Ask HN: single founders – how do you do it? - <AUTHOR>

I've been full-time on my startup for about a year now, and though I'm getting the hang of the wild ups-and-downs, it can be exhausting to bounce from client-side to backend to design to marketing to press. When you're faced with a bunch of rejection on top of all the stuff you normally have to do, how do you keep going? And if/when you burn out, how do you recover? <comment><USER2> There's one key point to everyone's comments thus far, I'll just reiterate it: _This is a marathon, not a sprint_. Work too hard, too fast, or too long, you'll burn out and get discouraged, quit and say that it doesn't work.

I have a full time job and work on my two WordPress plugins on the side. I make sure that every day I accomplish at least one thing relevant to them or something I'm starting.

Just one thing. It seems so easy, and yet, there have been days I got distracted, bored, busy, or just plain uninspired and didn't do it. Those days are the ones that I wish I had back.

If you make progress on something every day, even a _teensy tiny bit_ , you will head toward your goal. Progress does NOT mean:

\- Reading HN

\- Tweeting about your business

\- Looking at Facebook

\- Reading business books

These are _distractions (for the most part)._ And they're GREAT sometimes. But we tend to overindulge and think we're making progress because we read 5 new articles about X on HN today and feel "invigorated". That feeling will fade. You need to do something sustainable.

 _Action is sustainable_. Visible progress can be tracked on a daily basis. After 30 days, you can look back and see a LONG list of things YOU DID. That's inspiring. And it makes you want to do MORE. And MORE.

Once you have momentum, the other key thing you need IMO, is a trusted person to bounce ideas off of. Someone who won't listen to your bullshit, only someone who will listen and call it like it is, not how you want to see it. Most friends are bad for this--they will be an echo chamber. You need honesty. Not ego stroking. This is HARD. It is VALUABLE as hell, too.

Those two things will make a huge difference in getting you moving forward. That's what I rely on daily.

<comment><USER3> Great comment! I'd like to add to the points you made based on my experience.

-To stay focused, I set and obey time limits on researching startup advice and studying the domain of my startup.

-Everyday I write in a journal, among other things, about one great decision I made the previous day. This has helped me to consciously make better decisions. Therefore, more often than not, I decide to act/build rather than just think about something relative to my startup.

-Fortunately I'm not a single founder this time, but I have been on multiple past projects. A great friend of mine from college has agreed to co-found my current startup with me. One of the most important advantages I've gained is having someone that I trust and respect who can discuss ideas with candor. Try to find someone like this, even if they're not your co-founder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great thread andkon. I'm essentially a single founder, but I have a contract dev and there is always so much to do. There is a lot of good advice here already, but to me, the marathon analogy is best. In other words, take the long view.

I know a man who built an engineering company up from nothing to a billion dollar exit over 30 years. I'm in week one of having my app available to the world.

Am I in a hurry? No. I have a long time to build a business. I cannot live or die each DAY/WEEK/MONTH based on users who joined, or users who left, or any other metric. Good Luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a wonderful way of looking at it. I'm gonna strive to remember that timeframe. Good luck to you too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a single founder. For me it's a marathon not a sprint so I make sure I work at a sustainable pace: I start and finish at the same time each day (perhaps ironically given that there's no boss holding me to fixed hours) and I do my best to exercise every day.

I also make it a priority to chat to friends who work in "normal" jobs. It helps remind me that what I'm doing is quite unusual, which is motivating, and also reminds me it's just a job – which is easy to forget when it all depends on you – so I shouldn't worry about it too much.

I try to celebrate the small victories each day to keep motivated in the face of multiple rejections, and I try to complete whatever task I'm working on before switching to something else altogether.

There's no magic formula though – it depends on who you are. I suppose you just need to ensure you don't put your life on hold. Make sure you keep doing what you enjoy doing (in terms of hobbies etc) regularly and often.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a journey, don't forget to live. Work regular hours and make time for friends & family. Make sure you get exercise, sunlight and fresh air. Believe in your vision. Setup a positive feedback drip

On a positive feedback drip: Set a reasonable small milestone. Hit it, celebrate, set the next one.

On vision: You probably have a vision that's based on a number of assumptions. As you move forward, some of those assumptions will turn out to be false. You'll be forced to re-think, adapt and evolve the vision. That vision is a moving target, but as long you can see it, you know where to go next. As long as you can see it, all hope is not lost.

p.s. I'm local, feel free to reach out over email (on website)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here - I wanted to thank y'all for the great advice so far, and I wanted to share one thing that has helped me a lot: founder's breakfasts.

We get together once every two weeks and hold one another accountable. I bring donuts. Everyone shares a good thing and a bad thing that happened, explains what they accomplished and failed to accomplish, and commits to what they'll complete next time.

One thing: it helps to make sure everyone in the room is at a similar stage, or at very least working on product-focused startups (or all ecommerce, or whatever). That way there's a lot more value in hearing what other folks are going through.

<comment><USER2> Basically, you've described a Mastermind group. :) It need not be in-person, though. I have one, and we're scattered across the US. You definitely want to have somewhat similar timezones if you go remote, just because it's easier to schedule things. More than 3 hours time difference and someone is eating lunch when another is getting dinner ready, etc.

Gotta keep things simple to make them successful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for putting a name to that! A search for 'Mastermind group' got me a few things to tweak for next time. Part of the focus of our group is geographical - we're all in Toronto, and Toronto startups have some specific problems because of the cultural (read: overly polite) landscape we're a part of, but I could see this working well over skype.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to hear the responses to this since I am in a similar position. I was accepted to a startup accelerator at UPenn and have been working full-time the past 8 weeks both learning to code and building the application. Before that, I was working part-time for about 2 months while holding a job.

Lately, I've been in a massive rut and have serious doubts seeing if I have what it takes to make my startup succeed. It is mostly due to the technical side since I'm just graduating a bootcamp but I feel my energy and drive waining.

<comment><AUTHOR> I also had to learn to code to get my startup off the ground; it took a while and was painful, no doubt about that. Eventually I realized that coding is a process that I could enjoy if I let myself. Same with all the other things I do day to day.

But 8 weeks? That's it? You have a long way to go. It took me about that long to get to where I was good enough to create a basic app on my own. Building a business on top of your coding abilities takes much longer, so try to focus on what you have accomplished. It will always (ALWAYS) take longer than you'd think to get where you'd want to be, so just repeat what everyone else in this thread has been saying: it's a marathon, not a sprint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Give yourself goals and meaningful/relevant success metrics for various periods (week/month/3 month). Hack the system to constantly push that number up by engaging in activities that are high levered. This will keep you motivated and become an objective measure of progress. Everything else is time management and a holistic exercise in maturity, spirituality, and general wellness. It's entirely doable and an amazing experience. Feel free to reach out.</comment>


Show HN: "Qu" – an app to geek out, ask questions, get answers about Tech News - <AUTHOR> http://askqu.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys,

Would love to get your feedback on my app, Qu.

It's a place for technology lovers to geek out, ask questions and get answers about the latest in tech news.

The difference between Qu and other Q&A sites is that it's designed to be very lightweight. The focus is on voting and knowing a very clear yes / no % on where you stand vs others.

[http://askqu.co/](http://askqu.co/)

I love sites like reddit and HN, but sometimes reading through a long list of comments is time consuming and often hard to sum up where the overall opinion on a topic stands. That's why I made Qu!

Any and all feedback welcome!

Thanks all!

</comment><comment><USER2> This is pretty fun and interesting. there is something great about the up/down mechanic on many leading sites. I wonder if there is a way to distill down just that mechanic -- Qu is close!

</comment><comment><USER3> The screenshots look surprisingly similar to something I am developing in quasi stealth mode. And much nicer. I will not look at the functionality too closely.

Will have to hurry now...

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if this will eat away some of the time I spend on HN and if it'll stick. I'll give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use this app almost every day. Highly addictive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey anguspm! so glad you like the app. What do you think makes it addictive? anything I can improve on? Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hilarious and surprisingly informative. New standard of quick polling</comment>


How to speed up your computer using Google Drive as extra RAM - <AUTHOR> http://drusepth.net/how-to-speed-up-your-computer-using-google-drive-as-extra-ram/ <comment><USER2> This is meaningless technobabble.

"dislodge the nimbus bit"? "your RAM's syntactic DRM package"? It's already been criticized here: [https://plus.google.com/+DerekRoss/posts/XXwcq4ooT1a](https://plus.google.com/+DerekRoss/posts/XXwcq4ooT1a)

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought it was hilarious.

And clearly intentionally so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is this an attempt to get published with one of those autogenerated gibberish papers?

