch to the second best thing, concerts.

One thing hasn't changed, this is a popularity business. That means that giving away or subsidising some stuff to sell others is likely to stay part of the game. One major difference between selling concert tickets and selling albums is the margin. A concert can happily use up the whole ticket take or more. Concerts that spend more can be better, so it's not like selling a zero marginal cost product.

Marginal cost considerations are something that needs to be considered by this new concert star crowd. That David Byrne post is elbow deep in that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm guessing pg isn't _that_ into movies. For me, there's no comparison to the theater experience.

Also, on "content" as undistinguished: <http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1743>

<comment><USER10> I'm into movies, and my home setup is way better than a theater.

<comment><USER11> What about screen size?

<comment><USER10> My screen is something like an 8-foot diagonal (I use a projector, and a screen that pulls down from the ceiling). Our couch is maybe 6-feet away from the screen. So yeah, it is big enough ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Excellent essay -- one comment though:

> Is software a counterexample?

No:

> There have always been people in the business of selling information, > _(...)_ People will pay for information they think they can make money from.

Software, it seems to me, is information that people think they can make money from. That's why Microsoft needs Windows on all new PCs (so it's a toll-booth to consumers), and student/home use versions of Office are very cheap -- only businesses will actually pay for it.

It's even more clearly seen in the graphical world -- I have yet to meet a non-professional with a legal copy of PhotoShop or any of the other Adobe flagship products.

<comment><USER13> You also get more than just the content (and the medium) when you purchase software:

a) Peace of mind that the software won't harm your computer. There are situations where it does harm your computer, but at least you have someone to blame or try to seek redress from. You can never quite trust an executable file you obtain from someone other than the publisher to the extent that you can a legal copy.

b) Somebody to help you if you have problems with the software.

c) If you are really lucky, people working to make your software better even after you've already paid for it.

These selling points may not be important to a lot of people here, but they do add value for some users, and "media" types of information don't offer them.

<comment><USER6> Basically, legal software can be better then pirated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _"Do you, er, want a printout of yesterday's news?"_

This line from the article shows a fundamental misunderstanding about the way many people see the newspaper business. Despite the name most good newspapers aren't so much about news (as in what happened) as they are about analysis (why it happened and what it might mean). I don't buy the Financial Times because I want a list of things that have happened the past 24 hours, but because I want to read what smart, knowledgeable people think about a subset of those things. That sort of analysis does not go stale over night. Going further, taking a cursory look across the whole business it seems that the relative health of various publications seems reasonably well correlated to the amount of effort the place in quality analysis as opposed to just writing down things that have happened.

In fact the reason I still buy (paper) newspapers and magazines is that they still seem to be the only people doing good solid analysis.

<comment><USER15> Anyone can produce "analysis". Watch the cable news sometime--it's 100% "analysis" because only three facts have come out in the last hour, and they have a dozen people on call to give "analysis" of this "breaking news". Analysis is cheap. With more and more people offering this analysis for free, you'd think it'd be easier in the long run to just filter all of this freely available analysis and you'd end up with something just as good as if you paid the Financial Times.

Facts, however, are in short supply. Discovering a surprising fact or two is good journalism. "The CIA has secret prisons in Eastern Europe to imprison suspected terrorists". "The Watergate Hotel break-in was orchestrated by members of Nixon's re-election campaign". But facts like that are hard to get. The only people who'd pay for those facts are the political opponents of whoever they embarrass, which means if both parties are implicated you can cover things up. Also, political opponents will pay just as much for a convincing lie as they will for the truth.

"More data beats a better algorithm" is just as true for journalism. Yes, I'm sure the Financial Times does a good job analyzing the same shallow set of data we can all get for free. I'm sure they do a better job than most other places do. But analysis is what most of the media does. They scrape press releases and the like as hard as they can, never looking for more facts.

At some point, journalism is a public good. But, uniquely among public goods, it cannot be provided by the government because journalism often operates in opposition to the government.

<comment><USER16> I'm sure dagw would not agree with your description of cable news as analysis. I think he/she is trying to say that newspaper analysis by respectable papers is worth a lot, and it won't lose it's value overnight. People still value NYT because it is respectable and offers great analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Content still matters for the very simple reason that the lack of decent content means you don't have an audience to sell to advertisers - imagine if the Economist's only rival was a website written by middle school geeks.

It is, effectively, the central overhead to the media industry - as high a quality as cheap as possible to get as many eyes and ears (and fingers, for braille readers) as you can. Online media's winning out because the "cheap as possible" part of that equation is Very Cheap Indeed, without having to sacrifice the slightest bit of quality.

But, yes. It's the quantity of audience that determines profitability, not quality of content. So now we're stuck with the dilemma as to how to make advertising presentation a high-quality content unto itself - a nontrivial balancing act between advertiser and reader expectations.

