arooni

I have a simple-ish webapp to write that involves basic CRUD, hookup to the Stripe API for payment, a hookup to Twilio for SMS texting, some kind of cool image gallery display UI and well that's about it.

I've built several apps with Rails years ago that are still running on the web. Is Rails something I should look at using again, or are there other choices that would be better to look at? If so, which ones? I'm more familiar with Ruby than I am with PHP or Python.

I read far too much news/politics articles and I'd like to read more books instead. How do I go about doing this? The novelty of news and perhaps the uncertainty of rewards (slot machine syndrome) makes it appealing.

If you come for the king, you had better not miss.

Marketing for my buy a press pass service (gets you in for free to all kinds of events, concerts, museums, clubs, etc): https://www.magicpresspass.com

Marketing and recruitment for people who want to get paid consulting who have done amazing adventures (like travelled around the world on a bicycle, climbed Everest etc, please reach out if you have). Essentially I want to have a consultancy for people who have done amazing things and want to get paid to consult to people who have done those things before. https://www.adventurecopilot.com

Also seeking suggestions on how to learn marketing, it's a skill I'm keenly interested in acquiring.

And considering a Trump related merchandise business (not because I like Trump, but I think it would sort of market itself). I love businesses where people have strong opinions. Strong opinions travel, positive or otherwise.

Also writing about entrepreneurship and personal excellence at https://www.davidparkinson.com and polishing up my 'find your phone, escape a boring meeting/date service' https://www.phonemyphone.com (fun fact, launched this on Hacker News 10+ years ago :P).

Feel free to rip any of those ideas/concepts apart :P.

I realized I want to read all of these shareholder letters from 'Day 1'. Luckily some guy has already compiled them all into one PDF that I just sent to my [Amazon] Kindle. Reading about Amazon on an Amazon device lol. Hope this helps you too:

https://medium.com/@austenallred/every-amazon-shareholder-le...

PS: Have any of you read all of Buffet's shareholder letters? Would those be worth reading from the beginning?

In life you are either a consumer or a producer. Consumption is the silent killer that's killed more dreams than any other force in history.

Relavent: https://www.davidparkinson.com/beware-consumption-the-silent...

Also relavent: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat... [I use this and swear by it... destroys your news feed when you do login to facebook]

I think this is brilliant. And I think that it will be successful as evidenced from the strong opinions in this thread. Strong opinions help products spread. The fact that some people hate this app is only evidence that they'll tell someone else how much they hate it; which can only help you. I'm a big fan of polarizing products.

Work from anywhere. Just need a small design project done:

Email me at david {AT} emptyspaceads {DOT} com

===================================== JOB SUMMARY =====================================

We need the HTML/CSS for 4 wireframes we’ve completed, and you to update the CSS for an existing page we have. We already have a logo.

To make this easier for you, we already have the CSS/HTML (for the Account page with all the form elements you’d need, already) from a previous project. You are welcome to use as a base for the project. You will definitely need to adjust the font and color; but this should make it a lot easier for your to get the project done.

Notes: If you feel as though you need to move elements around to make a better user experience or make an easier, please feel free, we want to give you creative freedoms.

===================================== JOB RESPONSIBILITIES =====================================

   * HTML/CSS for the 4 wireframes we’ve created
   * No programming REQUIRED

===================================== JOB REQUIREMENTS =====================================

* You create 4 pages of HTML/CSS for the 4 wireframes we created * You will update the 1 page of HTML/CSS that we have provided to match the colors/styles you use. * You must use HTML 4.01 Strict Doctype Blueprint CSS framework . (version 1.0) * HTML Text Buttons (No Image Buttons Allowed) * CSS must validate according to W3C Validator * Browser Compatible: IE (7, 8, 9), Firefox (3.0, 3.5, 3.6, 4.0), Chrome, Safari. You should test to ensure compatibility. We will test ourselves as well to check your work. * Deliverables are due in 7 days from us accepting you

About You: * Excellent written English (spelling/grammar/etc) * Available via IM (either Skype, Yahoo, Google Chat, Yahoo, MSN, etc)

Yup! I'm debating flying/driving down there... you?

For those who are attending, please consider adding to the wiki (http://wiki.startupschool.org/doku.php?id=).

Additionally, I've created two pages that I strongly encourage you to fill out for your own benefit: http://wiki.startupschool.org/doku.php?id=list_of_startups_p... and http://wiki.startupschool.org/doku.php?id=list_of_people_att...

Speaking from experience @ Startup School '07, we all know the speakers and their projects, but we don't know much about fellow attendees. Let's help change that.

Quit Microsoft in January (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=110792) and I am loving working full-time on my own ventures.

I did build all products: (http://www.phonemyphone.com, http://www.craigslistautoresponder.com, and http://www.emptyspaceads.com) while working full-time at Microsoft, it seems really hard to succeed working part time on your startup.

+ 1 vote for making this happen the weekend of Startup School (especially for those of us who would be flying in to the Bay Area)

Here are my notes:

* The error page seemed a bit cramped (I tried things like entering A points, or -3 points)

* Your Current Bid: 36 points. Bid More! (What does this mean? I'd like a breakdown of which gift cards I selected, rather than a running total. This information seems to be lost).

* I don't see how: http://99b600c6.fb.joyent.us/how-to-win.html explains that "The more you bid, the more likely you are to win a prize today. Your prize vote increases the likelihood of that prize being awarded today." In fact, it seems to contradict what you say on your "How it works page": "At the end of the day (Midnight Eastern) we collect all of the bids made throughout the da" ... (i.e. to prizes are always awarded, and do not correspond to the # of bids placed)....Plus that URL looks spammy for some reason (even though it's not)

* Your button after bidding says: "« Go back to Easy Money, and Bid More or Get More Points!" ... but I can't see how I'd get any more points. Sigh.