[http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more- than-120...](http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more- than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763)

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it's satire. Presumably written by a bored techie, fed up of seeing one- too-many "Speed up your computer, with this one weird trick!" links.</comment></comment>


SpaceX Profitable as Musk Pulls in NASA Contracts, Google Cash - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/spacex-profitable-as-musk-pulls-in-nasa-contracts-google-cash <comment><USER2> If SpaceX can fly out their 2015 manifest, that will be impressive. This is the year the Falcon Heavy is supposed to launch. Their first manned flight has apparently been postponed; it's been "2-3 years" away for 2 years now.[1]

I notice they've stopped putting dates on their manifest for future flights.[2][3] SpaceX is doing a great job, but they're behind their own schedule. They're two flights behind on ISS resupply, and launched less in 2014 than they'd planned. They may be having scaling problems with their organization. They have a a product and customers, but can't meet demand. This may get better once they get their own spaceport in Texas finished.

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20130802104411/http://www.spacex...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130802104411/http://www.spacex.com/dragon) [2] [https://web.archive.org/web/20141030024140/http://www.spacex...](https://web.archive.org/web/20141030024140/http://www.spacex.com/missions) [3] httpd://www.spacex.com/missions

<comment><USER3> How will the spaceport in Texas help?

<comment><USER4> The spaceport is being built specifically to accommodate SpaceX rockets. The idea is to have the rocket automatically fueled when it gets docked, use robotics to stand things up, and add a bit more automation to the overall process. There are a few articles about it online, but I just found this one from Bloomberg: [http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-07-11/elon- musks-f...](http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-07-11/elon-musks- futuristic-spaceport-is-coming-to-texas)

It's not the be-all and end-all of space stations, but it's better than something that was built decades ago for a previous generation of vehicle.

<comment><USER5> I don't believe launches from the Cape have enough fuel to boost back to Boca Chica though, do they?

<comment><USER6> Correct, also they are not allowed to overfly land.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love how the writer phrased Google's incentive for investing as "Google has a practical goal in linking up with SpaceX. It wants to beam the Internet to hard-to-reach regions of the planet so it can take in more advertising revenue."

While...

"'Space-based applications, like imaging satellites, can help people more easily access important information, so we're excited to support SpaceX's growth,' Google spokesman Aaron Stein said in a statement."

<comment><USER8> Agreed, it's a bit silly to assume that all Google cares about is ad revenue. Plus, improving internet accessibility and making more revenue aren't mutually exclusive. Why do self driving cars? Def no ad revenue there.

<comment><USER9> I agree with you completely until

> Why do self driving cars? Def no ad revenue there.

Sure there is. Many people commute in their cars for 1-2 hours per day, when it is illegal for them to look at ads on their smartphone. If Google makes this legal, it's another 10%ish increase in the waking hours that people may be clicking on their ads.

I think that Google's ambitions are a lot higher than this, of course. Self- driving cars will be a lucrative business for them in numerous ways. And increased ad revenue will be one of them.

<comment><USER10> The business model in a self-driving car is THE SELF-DRIVING CAR...

<comment><USER11> ... unless they're interested in taking in a loss for each vehicle or only selling to the richest people in the world.

<comment><USER12> The business model for the self-driving car is a computer-scheduled, dynamically-provisioned taxi service cheap enough that nobody needs to own a car in the city. Because self-driving cars don't need to park (they can just move on to the next assignment or deprovision), if they catch on then in-city parking decks can be redeveloped into business space or park space.

<comment><USER13> You forget transportation of goods. Pretty much all over-land cargo in the U.S. and most of that elsewhere (less so, because trains) could be transported by self-driving cars/drones. Not sure if that is larger or smaller than transportation of people at this point, but it's still an astronomically huge market.

<comment><USER14> US is actually pretty big in freight trains.

Mostly because, freight and passenger trains interfere badly. No passengers = easier freight. A big wave of deregulation of the market a few decades ago helped, too. The Economist ran a special about the US market a few years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Makes no sense, SpaceX has been profitable almost every year they've been in business. Musk & Jurvetson are on record multiple times of SpaceX's profitability and how the aerospace industry is uniquely structured that way.

Edit: The article doesn't even mention any rep from SpaceX saying they're profitable. This SEEMS like a guesstimate by the writer

<comment><USER15> Companies have multiple definitions of profitability which they use for the desired effect.

<comment><USER16> True, this is what the field of accounting theory is all about: how do you best represent the finances of a company? The best way to do so depends heavily on the type of company you're talking about and who wants to know the information, but many companies choose to keep multiple sets of books--one that follows the IRS's rules (this one is required), one that follows the SEC's rules (required if they are a publicly traded corporation), one for non- public investors, and one used internally allows management to make strategic decisions and departments to make plans.

The existence of various ways of considering the finances of a corporation don't necessarily mean that any one method is "wrong". But when you get into questions of "is it profitable?" The answer depends a lot on who's asking.

In any one month, more money may go out of your checking account than came in, but does that mean you lost money that month? Maybe some of the outgoing money was paying for a year's worth of an expensive service, or was an investment in some other company, or was the purchase of some assets that will allow you to become more productive. In those cases, while your cash flow may be negative, you can keep a set of books that spreads the cost of a year's worth of service over the entire year, even if you pay it all at once on January 1. Or a building you might want to spread the cost out over the duration of any loans you took out to pay for part of it, or if you paid cash, you still may want to spread the expense out over the 15 year expected lifetime of the asset.

Obviously the IRS and SEC rules have to be pretty standard across the board, but within any particular industry or business model, a different representation may provide investors or management with a more accurate picture than the IRS or SEC rules would allow.

Obviously all of these can be abused, and investors should be skeptical and do due diligence, but even 100% honest businesses may report a loss to the IRS, a profit to investors, and a break-even for the SEC. They aren't necessarily trying to scam anyone.

<comment><USER17> > _In any one month..._

Pretty much everything you mention in this paragraph is covered by accounting rules a student would learn in year 1. Cash flow isn't profitability. Spending on assets is capitalized, and they depreciate according to rules, not what you "may want" to do.

Yes, there is always some leeway to play fast and loose with accounting, and companies are always trying "adjust" earnings to suit to their business model. 4 times out of 5, it's horsecrap. That's why we have GAAP.

<comment><USER18> Sure, but to take depreciation as an example, the rules do not necessarily match reality. Sometimes an asset's practical life is longer than the rules allow, sometimes it is less. These factors do not just depend on the asset, itself, they depend on how the asset is used. If a company goes under, the resale value of the asset may be worth more or less than its carrying value depending on outside economic conditions, technology changes, or what have you. Even the most earnest accountant can get things very wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >> "SpaceX Profitable as Musk Pulls in NASA Contracts, Google Cash"

Re: Google investment of $1B. I'm not an accountant, but when did taking investment money constitute making a business "profitable"?

<comment><USER20> I had to reread as well. The 'as' separates the events. ( but how else can I get hot terms like SpaceX, Google, NASA, Musk and Profitable in a title!)

think 'John types on the keyboard at his house as Jeff arrives to work'

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Good to see an independent company do this. The only way space will be open to world is for it not to be shacked in the hands of governments; nor should it ever get stuck away as a corporate only endeavor. Let countries do the hard science, the exploration part, and step out of the way when someone else can do the mundane, especially when there are savings to be reaped

</comment><comment><USER22> I didn't realize the cost of fuel is only $200-$300k for a space launch. That's ridiculously low considering it costs more than that in fuel to cross the Atlantic ocean in a 100-foot yacht.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have to wonder, if Elon Musk is alive on earth today, what's the use of me?

He's done pretty much everything I wanted to do in life, only a little less efficiently, and much faster.

What's the point?

<comment><USER24> This is an unnecessarily depressing way to see things. What you should believe is that your dreams are not meant for you. They are meant for someone much like you who probably doesn't exist yet. Someone who will actually understand what you've done and how you've helped them achieve what you would like to.

You will die, and someone else will follow in your footsteps. Make sure that person has what they need to live the life you wanted, because you're probably the only person who really knows what that is worth.

<comment><USER23> That's taking the long view, and it makes sense. I guess I'll have to find someone who can use my work, and then go die.

Does anyone want a small robotics company?

<comment><USER25> No, but can I work there? At least for a little bit? Always wanted to do something hands on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> When's the IPO?

<comment><USER9> SpaceX will IPO when their Mars Colonial Transporter is making regular trips between Earth and Mars. Elon thinks that taking the company public before then would result in a potential derailment of Mars colonization plans. Having MCT making regular Earth-Mars trips before going public will ensure that quarterly-return-investors won't try to interfere with sending millions of people to go live on Mars.

Citation: [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/342566837852200960](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/342566837852200960)

<comment><USER27> I think we can all read that as "not in my lifetime", though I may just be a pessimist.