</comment><comment><USER18> "I never watch movies in theaters anymore. The tipping point for me was the ads they show first"

But some of the DVDs have this annoyance as well.

<comment><USER19> Not if you use VLC...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _"... What would a content site look like if you started from how to make money? ..."_ ~ <http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html>

If you start from this statement and read the rest of the article I think it's a good start to better understand the parameters of the article. Post-medium publishing is an area I'm working on and I must say reading this article gives me another way to think about the problem.

 _"... If free copies of your content are available online, then you're competing with publishing's form of distribution, and that's just as bad as being a publisher ..."_

Instead of looking how to make money I was looking at _"solving a what users want"_ and still exploring the _"and willing to pay for"_ bit. In this case users want _"instructions"_ to build stuff but the cost of magazine producers is pretty high and the alternatives are primitive. Not making the "instructions" free or at least freeium-ish means a _"chicken and the egg problem"_ ~ <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000054.html>

So I'll have to explore these problems from a couple of different perspectives. Having read the article though I can think of how to get users to pay by letting others create, use or modify as well as access to tools and low-rez _"instructions"_.

One example I can think of post-medium publishing is <http://stackoverflow.com> but I didn't see the same emphasis on how to make money. Just making SO the place to look for technical programming answers.

I do like the way you identify readers who pg has passed to read the article. It's like looking at the names on papers circulated at post-grad level to see who's read the latest ideas.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is this pg giving more hints at a possible implementation of RFS 1? (<http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html>)

That would imply that no one has approached him with a satisfactory solution. This article seems to indicate that the solution is to simply give content away and figure out a better way to make money off advertising. That's a little more boring than I was hoping for, but sometimes boring ideas work.

I'm going to keep my mind churning on something more creative... just in case.

<comment><USER21> Here is what I think he might be getting at:

Advertisement is not a very effective form of marcomm because people tune it out, and if they don't, they don't believe what the ads say anyway.

PR is much more effective. Part of the reason is that if you can make your piece look like a regular article, that in itself makes it more believable. But the other part is that sometimes PR pieces are genuinely useful for the recipient.

If I were in the market for a new _x_ , I think I'd want to read the reviews of _x_ s, even if some of them are paid for by manufacturers of _x_ s.

Fake Steve often makes fun of the Apple "flaks" and the "hacks" that print the "flaks"s output, but I think many people in the market for Apple products actually like reading the gushing stories about Apple.

If PR is the new advertising, then an obvious way to fix the newspapers is to make the relationship with PR companies explicit and charge for it. It's not deceptive if the readers want it and you don't try to hide what you are doing. Charging to make product reviews is one possibility. Offering to write stories about any topic for payment is another, which would make you a direct competitor to PR companies.

There is a balance between making high-quality, independent content and making for-pay content that must be carefully managed, but this is not really all that different from today's print media that range from all-ads newspapers with minimal and very crappy journalistic content, to media with high quality journalistic content and almost no ads.

A company doing this should probably never offer a _positive_ review for cash, and never offer a _positive_ spin on a topic. Only ever offer _a_ review or _a_ story, with payment due regardless of whether the customer likes it or not. In the end, this would be in the interest of the customers anyway, even though they might not believe that at first.

<comment><USER22> Very interesting idea, but not at all what I had in mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> People pay more for "bootcamps" than they do for "seminars." So even pure information product sellers like stock tip newsletter operators have always known that packaging and format plays as big if not a bigger role than the content itself.

Anyhow - lets look at the key elements that go into successful information / content selling.

1.

Advertising.

Advertising has always been the chief device. Information product sellers like Tony Robbins made their fortunes on top of aggressive advertising!

Google et al have covered this online ad model well. And companies like InMobi are doing well to cover the ad model for the mobile market.

2.

Direct Distribution

What of folks who couldn't advertise? New comic book publishers had a hard time selling their books . Until Phil Seuling came and developed a direct market distribution system in 1970s for comics by connecting specialty shops. And organizing Comic book Conventions.

Amazon - by getting kindle into the hands of millions - has created a direct distribution device for books. iTunes has created a nice marketplace for music.

But I see a huge opportunity over here for someone who can create an entire ecosystem for direct distribution for other types of content. News. Blog posts. Art work.

</comment><comment><USER24> I must admit that I thought pg missed the ball on this one (he's usually spot on). He is right, content is something I don't need, but I usually want. Likewise, most things advertised alongside content is stuff I also don't need.

What makes content difficult to sell is that there is a business model around giving it away. This is due to one large reason: the cost of distribution of content on the internet approaches zero.

Now at this point pg may say, "exactly, because you were selling the paper before". No, not exactly, you were selling the content and the cost of distribution (which is a different thing). It's why I can't give away water with advertising on it. The cost of physically distributing it will eat into any profits I make on the advertising.

