Hisoka

Did Google pay you to say this?

The environment we're in affects us a lot. As young kids, very few consciously choose to pursue social situations, as our minds are not that developed. A lot of it happens due to our life situation.. ie we live near a park, we live near lots of kids our age, or our parents hang out with other parents who have kids our age, etc.

I agree. I remember the day when you could drop by a friend's house to chill w/o calling beforehand, or sending a text message or IM. or the days when you could just drop by the park and have a good chance of meeting a couple of buddies there. Everything now seems so structured. Have to arrange meetups with friends. Have to arrange this or that. And lots of socializing happens after work, where the intention is to just get drunk, and forget about the day.

What is the root cause of this problem though? Is it just a natural result of overpopulation + our natural tendency to be selfish? is it overpopulation + the need to give up individual needs to support the whole? is it the natural result of our biological instincts and we're just really fucked up species?

Saving energy doesn't instill a sense of achievement. Nobody has a bucket list with an item that says "Save as much energy as I can". It just doesn't inspire anyone. Sorry if that's your startup idea.

Yep, that's the point. People who use gamification for things like green living and saving energy, or advertising, or redeeming rewards, etc are missing the point. There's nothing to freaking gamify. Nobody feels any sense of achievement from saving energy, or redeeming airmile rewards, or checking in to places and doing random stuff.

How do you do marketing for Rails Tutorial? is it mostly search organic traffic? paid traffic? word of mouth?

How about going where your customers actually are?

Nothing wrong, just that you're going to have difficulty finding advertisers that will agree to this type of advertising. You're not in any way solving the problem of finding relevant audiences for their ads. You're just throwing an incentive for random people to do things for prizes, and hope they will buy whatever the ad is about. But users just want the free goods.

The problem is not how to make users interested in an ad. The core problem is connecting an ad to a relevant audience. You can't fake interest in an ad that's not relevant to what you want at the point. People have tried that with FB ads, but the CTR are horrible, and people get pissed when they see the ad had nothing to do with the actual product.

Isn't this just a fancy derivative of "fill this form out and we'll send you a free iPod?". Because that's all it is..

If you tell me people want achievements, well.. Achievements in games feel good because there's actual skill involved, and it feels like you mastered something. You can't say the same for doing random tasks online. You can't just throw a word like 'achievement' or 'score' on top of what you're doing, and think the effect will be the same.

I like the point about how being in covers of tech blogs doesn't mean much. It's all mostly noise, and if one did a study, I bet they'd find the failure rate of startups covered by tech blogs to be around the same as the overall failure rate of the average business. E

Yes, I would like to read a post about it.. also would like to know how you manage to get 28K in private beta if you are willing to share that secret haha

The true cost of commuting is actually the stress that piles on you, bit by bit.. it can contribute to divorce, physical disease, high blood pressure, loneliness, etc. Just ask anyone that has to ride their car into NYC traffic, or even take the crowded subways on a daily basis.

What is Hall.com going to be about, and how much did the domain name cost you:

What CDN did you use? CloudFlare?

What is your stack like? How many servers, what back-end technology, amount of memory, processor, etc?

Exercise is important, but I find the effects are way more beneficial when you do it early in morning as opposed to evening. It disrupts my sleep if I exercise too late

Yes, this freaks me out too, and makes the vast majority of humans insane for not taking care of their health... all the more reason to be vigilant, not complacent.

I don't know about his diet, but I do know it's virtually impossible to have healthy lifestyle with the responsibilities he has. He might have needed Apple, but there is a chance he put his body over the limit and ignored symptoms

I think the stress and pressure of running a company also may have contributed to Job's health. He may have had pancreatic problems nonetheless, but the stress, lack of sleep, eating fast food at his desk, etc couldn't have been beneficial. Jobs may have contributed a lot to society, but he probably paid a huge price for it.

I agree. We all like to say "Life is short, we have to live it to the fullest" but do our actions really reflect that? Some of us have the ability to do more, yet are complacent and happy with the status quo. Others are not in any situation to do more. Just call bullshit on anyone that says this until he/she really walks the walk.

They just want the world to be filled with a billion less people, first starting with people who are useless to society such as anyone associated with Wall Street. Of course, none of them will say this, and none of them know they want this, so you get all this incoherent blabber.

Did you guys get any writeups prior to Gigaom? Was is the case that you had lots of customers but just not a lot of glamour?

I quit in the first scenario: "Find a Job" or "Quit".. Anything but a job!

I work in Wall Street, and funny thing is I haven't seen a sign of 1 protestor. Maybe I'm in a very small radius, but still, it's very overwhelming. They need someone like Lady Gaga if they want more traction. They should probably consult with one of the guys from Mint.com for marketing ideas

A society with so many ppl that rely so much on alcohol is just a symptom of even bigger problem. Give people a sense of purpose, or better community ties, and the need for "drugs" decreases

"“When the stars align, they align quickly,”

Not so fast. The toughest and most challenging alignment to get is paying customers. Everything else is easy in comparison

Just wanted to say you guys were one of the few "startups" I actually gave my email to in the beta page when you announced it. I could care less about the next social app, or next reminder app but as soon as I saw your value proposition, I KNEW I had to be notified when it was out. Thanks for making something that actually solves a crucial problems. This is much much needed, and you guys are definitely on your way to success

1) Yes I am free from physical pain 2) Yes, for the most part.. minus one, starts with s, ends with x. 3) I experience negative emotions regularly. 4) Yes I anticipate a couple of happy ending. 5) I think world is cruel inhumane place