<comment><USER9> MCT should be flying its first trips in about 15 years (Elon says 10-12, so we add some). So I'd guess IPO in around 15-20 years. The real colonization effort will probably be getting going in 20-25 years. SpaceX will want to send about 80,000 people each year (or each launch window), and that scale is probably 30-40 years away.

Most of us will see SpaceX go to Mars. And optimistically, I think many of us will go too.

<comment><USER27> Who is going to pay for it, though? If Musk is then, okay, maybe. But if he's counting on Congress to pony up the cash it may never happen at all. Probably won't, in fact.

<comment><USER9> Elon will not wait for Congress. Who will pay for it?

1\. The people who want to move there - target price $500k USD.

$500,000 is the estimated price at which the demand is estimated at 80,000 tickets. Elon figures that if the price of moving to Mars is comparable to buying a home in California, the number of people who could afford to go and would want to go is ~80,000. So that's ~$40B or so.

2\. Elon - maybe worth $50-100B by then?

If we assume that SolarCity and Tesla will continue to grow for the next 10-20 years, then Elon's net worth will probably be ~$50B or so. Not enough to fund a full Mars colony, but it'd be a really good start.

3\. Satellite internet profits

The recently announced satellite internet effort by SpaceX, financed by Google and Fidelity, is intended to provide high-speed, low-latency global internet access to billions of people. Elon expects to be able to fund part of the Mars colonization project with profits from that.

4\. NASA / Congress

NASA already expects to spend many billions on making trips to Mars. It does not seem unlikely that, in 20 years, they would be willing to join some efforts and allocate $10-30B towards Mars colonization with SpaceX.

5\. VCs and billionaires.

The Martian economy may have a rough start but will probably grow wildly once established. SpaceX already attracts VC funds in the billions from large firms and billionaires, and this will certainly be amplified in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How could you not be profitable with NASA contracts and Google cash?

</comment><comment><USER29> so tax payers are padding Elon's pocket book. If a NASA official made that much, people would complain.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have trouble trusting business statements from companies in the space industry. They play in a world of secrets, classified technologies and continuous background checks. At every launch, over in the corner, sits a uniformed member of the US military and a switch. That switch is to destroy the rocket should it run off course.

SpaceX might be profitable today. It might be very profitable tomorrow. But because of the classified nature of the industry that can change in a heartbeat. Fall out of favour with certain government agencies and suddenly that constant stream of background checks slows, deadlines get missed, and profits become loss. There are many fingers on many kill switches.

Maybe the company is or will be a great success, but that success comes only with permission. Investors beware: Balance sheets are only half the story. The other half is not open for inspection.

<comment><USER31> Well the reason for that is because they're given exclusive access to basically launch a missile from US airspace. With a mere change of payload, that rocket can be used to deliver a nuclear warhead. So yeah, it's pretty prudent to have background checks, massive amounts of oversight, and many kill switches. An even if you have all the best intentions, it doesn't take that much to accidentally crash into the ISS and kill everyone aboard. Look at all the maneuvers SpaceX had to do to prove they were capable of docking with the ISS.

Sure, politics comes into play. But the idea of a less-regulated spaceflight industry doesn't seem feasible anytime soon. Even the airline industry is still heavily regulated compared to even automobiles. That's just the risk associated with the massive inherent dangers associated with flight.

<comment><USER32> To be fair, it's pretty improbable to accidentally hit the ISS. It takes really precise maneuvers and calculations to get there on purpose.

<comment><USER33> I think the case would be more like you accidentally used the thrusters too much at the last minute and tore a hole in ISS. Or your docking mechanism failed horribly and showed safe when it was not safe</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible for anyone to be a mentor for me? - <AUTHOR>

Hi! I am a beginner Cocoa developer and I would like someone to be a mentor for me. I just need someone who can tell me if I ask how a certain functionality can be achieved. I am decently good at objective-C and I am creating an open-source linear programming solver. I have the library  ready and I just need someone who can guide me to create the GUI. I swear I am not going to ask you the basic questions. My questions will be mainly about implementing certain features like best way to hook up a function to a view etc. <comment><USER2> Ok, I'll chat anyway. :-)

I implemented a linear programming solver for iOS in the form of Cocoa Auto Layout, and the app I'm working on now, [http://understudyapp.com](http://understudyapp.com) is kind of about mentoring (it does videochat with a whiteboard).

My email is my username at gmail.</comment>


Planimeter – a mechanical device to measure surface of arbitrary shaped areas - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_k_0hRpOA4 <comment><AUTHOR> Also here - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planimeter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planimeter)</comment>


I'm Sorry Mr. Zuckerberg, but You Are Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://shift.newco.co/im-sorry-mr-zuckerberg-but-you-are-wrong-65dbf8513424#.knjwoahk9 <comment><USER2> ...and the mask comes off. It seems that the writer isn't actually concerned with "fake news", but demands that Facebook censor "opinion pieces" negative of his candidate. Amazing that he thinks this is somehow strengthening his case!

</comment><comment><USER3> Of course he is wrong - and he knows it full well. But he would be foolish to accept responsibility for the election, especially since he doesn't have a way to solve the issue without making Facebook worse for users. After all, most of us enjoy seeing our opinions validated by our friends, and the stories we read, regardless of their accuracy.

Facebook is already alienating some users with the recent barrage of advertising, no need to open a new front!</comment>


Tech Support Market? - <AUTHOR>

Hey all! I was just wondering how everyone feels regarding the tech support market as is? Just collecting some thoughts at the moment, but was wondering what people were frustrated with or actually enjoyed! Any experiences? <comment><USER2> What tech support market? I thought Google Search was it!

I have never encountered tech support that was acceptable. The phone jockeys typically have very little real knowledge and they assume that the caller knows even less than they do. Vendors treat tech support as a cost centre and even if you pay up for some plan, it hardly gets any better.

I'm sure tech support could be improved, but the costs will probably escalate to the point that very few people will be willing to pay it.

<comment><AUTHOR> @CyberFonic

Do you have any experience with Geek Squad or customer support tickets?</comment></comment>


Trump University's Online Materials Are a Lot Better Than Your University's - <AUTHOR> http://hapgood.us/2016/03/08/trump-universitys-online-materials-are-a-lot-better-than-your-universitys-online-materials/ <comment><USER2> wow, quite a surprise

<comment><USER3> The guy is a billionaire. He probably had more hits than misses</comment></comment>


Graphcool – Serverless GraphQL Back End - <AUTHOR> https://www.graph.cool/ <comment><USER2> This is a super exciting release and I'm really excited to see the community go in this direction, specifically the ability to add more sophisticated, custom capabilities to the server. GraphQL is a client-server dance that needs server-side capabilities, not just CRUD semantics.

It is also surreal to see GraphQL go from the first prototype system I wrote five years ago to where it is today. I'm so impressed with the players in the community and its humbling to see so many people take the ecosystem to new heights.

Congratulations to the whole Graphcool team on this awesome milestone!

<comment><USER3> Thank you so much for your support and most important of all, your great work on GraphQL. Without your (and others') great ideas, Graphcool (and many other tools & services) wouldn't exist today.

We've written up a blog post about how we think an architecture combining GraphQL and serverless functions could look like on the backend: [https://www.graph.cool/docs/blog/introducing-the- serverless-...](https://www.graph.cool/docs/blog/introducing-the-serverless- graphql-backend-architecture-ahde7paig2/)

P.S. we're also currently on Product Hunt and appreciate any kind of support :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been playing with this for the last hour and I must say it is a beautifully-designed experience throughout. I've seen quite a few BaaS (Backend as a Service) products debut on HN, and I'd usually play around with them for 5 minutes and then throw them into a bookmarks folder. What really got me engaged here was the many examples, the excellent documentation, and the gorgeous interface.

You really hit that dopamine rush in a developer's mind when they imagine the possibilities. I think that was a really powerful effect that Firebase had with me and I see it here too. Really awesome platform and can't wait to see where it goes!

<comment><USER5> Thank you so much! A lot of work has gone into the onboarding experience, so it is great to see that it is working. I just gathered everybody on the team to show them your comment :-)

<comment><USER6> Sorenbs - would you recommend Graph.cool to a beginner? It's between GraphQL and REST API and I only have a basic understanding of REST API.

I was thinking of using React.js + Graph.cool with a Node.js server to handle subscriptions and background tasks/calculations

<comment><USER5> Hi Blackstone4 :-) I would definitely recommend you use Graphcool if you are just getting started with GraphQL. People in our slack are super friendly, so you can get help with questions around how to structure your data model, how to use the Apollo or Relay clients etc.

You should consider following one of our tutorials to get a jumpstart into GraphQL: [https://www.graph.cool/freecom/](https://www.graph.cool/freecom/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems well designed. But besides a startup in a rush for an MVP, who's in the market for a backend as a service?

