gr366

Writing this from Sevilla, Spain, where my wife and I have been living for about 2 weeks.

We've just completed 2 years of a digital nomad lifestyle, having previously spent between 1 to 11 months each in Madrid, Buenos Aires, Tulum (Mexico), Portland (Oregon) and Edinburgh. Of course those are bases from which we've also visited Mallorca, Granada, Lisbon, Uruguay, Santiago (Chile), Mendoza, Mérida, Dublin and Paris. This is done while working on average 7-8 billable hours, 5-6 days a week, with some gaps in between for "touristy stuff."

All of the advice in the article about settling in to a new place rings true, particularly the internet connectivity situation. We've had difficulties in about half the places we've lived, but have also had the good fortune of incredibly considerate locals who have bent over backwards to assist.

Because we're both working, we decided to keep our house in Los Angeles and rent it out. We started with my friend acting as a property manager, but have since found that as long as we have a handyman, plumber and various other maintenance and repair people, the middleman only causes delays in communication. It's pretty amazing what can be done from the other side of the world.

We'll be in Europe until the end of January (as Americans, the Schengen agreement is a continual thorn in our plans), and haven't yet determined where we'll head next. Financially, the expensive part is hopping from place to place. If you can find somewhere whose tourist visas allow 6 months (UK, Mexico) or where you can pop across the border for a day and get it renewed (Argentina), you can cut down on a lot of expenses (and stress) by planting yourself for longer.

All that said, I highly recommend it. The opportunity to experience other cultures, learn a new language, and gain a different perspective on life is invaluable. Even for the process of winnowing your "stuff" down to what you're willing to carry with you while traveling for months on end.

It also has the side benefit of making you one of the more interesting people at any gathering you attend.

"Special thanks to Google Chrome’s developer tools for making this post possible."

So it's a faked/speculative mockup created by swapping out the Google logo and changing some text? I'm think missing out on the newsworthiness.

I don't know if they ended up being the acquiring party, but one of the people seriously considering the purchase reached out privately to my company (a Sortfolio customer), with a few short questions. It was a polite email that made it clear they were looking for opportunities to improve the service (as well as address the original concerns about credit card info not carrying over), so I was happy to provide my feedback. I'm happy Sortfolio has been acquired and plan to stick with the service.

It looks like they're gradually simplifying. They originally launched with a range of domains you could choose from: projectpath.com, clientsection.com, grouphub.com, etc. with a subdomain. Then it went to subdomains on basecamphq.com, and now just basecamp.com with no subdomains.

I notice the new version is running on basecamp.com. The old version is at basecamphq.com and 37signals always made a point about the domain not mattering as much as the product name. I imagine there's a follow-up to that saying that if your product becomes successful there's nothing wrong with going and grabbing the pure domain (thinking Dropbox, Instagram and others. Or basically the opposite of Color.)

+1 on the difficulty of getting in to Spain.

Prior to a year of living and working abroad, my wife and I hired a Spanish immigration lawyer to provide us with visa options (as Americans we can typically only remain in the European Schengen Zone for 90 out of every 180 days). I've got a web development company and all U.S.-based clients, so in theory would have been bringing money into the Spanish economy. The lawyer came back with 3 options for me:

  1. Be a student
  2. Retire (with proof of savings/income)
  3. Be independently wealthy (again with bank account proof)

So we lived in Madrid for our allotted 3 months and then moved on to Buenos Aires, where the visa restrictions are a lot more lax and they have a year-long visa option for foreign business owners had we decided we wanted to stay there.

Anecdotally, the number of American expats in Madrid was minuscule to the number we met in Buenos Aires, and the ones in Spain were there almost always after having been sponsored by large companies.

Does Forbes.com have a print URL? I couldn't find one (did find a print.css which does almost nothing to optimize for printing), and I'd rather not encourage their splitting the article onto 4 separate pages by clicking through.

I was watching to see whether they would A/B test the beer to find the right color. (ref: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=524991)

Actually Dogfish founder Sam Calagione addresses that at 10:30 in the video — "Like most small businesses, it's not like we've got focus groups and separate floors of MBAs squirreled away to give us guidance and consultance (sic). You just wing it and use whatever tools are cheap and at hand."

They do, however, test their new brews in their tasting room, and the ones that are well-received are produced in volume. Maybe more hallway usability testing than a focus group?

Also, I'm impressed they kept the part at about 11:09 where Calagione says, "We don't really spend any money on advertising or marketing…" – sure the video is focusing on Apps integration, but he's talking about Google's core business!

This sounds like a great solution for the problem of package deliveries while you're not home.

I'm skeptical about the burglary prevention angle — I imagine they would just switch to knocking on the door to determine if you're home or not.

Hi Dave. They do now, but didn't when I posted my original comment.

Ah thanks, it wasn't there when I first looked at it.

I think they should give credit to Dave Winer for the idea.

http://scripting.com/stories/2011/05/15/socialMediaBubblePop...

A small detail I found interesting while watching Minority Report recently: among all the futuristic innovations displayed and mentioned in this article, when it began to rain, people still opened up traditional black umbrellas.

Painless and easy, and a bit of glue I didn't realize I wanted until I saw it.

Minuscule nitpick: on the Instagram oAuth screen, it asks if I want to allow "Instadrop - production" access. Now that it's working you can probably drop the "production" part.

Even better than the real thing — the video clearly demonstrates the robot bird not flying into all those glass windows like its avian counterpart has been known to do.

And here I just thought it was awesome they had angled the text to match the tilt of having the lanyard connected at the corner, providing more space for names.

Then I scrolled down to discover the booklet and all its goodies.

Surprise and delight.

I think it's important to define exactly what you want from the designer. If you're looking for a graphic artist to come in and provide a slick look and overall template for the site, my guess is you could get by with just a few templates to build out from. 20 to 40 hours per page for that kind of work strikes me as excessive.

However, if you're looking for a user interface designer who will put some real consideration into what goes inside the template shell ("epicenter design" as coined by 37signals), then assume more hours. Ideally this person would want to be there to adjust or tweak elements or flows as you analyze your traffic and success rates.

I have a client who usually knows exactly what he wants from a content/layout/interface standpoint, so my work becomes more graphic production. This generally takes under 3 hours per page. But, we've built up a visual vocabulary for the site over a number of months.

Other projects that are starting from scratch may take your aforementioned 20-40 hours up front to arrive at an agreeable overall design direction. But it usually shouldn't take that much time per page.

Just because we had different interpretations, you shouldn't assume I haven't read the article.

To me, there is a difference between saying: "From my personal experience, when my friends ask my advice, I present them these reasons for not buying a house," and: "Nobody should ever buy a house."

If nobody bought a house, who would we rent from?

Update: fixed spelling

The title on the post itself (and the slug in the URL) is "Why I Am Never Going to Own a Home Again" (emphasis mine). In the article, the author states "there are many reasons to not buy a home," and the reasons are from his perspective, which presumably is what his friends are asking for.

However, the title here on HN makes it sound like the author is suggesting nobody ever buy a home again — probably not his intent. Sure, there are numerous reasons for not buying a home just as there are numerous reasons for buying a home — it depends on your situation.

I can personally relate to some of the author's arguments. Having rented out the house I bought 5 years ago while I'm living abroad, I'm essentially paying a 2nd rent to make up the difference between what I'm getting from my renter and the sum of my mortgage, taxes and homeowner's insurance.