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41,890 | nanijoe | 2007-08-13T09:30:13 | MySQL Takes Another Step (Away from Open Source) | http://mike.kruckenberg.com/archives/2007/08/mysql-takes-another-step-away-from-open-source.html | 7 | 3 | [
42000,
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|
41,899 | transburgh | 2007-08-13T12:30:54 | How to Take Advantage of the Coming Web 2.0 Crash | null | http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-take-advantage-of-the-coming-web-20-crash | 6 | 4 | [
42137,
42050,
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41,907 | null | 2007-08-13T12:59:21 | null | null | null | null | null | null | [
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41,911 | epi0Bauqu | 2007-08-13T13:22:38 | Best drop-in forum software? | I want to add some kind of segmented forum functionality within my site, such that smaller groups of users can have their own forums. Does anyone have any recommendations for some good forum software? I don't really have any specific requirements yet as this is just exploratory, so any recommendations would be appreciated, even software that is not open-source. | 1 | 3 | [
41912,
41942
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
41,920 | nailer | 2007-08-13T14:05:29 | The VMware house of cards | Bloomberg believe VMware 's IPO today may the largest technology offering since Google. But doubts have been cast over the company's supposedly proprietary ESX product, which may be derived from Linux. | http://www.venturecake.com/the-vmware-house-of-cards/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | http_404 | Page Not Found - Top Stories & Analysis | Venturecake.com | null | null |
Home » 404 Error: page not found
Come back, you're wandering too far!
We couldn't find the page you're looking for. Try searching or go back to the Homepage.
| 2024-11-08T07:11:42 | null | train |
41,923 | tedb | 2007-08-13T14:19:57 | Does anyone have experience with Joyent Accelerators & the Sun Startup Essentials Program? | null | 1 | 2 | [
41924,
41941
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
41,932 | pg | 2007-08-13T14:46:59 | VideoEgg: Suddenly They're A Facebook Ad Network | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/13/videoegg-suddenly-theyre-a-facebook-ad-network/ | 5 | 1 | [
41974
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
41,933 | dpapathanasiou | 2007-08-13T14:48:47 | Thoreau on the Neccessity of Selling Your Work | http://www.steve-olson.com/thoreau-on-the-neccessity-of-selling-your-work/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
41,940 | ivankirigin | 2007-08-13T15:01:38 | Noonhat. It's the creator's 1st Django Project, done in 50 hours, spending $35. | null | http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/08/noonhat_changin.html | 8 | 6 | [
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41,944 | keith_erskine | 2007-08-13T15:19:14 | Notes on adding SMS to your Web Service | I wrote three blog posts that outline our experience in getting SMS plugged into Padpaw. I hope it can save you some time when you're integration effort --Keith | http://www.padpaw.net/blog/?cat=3 | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
41,949 | drm237 | 2007-08-13T15:30:57 | Startup: Lucid Design Group, Network Effect on Energy Use | Can the social network effect change energy consumption habits? That's what Oakland, Calif.-based startup Lucid Design Group is looking to find out. The 5-person company, which was founded in 2004 out of research at Oberlin College, sells a software and sensor service that monitors the real-time use of electricity, natural gas and water. | http://earth2tech.com/2007/08/13/startup-lucid-design-group-network-effect-on-energy-use/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
41,955 | dean | 2007-08-13T15:44:08 | Poll - How many here are involved in a startup? Vote up the appropriate comment. | Update: The options didn't come out in the order I wanted. "None of the above" came out in the wrong place, but I'm sure you all get the picture.<p>Update #2: Added another option that you should vote down in order to make this poll "Karma-neutral". | 7 | 25 | [
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|
41,962 | maverick001 | 2007-08-13T15:48:48 | Would we be more willing to participate in a discussion if it involved people we know? - tribeIn | Guys, I need your help. In my free time I wrote up this application which enables users to create topics and discuss it with their friends. <p>I would spend a lot of time on reddit but rarely participated in the discussions. This had me wondering, "Would we be more willing to participate in a discussion if it involved people we know?" The quest for an answer led me to create tribeIn. Try it out and let me know what you think. | http://tribein.com | 2 | 3 | [
41975,
42027
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
41,963 | Tichy | 2007-08-13T15:48:49 | Submit several ideas to YC? | Is it possible to submit several ideas to YC? Would it be contraproductive (not focussed enough)? Or would it be better to just mention the other ideas in the respective form field?<p>Has anybody ever been accepted for a secondary idea they mentioned on the form field, rather than the main idea? | 4 | 3 | [
41970,
41967
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
41,973 | davidw | 2007-08-13T16:22:28 | Edgeio vs. Freegeio | http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/08/edgeio_vs_freeg.php | 5 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
41,976 | horatio05 | 2007-08-13T16:25:17 | TrialIPO to Offer A Community for Start-Ups and Traders | null | http://mashable.com/2007/08/12/trialipo/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
41,977 | horatio05 | 2007-08-13T16:25:28 | Online Presentations: 30+ Presentation & Slideshow Services | http://mashable.com/2007/08/12/online-presentations/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
41,980 | vegashacker | 2007-08-13T16:31:52 | App-Camp 2007, in San Francisco | http://www.app-camp.com/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
41,981 | transburgh | 2007-08-13T16:36:34 | Users Spend Half Their Time Visiting Content | null | http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/08/13/users-spend-half-their-time-visiting-content | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
41,986 | transburgh | 2007-08-13T16:49:24 | Why Did Google Pack Add StarOffice and Not OpenOffice? | null | http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/why-did-google-pack-add-staroffice-and-not-openoffice.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
41,988 | eposts | 2007-08-13T16:54:33 | Cringely: The $200 Billion Broadband Ripoff | http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html | 9 | 2 | [
42076
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
41,989 | transburgh | 2007-08-13T16:56:09 | And You Thought the US Ask.com Ads Were Strange! | null | http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/and-you-thought-the-us-askcom-ads-were-strange.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