* I happen to hate the ads use Facebook style buttons to assault me with (that you see after you make a bid): "You Have 1 New Message Someone On Your Friends List Has A SECRET CRUSH on You. Find Out Who! www.Crushmessage.com"

* I like how you're not sure what gift card you'll get. Keeps it exciting and I think would cause people to want to invite others to bid on the gift card they want.

* As a counterpoint to above... I'd think that the more people got invited to this app, the less likely I am to win anything. So what's my incentive for sharing this with friends? Perhaps you could have a mechanism to give me more points for inviting users (or get a constant 10 point override whenever one of my friends whom I invited places a bid)

* Ok NOW I see that you did exatly what I mentioned above. However I had to click on the "Learn more about this game »" to find out that I could invite friends for more points. The invite friends and the more points div seems to be buried at the bottom right.

* So I just invited a friend, and I didn't get my 25 points as a referral. :( Sigh. If you're going to put restrictions on when my 25 points are rewarded, as I'm guessing you're doing (perhaps only when the user actually signs up as opposed to me sending the invite), you should let users know that clearly (which you currently don't do).

* Oh and even if I do invite a friend, its a net loss for me. I get 25 more points one-time, but my friend gets 50 points to bid... Assuming they bid, I'll be less likely to win anything. Plus if they continue to bid day after day, I'll just be even more in the hole.

* I'd like to see a better countdown clock than a simple, static string: "Feb. 15, 2008 - 6h, 17m Remaining"... make it dynamic and thus more exciting.

That's all I have for now. Good luck with the launch!

I'm 99.99% sure it's the demo code. You see we pull down all the HTML + CSS from your site and insert a bit of our javascript code to your site when we show the ads. This could cause some irregularities of the ads appearing as you mention.

In fact I just previewed your website (http://www.emptyspaceads.com/websites/preview_url?website%5B...) and while I do see the ads appearing sometimes over AdSense (because we're using the snap to margins behavior) I don't see them replacing the AdSense ads as you mention. What is your OS/Browser?

And finally, I absolutely need to put a disclaimer that lets you know as a user you can specify the divs that you consider empty space (the "Let Me Decide" option) by adding the class ID attribute "ESAemptyspace" to any HTML elements you'd like the ads to appear in. On our part, we'll be sure to ensure that the ads only ever appear within those elements. The valid issues you're bringing up could be mitigated with this option.

Again, we have two detection options, "Automatic" which is what the demo is using in addition to "Let Me Decide" where you can specify the HTML elements that you'd like the ads to appear in by simply adding the "ESAemptyspace" class attribute to the elements you'd like (http://www.emptyspaceads.com/publisher/customization_options).

For the purpose of the demo, we use the Automatic detection method... but if you signed up as a publisher with us, you could get the fine grain control that you desire.

Thanks for your feedback run4yourlives. Can you please elaborate what specific issues you're talking about? I'm testing it now (http://www.emptyspaceads.com/about/demo) and don't see any issues.

I have been noticing that I'm getting a request for Processing ApplicationController#index (for 153.XX.XX.XX at 2008-02-07 12:42:01) [GET] from some users which is causing the flash demo file not to be found.... but I'm not really sure how users can even get to that action since I don't have a method that defines index.

Ah I see. Can you tell me what OS & browser you were using? I've tested with many setups and the ads should go away when the mouse is over flash elements.

shawndrost: Thanks I've verified the bug regarding accidentally counting clicks and will look into it. Can you elaborate on flickering? I've tested with your same setup some days ago and had no issues. Or just ping me privately through my Hacker News profile.

Thanks for your feedback dkokelley. I'll see if I can incorporate the message of not having to sacrifice your site's beautiful design to run emptyspaceads.

Thanks for the feedback nkohari. I'm happy to hear about AdCamo, it means that the space I've gone into is valid (with the entrance of competitors).

Great comment. The ads we show on your site are ones we pick but as the website owner you get to control what's inside the ads that appear on your site. For the purposes of a preview, I had to pick some types and styles of ads, and unfortunately, not everyone will like them :P.

Thanks for the feedback kashif. Can you please elaborate what you mean by "sticky"?

Thanks for the feedback tyohn. Flash ads are an interesting format and I'll definitely add it to Trac as a future release. We'd like to support all manners of ads to allow you, the website owner to customize the ads to your needs.

Thanks for the feedback raju. I've never seen that bug before and thanks very much for calling it to my attention, I'll investigate. Please don't hesitate to contact me via my Hacker News profile regarding using our product on your site. I'd love to see how we can help you.

Thanks for the feedback dejb. As called out in the thread, you can specify your site's own empty space by adding the class attribute "ESAemptyspace" to elements you'd like the ads to appear in. On our part, we'll make sure to only place the ads within these elements. In our preview feature you used, we use our "Automatic" detection, but if you were to sign up with us, you could try out the "Let Me Decide" detection. Please let me know

Thanks for the feedback hhm.

So perhaps the demo page is too confusing. The ads are supposed to show up in the demo page when you move your mouse to the empty space of the site (http://www.emptyspaceads.com/about/demo). Could you please elaborate on your comment?

utnick, I'm honored, thanks for taking the time to look at our product. I'd be happy to help you out in any way that I can. Please see my contact information in my Hacker News profile.

We have two detection modes (http://www.emptyspaceads.com/publisher/customization_options) that you can use. The preview feature is using the Automatic detection which isn't always perfect. However, you can use the "Let Me Decide" detection which will only cause the ads to appear in divs or HTML elements that you add the class attribute "ESAemptyspace" to. That way you can explicitly tell us where you'd like the ads to appear on your site.