Who wants to trust the most valuable part of their product to a third party start up that has a lot of potential to disappear from under your feat, is hard to move away from and might not be flexible enough to incorporate all your future use cases? I can't imagine selling this to any company I ever worked for.

<comment><USER5> Hi Kabes

You are raising a very valid point. You should always carefully consider pros and cons before choosing a third party provider.

The primary reason to build your product on Graphcool is speed of execution. Being able to deliver value quickly is important not just to startups, but also increasingly to enterprises getting squeezed in their core market. This is the reason companies adopt Graphcool.

We acknowledge the fear of lock-in. This is why we support open source GraphQL servers and work on standardising your project configuration as much as possible. For example, today we released the new Graphcool CLI that allows you to configure your project using the open IDL specification ([https://www.graph.cool/docs/faq/graphql-idl-schema- definitio...](https://www.graph.cool/docs/faq/graphql-idl-schema-definition- language-kr84dktnp0/)) We also make it very easy to export all your data - either as json, using the api or as a raw sql dump.

Does that answer your question?

<comment><USER8> Any plans for continous (read-only) direct database access? Without that, basically every modern BI solution can't be used. I think that besides the obvious lock-in, that's another big hinderance for building real products with Graphcool.

<comment><USER5> Hi hobofan :-)

This is something we are planning to support. We have two approaches, and I'm curious to hear what would work best for you.

1) Add an integration for selectively syncing data to s3. This would work very similar to the Algolia integration and allow you to transform the shape of your data. Tools like Athena and QuickSight can query directly against s3 buckets, and many other services can import data from s3.

2) Add the ability to provision a read replica and offer direct read-only sql access. This option would carry a higher fixed cost, so would not be appropriate for hobby projects.

<comment><USER9> 1) would a very good solution. It's adding the graph cool pieces to an existing data lake. From there anyone can do what she wants (Athena, Quicksight, Import into Redshift/BigQuery). Would love to see that.

BTW saw your talk today at AWS Summit in Berlin. Good job there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I feel like the term "Serverless" has been hijacked to a point that it will soon become meaningless just like "AI", "IoT", etc.

Basically "Serverless" in 2017 has become just a hype friendly marketing friendly way of saying "Saas".

That said, I think the platform looks great!

<comment><USER11> Whenever I hear serverless, I think backend as a service remarketed.

A few years ago they were tried and never fully caught on largely because people saw the inherent vulnerability of betting your entire backend on a company you don't control.

It has that old problem of being beholden to a single vendor.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the comment throwaway!

Our view is that the main reason Parse and Firebase didn't manage to gain mainstream adoption is that they were too limited. At the time, limitations imposed by available infrastructure forced them to to adopt a nosql model that made it very hard to implement advanced business logic. We have come a long way since then, but unfortunately Firebase is still stuck with the same fundamental data structure.

Here are some good resources on this topic:

[https://www.graph.cool/docs/tutorials/graphql-vs-firebase- ch...](https://www.graph.cool/docs/tutorials/graphql-vs-firebase-chi6oozus1/) [https://medium.freecodecamp.com/firebase-the-great-the- meh-a...](https://medium.freecodecamp.com/firebase-the-great-the-meh-and-the- ugly-a07252fbcf15)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We used graphcool for our latest launch and it probably saved hundreds of back end dev hours. The team is really responsive on slack and intercom, the interface is great and really robust with query permissions and flexible mutation callbacks. The pricing is more than fair.

They've been a bit slow to implement new features for production, but I understand development timelines are hard to predict.

I think the product is in a pretty good place for a limited release right now. We are really looking forward to synchronous mutation callbacks and multi- region replication (currently only eu in production, us-west-2 and asia-pac are in beta). We're using lambda functions as in-betweens while we wait on synchronous callbacks and it's been totally fine, it just breaks the "GraphQL fits all your server api needs" paradigm.

Edit: it looks like today they just released "request pipeline" which is actually a pretty robust synchronous callback. Impressed at the thought that went into this. -- [https://www.graph.cool/blog/2017-05-16-introducing-a-cli- fun...](https://www.graph.cool/blog/2017-05-16-introducing-a-cli-functions- teko4ab8za/)

<comment><USER13> Hi there! If you're interested in synchronous mutation callbacks ([https://docs.scaphold.io/custom-logic/](https://docs.scaphold.io/custom- logic/)) and have multi-region deployment ([https://docs.scaphold.io/app- management/multi-region/](https://docs.scaphold.io/app-management/multi- region/)), you should check out Scaphold.io ([https://scaphold.io](https://scaphold.io))! We were in the most recent YC batch and have more features for schema management like enums and interfaces as well. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out on Intercom or Slack.

<comment><USER5> Hi Vincent - nice to see you here :-)

<comment><USER13> You too! Congrats on the launch!

<comment><USER5> Thanks man - looking forward to finally meet you in Berlin! When are you guys flying out?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nobody has brought this up: why should we trust proprietary software running on the vendor's server? And more practically, how can we expect this service to be reliable in the future (related: Parse shutdown). I think this is a disturbing trend that more and more things that used to be open and on premises, are moving to the cloud/serverless/microservices hype.

<comment><USER15> When I saw mention of AWS Lambda in their docs, I thought this was going to be something I ran myself on my own AWS account. But that's not the case. I'd really like to see more BaaS run with that model. My understanding is that the AWS Marketplace API would let them charge an upsell cost, even if I'm running all the infrastructure myself; is that not the case?

That seems like the best scenario: I have access to the infrastructure if necessary, and am paying for the value add of the service over-and-above AWS (or Google/Azure). If they stop supporting it, all my instances/lambda functions/etc are still my own.

edit: typo

<comment><USER5> Hi ryanschneider

This is a very interesting model we are actively exploring. The primary issue is that the cost of the minimum infrastructure required to run Graphcool in the scalable and fault-tolerant way we have designed our architecture is too high to make it feasible for most projects. We are offering this option on the enterprise plan, but that's a very different price point than our publicly listed plans.

<comment><USER15> Maybe it's a hybrid approach where most of the load is handled by the SaaS "mothership" but users could opt-in to running additional AWS Marketplace nodes in their own infrastructure to have more direct access to their data? This could also answer hobofan's request for a solution to BI integration.

<comment><USER5> I think that is a very valid approach. We use [https://buildkite.com/](https://buildkite.com/) for ci and they have exactly that model, where they manage the admin panel and meta data db, but worker nodes can be deployed elsewhere

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been using Scaphold for a long time as a prototyping backend for GraphQL frontends. The biggest issue I've had with it is that its permission system always uses the most "lenient" rule, which makes multi-tenant applications impossible. Looks like Graph.cool is REALLY catching up (and their permissions system is just better).

<comment><USER13> Thanks for sticking with Scaphold. We'll be bumping up the power of permissioning soon! We've been focused on implementing more features with our schema and custom logic in the meantime :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd love to have a few days of peace to be able to try GraphQL and Graphcool.

If it does the job as expected it looks super useful for small dev teams. They have solved simple auth, permissions, data modelling, cloud functions, etc.

A priori, my only complaints about Graphcool are:

\- Ridiculous file storage price beyond the initial 10GB. Almost 20 times more expensive than Firebase and S3.

\- No permissions for machine clients. They provide a machine key but these machines have access to the entire DB. So if you need an integration with some third party you need to spin up your own proxy.

\- The UI for working on the database and models is really awesome. It would be even better with some headless CMS alternative type of UI and allow puny humans to add/edit content, files, etc. This is something most projects need anyway.

\- No REST API. Yes I know, but not everyone is ready to make the jump to GraphQL and being able to implement it gradually might be a nice bonus. Or maybe you'd like to give access to a third party to some of your data. Again, this could be solved with a proxy, but it would be a nice to have.

<comment><USER5> Thanks a lot Pier!

\- File storage is not where we want to earn our money. Please get in touch if you have a use case that would be prohibitively expensive with the current pricing so we can figure something out.

\- More granular permissions for machine clients is something that is high on our priority. We are currently prototyping different ways to integrate it with our Permission Query system, and want to make sure we get this right before releasing.

\- I think it would be awesome if someone would create an open source content editor for GraphQL apis. It wouldn't even have to be specific to Graphcool.

\- Implementing a REST API is something we are considering. We see very little demand for this feature though, so not likely to happen in the near future.

<comment><USER17> > File storage is not where we want to earn our money

Why not sell storage at cost + 15% or something similar? You could also simply offer some type of GCS or S3 integration so that your users would provide their own buckets but use your fantastic API.

> I think it would be awesome if someone would create an open source content > editor for GraphQL apis.

Hmmmmm (wheels turning)

<comment><USER5> Great feedback. We have some planned integrations between file storage and the GraphQL API. We want to make sure we understand our cost structure before we commit to a price point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What's exciting to me, having tested graph.cool and others, they are fantastic at providing an API in a format that works quite well (GraphQL) and handing the admin for me.

