2007-05-18 front | Hacker News

Stories from May 18, 2007

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1.		The Day The Day Job Died - Celebrating the Plunge (promoterforce.com)
		19 points by Mistone on May 18, 2007 \| 13 comments
2.		Well after a month of sacrificing all my free time... this is what i came up with
		14 points by twism on May 18, 2007 \| 52 comments
3.		2 weeks after launch, and no real traffic. What should I do?
		13 points by edawerd on May 18, 2007 \| 33 comments
4.		Blogs of startup founders
		12 points by RichardPrice on May 18, 2007 \| 13 comments
5.		So it's 2000, you've created a great MP3 player that runs on a Mac and... (panic.com)
		12 points by palish on May 18, 2007 \| 1 comment
6.		Microsoft Launches Popfly: Mashup App Creator Built On Silverlight (techcrunch.com)
		10 points by veritas on May 18, 2007 \| 8 comments
7.		Starbucks Economics: How to charge consumers what they really think your product is worth (slate.com)
		9 points by byrneseyeview on May 18, 2007 \| 1 comment
		pg on May 18, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: Microsoft Launches Popfly: Mashup App Creator Buil... Boy, Microsoft seems to be really working Arrington.
9.		The Uncanny Valley of User Interface Design: Why web apps shouldn't look like desktop apps (oreilly.com)
		8 points by danw on May 18, 2007 \| 5 comments
10.		5 reasons not to partner with an "idea guy" (tonywright.com)
		7 points by Sam_Odio on May 18, 2007 \| 1 comment
11.		Microsoft buying aQuantive for a massive $6bn... larger than youtube & doubleclick combined (techcrunch.com)
		6 points by Sam_Odio on May 18, 2007
12.		MIT launches tech TV (youtube for techies) (techtv.mit.edu)
		6 points by knewjax on May 18, 2007 \| 3 comments
13.		Startup Hiring: 6 Subtle Signs You Might Have A Winner (onstartups.com)
		6 points by brett on May 18, 2007 \| 1 comment
		aston on May 18, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: 2 weeks after launch, and no real traffic. What sh... http://yelp.com
		elialfordj on May 18, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: 2 weeks after launch, and no real traffic. What sh... Edward - don't let the nay-sayers get you down. Here's a few pieces of advice. First of all, for all of the users who don't sign up and are merely there to look around and maybe catch some reviews, the site has no local focus.(I recently read somewhere that a typical site with user generated content can expect around a 10:1 ratio of readers to creators - so this group should be important to you). I'm not particularly interested in seeing a Google map of reviews from Connecticut when I'm in Portland Oregon. I feel like you would do well to pick one or two cities, and focus your resources on reaching critical mass in those markets. I think what you have is cool. Talk to your friends and enable them with digital cameras. A lot of people eat out once or twice a day and even a few of these people using your site will really rev up the user experience in a given city. After you have 100, maybe 200 reviews. Reach out to local bloggers, small local papers, and some of your favorite restaurant owners. Maybe even print up some info and go talk to some of the more interesting restaurants in your area. Restaurant owners love getting reviews, and many will be happy to speak your praises to their customers in hopes of a good review.
		create_account on May 18, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: YC startup Auctomatic looking to hire What happens if ebay decides they don't like what they're doing, and shuts them out or makes it hard to connect?
17.		RailsConf07 Notes: Building Community Focused Apps (Cork'd) (scribd.com)
		6 points by wammin on May 18, 2007 \| 3 comments
18.		The Nine Biggest Myths of the Workplace (guykawasaki.com)
		6 points by mattjaynes on May 18, 2007
19.		Truemors: They say there's nothing new under the sun... (flickr.com)
		5 points by kn0thing on May 18, 2007
		twism on May 18, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: Well after a month of sacrificing all my free time... I thought id share with you guys... feedback is very much appreciated... Im taking the weekend off http://www.theother9to5.com/
21.		Facebook growing, but more roadkill coming? (venturebeat.com)
		5 points by transburgh on May 18, 2007 \| 2 comments
		danw on May 18, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: Well after a month of sacrificing all my free time... Im taking the weekend off I've learnt from experience that you should take the time off before shipping the app. That way you're there to gather the feedback, do the bugfixes. Then try to do a second release within a week with a few little extra features that have been requested to show the community you listen to them. Nice site, keep up the good work.
23.		Guy Kawasaki gets zinged (uncov.com)
		5 points by lupin_sansei on May 18, 2007
		Sam_Odio on May 18, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: YC startup Auctomatic looking to hire Sounds moderately interesting.
		yubrew on May 18, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: YC startup Auctomatic looking to hire i think the idea is that they will innovate and add features much faster than e-bay or other competitors will. from a user's perspective, i would much rather use the tools and software provided by a capable team that caters to my needs. that said, you don't really need a brilliant team, just one that does the job better than other current competitors. this is a great opportunity that aligns well with the strengths of the founders.
		edawerd on May 18, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: 2 weeks after launch, and no real traffic. What sh... After months of after-work-hours programming, I launched my site http://www.mygrub.net but haven't seen any traction. Any tips for getting traffic? How did reddit get its very first users? I applied to YCombinator with this, but was rejected. Maybe for good reason =(
		byrneseyeview on May 18, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: YC startup Auctomatic looking to hire Read Paypal Wars if you want to know how that's done. They spent their entire existence about a week ahead of being crushed by eBay. The trick is to start with brilliant people, hire more brilliant people, and give them all stock options. Or something. They might have just had a longer outlook: if competing with eBay was a zero-sum game and eBay was worried about a bad quarter, Paypal could come out ahead by accepting bad quarters in exchange for good years. I think that's essentially what they did: eBay could (for example) lose 10% of their customers by completely locking out Paypal, or they could try to winnow that down to 5% or 1% or so by coming up with Paypal-like features.
		BrandonM on May 18, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: Well after a month of sacrificing all my free time... I like the color scheme, actually. I am quite partial to the color scheme because I agree with Maddox (though I don't read his site much anymore) that looking at a white background is basically the same thing as staring as a light bulb. If the entire Internet used dark backgrounds, it would be a much warmer experience, in my opinion. That said, perhaps the text needs to be just slightly lighter in order to give it a little more contrast with the background. Also, the size is minuscule. I know that Ctrl-+ is not too hard to press, but if that's the first thing that every visitor has to do, it's kind of a waste of time. On my display, at least, the size of event titles is about the same size as the normal text on this site. I would personally increase the size by 25-50%, but I tend to like larger text, so take that recommendation with a grain of salt. I agree with the other comments that the front page should have a little bit more useful information. It could be something like a list (in order of decreasing popularity) of the events that are happening that day. The search seems somewhat strange, because if I was using that site, I think it would be in a situation where I'm like, "Hmm... what am I going to do tonight?" not a situation where I already know what I want to do and just want to figure out when it is happening (although that is a legitimate use case as well). In spite of the criticisms, I'm liking the idea, and I wish you the best of luck with it. Have you considered trying to tie it into e.g. Google Calendar so that people can easily add events? Of course, ideas like that are just added features, but I'm curious where you plan on going with this.
		timg on May 18, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: 2 weeks after launch, and no real traffic. What sh... Have fun basking in your honesty, all alone on your fantastic new site. (if you were against it, that is.)
30.		Anyone going to the "Invite only" Y-combinator 'wannabe' programs?
		4 points by Leonidas on May 18, 2007 \| 4 comments
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