OpenAlgorithm

I'm learning to program for a few months now (I'm 16) I did quite a bit of research into what language to learn first.

In the end I chose Python, it's easy to use, simple to understand and with IDLE you can get instant results.

Plus there are tons of resources if your girls get really interested.

Python gets my vote but dependant on how young they start then something using GUIs might be more interactive, ColinWright mentioned a few good ones.

Only continue if you are doing something different or better than your competitors. Obviously if you are just mimicking what they gave already created, that's no good but if you can improve on it, then their presence in the market may be helpful in terms of warming the market for you before launch.

Great, thanks for your advice, it looks like a great book with lots of top exercises.

Personally I would really focus the ability to know when your email has been read, there are many analytics software providers that give you far more detailed statistics than your package will.

While I know there are email trackers and from a commercial point of view you would be using an email marketing provider.

But from a consumer's point of view tracking when a really important email has been sent could be a great idea. I would use it if I was sending an email to someone I hadn't contacted before but respected a lot and placed a high value on being in contact with them.

As a result if I was running the site, I would focus the branding and marketing on the consumer level, simple to use email tracking versus commercially focussed stuff.

Also tip: maybe don't use so much tech mumble on the homepage, tell the user about the results of your technology on the homepage and the details of the technology on a sub-page, otherwise you are just confused if you are coming from a search engine or social media site.

So something like: "copy and paste this one line into your emails and know whether the recipient has read your message".

Looks like a cool idea so keep going.

Thanks for your advice, yes I have asked questions on Stack Overflow and found the response to be excellent, and I plan to use it in the future.

But with a mentor you can ask more general questions, whereas with SO it tends to be more code/error specific.

Thanks, [email protected], send your profile links.

From what I know about Stripe they are purely making it easier for developers to accept payments and as far as I know they aren't looking at developing technology aiding the sending on money.

* Unless they have some underground project that their website doesn't mention.

I have a section on my desk for all my scraps of paper, I prefer paper, because it is physically in front of you reminding you of your ideas and to take action on them.

Plus writing seems to be less mechanical and more creative, which helps me get the juices flowing when I come up with a new idea.

I know from experience that most people don't know the key combos to open in their chosen windows.

I always use Ctrl + T, but when I'm demonstrating something or somebody is watching me browse they almost always ask what I have done when I use the combo.

It's dangerous to assume that your readers are as technically proficient as yourself. But I can see in certain citations why it might be applicable, e.g. on Hacker News the majority of their readers are going to know the keyword shotcuts because that's their target market.

I do think that the blog choosing for you can be a pain, but the combos still work on the majority of links and for those who don't know them you can keep them on your site by using the target= in the link HTML, probably the best of both worlds.

Stick with your niche, social networks and the ability to sell on them should be your unique selling point.

There are many other service providers for selling digital goods via your blog or website.

Having it as an option or integrating with one of these providers might be a good idea.

Other than that, maybe for Facebook/new social networks I would recommend partnering with a landing page software provider.

Great idea, keep up the good work.

I'm not declaring it is a technology they are capable of developing, just wondering, still a bit surprised that with all their top engineers they couldn't (if they wanted to) come up with a solution to this?

Well we know Google can classify what spam sites are.

And assuming they could (despite your arguments against) determine the method of monetization on a site, then simply compare the models they see on spam sites versus another metric which would track the user's reaction to certain types of monetization models.

Thanks for your response, is the data you are viewing publicly available?

1) Make sure you have a Google Webmaster Tools account and see if your site has any warnings and/or other problems identified by Google.

2) Think about reducing the number of links on the homepage, and increasing the amount of content. Maybe a greeting for new users letting them know what your about. Overall your homepage is covered in links and as a user at first glance nothing stands out and I'm likely to hit the backspace button.

3) Create a better site structure (clear tiers of content), its very hard to navigate your site.

4) Get rid of empty pages like this: http://www.cardboardconnection.com/2011-topps-tier-one-baseb....

5) Make sure you aren't copying other's content and they aren't scrapping yours see: http://www.copyscape.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cardboardconnec...

6) Save posts like these for Twitter and Facebook: http://www.cardboardconnection.com/hockey/amazing-patches-fr...

7) A new design with larger font, different colour scheme and better plugins (commenting, ratings, etc) is in order.

8) Get rid of the Hot Auctions tab, link to eBay from the product page and not a secondary link farm looking tab.