I don't want to build admin anymore.

Frankly, I'll spend more money at the service with the best admin UX.

It's like MixPanel for analytics. I can perform complex queries and analysis with minimal friction, which makes it worth the cost.

"Owning" isn't a selling point for me, when all of the services make it possible to dump the data.

<comment><USER5> Thank you ericclemmons.

The Andreesen Horrowitz Podcast has an interesting episode talking about this trend of specialised services removing one pain-point after the other, enabling a small company to focus on their core differentiator.

[http://a16z.com/2016/09/01/microservices/](http://a16z.com/2016/09/01/microservices/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Really great to see this! We're excited to see Graphcool using Auth0 Extend for functions and this is a great use case for Serverless. When you write your function in Graphcool, GC doesn't have to provision servers to run them. All of that is handled on demand by Extend, powered by Webtask.

<comment><USER5> Thank you Glen! Auth0 Extend has really been great to work with. Such a smooth experience compared to AWS Lambda.

While we're at it I also want to plug [http://sangria- graphql.org/](http://sangria-graphql.org/) \- the most mature GprahQL server implementation. Oleg - the maintainer - will be attending the GraphQL-Europe conference in a few days, so that's a perfect oportunity to pick his brain about all things GraphQL :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This comment section is a strange juxtaposition of roasts of the fundamentals of the business modal and shill-like praise of the business...

</comment><comment><USER21> The Free plan is very generous and all I would need for a side-project, but can I have multiple databases on the free plan or would I need to create multiple accounts per project?

P.S. Your onboarding is amazing walking me through setting up the first schema, I hope [https://www.useronboard.com/onboarding- teardowns/](https://www.useronboard.com/onboarding-teardowns/) does a teardown of it someday.

<comment><USER5> Thanks welder! Getting a teardown by useronboard would be the proudest moment in my life :-D

You can create as many projects on the free plan as you like, all under the same account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice to see Graphcool in HN and doing such great things in the GraphQL space. For those interested in hearing more about their back story, I did a podcast episode with their CEO on JAMstack Radio. [http://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/jamstack- radio/ep-1...](http://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/jamstack- radio/ep-13-staying-cool-with-graphcool/)

</comment><comment><USER23> As seasoned developer this things really make me feel old and dumb... so many acronyms, frameworks, unnecessary features, etc... that live me wondering, what kind of job requires to built things this way?

<comment><USER17> I was discussing about this with an old (60+) developer that still insists in making everything in PHP with his own CMS / framework that he built 10+ years ago.

He stated similar opinions to yours: "so many acronyms, frameworks, unnecessary features, etc". I don't know about you, but it sounded he was trying to cope with generational gap more than anything.

Nobody needs electrical powered car windows or even automatic transmission. Is it more complicated to build cars with those unnecessary features? Yes, but that's what the market expects.

Similarly, these days users expect all the bells and whistles of sophisticated user interfaces. They want to click a like button without having to refresh the whole window, and load content progressively without having to go to the next page.

<comment><USER23> For this case your analogy is way-off this topic, you focused on age/old rather than what GraphQL cool offer... The correct analogy will be something like: Why do i need to lend a machine that only builts another machine on his own premises?

<comment><USER24> We live in a world where we pay people to do things that they can do better, or faster, or things that we just don't have time to do. The reason I go to the grocery store to buy my food is because I don't have the space or time to grow the food myself.

The reason I host on AWS is because I don't have the space, power, or time to set up machines locally and scale them as needed. And I definitely don't have time to manage them. What doesn't make sense about paying for additional levels of tooling? In many cases, the economy of scale actually makes it cheaper, not just convenient.

I once watched a show about a man who was obsessed with saving money. He saw some spilled uncooked rice on the ground, and sat there picking up the individual grains for probably about 20 minutes. He was extremely self- satisfied, and thought less of people who weren't able to be so financially responsible as him, not passing up a chance to get some "free" rice. Meanwhile, the task valued his time at probably 20 cents an hour.

<comment><USER5> We spoke about this at the office just the other day. Five years ago our small team would simply not have been able to build Graphcool. By utilising the latest technologies and outsourcing as many non-core areas as possible we have come incredibly far in just 1.5 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Facebook, Github, Pinterest, etc. are listed as Graphcool enterprise customers? Is that true?

<comment><USER25> No response...I think these are companies that have GraphQL APIs, but no actual relationship with Graphcool. They shouldn't be listed as customers.

<comment><USER5> Sorry about the delay here, it was a busy night for us.

The enterprise page is targeted decision makers in big companies who might have been sent there by the dev team. As such our main objective is to communicate that GraphQL is a proven technology.

We will make that more explicit on the page. Some of these companies actually do use Graphcool for small projects and prototyping, but that is not the story we want to tell on this page.

<comment><USER26> As a decision maker, this kind of dishonesty will ensure I can't do business with you. It's a customer list and nowhere does it state that they just use GraphQL and are not your direct customers. I know you're trying to get some traction and all that, but this makes your whole offering look dodgy

<comment><USER25> Agree, I understand you need to have referenceable customers...but you have to actually...like...have them. I would imagine you are violating restrictions around the use of these companies trademarks.

Similarly confused by the random logos on the homepage with no context. The implication is they somehow rely on Graphcool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Really excited about this launch, Graphcool has been an awesome part of the GraphQL community, organizing the upcoming GraphQL Europe conference, and creating some great content. I work on Apollo, a set of tools for GraphQL including some client libraries, and if you're looking to get started building a full-stack app with GraphQL, Graphcool, and Apollo, there are some really great options!

1\. Learn Apollo, build a simple Pokedex app: [https://www.learnapollo.com/](https://www.learnapollo.com/)

2\. Freecom, an intercom clone: [https://www.graph.cool/freecom/](https://www.graph.cool/freecom/)

Getting started only takes a few minutes, and you can get a taste of the awesome experience you can get as a frontend developer building on GraphQL.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for bringing up the GraphQL-Europe conference Sashko!

The sale of early bird tickets ended a few days ago, but I just created a special 30% discount code for hn: [https://www.eventbrite.de/e/graphql-europe- tickets-326484042...](https://www.eventbrite.de/e/graphql-europe- tickets-32648404256?discount=hn30)

If you are in Europe, I'd encourage you to check it out. There are some really interesting talks lined up. And Berlin is an awesome city :-D

The full schedule is available at [https://graphql- europe.org/](https://graphql-europe.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm building a little react-apollo web app with a graphcool backend, and the backend part is just so dead simple. I don't have a lot of time to work on this app (full time dev with three kids) so the time savings on not needing to worry about the backend is a huge help. I can just focus on the front end. (Hope I can get the free lifetime project tier too!)

<comment><USER5> Hey jorjordandan - just ping @nilan in our slack and he will get you set up with a lifetime project plan :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> One issue I had with Graphcool in the past is the high latency. I'm in the mid-west of North America and a request would typically take far longer than I would expect. I'm wondering where the servers are actually located?

<comment><USER5> Hi Beart

We are aware of higher than expected latency from certain regions. We are working to mitigate this and in addition we will announce two additional regions in the near future to compliment our current EU region.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The major gripe I have with BaaS platforms like Graphcool or Firebase, is that they offer basically no protection against third parties stealing my public data straight from my API.

With my own backend, at least I can throttle or ban clients that are incurring in abusive behaviour. Same goes for rendered HTML – to avoid scraping.

Is there anything in the Graphcool roadmap regarding this?

</comment><comment><USER31> The landing page and the quick start are amazing. Keep up the good work, it definitely landed in my `to try` folder!

</comment><comment><USER32> Q for sorenbs or schickling or anybody else on the team: how far can you take it in terms of disk IO (not the serverless API portion) scaling? If I build a consumer web product on graph.cool and blow up, what's the end of the runway?

<comment><USER5> Hi pkghost

We can help you go very far as long as you are able to pay for the underlying infrastructure. You can start out on of our normal plans, and transition to a dedicated installation when you need to.

We run customer databases on AWS Aurora and can scale up to 15 low-lag read replicas.

Feel free to send me a message at email@example.com if you want to talk more about this. Also happy to jump on a skype call if that's more convenient for you

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Anyone know what the thing on the pricing page means:

> To celebrate being hunted on Product Hunt, every product hunter gets a free > lifetime project plan!

How do you get that? I signed up, but it only gave me the basic one free.

<comment><USER5> Hi brango - thanks for signing up :-)

We will activate the lifetime project plan for everybody tomorrow. Feel free to explore the product in the meantime!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is interesting but I always fear the lock-in related problems.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's always good to see more companies push for GraphQL.

There are a few others like this, one of which I co-founded, called Scaphold.io ([https://scaphold.io](https://scaphold.io)), and we're huge proponents of GraphQL and Serverless as well. It truly is the future of app development.