41,990 | jsjenkins168 | 2007-08-13T17:00:19 | Mobile social networking and content delivery set to explode | http://mobilecrunch.com/2007/08/13/juniper-research-mobile-social-networking-set-to-explode/ | 1 | 2 | [
41996
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,006 | brett | 2007-08-13T17:29:29 | The Endowment Effect | http://particletree.com/notebook/the-endowment-effect/ | 6 | 6 | [
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] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,007 | jcwentz | 2007-08-13T17:31:10 | Fred Wilson: Demo Day "a blast and there are some gems to mine" | http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/08/y-combinator.html | 18 | 11 | [
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|
42,021 | sigma3dz | 2007-08-13T18:21:27 | Bookmarking sites without no-follow tag | null | http://www.ventureitch.com/?p=406 | 1 | -1 | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,022 | kyro | 2007-08-13T18:22:36 | Disqus sign up. | I stumbled upon this linking from someone else's blog...<p>Not sure if this is something known, or something that shouldn't be known.<p><a href="http://disqus.com/login/?next=/dashboard/account/%3Fnew%3D1" rel="nofollow">http://disqus.com/login/?next=/dashboard/account/%3Fnew%3D1</a>
| 2 | 0 | [
42038
] | null | true | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
42,036 | gregp | 2007-08-13T18:59:10 | Was YC demo day recorded? | 2 | 6 | [
42109,
42049,
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42045
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
||
42,051 | dannymo2 | 2007-08-13T20:01:52 | Rapleaf Engineering Blog | null | http://blog.rapleaf.com/dev/ | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,053 | semigeek | 2007-08-13T20:06:35 | Pounding A Nail: Old Shoe or Glass Bottle? | http://weblogs.asp.net/alex_papadimoulis/archive/2005/05/25/408925.aspx | 4 | 1 | [
42139
] | null | null | no_error | Pounding A Nail: Old Shoe or Glass Bottle? | null | null |
"A client has asked me to build and install a custom shelving system. I'm at the point where I need to nail it, but I'm not sure what to use to pound the nails in. Should I use an old shoe or a glass bottle? How would you answer the question? a) It depends. If you are looking to pound a small (20lb) nail in something like drywall, you'll find it much easier to use the bottle, especially if the shoe is dirty. However, if you are trying to drive a heavy nail into some wood, go with the shoe: the bottle with shatter in your hand. b) There is something fundamentally wrong with the way you are building; you need to use real tools. Yes, it may involve a trip to the toolbox (or even to the hardware store), but doing it the right way is going to save a lot of time, money, and aggravation through the lifecycle of your product. You need to stop building things for money until you understand the basics of construction. I would hope that just about any sane person would choose something close to (b). Sure, it may seem a bit harsh, but think about it from the customer prospective: how would you feel if your carpenter asked such a question? I find it a bit disturbing, however, that this attitude is not prevalent in software development. In fact, from what I can tell, it seems to be discouraged. I've been participating in Usenet/forums/lists for a decade now, asking programming questions and helping out others who have questions of their own. If some one asks a question that demonstrates the complete absurdity of their design, I'll generally reply with my (quite candid) opinion on their design. To give you an idea what I'm talking about, here's something I remember seeing a while back (from memory). Subject: Aggregates HelpI have a table that stores test results for milling machines. Each test consists of N-runs conducted by a measurer going M-trials each. I have this information represented in a varchar column in the following format: "44:1,5,4;23:2,4,9;14:1,4,3". When the column is read into the class, it is converted into a jagged array: ( (44,(1,5,4)), (23,(2,4,9)), (14,(1,4,3)) ) of runs (3 of them) and measurers(Ids of 44,23,14) and trials (1,5,4 and 2,4,9 and 1,4,3). One of the reports I have is a deficiency report, which predicts which machines may fail. To run this, I have a report class that loads up the appropriate tests and processes the information. However, this is taking longer and longer to run. I'm thinking that running it in a stored procedure will be quicker. I can figure out how to get an "array" in SQL with a table variable, but how do I make a jagged array? Any ideas? Some of the folks on in the list took it as a fun challenge, going back and forth with how deficiencies are calculated, and providing some incredibly brilliant ways of solving this problem. Not I, though. My response was something to the effect of … This is quite possibly the worst way you could store this data in a database. No, seriously. They had better ways of doing this over thirty years ago. You have created a horrible problem that is only starting to rear its ugly head. It will only continue to get horribly worse, costing your company more and more money to maintain. You need to drop everything your doing right now and take a trip to your bookstore to get a database book. I recommend INTRODUCTION TO DATABASE SYSTEMS by DATE, but at this point anything should do. For the sake of everyone who will maintain your future code, don't touch a database until you understand how big of a mess you've created. How do you think you would have responded to that post? Would you have taken the challenge to think about how to solve the problem or just take the opportunity to school the poster? If you say the former, then you probably think I'm a grumpy curmudgeon (more likely, less family-friendly words though). My appeal to you is to think back to the carpenter. How is this any different? How fair is this to person paying him to develop software, or, more importantly, the poor sap that will have to come in and not only understand the mess, but maintain it. That poor sap could be you one day! If you say you'd go with the latter, harsher reply, then I ask, why aren't you out there participating in the newsgroups/forums/lists? We need more people like you out there: there are too many of the people who tell people exactly how to apply the duct tape without giving the poster a firm scolding. But I think the problem is worse than not having enough grumpy curmudgeons: in my experience, forum moderators actively delete critical posts that don't solve the problem, keeping only the hacks that solve the hacks. When new users come to read the posts in the future, they may actually think, "hey, I could use this to solve my problem." Am I on the wrong side in this? Should we actively be encouraging new programmers to use their horrific techniques? Or am I just looking at this the totally wrong way?
