hissworks

Really cool that you built this from scratch for so many major cities! I am located in Chicago but browsed SF and the list returned there looked like a logical categorization of events & things to do.

Re: your question of whether to pursue the project, my thoughts from the perspective of someone who works in the tourism & travel industry.

Collecting and aggregating event listings is, as you note, time consuming. It can't all be done by crawl/scrape. Curation is an important factor here, and so perhaps you tailor the product to the perceived needs of a specific type of end user.

First user type that comes to mind: those of us who maintained Facebook accounts for the event listings/invites, but have all but fallen off of Facebook over the years due to... everything else that's wrong with the product :)

I'll say this, too — Airovic is entering a space where your number one competition is Google. Google orients its event listings geographically, around a "place," and I think your opportunity is to orient around people and their preferences.

To that end, another competitor here is Spotify for concerts — much as I hate to admit this, as a retired "Cool Person," I'm generally made aware of bands I want to see touring in my area first by Spotify, and then by social and local media.

That said, in identifying and meeting the needs of a narrower band of users, you may find that emphasizing curation and personalization could position your product as a more useful method of discovery.

They've been separate entities for years. The Onion under Univision became more of a digital production house. Editorial staff was always distinct. I presume that the handful of people leaving are writers, and they'll need to staff up around operations.

Really neat application of the data. I'm the Director of Marketing at a mid-sized destination marketing organization (DMO) represented on your map (Aurora, Illinois -- we're actually a terrific place to visit in winter!). Curious to learn more about the variables used to deploy the "best time" pages and get a sense for where you'd like to take this further.

Due in large part to its size, Texas is actually the only state in the United States that's susceptible to every type of natural hazard.

Source: Worked in marketing for a P&C firm, compliance wouldn't let us publish a blog post on the topic.

Wouldn't be so certain about blizzards. Warming increases the amount of moisture in the atmosphere during the cold months, producing more blizzards. My only fear about living in the Great Lakes is that we may end up snowed under before our ready access to fresh water makes a difference in terms of climate change preparedness.

References:

http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2013/02/global_wa...

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/future-of-epic-blizzards-...

http://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/Threats-to-Wildlife/Global-Warmi...

Closing up shop as a marketing strategy is interesting as a high-risk/high-reward last ditch effort.

If under a particular set of circumstances, the most viable path to attracting eyeballs is to go under, it could be really effective to give potential users a "last chance" and then pivot to a new name.

You can also let dandelions grow rather than kill them off with weedkiller.

When dandelions are in bloom they attract and sustain many types of bees and other insects.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gardening-blog/2015/...

I really don't want to turn off 2FA even temporarily.

What would a workaround for this look like?

How do avocados fare as a substitute?

Thanks for the insights. Sounds like a fair procedure.

Curious to hear more about what you found cool about their communication methods. I've been thinking about this a lot as I'm surprised how inefficient a lot of Big Corp communication methods can be, especially those with a field/regional organization. Inclined to agree that knowledge radiates outwards, but tinkering with ideas about how to best receive feedback inwards and what are the most effective methods of radiating that knowledge. Easier said than done.

Don't want to give you a false sense of optimism on this, but an article I recall reading last year speculated that Fiber penetration in Chicago could begin outside the city and work its way downtown, rather than the other way around.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-google-fiber-lottery...

I'd assumed that cities like Chicago with relatively old/dense/complex infrastructure would pose a tremendous challenge to a project like Google Fiber. Happy to have assumed incorrectly, but it does seem a significant jump from mid-sized metros like Provo/Austin/Kansas City.

What was the inspiration for launching this?

I'm having trouble creating a new site for myself right now because I'm embedded in a career that would likely frown upon a) sharing trade secrets, even though that'd be the only compelling professional content I can think to write and b) sharing my personal views on any number of things (+ I don't want to just write an online diary like it's 2002 and I'm livejournaling all my feelings).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is wonderful and an inspiration and I'd like to know the origin story (really).

edited to add: PLEASE create a LinkedIn profile for Princess Penelope Pricklepants.

From the article:

"Even if one of the parties is dishonest and deviates from the protocol, that person cannot learn anything more than if x = y."

Yeah, this was a poorly constructed article. Lost me at:

"To talk about Stewart’s theory, you have to first tackle the ideas of the 20th-century philosopher of media, Walter J. Ong."

No, you really don't.

That said, Twitter's never made it easy to digest its content. Sure there are lists, and now moments, but it's not always easy to find what you're looking for, and if you're not really careful about curating your own feed and follows reading twitter is like some sadist's idea of an exquisite corpse.

It could be that people don't feel comfortable with everyone having access to what they have to say. It could also still be as simple as not really caring what other people have to say.

Most dictionaries carry two definitions for vital, each of which apply discretely to either publisher.

One is "of absolute importance or necessity" which I do believe applies to the Tribune.

The secondary definition is "lively" and the Sun-Times has always been that.

I, too, was curious about Lady Cynthia Blunderboro. It seems she's a fictional persona prone to hoaxes.

https://www.google.com/search?q=lady+cynthia+blunderboro

Way cool! Echoing the sentiments of others who've commented on the fluidity of the motions on display here.

In my (recent) experience, Honeywell owns the HVAC contractor market, which is where these decisions are being made on installation, repair, and maintenance.

Limited sample size but between three furnace + air quotes proposed in August 2015, all three contractors recommended the Honeywell and all three contractors dismissed the Nest as a gimmick with lackluster functionality compared to the Honeywell.

As a consumer, I'll engage with popovers if it's content or a publisher I'm especially interested in reading more about. An example of this might be - let's say I already donate to or am active with an organization, and they have a static newsletter signup link in their site's main nav... I'll never click this, but I will engage if they prompt me.

Jordan Coeyman's OptKit is a light but intelligent popover tool that actually works, and I signed up for his newsletter based on how well the tool worked on his blog.

https://optkit.com/

Are you using Daybook?

An indirectly related fixation that bugs me every time I see a Facebook link is this: why are notes, events, etc. appended with a string of digits?

Shouldn't the URL here be simply: https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/rip-tdd/ rather than https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/rip-tdd/75084019494...?

Does every element that exists on facebook.com get assigned a unique string like the one above?

Font color: The difference between #333 and #444 is tremendous. #333 against a white background appears black on white. While perhaps you convey a 'weaker' message, it's easier to read.

Editing to add:

The columns Increase Conversions and Understand Your Funnel should be swapped.

You identify two segments of work at the very bottom of the page (one week and two weeks) but in sum it reads like you're just a guy who comes in and sets up GA. Rather than obfuscate this, make it more transparent and up front: I'm a guy who knows GA and I'll guarantee that I'm going to find value in what you're not optimized for, let alone tracking.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

This article ended abruptly.

>> Aim for 2 or fewer.

This also violates current usage conventions for handling numbers in text.[1] Figures are only meant to be used in greater numbers (a rule of thumb is anything over 30, but I think I read that in a David Foster Wallace text, fwiw) with more complex verbal / textual representations - that is, not "two".

[1] https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/593/01/

If your blog is going to live on a subdomain of userapp.io, you may want to more fully integrate the browsing experience with that of userapp.io. I looked for the footer mentioned in Day 19 and couldn't find it. Why not? (as in "why not try anything?")