ColemanF

A tiny suggestion: the field where you type the route should say "Or type it and click go", not just "Or type it and click." It's a little clearer. I see that you fully spell it out at the very top, but I skipped past that, and I suspect a lot of other people will, too, because it's so small.

This is impressive, though -- good job.

I was thinking about trying to make a similar tool. I got the idea when I was trying to decide in which format I wanted to buy the complete series of The Wire. I found it too hard to compare prices between all the different sources, including DVD. Google's Shopping results are only for the DVD format. I would incorporate prices to make it more useful. Moki.tv was a good app that was pretty similar. http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/17/moki-tv-is-the-ultimate-per...

Bloc(http://www.bloc.io/) does exactly that. "This is perfect for someone who wants to enroll in something like Dev Bootcamp but can't because they don't live in San Francisco."

I'm part of their fall cohort that's about to start and so far it's been great.

Personalized news is exploding right now. This looks like a pretty strong contender.

Interesting discussion, but why is there a picture of Joe Montana on Winer's post?

We think we are more obsessed with apps than pretty much anyone, so others might want to see what we have to say. What are the main hashtags for this purpose right now? That sounds like a good idea, too.

Toorld? Too hard to pronounce and spell. But it seems like a great idea.

I don't have any UX training (Econ major, myself), but I recommend making bigger stories take up more space, like TechMeme does. I do like how you de-emphasized related stories, because they make TechMeme kind of noisy. I also miss the pictures TechMeme puts next to most stories. In general, it is a little bland, as you seem to realize. Then again, HN is bland and I don't have a problem with it.

The story ranking and discovery is good, though. Seems on par with TechMeme, which is impressive.

I found it with a Facebook ad. Are you advertising it a little just to see if it takes off, or what?

Anyways, good job and good luck.

Google is making good-looking stuff lately. The YouTube update, Chrome, and now this.

False sense of superiority.

The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century by Thomas P. M. Barnett.

It's like The World is Flat on steroids. It's probably even more pro free trade. It's the most optimistic look at world affairs I've ever seen. The idea is that trade ties countries together and makes them stop fighting.

Another good Behavioral Economics book: Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman I liked it a lot better than Predictably Irrational.

A bureaucracy meant to increase entrepreneurship...maybe he should make an Office of Government Non-Intervention, too.

Maybe he should create an office to boost government non-intervention, too.

Eliminating high school would cut the amount of taxes needed for public schooling, and would instead increase tax revenue by putting more people in the workforce. Not to mention that a more experienced (real-world experience) workforce might be more productive.

Aspies are often outgoing, but they have a lot of trouble socializing. That is what I am like, and it is pretty tough. How is it not a disorder to be unable to do something that is necessary for your happiness?

well, kinda

It's like the boy who cried wolf. I've seen so many of these articles, it hardly means anything to me anymore.

If Chris Anderson accomplishes nothing else by releasing "Free", he will have at least started a really good debate.

excellent point

Asperger's is very poorly understood, and this misunderstanding is really hard on suffferers (I am one.) The cause of all the varied symptoms is that we have a slight delay in processing sounds, as explained in this article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16174-brains-of-autist... This means that if you say "Hi" to me, I know instantly that you said a word one syllable long, but it takes me a fraction of a second longer than a normal person to decipher the word as "hi." This isn't a problem when a person says just one syllable. But in a whole sentence, the delays snowball until I miss a big chunk of the sentence, especially if the person speaks quickly. That's why, in danteembermage's example, his son "has a hard time finding objects using verbal instructions 'grab your shoes buddy.'" If you handed him a piece of paper that said "grab your shoes, buddy," he would get the shoes as fast as anyone. Poor speech comprehension is the root of all unusual Aspie behaviors. ShabbyDoo's son "physically cringes when there's lots of noise/confusion." The confusion comes because there is too much noise and not enough signal. Aspies shy from social situations because they can't understand what people are saying. Even things that seem like deep-down problems can easily be explained by poor speech comprehension. The article spends a lot of time on empathy, but empathy is not an emotion, it's a social skill. You act like you care about somebody else's problems so you get along with them better. Aspies suck at it because they have a hard time understanding what people are saying, and they just have less chance to develop social skills in general, because it is so hard for them to talk to people.

i don't think it's too niche, because as many web apps as have come out in the last year, i think there will be way more in the coming year. good, thought-provoking comment, though.

Technology is certainly necessary. Technology is the only way to increase production. Increasing production is they only way to get wealthier, by definition. Not only is it necessary, but technology is also sufficient for development. I'll take development to mean progress on indicators such as GDP as well as life expectancy, literacy rate, and freedom of expression. As I said in the first paragraph, technology is THE way to increase production. But increasing wealth also improves things that seem unrelated to the economy, like freedom of speech, the right to vote, and more. When people are starving, they are desperate for money and will do crazy things to get it. Once they pile up enough money to relax and feel like they have an interest in keeping society stable, they demand (and get) more human rights. South Korea, for example, went from a third-world nation of unproductive farms to a super-productive industrial nation, and, at the same time, became a democracy and a civilized place to live. South Korea just adopted new technologies and the rest followed.

The US will remain the top innovator, if for no other reason than that nobody else innovates very much. I don't know how people came up with China as an innovator. The article doesn't mention just how far ahead we are. We made Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Intel, AMD, and countless others. What innovation ever came out of China? Or, for that matter, Europe?