| 2024-11-08T20:09:31 | en | train |
|
42,060 | horatio05 | 2007-08-13T20:36:44 | iYomu Lets Community Choose $1M Winner | null | http://mashable.com/2007/08/12/iyomu-challenge/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,061 | horatio05 | 2007-08-13T20:37:57 | Get Your Manager To Prioritize Your Tasks | null | http://www.codesqueeze.com/get-your-manager-to-prioritize-your-tasks/ | 1 | 1 | [
42077
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,064 | henryw | 2007-08-13T20:48:14 | Best of July 2007 - Smashing Magazine | http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/14/best-of-july-2007/ | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,065 | run4yourlives | 2007-08-13T20:48:55 | Idea of the Week - Edit Queue Website | http://davidpiccione.com/blog/new-feature-idea-of-the-week/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,068 | transburgh | 2007-08-13T20:56:26 | Second Life gets a well-deserved drubbing in Time | null | http://valleywag.com/tech/media-relations/second-life-gets-a-well+deserved-drubbing-in-time-288879.php | 7 | 10 | [
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42305,
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] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,070 | giddo | 2007-08-13T21:04:43 | The tasty effects of good branding | null | http://www.web-jungle.com/2007/08/13/the-tasty-effects-of-good-branding/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,075 | vlad | 2007-08-13T21:26:19 | Cross Platform Desktop Applications with Python | http://yergler.net/talks/desktopapps_uk/ | 7 | 2 | [
42202,
42788
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,078 | transburgh | 2007-08-13T21:44:57 | Founder conundrum - How will my equity numbers look? - Solved!! | null | http://startupsquad.com/2007/08/13/founder-conundrum-how-will-my-equity-numbers-look-solved/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,080 | palish | 2007-08-13T21:52:03 | Ask News.YC: What sort of things do you do when you're so bummed you can't be productive? | What's your guilty pleasure? | 2 | 9 | [
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] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
42,087 | thingsilearned | 2007-08-13T22:26:00 | Vote up if you dislike Karma Whoring! | This post is an infinite loop of hypocrisy! | 8 | 11 | [
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|
42,098 | dpapathanasiou | 2007-08-13T23:04:31 | Lisp NYC: If you're tired of waiting for Paul Graham to release Arc | http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/thread/e2764cbec47cbe57/5c597b31df6be557#5c597b31df6be557 | 9 | 13 | [
42100,
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|
42,099 | sherman | 2007-08-13T23:05:52 | Breathalyzer Source Code | http://news.com.com/Police+Blotter+DUI+defendant+wins+breathalyzer+source+code/2100-7348_3-6201632.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,112 | farmer | 2007-08-14T00:02:43 | The Internet (Apparently) Isn't Ready For IPTV | null | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/13/the-internet-apparently-isnt-ready-for-iptv/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,123 | transburgh | 2007-08-14T01:01:11 | Alexa Says YouTube Is Now Bigger Than Google. Alexa Is Useless | null | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/13/alexa-says-youtube-is-now-bigger-than-google-theyre-wrong/ | 18 | 2 | [
42190
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,125 | mitch | 2007-08-14T01:04:10 | Crush found dead - TvByDemand | Forums | WWE | null | http://www.tvbydemand.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=758&FORUM_ID=49&CAT_ID=2&Topic_Title=Crush+found+dead&Forum_Title=WWE | 1 | -1 | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,129 | Twiek | 2007-08-14T01:11:46 | No Employees for a while - Plentyoffish won't hire | "All I can say is there is going to be a major major change to the web and the economics of Online Dating are about to dramatically change."<p>Sounds... well, dramatic.
| http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/no-employees-for-a-while/ | 8 | 6 | [
42153,
42132
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,130 | brett | 2007-08-14T01:13:34 | Arrington uses Feedlounge's demise to disagree with 37 Signals about charging for software | null | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/13/37signals-drives-another-company-to-the-deadpool/ | 13 | 5 | [
42210,
42256,
42347,
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] | null | null | no_error | 37Signals Drives Another Company To The DeadPool | TechCrunch | 2007-08-13T20:51:18+00:00 | Michael Arrington |
Ok, the title is a bit ridiculous. But 37Signals has been urging developers for years now to charge for their software, and attacking anyone who suggests a business can be made from giving that software away for free instead. Their model works for their own products, at least so far. But I believe they are responsible for influencing a number of startups to charge for products that were already commoditized by the time they launched. Which is suicide.
Feedlounge, a subscription-based online RSS reader, is the most recent casualty. They launched in 2005 and offered a web based feed RSS feed reader for a monthly subscription fee. There were a number of free competitors at the time, including Bloglines and NewsGator, which had dominant market share. FeedLounge planned to carve a niche for itself by offering speedier and slightly better service.
The reader was good but not great, and came out in the middle of the pack when we reviewed the competition in mid 2006. But the company defended its business model until the end – hear our podcast interview at TalkCrunch with founder Alex King where he defended his business model.
They shut down over two months ago, canceled everyone’s subscriptions, and no one seemed to notice until now. FeedLounge is now in the deadpool, although they may re-emerge as a free service at some point.
If you are in a position to charge for your software and you aren’t that concerned with dominating your category, by all means go for it. But to blindly follow the idea that software must not be free because, damnit, people put a lot of time and effort into it, means you probably shouldn’t be making the business decisions for your company. And if you are entering what is already a commoditized business (online feed readers in this case) that has a price point of zero, you are absolutely crazy to try to charge for that product.
Offering your product for free isn’t always the right choice, either. Often, the right choice is to never have entered the market to begin with. But just because 37Signals tell you you are dumb to go the free route doesn’t mean you have to be a lemming and walk over the cliff.
Thanks Smaran for the tip.
Most Popular
Michael Arrington most recently Co-Founded CrunchFund after leading TechCrunch to a successful exit with AOL. His venture investments include Uber, Airbnb and Pinterest. Michael was the Editor of TechCrunch, which he founded in 2005. In 2008 Time Magazine named Michael “One of the World’s 100 most influential people”. Michael also practiced securities law at O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.Michael graduated from Stanford Law School and
Claremont McKenna College.
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| 2024-11-08T10:37:18 | en | train |
42,131 | bootload | 2007-08-14T01:16:00 | Web users reading more, saying less, study says | null | http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9758946-2.html | 2 | 1 | [
42279
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,136 | bootload | 2007-08-14T01:49:42 | Digg-nation is huge! Community is more powerful than money or technology | http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/08/digg-nation-is-.html | 3 | 1 | [
42209
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,141 | obayan | 2007-08-14T02:38:47 | Interactive World Atlas - Okapiland Map | null | http://www.okapiland.com/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,147 | moses1400 | 2007-08-14T03:01:34 | Interview with Netscape Director, Tom Drapeau | Ever wonder what supposed Digg clone Netscape is up to? Centernetworks sits down with Netscape Director Tom Drapeau to find out where the social news rating site is today and where they are going. They are looking at localization and internationalization as part of their future expansion. | http://www.centernetworks.com/interview-with-netscape-director-tom-drapeau | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | timeout | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T04:54:02 | null | train |
42,158 | ajju | 2007-08-14T04:12:32 | Dare Obsanjo has his doubts on Hadoop / Copying Map Reduce | null | http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/08/14/SomeThoughtsOnHadoop.aspx | 4 | 1 | [
42487
] | null | null | no_error | Some Thoughts on Hadoop - Dare Obasanjo | null | null |
Recently I've seen a bunch of people I consider to be really smart sing the praises of Hadoop such as Sam Ruby in his post Long Bets, Tim O’Reilly in his post Yahoo!’s Bet on Hadoop, and Bill de hÓra in his post Phat Data. I haven’t dug too deeply into Hadoop due to the fact that the legal folks at work will chew out my butt if I did, there a number of little niggling doubts that make me wonder if this is the savior of the world that all these geeks claim it will be. Here are some random thoughts that have made me skeptical
Code Quality: Hadoop was started by Doug Cutting who created Lucene and Nutch. I don’t know much about Nutch but I am quite familiar with Lucene because we adopted it for use in RSS Bandit. This is probably the worst decision we’ve made in the entire history of RSS Bandit. Not only are the APIs a usability nightmare because they were poorly hacked out then never refactored, the code is also notoriously flaky when it comes to dealing with concurrency so common advice is to never use multiple threads to do anything with Lucene.