If you're interested in learning more about using Serverless with GraphQL, feel free to join the Serverless GraphQL Meetup that we're hosting ([https://www.meetup.com/serverless- graphql](https://www.meetup.com/serverless-graphql)).

</comment><comment><USER35> Congrats to the Graphcool team on the launch! You're part of what makes the GraphQL community awesome. I can't wait to see what you come up with next!

<comment><USER5> Thanks Rob!

I'm really looking forward to see where the new RFC process will take GraphQL in the next few years. Was great being able to contribute to the standardisation process for subscriptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> How can I handle aggregate functions with this?

<comment><USER5> Hi there! I assume you mean something equivalent to GROUP BY or MAX in SQL? This is one of the highest requested features on our roadmap. You can see a proposed syntax for this at [https://github.com/graphcool/feature- requests/issues/70](https://github.com/graphcool/feature-requests/issues/70)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> When I first look at it, I thought it was a demo video on the main page because of the button. Maybe it is just me.

</comment><comment><USER38> How does everybody feel about this compared to Firebase?

<comment><USER5> Hey - our frustration with existing solutions like Firebase was the primary reason we started Graphcool. We've written up a detailed breakdown of the main differences: [https://www.graph.cool/docs/tutorials/graphql-vs-firebase- ch...](https://www.graph.cool/docs/tutorials/graphql-vs-firebase-chi6oozus1/)

I would love to hear from other developers who have used both GraphQL and Firebase to see if there is any way we can make GraphQL an even better choice.

<comment><USER38> Nice. It would be cool to see a "kitchen sink" example project, similar to Firebase's Friendlypix, or something similar. Give people something to explore and hack on. I saw many good example projects, but nothing as full-featured.

[https://github.com/firebase/friendlypix](https://github.com/firebase/friendlypix)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Looks cool! How does this compare to scaphold.io ?

<comment><USER5> Hi Krashidov! [https://stackshare.io/graphcool](https://stackshare.io/graphcool) is a good neutral way to compare Graphcool and Scaphold. I'd recommend that you spend a few hours with both services before deciding which one to go with.

<comment><USER5> This one is even better :-) [https://stackshare.io/stackups/graphcool-vs- scaphold-io](https://stackshare.io/stackups/graphcool-vs-scaphold-io)

<comment><USER40> ok, so graphcool is winner?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Great idea btw. Great platform.

But .... this had 4 points when I first spotted it on the front page of HN. I've seen many things get more points and never make it to front page. Does HN mimic Product Hunt now in that there are super users who can push content to front page, or has it always been like that?

[https://medium.com/@benjiwheeler/how-product-hunt-really- wor...](https://medium.com/@benjiwheeler/how-product-hunt-really- works-d8fdcda1da74)

<comment><USER42> You can't compare points over time between stories directly because of the anti-abuse software. This story made it to the front page by user upvotes, nothing fancy.

<comment><USER43> Additionally, the number of users that have flagged a story isn't user-visible (flagging a story doesn't count as a down-vote on the story's score).</comment></comment></comment>


What the hell is an information architect? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.controlgroup.com/2012/06/25/so-whats-an-information-architect/

<comment><USER2> Here's what the information architect component of a recent project at my firm involved for a major non-profit organization that needed to redesign a site that had not been touched since 2007:

1 - Document and structure the current site map in all its depth and unorganized glory. With over 50+ sections, 75 contributors, and 150,000+ pages, this content inventory was vital to communicate to the client what the current site architecture looked liked.

2 - Consolidate the architecture of the site. We began by overlaying analytics data on the site map to figure out the most popular sections and pages. This led to a series of conversations and recommendations on what to cut and why.

3 - We coupled the analytics data with user research and business requirements to come up with a new site map/site architecture [1]. This site map included renaming wholesale sections, adding new sections to the site based on what users want, and in general, making sure we were as logical as the client would allow us when designing the new site map.

4 - Once the initial site map was put together, we validated this by using TreeJack, a great IA and wayfinding testing tool. Read more about TreeJack on their site to learn what and why this tool is useful.[2]

5 - We iterated on the site map based on TreeJack findings

6 - Once the initial site map and labeling were locked down, then we began discussions on page archetypes and templates. At no point did we sketch or draw UI designs. These discussions were all about the purpose of each section, the user goals they'd satisfy, and what type of content may live on each page.

7 - Once we had the archetypes down and some agreement on the number of sections and templates, then we moved to the wireframing and UI sketching phase.

Obviously, this is just 1 example, and is by no means thorough. But, you'll hopefully realize that the role of an "IA" is absolutely vital for complex projects.

When it comes to building web applications, the IA work we do is different, the artifacts we create are different, but the end goal is still the same, and attempt to organize, simplify, and improve usability.

[1] <http://viget.com/inspire/ux-101-the-site-map>

[2] <http://www.optimalworkshop.com/treejack.htm>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm wondering if this posting is a practical joke of some sort. The post linked to here is so dense with vocabulary, yet somehow lacks any meaningful content.

I kept reading only to see if there was a punchline at the bottom. Something to the effect of: "See? All that crap written above really cries out for some information architecture, doesn't it?"

<comment><USER4> Agreed. "When trying to articulate what it is I do, I find that I default to an older arsenal of terminology to qualify what is actually a fairly simple vocation, built on an assortment of superficial qualifications and reliant on a heavy interaction with a cloud of specialized UX disciplines." Huh?

This person clearly has a difficult time explaining basic concepts (not exactly a trait I'd look for in an IA).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This post is very difficult to understand, so here's my attempt at a simpler explanation. At some point in a project, somebody has to sit down, read through all the content and organize it. They have to gather all the information from the various groups involved and define how to logically break it down into separate pages. The define how users should navigate between them, what type of navigation is needed, etc. All decisions have to consider the various business, strategic and user goals, technical requirements, etc.

These tasks have to be done at some point, and if there's no information architect, then somebody else has to do it (designer, developer, PM, etc). That's no problem for small projects, but it gets messy for large portals or big corporations where many stakeholders are involved.

<comment><USER6> In other words it's some kind of bureaucrat or something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article "Top 10 Information Architecture Mistakes" by Jakob Nielsen from 2009

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ia-mistakes.html>

has a lot of good tips for website builders to consider to make their sites more appealing to users. Keeping information architecture in mind is especially useful for any website that is trying to sell goods or services to the general public.

</comment><comment><USER8> Translation:

"I have a lot of varied skills. I studied art and languages. I organize and prioritize information.

"We build web sites. We strive for good user interface. The information architect architects information. Information architects do everything."

What a total BS piece.

In my experience, an information architect is someone who creates wireframes (poorly), creates user interfaces (poorly), uses photoshop and illustrator as their primary tools (poorly), and writes HTML and CSS (poorly).

It's a garbage title for the in-between between designers and engineering and project management that doesn't have the skill of a designer or a programmer or a project manager but tries to give input on the jobs of all three. It's the glue role for the person who was willing to put in insane hours at a service oriented 'startup' that will never exit the startup phase (because that's not what labor intensive service oriented companies do).

<comment><USER9> I've worked with a couple of good people who would style themselves "information architect". In my experience they do pretty well understanding the whole "lifecycle" of the information and help optimize information flow between various parts of a business. They shine well when there are multiple places data lives, and when there are many uses for shared information. Then they are good at figuring out where data lives, what is important for just an app or subset of apps, and when that information is a global requirement. They aren't DBAs, but they seem like it sometimes. They can figure out where there is bad duplication, where duplication makes everyone's life easeir, an when to use what representation for something. Basically a good IA can help ensure that your data flows well.

Programmers have a tendency to optimize the data architecture towards their specific project, while IAs optimize it between various business units. This does create a tension sometimes, but a good IA goes a long way to smoothing that.

<comment><USER8> That's the traditional role of information architect, which doesn't seem to be what this blog post is describing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I met the IA at CSX who is responsible for building their positive train control system mandated after the CSX 8888 incident. We sat next to each other often on our commute from Marine barracks in Okinawa to the planning center for Fukushima. Sounds like trying to design something roughly as complex as designing an automobile, with plenty of prior art in metallurgy, materials, and basic machinery (bearings, screws), but having never seen a vehicle with 4 wheels before.

 _<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control>

_<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSX_8888_incident>

</comment><comment><USER11> An information architect is very similar to a product manager.

They have expertise in information systems, but are essentially performing a product mgr role in being the expert on what you're building, and who you're building it for. In many internet businesses, information is the product.

Info architects also cop the same criticism and praise as product managers. Jack of all trades, master of none. Not a critical hire because their role can be covered by others. But good ones can make a real difference to the process and the final product.

</comment><comment><USER12> tl;dr: An information architect is a librarian for the internet.