When you look at it from this position you see that nothing has really changed from the pre-internet days. You simply have the cost of production/distribution of a product versus its selling price + indirect revenue (advertising and such).

<comment><USER7> _"... It's why I can't give away water with advertising on it. The cost of physically distributing it will eat into any profits I make on the advertising. ..."_

I can think of a lot of plastic bottled drinking water that invalidates this.

<comment><USER24> Really? Who is doing this and making money on it? If there are margins on it, someone is doing it. Otherwise it's a shining billion dollar opportunity.

Of course the other problem is getting it in the channel. People who also sell Pepsi/Coke will probably be discouraged from giving away your product. You could target places like hospitals, parks, events, etc...

In any case, I'd love to see the companies who can do this.

<comment><USER4> <http://customwaterworkz.com/>

If I wasn't running out of server space faster than I could buy new servers already, I'd have bought a bunch of those for the last opensourceworld tradeshow.

<comment><USER24> Cool. I guess given that people carry 8-16oz bottles of water makes this feasible (lots of advertising surface area for a small amount of water). Better example, I can't give away dirt with advertising on it. There you probably cross the line between cost of production+distribution versus advertising revenue (note, these examples are heavy on the distribution side to attempnt to mimic the apparently free cost of content generation).

<comment><USER4> yeah. and the water thing only works if you can target relatively high-value customers. But at $0.50 or so a 'click' if you are at a tradeshow or some other concentration of 'high value' customers, it's probably a better deal than paying as much for adwords.

Adwords itself is an example of how some companies are willing to pay tens of dollars per 'click' for advertising. Branded dirt won't usually work, but it might at a nursery tradeshow.

But yeah, nothing but 'free content' is going to work if you are spamming the masses with your advertising. But, I believe that many content creators are willing to create content to advertise themselves. Especially in the technical world, writing has almost no hope of paying the same as technical work, but people still do it.

I suspect the problem will not be that nobody is willing to write content for free, but that we need a new way of vetting the good, credible content from the bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think one interesting dynamic is that publishers have visibility. I am mostly thinking about books. There are book clubs and book reviewers. I wonder how many people buys a book just because it's on Oprah's Book Club. (apparently, a lot, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprah_Book_Club>). And then my next guess is that there are PR people at the publishers that push reviewers and book clubs to endorse their book.

I think you can draw an analogy with content aggregators like Digg or Reddit. There too many books for the average person to consume so they look to some book club or reviewer to tell them what they should consume. I believe the publishing dynamic may change if a book "content aggregator" received a wide following.

Is there a digg (or reddit!) for books? If not, someone here want to create one? :)

</comment><comment><USER26> I feel it's appropriate to mention our humble news/daily content start-up in a meta-publishing thread. We're recruiting a team of people who enjoy writing for a one-day proof-of-concept effort, and if the experiment works it's angels, YC and beyond. If you are a news addict you'll probably have fun. E-mail is in my profile.

<comment><USER27> No it's not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Has your opinion of the Kindle changed, pg? You used to think that in ten years it would be a forgotten curiosity.

<comment><USER22> Not really. I think they'll be superseded by whatever little device people carry around to browse the web. E.g. the Apple tablet.

<comment><USER29> This is true for me. My Kindle2 has been gathering dust since I bought an iPhone. I wouldn't be surprised if others behaved the same way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As usual, I agree wholly with pg, but I think he is ignoring a very significant fringe group.

People are willing to pay for good information/entertainment/content on a tip or tip-like basis, especially if the author(s) is a frequent publisher they can maintain a long term relationship of some form with.

The online experiments of NiN is one example. Perhaps a more apropos one is ArsTechnica. They sell advertising and also premium subscriptions. They do reserve some content for the premium subscriptions and they turn on a few extra features of the site, but I suspect the vast majority of their subscribers think of it as a "tip-like" payment rather than thinking that little bit extra is worth the subscription amount.

</comment><comment><USER30> In "Reinventing Comics," Scott McCloud talks about how digitized information leads to result that all our content becomes "unpackaged" from their original mediums - a comic, a piece of writing, a pop song, and a movie don't all have to be treated in fundamentally different ways anymore.

I think that in turn, this opens the door to a lot of creative possibilities for mix+match usage of media. It suggests an approach to publishing which is equally unwedded to particular mediums.

</comment><comment><USER31> I agree with you PG completely. There was another blog post by Albert(USV) [http://continuations.com/post/190217323/the-web-and- educatio...](http://continuations.com/post/190217323/the-web-and-education-we- need-scale) about missing scalability solution in education, where content is extremely expensive. It is going to change very soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> As for "printed yesterday's news". I regularly spot things (mostly research and interesting facts) on NH which I've read in Computerra about, half year ago.</comment>