Incomplete Specifications: Hadoop’s MapReduce and HDFS are a re-implementation of Google’s MapReduce and Google File System (GFS) technologies. However it seems unwise to base a project on research papers that may not reveal all the details needed to implement the service for competitive reasons. For example, the Hadoop documentation is silent on how it plans to deal with the election of a primary/master server among peers especially in the face of machine failure which Google solves using the Chubby lock service. It just so happens that there is a research paper that describes Chubby but how many other services within Google’s data centers do MapReduce and Google File System (GFS) depend on which are yet to have their own public research paper? Speaking of which, where are the Google research papers on their message queueing infrastructure? You know they have to have one, right? How about their caching layer? Where are the papers on Google’s version of memcached?Secondly, what is the likelihood that Google will be as forthcoming with these papers now that they know competitors like Yahoo! are knocking off their internal architecture?
A Search Optimized Architecture isn’t for Everyone: One of the features of MapReduce is that one can move the computation close to the data because “Moving Computation is Cheaper than Moving Data”. This is especially important when you are doing lots of processing intensive operations such as the kind of data analysis that goes into creating the Google search index. However what if you’re a site whose main tasks are reading and writing lots of data (e.g. MySpace) or sending lots of transient messages back and forth yet ensuring that they always arrive in the right order (e.g. Google Talk) then these optimizations and capabilities aren’t much use to you and a different set of tools would serve you better.
I believe there are a lot of lessons that can be learned from how the distributed systems that power the services behind Google, Amazon and the like. However I think it is waaaay to early to be crowning some knock off of one particular vendors internal infrastructure as the future of distributed computing as we know it.
Seriously.
PS: Yes, I realize that Sam and Bill are primarily pointing out the increasing importance of parellel programming as it relates to the dual trends of (i) almost major website that ends up dealing with lots of data and has lots of traffic eventually eschews relational database features like joins, normalization, triggers and transactions because they are not cost effective and (ii) the increased large amounts of data that the we generate and now have to process due to falling storage costs. Even though their mentions of Hadoop are incidental it still seems to me that it’s almost become a meme, one which deserves more scrutiny before we jump on that particular band wagon.
Now playing: N.W.A. - Appetite For Destruction
| 2024-11-08T07:10:55 | en | train |
42,167 | sharpshoot | 2007-08-14T04:51:34 | New code on facebook secrets | http://facebooksecrets.blogspot.com/2007/08/searching.html | 9 | 10 | [
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] | null | null | http_404 | Facebook Secrets | null | null |
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| 2024-11-08T18:10:07 | null | train |
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42,168 | Readmore | 2007-08-14T04:57:33 | Adobe takes aim at Microsoft and Apple | http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/08/adobe_officedocs | 11 | 1 | [
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42,170 | staunch | 2007-08-14T05:12:18 | Former TechCrunch Contributor Launches Rival Site | null | http://ustech.blognation.com/ | 5 | 3 | [
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] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,175 | Readmore | 2007-08-14T05:56:46 | Newsweek wants to talk about how cool Facebook is... | http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227872/site/newsweek/ | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | no_title | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-07T23:24:08 | null | train |
|
42,179 | rwalker | 2007-08-14T06:27:24 | The User Is Priority #1 | http://www.robbywalker.name/1/post/2007/08/the-user-is-priority-1.html | 3 | 2 | [
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42,181 | kishore | 2007-08-14T06:29:16 | Immigration | 1 | 1 | [
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||
42,184 | toffer | 2007-08-14T06:50:38 | Tim Bray: Prognostication | null | http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2007/08/13/Prognostication | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | Prognostication | null | Tim Bray |
It seems to be in the air. Sam Ruby
plants a stake in
the ground, and isn’t too shy to point at
his track record.
My turn.
Right now is a good time for futures hog-calling; there are lots of changes
that we’re in the middle of, where it’s hard to see what’s on the other
side.
Item: Millions of people are directing online energy away from the
wide-open Web into walled gardens like Facebook. At
what seems like every
social gathering I’ve attended in months, there’s a conversation that ends up
with the FBers evangelizing the service and bugging others to get on. Some of
the arguments make my blood run cold: “It’s
like the Net, but safe because you know who everyone is.” I don’t think
so. But still, I’m not immune to Facebook’s charms.
Item: Computers keep on getting wider. We just
shipped this silicon
morsel that’s really wide, and our
rude boys are shouting to the world
is just the fastest ever:
shout
shout
shout.
Meanwhile, geeks everywhere are
thinking
Erlang. Yep, that book’s sitting here on my desk too, and since I used
Webserver logfile analysis as my
Beautiful Code
testbed, I’m thinking of seeing how fast ten thousand Erlang processes can
crunch my logs, compared to linear Ruby or Python.
Item: The WS-* project is
imploding
amusingly and while we can all stand in a circle and chant “REST! REST!
REST!” as long as we want, the tools and best-practices landscape is
distinguished mostly by its emptiness. What’s the RESTful future look like?
Beats me.
Item: Nobody I know, who switches from mainstream static languages to
Ruby or Python or equivalent, wants to go back. Yet as of today, the
dynamic-language practitioners, compared to the Java/.NET mainstream, are
off to the right of the decimal point, if you count heads. It’s nice to be the fastest-growing
member of the ecosystem, but you still get the feeling that some big horny
hoof could descend from on high and squash us like bugs, and nobody would
notice.
Item: It is now within our power to
equip every significant locus of
digital creativity with a “Publish” button. So, what happens then?