As with every position in every industry, you'll come across good, mediocre and bad people filling the role of an information architect.

Info-architects should not produce code, specs, interaction design or anything visual beyond a high-level site map. And they should not be asked to do so unless they can write production code, produce visual design or architect the full user experience, something most cannot do.

Their role is to understand what information the system is receiving, analyzing and transmitting, how the information relates to itself and how that information should be best organized and disseminated in order to meet business requirements.

If you meet one who knows their shit, cozy up and learn as much as you can because it's been my experience that many of the root causes of adoption failure lie in the engineer's inability to properly organize, relate and disseminate information to the user. Not scale, not coding skills, not lack of design.</comment>


Regulators eye tech companies' free food options - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/the-tax-man-cometh-regulators-eye-tech-companies-free-food-options/

<comment><USER2> Ludicrous.

Are they also going to tax the chair you sit in? The computer you work on? The electricity to provide lighting and run the computers?

<comment><USER3> What is "ludicrous" about it?

Two basic principles in the income tax are: 1) things that are "consumption" are not tax deductible as business expenses; 2) compensation in kind is identical to compensation in currency.

Food is a classical case of consumption as distinguished from a business expense (chairs, work computers, etc). The theoretical basis is: you'd eat whether or not you were at work, but you wouldn't necessarily need office equipment if you weren't at work.

The effect of not taxing these beanies is regressive. The guy who works at Wal-Mart pays for his lunch with post-tax dollars, the guy who works at Google pays with pre-tax dollars.

<comment><USER4> Having a "company car" used to be a great perk, back when the tax code only considered it compensation if it was dollars.

We don't want to go back to those days. There was so much energy being put into working around the tax code and dead-weight from inefficient benefits. Even if you only got $4000 of value from the $8000 company car, it could have the rational choice given tax rates.</comment></comment></comment>


Mac OS 7.5.5 running on Apple Watch [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1xJxS_kr-M <comment><USER2> I didn't make a video but I did something similar ^^ [https://twitter.com/Sephiroth87/status/608460838467420162](https://twitter.com/Sephiroth87/status/608460838467420162)

</comment><comment><USER3> I knew the Apple watch was useful for something.

</comment><comment><USER4> Aw. Apple Watch looks a lot like the Watch icon (shown when the system was busy) in the original MacOS.

Now if someone can figure out how to do pointing on a tiny screen, it might work. Maybe you wave you arm around in space and the accelerometers drive the cursor.

<comment><USER4> Now here's a thought. Wear two devices, one for the screen and one for pointing. Move the other hand around to move the cursor. Or track the other hand when some distance from the screen when you need a cursor smaller than your thumb.

We're going to need that technology soon, so you can do stuff while wearing VR goggles. So downsize it to the wrist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Get NeXTSTEP 3.3 and Interface Builder running on the Watch and I'll be really impressed.

</comment><comment><USER6> My second favorite computer to write (my main job), to this day, is still a Powerbook 1400c running System 7. It uses a G3 upgrae so it's _very_ fast/responsive, as that OS would run just fine on even a 040 processor.

<comment><USER7> I'd have to say my favorite computer ever was the Power Mac G4 867MHz running 8.6 (or was it 9.1?). Basically Mac OS 8-9 just ran obscenely fast on PowerPCs as it was essentially in maintenance mode while they built OSX, so we got years of little more than stability patches and cosmetic changes without bloat while Apple's hardware was overtaking Wintel (temporarily). Heck you could run the entire OS and applications off RAM Disk and still have plenty of RAM left over.

Aside: the 1400 was a great model (especially after the 5300 debacle) and had an upgradeable CPU daughtercard (ah back when the engineers were running the asylum). The big problem with it was lack of space for RAM, so when you did upgrade the CPU you had a kind of fast but cramped machine.

<comment><USER6> You're right: my 1400 maxes out at some 64 megs or Ram. More than enough for writing/text editing, but too little for anything else. The keyboard is awesome by the way.

I also replaced the hard drive with a fast pcmcia compact flash card, made it even more responsive.

There was also a G4 upgrade for the Powermac 9500 series that was compatible with System 7.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice to see OS 7.5.5 on a Retina display.

</comment><comment> z-cam In theory Apple Watch has the processing power for significantly > OS 7

[http://www.cultofmac.com/320279/how-powerful-is-the-apple- wa...](http://www.cultofmac.com/320279/how-powerful-is-the-apple- watchs-s1-processor/)

<comment><USER9> MacOS System 7.5.x shipped on ~100MHz PowerPC chips with ~24MB of RAM, a bit higher in the later models. So the Watch most certainly has more processing power.

The real problem is emulating PPC -> ARM, which is a very slow process, and why the boot time is so long in the video.

<comment><USER10> For the record, my Performa 6116CD which shipped with 7.5 had a 60 MHZ PPC 601 and 8 MB RAM. It could run on significantly less than that as well - in fact I believe it ran as far back as on some 80s machines.

<comment><USER11> Yup. I had an LC520 (25 MHz 030--not that far back from your 6116) that ran 7.5.x.

<comment><USER12> 7.5.5 was the last version that ran on the Mac Plus, SE, Classic, and various other 8MHz 68000 Macs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Over the weekend i saw an HN article about an x86 compiler written to compile using only MOV commands, after it was proven that x86 MOV is Turing Complete. I was sure this would be the most impressive waste of technology efforts i would see for a long time.

I was wrong. It lasted 3 days.

<comment><USER14> What you call useless other people call brilliant. I was at RECon this past weekend and one of the coolest talks was about compiling malware using only MOV. Good luck reversing that.

[https://recon.cx/2015/schedule/events/55.html](https://recon.cx/2015/schedule/events/55.html)

<comment><USER15> You still have to make system/library calls to do anything evil. You can obfuscate the logic, sure, but it's still easy to tell where important things are happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's just a screen sharing, no?

<comment><USER17> not necessarily. The video description says it's watchOS 2 which allow native apps to run on the watch. Also the current WatchKit remote UI thing would not allow the kind of access to the screen that is seen in this video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> LOL, now I really want to get an Apple Watch!

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm more interested in how the uploader got a verified Youtube account, especially with <20 subs and 3 videos.

<comment><USER20> Is this the same as [https://www.youtube.com/verify](https://www.youtube.com/verify) ? I've just verified my account, but I have no uploaded videos to test with.</comment></comment>


Facebook DataMine - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/nhmllknbjibkgkoemncfnceoalldboif#

<comment><USER2> There's more information here: [http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/01/27/facebook-datamine- sell...](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/01/27/facebook-datamine-sell-your- browsing-data-make-some-cash/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting idea

Does anyone know who the creator of this is?

I would love to talk to him/her about a possible tie up with something I'm developing

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder about the legality of this. Can Facebook claim ownership of your data and block this? time stamp: 56 users signed up Jan 26th at 5:04pm pst

</comment><comment><USER4> Tried to install twice, failed both times.</comment>


Google's sync changes are going to screw Gmail users on Windows Phone - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/12/15/googles-sync-changes-are-going-to-screw-gmail-users-on-windows-phone/?utm_source=HackerNews&utm_medium=share%2Bbutton&utm_content=Google%E2%80%99s%20sync%20changes%20are%20going%20to%20screw%20Gmail%20users%20on%20Windows%20Phone&utm_campaign=social%2Bmedia <comment><USER2> First off, Microsoft can fix this problem themselves, by supporting standards such as CalDAV and CardDAV. Microsoft is still very poor at supporting open standards over their proprietary ones. That needs to change for their own users sake, because Microsoft is not the only game in town anymore, and they can't seriously expect Google and Apple to pay them for the privilege of using their own proprietary stuff in the future, when they can use their own.

Second, WP has like 2-3% market share globally. Would you expect Google to support IE6 if it had a 2% market share? Google actually stopped supporting IE6 when it had 20%.

<comment><USER3> They just need to support EAS in their consumer stack. Google does support it and will continue to in enterprise. There's virtually no cost to them to support it on their consumer service. This is an attack against their Windows customers, not a cost cutting measure.

Google doesn't want us on their service. I'll comply.

<comment><USER4> I think there is a lot of cost to Google, they must pay for Exchange licences. I highly doubt that Google did this to cut off Windows Phone users, traditionally Google makes their services available to as many platforms as possible.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, another interpretation of this (and to be clear: I'm not saying that this is the case; just that it also fits the data we have) is that Microsoft has made the terms of an upcoming license renewal worse now that they have a more reasonable competitor to Gmail, thinking that they can use this to win back some of what are arguably their own customers.

<comment><USER6> >arguably their own customers

I use an Android phone but I wouldn't label myself as just a Google customer

<comment><USER5> I did say "arguably" (and I can't stress that enough: if you were Microsoft, wouldn't you feel like these are your customers? it doesn't really matter what the customers think); that said, if your purchase was affected by the fact that the device came with the Market and other Google-branded apps that Google only offers to manufacturers as part of a licensing program, then you are at least indirectly their customer.