9) Despite all these minor problems (and there's more) the quality of content on site is pretty poor, I guess if I was coming for the history of some cards maybe your site would be helpful but the content is written in a detached, impersonal tone that doesn't garner links or Google rankings.

Focus on writing high quality articles based on your/author's personal experience and expertise.

Check out www.copyblogger.com for more information on how to write well for the net.

10) Try and get in touch with Matt Cutts (http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Matt_Cutts), he regularly helps out sites that feel like they have been harshly treated (proof: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-ban-cutts-support-14164.h...)

11) After you have fixed all these problems submit a reconsideration request to Google.

Second that, Bluehost is great and support are very helpful. For content based sites like mine it works just fine, haven't had experience running anything major or any major traffic spikes but from my experiences they would be able to handle it.

I'd prefer to read an appreciative post about a positive and helpful change than somebody bashing HN or any other site (which rarely happens).

Personally I always have about ten tabs open so its handy when I can go straight to the HN tab that I want.

How else can HN get feedback on changes?

Don't have Android but the product information page looks great, very clever idea and great use of a weekend!

What about a high school student willing to take the 18 months off to work on their start-up and dependant on success leave school for good.

In Ireland its free high school and college education and if it was a failure its very easy to re-enter the education system.

I know you guys founded Collison, what do you think?

I have received many compliments about my writing now but I can tell you that two years ago my writing sucked.

Since then I have written hundreds of articles, a 270 page book and hundreds of thousands of words.

There truly is no substitute for practice, but its the right kind of practice that works.

I would highly recommend reading www.copyblogger.com, which covers all the major tips and techniques around writing online (Make sure to dig deep into the archives).

What you will find is that every few articles you read you will pick up a tip and if you make a concise effort to implement the tip into your next article then it becomes almost second nature and your writing improves immeasurably.

For now make sure your double if not triple checking all your posts looking for ways to make them more readable and fluid and get reading about writing techniques and skills.

The best way to get the best publicity is to have an incredible product that people need to hear about.

But failing that or having a less revolutionary product, I would highly recommend blogging, whatever your start-up you must have interesting insights and tips about your industry that you could share.

If your not committed to regular, high quality blogging and for many founders that doesn't fit into their skill-sets then think about creating one time big research reports that would shake the industry or provide some highly valuable new information.

Blogging and reports are perfect for a start-up because there is virtually no cash cost, so if your bootstrapping or just playing it smart then these are my top two.

Instead of looking for a typical outsourcing company, why not look for a blogger or forum member (stack overflow or HN) that answers questions/writes tutorials on the topic you are struggling with.

Contact a few with the offer of a small bit of work and I'm sure if you email enough people you will get a response.

By already viewing their work and being able to hand pick only the best you will ensure that their work is top-notch.

Why not do some of your own projects and build something cool.

Just think about what you would want (maybe for a hobby or interest) or what other users would want, build and either sell it or in the more hacker style give it away for free.

I agree but don't you think that from an algorithmic point of view Google would be better looking at what the user wants and what monetization models they prefer to see versus the averages in terms of monetization models on spam sites.

That way their focussing less on removing spammers and more on user quality and thus removing spam.

Thanks Matt, took a look at the video, that answers my original question.

Also is there a preferred monetization model, e.g. do Google think advertisements are more or less harmful to the user experience than affiliate links, sponsored posts, etc?

Obviously across different models you can't just track space taken up, so is there some kind of metric that tracks the rate of content diluting via monetization?

Would it be likely that if the site was to use another monetization plan that it would be less likely to be penalized e.g. advertising instead of affiliate links?

Presumably because he was a former computer hacker and of course the fact that it is a high tech website which uses unique and technologically advanced methods to discover new information and keep the identity of sources secret.

Posted this on the original article, but had a feeling you might not return, so here goes:

Surely that points a crucial flaw in the system, how can you manually penalize a site and not put any tests in place that would let you know when the reasons for the penalization have been removed.

If Jake hadn't filed a reconsideration request he would have continued to be "trusted less" by Google thus presumably receiving less traffic.

Google should create a simple algorithm that would alert the webspam team who I presume take the manual action on websites that the reason for penalty has been removed and they should take another manual look at it.

As I see it the only reason Jake was informed of such penalization is because he filed a recon request, what about the thousands of other websites who inadvertently had bad links or another reason for penalization on the site and didn't sport the traffic dip and didn't file a request.

Maybe I'm wrong, Matt, do Google have these stops/tests/algorithms in place to stop incorrect penalization?