Sam’s List ·
Surprisingly, while I would have agreed with probably four out his five
futuristic bullet points,
last time, I
think I’m down to three at best on this one.
REST, well, yeah; I don’t
invest three
years of my life unless I’m pretty bought in.
Hadoop? Halfway there. If by Hadoop you mean “Large-scale
functional-programming infrastructure that doesn’t rely on conventional
database thinking, as first seen in Google’s Map/Reduce”, I’m down with that.
But Hadoop itself? We still don’t know, it’s really the first attempt outside
Google, and I’d be entirely unsurprised if it turns out to have some sort of
horrible flaw that shows up under Internet-scale loads. I still think the
direction’s important.
Erlang? I just don’t think so. Once again, if we’re really talking
symbolically, saying its message-passing, lightweight-threading,
functional-programming, live-patching virtues are important, well, then,
yes. But Erlang itself? It’s too weird, and in my brief experiments, the
implementation shows its age; we have in fact learned some things about
software since way back then. And anyhow, I
worry less about
concurrency these days. The right way get the most mileage out of something
like our T2 is load it up with a bunch of process-granular PHP or Rails or
Django jobs. Which burns memory, but who cares? Or alternatively, to run
something like Java EE, stay away from application-level threads, and let the
JVM sweat the concurrency.
Jabber? Yep. Wire open a connection to wherever and send one start tag
followed by an infinite number of XML chunklets. I seem to stumble across
another good application for this every month or so, on average.
Microformats? Color me unconvinced. It’s like RDF and the SemWeb; sounds
great in theory, but I’ve been hearing the theory for years and I’m still not
using any applications. I could be convinced; but only by a killer app.
My List ·
A few of these are very specific. Hmm... risky.
Green infrastructure, both for public-spirited reasons and because the
juice is pricey and we can’t swing the HVAC. (This may be bigger than the rest
put together.)
The Atom Protocol, and REST.
Ruby and Python. The Web frameworks will lead them there, and they’ll
get a taste, and they won’t come back.
AJAX, by which I mean the browser getting smarter and better and
quicker and richer, incrementally month by month, until the increments become
qualitative change. Which happened two or three times already in
the last decade.
Jabber, like Sam said.
Ubiquitous functional programming. But I’m far from convinced we’ve
seen the actual instantiation that gets us there from here.
Self-Indulgent Postscript ·
Writing this kind of thing makes me nervous, because last month Jeff Atwood
asked
Yes, But What
Have You *Done*? and I don’t wanna be an airhead pundit. And it’s years
since I spent a whole week doing nothing but code. And it’s worse than that;
not only am a bloviating commentator, I’m also intermittently a standards
iron-butt, writing rules from on high, the things that turn respectable
geeks into
morons and
assholes.
Whatever... I do find time to code, even if it’s not getting
Internet-scale deployment.
And I’m an OK coder, but I’ve worked with a few of the great ones and
more than a few who weren’t great but still better than me, so my
engineering ego is well
under control. And I’m a decent writer, but I doubt
I’ll ever achieve my childhood dream of publishing a slim book of verse, or
anything at all in a good serious magazine. I think I’ve basically lucked
into following
Scott
Adams’ career advice.
At the end of the day, I think Atwood is overly harsh; the world
needs loudmouths (at least on a part-time basis) as well as engineers. Having
said that, he’s got a damn fine blog, for example
Measuring Font
Legibility, which is entirely irresistible to a typography geek named
Bray.
| 2024-11-07T15:04:50 | en | train |
42,186 | aaroneous | 2007-08-14T07:01:16 | Starting Startups | http://blog.viddyou.com/2007/08/13/starting-startups/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,187 | nickb | 2007-08-14T07:04:05 | Facebook lesson: Who Owns the Concept if No One Signs the Papers? | http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/business/yourmoney/12stream.html?ex=1344571200&en=179209e09854b8a8&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss | 5 | 1 | [
42214
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,205 | jamiequint | 2007-08-14T09:16:40 | 34 More Ways to Build Your Own Social Network | null | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/14/34-more-ways-to-build-your-own-social-network/ | 4 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,206 | jamiequint | 2007-08-14T09:17:08 | Mashable Launches the Web 2.0 Marketplace: Free for 48 Hours | null | http://mashable.com/2007/08/14/web-marketplace/ | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | Mashable Launches the Web 2.0 Marketplace: Free for 48 Hours | 2007-08-14T10:15:23+00:00 | null |
[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]This week we're soft-launching something that I think fills a big need: a single place to buy, sell and trade modern websites, services and more. What's more, everyone who lists within the next 48 hours gets a week's free listing. It's called, at least for now, the Web 2.0 Marketplace.Increasingly, companies are listing themselves on eBay and other marketplaces, but telling us they got more leads from Mashable. Pligg, for example, told us about the sale before anyone else. Or folks are trying to sell their Facebook applications, provide development services for Facebook applications and MySpace widgets, looking for suitable job candidates, looking to advertise their events and so on. Clearly, there needs to be a single point for all this activity. So here are some of the things you can list on the Web 2.0 Marketplace:--Websites for Sale--Websites Wanted--Jobs Available--Jobs Wanted--Facebook Development Services--Software providers--Consulting--Events...and much more to come.It works the same as classifieds listings, with a flat rate of what we expect to be around $120/month, but I'd welcome your feedback on that. All listings will be syndicated through the Mashable feed. We're serving 5 million+ pageviews/month now, so plenty of eyeballs on your listings.Here's what we need from you right now: if you are selling your site or services, go and list on the marketplace. You'll see a free option in the listing price, which provides one week for free if you post within the next 48 hours or so. After the week is up, you won't be billed: your listing will just be retired and you can choose to relist if you want.You'll notice an email link to request new categories, too: obviously those aren't set in stone yet, and we're still trying to find the right categories, input fields and so on. Send me your feedback, good and bad, on what you'd like to see. And yes, with enough popular support we can even change the name: that 2.0 meme really gets on the nerves of some people. ;)PS. I should add that all listings are moderated and we don't promise to post them all.