Also, it should be noted that many of the people who need Exchange sync support are also doing so because they have an iPhone (where Google at least used to recommend you use the Exchange protocol to access Gmail instead of Apple's Gmail profile, as it allowed more content to synchronize; maybe Apple fixed this) or want the extended synchronization to work in clients like Outlook.

It just feels somewhat weird that Google /chose/ to do this, given the importance they ascribe to getting the most out of tools like Outlook that some Gmail users really want to access all of their content with: it doesn't really screw Microsoft very much as most normal people aren't tied to their e-mail address (like us techy people are)... it mostly helps Microsoft's Outlook.com service.

<comment><USER6> I know exactly one person who owns a Windows Phone 8 device (the 920). I can see where he is coming from because he is our SharePoint guy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Apple and Google both support CalDAV and CardDAV natively, but Microsoft > doesn't support either.

Sounds like Microsoft's problem, not Google's. This is what Microsoft gets for not supporting existing open standards. In any case, surely they support IMAP? This seems like it affects google calendar/contacts and not gmail.

EDIT: I guess IMAP doesn't have push notifications, but that's hardly a crucial feature.

<comment><USER8> Push is the most crucial feature.

Because my device is already registered, I can continue to use exchange sync, but if it wasn't then I can say goodbye to using email for monitoring notifications.

If my site goes offline, I don't want to know in 5 minutes. I want to know right now.

<comment><USER7> > If my site goes offline, I don't want to know in 5 minutes. I want to know > right now.

Sure- this isn't exactly the usual case, though, and if you require that, maybe you shouldn't use the free gmail account to get it. Most people just call when there are actual emergencies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That should be "screw gmail _consumer_ users on _new_ windows phones" - existing consumer users, and all current and future business/government/educations users don't appear to be impacted.

From the original post: <http://googleblog.blogspot.ca/2012/12/winter- cleaning.html>

"Google Sync was designed to allow access to Google Mail, Calendar and Contacts via the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync® protocol... Starting January 30, 2013, consumers won't be able to set up new devices using Google Sync; however, existing Google Sync connections will continue to function. Google Sync will continue to be fully supported for Google Apps for Business, Government and Education. Users of those products are unaffected by this announcement."

</comment><comment><USER10> CardDAV and CalDAV are not really good replacements to EAS. And IMAP is really pathetic. I'm on board with open standards, but if the proprietary one is better, then I'd like to use it.

Google's just using the "open" argument to screw people. If it's related to "open standards being better", drop EAS support on business accounts too. That'd be a commitment. This is just a chess move to drive the market to their direction.

</comment><comment><USER11> CardDAV and CalDAV are open standards, no? Sounds like it's Microsoft's turn to step up to the plate.

</comment><comment><USER12> "... Windows Phone users can choose to set up IMAP for Gmail, but this won't support push mail. That renders the connection useless."

This is so incredibly hyperbolic. You still get mail right? Just after a minute instead of "instantly." If you need real-time communication pick up the phone or use a chat client.

<comment><USER13> This a million times. I just tried it on my WP7 device and to be honest I can't tell the difference between this and my exchange account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well, looks like I'll be switching to Outlook.com fully. I've been using it with my Gmail pushed to it for a while now, but I've often found myself wondering why I should be routing through Gmail in the first place. Without the ability to sync directly to my phone in the future, why bother? Its just really sucks having to bounce from service to service every few years because the boys can't play nice.

<comment><USER15> I don't understand why you think Google should support Microsoft's proprietary protocol rather than Microsoft supporting open protocols.

<comment><USER3> What open standard? IMAP? There is no adequate mail open standard.

<comment><USER16> IMAP is quite adequate. It's imperfect, but it's open and it's extensible. The same can't be said of ActiveSync.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This might have something to do with Office 2013 supporting Exchange ActiveSync connections. My first thought was "awesome, Outlook calendar/contacts/mail push support without having to pay for Google Apps for business to use the Outlook Sync connector!". Google probably saw this as an attack on their business model.

</comment><comment><USER18> Or: Microsoft is screwing their customers by not supporting open standard protocols.

</comment><comment><USER19> More info on CalDAV & CardDav (both standards)

<http://caldav.calconnect.org/standards.html>

<http://carddav.calconnect.org/standards.html>

</comment><comment><USER19> Situation seems to also affect Windows 8, RT, and Office..

[http://www.zdnet.com/gmail-loses-google-sync-how- windows-8-r...](http://www.zdnet.com/gmail-loses-google-sync-how-windows-8-rt- office-are-affected-7000008846/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been delaying my migration off of Gmail. Google just accelerated it considering I'm moving all of my machines and family/friend machines in the next few months to Win8. Depending on how easy my final migration turns out to be, I may move everyone.

Thanks Google for the forced motivation.

<comment><USER2> If you want to live in a more closed proprietary ecosystem, that's your choice. Google is trying to get their users as far away as possible from that kind of closed world.

<comment><USER20> trying to get their users onto proprietary gmail apps / webmail where they can eventually ramp up the advertising & personal information harvestry

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Doesn't this screw over iPhones users too? I'm currently using EAS with my free Google Apps account in order to get mail, contacts and calendar. Mail is easy through IMAP, but calendar and contacts are difficult to do otherwise, at least last I tried it in 2008. (Unless Google or Apple changed how those things work on the iPhone recently)

With the recent Google Apps announcement and this, looks like the bean counters have taken over at Google.

</comment><comment><USER22> I stopped using Google's products when I realized how much they tracked everyone. It's pretty weird not knowing what information they have about everyone and the fact that everyone is OK with that.

This is clearly a move to try to ensure that the Windows Phone market share doesn't grow. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out and if Microsoft can get people to switch to Outlook.com instead of Gmail.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why is everybody saying that they will only screw Gmail users on Windows Phone? As an iPhone user they will screw me too, because I will not longer have push if I use the Mail.app. The alternative is using the Gmail app of course, but that will only lock up users.

How much time until they announce that ALL the current users won't have this feature anymore?

</comment><comment><USER24> Google really should think about the majority of their freeloading users when they do things like this!

... wait a moment...

<comment><USER20> Nobody is freeloading.

Again:

People pay for Google's consumer offerings with personal information.

<comment><USER25> I'm guessing you made this account because you know how stupid your ideas are.

It's a free service. People who offer free services owe you nothing. Your sense of entitlement is sorely misplaced.

Google has to pay Microsoft actual money for Active Sync. If this is not economically viable, then they can't continue paying money out of their own pocket for you to freeload.

Your offering of personal information is just not paying the bills, sorry.

<comment><USER22> I'm guessing you're either young or ignorant, so let me explain to you how it works with any Google product. I'll use Gmail as an example:

1) You sign up for Gmail

2) Google starts data mining all of your e-mail, scouring it for any type of keywords as well as using algorithms to determine your age, gender, sexuality, married, location, if you like Mac or PC, what mobile phone you have, what diseases you may have, etc... Remember this is on a HUGE scale and they can easily uniquely identify you using many methods.

3) Remember, that if you leave yourself logged in and then go to do a search on Google, they log that information too, they also log the information from you on YouTube or any other of their properties.

4) They now have all this information and they track you using cookies. So when you get to a site that uses Adwords or Double Click Google has a VERY good idea about what type of ads to place on that page to entice you to click on one of them.

5) Profit

Unfortunately, there's quite a large number of people out there who don't know what Google's doing. Just so you know the personal information IS paying the bills in a HUGE way. Google gets > 90% of all revenue from advertising. You seem to fall into that group. Please educate yourself and also try not to call people stupid as sometimes you MIGHT be wrong yourself.

Also, just so you know, the reason that Google is stopping EAS for personal Gmail accounts is to attempt to cripple the Windows Phone before it has a chance to take off. It's a shrewd business move and once again, it has nothing to do with economics.

<comment><USER26> > Also, just so you know, the reason that Google is stopping EAS for personal > Gmail accounts is to attempt to cripple the Windows Phone before it has a > chance to take off. It's a shrewd business move and once again, it has > nothing to do with economics.

Got a source for that statement? For all we know, this could be related to the lawsuit following Motorola and Microsoft not being able to agree on the per- phone fee for ActiveSync. If the ActiveSync servers require a license per connected user (Client Access License), that would certainly seem like a valid cause for this decision.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using dead children as the unit of currency - <AUTHOR> http://www.raikoth.net/deadchild.html

<comment><USER2> Articles like this make me less likely to give to charity, not more. The fact that someone this crazy wants me to do something automatically makes me not want to do it.

This is a horrible suggestion.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is obviously intended to as sarcasm, with the intention of making you think.</comment></comment>