| 2024-11-08T07:29:51 | en | train |
42,207 | mark-t | 2007-08-14T09:23:43 | Fame vs. Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content | http://www.shirky.com/writings/fame_vs_fortune.html | 8 | 3 | [
42233
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,211 | 7media | 2007-08-14T10:20:19 | 202(c) the anti hacking German law | 202(c) came into effect on Sunday, which states that any illegal distribution, sale, and possession of security tools that encourages to commit a crime such as hacking. | http://www.irintech.com/x1/blogarchive.php?id=1396 | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,220 | transburgh | 2007-08-14T12:38:29 | Google Seeks Court Time With Stewart, Colbert | null | http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/08/13/google-seeks-court-time-with-stewart-colbert | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,221 | drm237 | 2007-08-14T12:43:23 | Eat, Drink & Breathe like a Startup !!! | In the interesting podcast,you find an delicious recipe to a Startup.They deal with cutting costs on Food & Drink in a startup where they talk about "Ideal(and economical) food for startups".This podcast would definitely bring you smile as well as makes us understand "Every penny is important in a startup" | http://thoughtsprevail.blogspot.com/2007/08/eat-drink-breathe-like-startup.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,222 | eposts | 2007-08-14T13:00:18 | Luck and the entrepreneur, part 1: The four kinds of luck | http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/08/luck-and-the-en.html | 43 | 13 | [
42503,
42273,
42423,
42274
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,223 | transburgh | 2007-08-14T13:05:03 | Yoomba Reaches 500,000 Userbase in Less than One Month | null | http://www.centernetworks.com/yoomba-reaches-500-000-userbase | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,224 | Keios | 2007-08-14T13:05:12 | The Complete Web 2.0 directory (broadband preferred) | A comprehensive collection which seems to be updated often. | http://go2web20.net/ | 2 | 1 | [
42267
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,234 | transburgh | 2007-08-14T14:09:12 | Yahoo Edges Out Google In Satisfaction Survey | null | http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/08/14/yahoo-edges-out-google-in-satisfaction-survey | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,238 | rrival | 2007-08-14T14:34:51 | On Pricing Strategy | I'm working on a business model that requires charging something for a web-based service (not consulting/nothing hourly). I've never known where to begin the process of arriving at the 'right' price. Clearly, there are marketing/customer perception implications to:<p>1) providing something on a free trial basis initially
2) increasing the cost of a service later
3) charging too little and being deemed insignificant "How could $5/month give me that much value?"
4) charging too much and being seen as a ripoff, leaving room for others to step in. <p>I know it's easy enough to arrive at or at least be aware of a market price (median/average) if there's enough competition in the space to do a back-of-napkin statistical analysis. I'm not sure how that carries over into concepts with a 'first mover' advantage, or markets where competition is light.<p>I know there must be theory relevant to this (probably volumes). Can anyone recommend a place to start? How have you dealt with pricing your startup's services? | 7 | 15 | [
42300,
42253,
42251,
42240,
42252,
42301,
42264,
42288,
42485
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
42,239 | nickb | 2007-08-14T14:40:28 | TV show panel full of experts tells entrepreneur his idea is worthless, he proves them wrong | Never let anyone persuade you your product is useless until you prove its usefulness in the market! | http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=475095&in_page_id=1770&ito=1490 | 20 | 6 | [
42248,
42265,
42269,
42249
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,243 | drm237 | 2007-08-14T15:18:10 | Transitioning from start-up phase to build-up phase | We have been starting-up Architel since late 2001, but I always considered the business to be a 'start-up'. I am not sure why, but recently my feelings changed. Now that we have brought in 'real' operators the business seems to have transitioned to a new phase. | http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2007/08/14/transitioning-from-start-up-phase-to-build-up-phase/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,246 | ratsbane | 2007-08-14T15:23:51 | Google Health coming tomorrow: Electronic Medical Records (EMR) for everyone? | http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/08/google-health-prototype.html | 8 | 2 | [
42293,
42247
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,255 | joshwa | 2007-08-14T16:16:00 | Why Did Google Answers Shut Down? | null | http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-08-09-n28.html | 2 | 2 | [
42295
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,258 | horatio05 | 2007-08-14T16:30:19 | BuiltWith Shows the Stuff a Site is Made Of | null | http://mashable.com/2007/08/13/builtwith/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | BuiltWith Shows the Stuff a Site is Made Of | 2007-08-14T02:57:26+00:00 | null |
[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]BuiltWith is a new service that lets you search for a website, and it will tell you what's going on behind the scenes.For instance, you can search for a site and BuiltWith will pull up what language the site was built in, what services it uses for analytics and tracking, what server it goes through, which widgets are shown on the site, etc. It will also show data on the site's advertising methods, aggregation functionality, document information and encoding. The basic analytics report you'll find with BuiltWith is powered by Compete, but there are also links for you to gain additional information from sites like Alexa and Technorati.The company has determined the different aspects of a website that it would get information for, so when you type in your search query, BuiltWith returns results that match up with the aspects it can profile. That being said, some information can fall through the cracks if you're seeking out something that BuiltWith doesn't look for, or if the site developer has inhibited a particular feature from being seen.Another useful tool that BuiltWith offers is the percentage of other sites profiled in its database that use each metric that's considered for this site profiling tool. It won't indicate what sites these are, and there's no directory of sites that it's profiled (though there is a tag cloud for popular searches), so this tool is best used as a point of reference in regards to a particular site's place in comparison with others BuiltWith has looked at. It would additionally be helpful for developers to search by the different aspects that BuiltWith gets information for.[via R/WW]
| 2024-11-08T02:41:28 | en | train |
42,259 | horatio05 | 2007-08-14T16:30:28 | Classmates.com, Grandaddy of Social Networks, Going IPO | null | http://mashable.com/2007/08/13/classmates/ | 1 | 1 | [
42291
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,260 | horatio05 | 2007-08-14T16:30:58 | Google Offers Easy Embed Code for Maps | null | http://mashable.com/2007/08/13/google-embed-maps/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | Google Offers Easy Embed Code for Maps | 2007-08-14T04:02:15+00:00 | null |
Credit:
Looks like there's an easily embeddable Google Maps feature that will be launching in about a week. The feature was unveiled at Google Australia.While Google already offered the capability of embedding a Google map into your web page, the process will soon require nothing buy copying and pasting code. Placing an interactive Google Map on your personal website or blog will be as simple as adding any other widget to a site, as Google reportedly states that it will be as simple as posting a YouTube widget. The embedded maps will have all the functionality of Google Maps found elsewhere, providing a satellite view, regular map view, or hybrid view. Site visitors will be able to click and drag maps to see different areas as well.
| 2024-11-07T18:11:03 | en | train |
42,262 | joshwa | 2007-08-14T16:38:36 | Facebook In-House App Killed in Favor of 3rd-Party F8 Apps | null | http://mashable.com/2007/08/09/facebook-courses/ | 5 | 1 | [
42286
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,263 | null | 2007-08-14T16:41:30 | null | null | null | null | null | null | [
"true"
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,276 | epi0Bauqu | 2007-08-14T17:14:34 | Group-O-Matic (My Startup Launch!) | I am launching my startup today. All comments/questions/feedback, however harsh/cynical/insightful, will be greatly appreciated. Short version: free site to help people form local groups for regular events. Even shorter version: free alternative to meetup.com. There has not been a private or public beta. Group-O-Matic has been released with a minimum feature set I thought would be useful. I'm coding message boards right now, to be released shortly. | http://www.groupomatic.com | 15 | 19 | [
42306,
42289,
42388,
42287,
42277,
42308,
44016,
42620,
42380,
42383
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,282 | unfoldedorigami | 2007-08-14T17:18:00 | The Importance of Design in Business | http://particletree.com/features/the-importance-of-design-in-business/ | 24 | 1 | [
42378
] | null | null | no_error | The Importance of Design in Business | null | null |
IntroductionMost of the debates on the importance of design in business are usually focused on how aesthetics affect a business’s bottom line. Whether it’s Facebook vs Myspace or Microsoft vs Apple, the argument is a lot like the infamous invisibility vs flight hypothetical. With absolutely no data, it can be argued on several levels and, in the end, often say more about the person than the companies involved.On our team, our experiences and workflow have brought about a richer appreciation for the role of good design in a company. While we do like to focus heavily on the look and usability of our products and experiments, we believe design’s greatest value to a business goes deeper than the idea that it’s a glossy exterior that attracts customers. In an interview with Fortune Magazine, Steve Jobs said:
“Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product.”
It’s a little romantic, but we believe the greatest asset of this “fundamental soul” is the ability to dramatically influence the quality of a product and the culture of a company before production even begins. We think it’s a shame when developers debate the merits of design after the core product is already completed, because it misses out on design’s true potential: to impact your internal business. Good design in our company doesn’t just sell products. Good design fosters collaboration, communicates strategy, sets expectations, improves the efficiency of a team, and most importantly inspires and motivates like nothing else.Setting ExpectationsSeth Godin recently mentioned in a post on expectations that when it comes to business, promising big and delivering bigger seems to be the only reliable strategy. To gain buzz you need to set expectations high. To gain and retain customers, you need to surpass those expectations on a regular basis. A great way to start is by setting the table for quality early on inside your organization and one of the best ways to do this is through design.Numerous research studies have illustrated the impact of expectations on individuals and groups. The Pygmalion effect, which is more commonly known as the Teacher-Expectancy effect, describes situations where students perform better than other students simply because they are expected to do so. In 2003, J. Sterling Livingston wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review about the Pygmalion effect in management. He explained that “if [managers] are skillful and have high expectations, subordinates’ self confidence will grow, their capabilities will develop, and their productivity will be high.”Garr Nolds, an associate professor of management at Kansai Gaidai University and an ex-Apple employee, believes that these high expectations for an organization should be set with design.
“[Companies] are beginning to preach design internally and demand great design, not just of the product-development teams, but of all departments. If an organization’s true brand is actually inside the company, then we sure as heck better make sure we have an internal climate that preaches great design and lives incredible design everyday.”
Why Design Matters
Two Types of QualityOne culture that does a fantastic job of incorporating design expectations into business practices at every level is the Japanese. Their version of total quality management, which is a management strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organizational processes, is heavily dependent on aesthetic values. The relationship between design and quality is very close for the Japanese, who believe that in order to have a quality product or service, it needs to be created in a way that satisfies two different ideas of quality. The first, atarimae hinshitsu, which is roughly translated as “taken-for-granted quality,” is the idea that things will work as they are intended. The second, miryokuteki hinshitsu, which means “enchanting quality,” is the idea that things should have an aesthetic quality that appeals to a person’s sense of beauty. Here’s a simple example to help make it a bit more clear:
atarimae hinshitsuA pen will write.
miryokuteki hinshitsuA pen will write in a way that is pleasing to the writer AND leave behind ink that is pleasing to the reader.
—Wikipedia on miryokuteki hinshitsu
For the Japanese, the product or service isn’t good enough when it just works—it needs to also work elegantly to be considered of a sufficient quality that makes it presentable to the consumer. This belief is embedded deeply into Japan’s corporate culture and permeates everyone’s values from management to the workers on the factory floor. What Nolds and Japanese companies like Toyota understand is that to be effective in creating values that expect quality work from everyone on a team (not just designers), you have to instill these design values from the beginning and at a fundamental level that presents a commitment to beauty and elegance for everyone and at every step in the process. When you do this, you find your team rising not to the challenge or your competitors’ cries, but to the designs presented before them.Design Helps Get Things DoneWhen you provide engineers with a design from the beginning, in addition to setting expectations of quality, you provide a holistic understanding and strategy for what needs to be accomplished. Good prototypes show exactly what the product is supposed to look like, and which features need to be created without getting in the programmer’s way.
“…without product design, our manager’s two fears remain unquelled. She has not established whether or not the users will like the product, which indeed leaves its success a mystery. Nor has she established what a ‘complete’ product looks like, which leaves its completion a mystery.”
Alan Cooper
Good designs that are established at the start of a project prevent the programmer from leaving features incomplete or straying off course to create “neat” features that may turn out to add unneeded complexity and reduce the usability of your products. Incomplete features hinder productivity and when you remove a programmer’s cool features after they’ve already created them, you open up the potential for arguments and bruised egos. The sunk cost fallacy might be one of the most difficult concepts to accept when it’s your time and energy that has to be sunk.Most of the programmers we know seem to have a common problem where they love to start challenging projects, but have a hard time following through and finishing. You may disagree on exactly how detailed a functional spec should be, but when your engineers are also acting as your interaction designer, chances are your product is going to take longer to complete and you won’t end up with the results you intended. There’s actually a common saying that goes something like this:
“The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.”
Ninety-Ninety Rule
Our team is definitely no exception, and while we have no problems working on features that excite our users, the boring features like backend account management or even documentation seem to be a real drag. To help speed up the work on boring or tedious projects, we often turn to design to get us going. To illustrate what I’m talking about, here’s two screenshots showing the old administrative interface compared to the new design proposed by Kevin:We couldn’t help but want to actually make it work. Well-designed comps show you what could be accomplished if you would only get off your lazy butt and bring the design to life. Not only does design get us started, but we find ourselves finishing projects that were well designed ahead of time much faster than projects that didn’t have a wireframe or prototype (like our billing system). We’ve come to learn that it’s hard to motivate technical people, including ourselves, through money, colorful toys, or gigantic monitors. We try, instead, to have a design ready for everything we’re about to approach so the motivation for accomplishment is instilled by our need to see something that looks cool come alive.A good design also has the ability to remind us that we’re working on something worthwhile, which is another way design can help fuel productivity. This seems to be a common motivational factor for programmers. Here’s a few quotes from programmers discussing the problem on how to motivate programmers in the Joel on Software forums :
“If they’re new meat they haven’t really had the feeling of shipping a product and seeing it in the real world help somebody. That’s what gives me the biggest kick.”
“I think the inverse of that is why most programmer’s get so fired up about not wanting to ship crap. Having been involved with a couple of projects that were total garbage I can’t tell you how horrible it is to continually have to apologize for the complete piece of shit that is sitting in front of a user.”
By designing first, you know that you’re working on a product with a soul and not some middle manager’s steaming turd of a project that they’re just trying to ship out the door to make their quarterly bonus. Programmers do not want to work on garbage and when they see something that’s useful, real, and worth accomplishing, they’re internally motivated to not only start but to also finish.ConclusionDeep down, we all have a desire to be proud of our work, and design is a great way to set the stage for excellence within your organization. When you start out with a beautiful and awe inspiring wireframe or prototype, your expectations about that product and everything associated with it is expected to also be beautiful and awe inspiring. If the initial expectations for a web application are low by bad or no design, then bad practices seem to find their way into the code, the web site marketing, and even the attitudes toward customers by employees. When you start with great design as a foundation, there is a snowball effect on the quality and execution of a product from start to finish.In a healthy business culture, what’s good for the company and for customers comes together and becomes the driving force behind what everyone does. Whether or not design results in a few more units sold can be debated, but I don’t believe we’d argue about the importance of instilling pride and values in your workforce. This is where the true value of design lies.
| 2024-11-08T05:41:34 | en | train |
|
42,283 | nickb | 2007-08-14T17:19:32 | Dumb But Profitable. 10 Million Dollar Ideas That Shouldn't Have Worked | http://madconomist.com/dumb-but-profitable-10-million-dollar-ideas-that-shouldnt-have-worked | 11 | 3 | [
42456,
42563,
42290,
42473
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,297 | terpua | 2007-08-14T17:57:16 | Finding Funding For Your Infant Brand | null | http://www.fastcompany.com/resources/marketing/post/finding-funding-080907.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,303 | terpua | 2007-08-14T18:07:14 | How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life | null | http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-08/ff_sheep | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,309 | auferstehung | 2007-08-14T18:19:51 | Web App Weakness: Dvorak nails it. | Dvorak highlights the big web app weakness no one likes to discuss. What do your customers do when you pull the rug out from underneath them or go bankrupt. | http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2170676,00.asp | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | http_404 | Page Not Found 404 | null | null |
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| 2024-11-08T16:04:43 | null | train |
42,310 | transburgh | 2007-08-14T18:21:28 | Aging Boomers lead startup growth (I would assume these are not tech startups) | null | http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/09/magazines/fsb/older_owners.fsb/index.htm?postversion=2007081303 | 1 | 6 | [
42311,
42459
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,314 | transburgh | 2007-08-14T18:33:36 | Netflix Quietly Rolls Out Social Networking Features | null | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/14/netflix-quietly-rolls-out-social-networking-features/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,317 | pg | 2007-08-14T18:41:57 | Hacker News | http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html | 150 | 76 | [
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42469,
42594,
42335,
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42743,
42944,
42329,
42354,
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42411,
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42342,
42763,
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] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,320 | pg | 2007-08-14T18:45:09 | Indian mathematicians discovered infinite series in 1350 | null | http://www.physorg.com/news106238636.html | 45 | 13 | [
42373,
42532,
42385,
42420,
42654,
42430
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,328 | nostrademons | 2007-08-14T18:54:33 | Data and Codata | http://sigfpe.blogspot.com/2007/07/data-and-codata.html | 14 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,330 | terpua | 2007-08-14T18:57:52 | Film about Ramanujan (math genius died at 33) being made | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4811920.stm | 24 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,332 | bosky101 | 2007-08-14T18:58:28 | In-text ad, content injection prototype | the first thing that came across my mind when i read about the israeli startup going for its 2nd round funding was - 'woah i could do that. hey,wait a sec. i am doing something like just that' . got the in-text architecture in place. right now can support html ,and basically any media,etc . chk it out. | http://returnable.org | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,333 | mqt | 2007-08-14T18:59:23 | Building a (fast) Wikipedia offline reader | http://www.softlab.ntua.gr/~ttsiod/buildWikipediaOffline.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,336 | jey | 2007-08-14T19:02:18 | Bayesianism: The Rationalist's swiss army knife, power saw, and flamethrower | You should read the introduction at <a href="http://yudkowsky.net/bayes/bayes.html" rel="nofollow">http://yudkowsky.net/bayes/bayes.html</a> first if you aren't familiar with Bayesian reasoning. The introduction is a bit repetetive, so skip over parts of it once you understand the idea. | http://yudkowsky.net/bayes/technical.html | 8 | 2 | [
42337,
42434
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,338 | nostrademons | 2007-08-14T19:04:54 | Number Systems and Data Structures [pdf] | http://www.informatik.uni-bonn.de/~ralf/talks/BCTCS.pdf | 1 | 1 | [
42343
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,344 | dawie | 2007-08-14T19:11:15 | Dick Costolo from Feedburner: The wizard is in | http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/558-dick-costolo-the-wizard-is-in | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
|
42,345 | dawie | 2007-08-14T19:11:38 | Home Sweet Home | null | http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/home-sweet-home | 5 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
42,346 | farmer | 2007-08-14T19:11:54 | The Beam of Light That Flips a Switch That Turns on the Brain | http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/14brai.html?ex=1344744000&en=0145761433431fd7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss | 14 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
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