socmoth

shared an office with her in 2008. ;(

thanks for taking the time to write this up. (an upvote did not seem like enough).

here is the actual speech in video form. http://t.co/9s6TZNOsJw

Going to try and answer that with examples.

Anything silly and whimsical.

If you were to look at a teenagers phone and ask "what does this word mean, and this word, and this word." That is our audience. Example: "OMG LOL FML" (clearly you know those words, but your parents may not)

Apple actually rejected our App the first time because our marketing copy was too ridiculous. This is the more reasonable version.

Typo is intentional. Based on the tone and audience we want to create.

I know that is unusual, but keep in mind nobody downloads an app because it is exactly the same as every other application.

IRC! Usenet! BBSes!

The last era of the net (since 2004) a lot of stuff went full real names, after facebook made it ok to put your name on the internet.

We've started (re) discovering ways to connect which are less about real names.

Naveen is the cofounder of 4sq.

I'm Paul. One of the creators of WUT.

You are totally correct on the cold start problem. ;)

You probably don't (but you knew that). But that is why we explicitly call it semi anonymous not anonymous. (with no quotes)

It isn't a contract just a word choice that guides people to the expectation of how the app works.

Paul here. Happy to answer any questions you may have.

facebook login is annoying but did get us out the door. poor grammar is intentional.

We used to have the words "WUT" repeated 200x in the app store copy, but Apple politely told us that wasn't good enough. We had more than a couple people tell us it was great though.

Is not an april fools joke. Was a hackday project that turned cool.

Sorry about the typo. Sadly the update button does not appear to let me update the title.

Trying to get more people to actually try out crypto currencies, rather than blog about them.

I actually did this policy to get one of my apps in the store. As more people eventually use it (and presumably good reviews roll in), I anticipate that I will be able to remove the features which I didn't think were needed.

On the other hand, I really don't like the idea of apple having editorial review over apps for being too simple. The only app which I feel might be too simple is an additional fart or flashlight app. And I'm still inclined to let those be distributed in some way (if not directly through the app store process).

Random details you may of missed:

"The integrated card reader keeps information secure from swipe to payment."

That means integrated encryption in to the stand. There are probably some other details. How to mount the thing to the table, how to connect devices.

Edit: disclaimer, former square here. Details matter.

I once had someone pitch me an idea for an app, which coincidentally I had actually built and was selling on the app store. He wasn't willing to pay 99cents for it (but had previously been willing to quit his job to make it hypothetically with me).

It is a weird world.

(for the record I like marco's work)

Rdl is correct. Smart people often get hired by small firms which do contract work for government organizations. It allows the smart people to live outside of the hierarchy imposed by a large institution.

The motivations are very similar to startups working outside of larger companies. You get more freedom in work choices and pay scale.

Oh, I've been using EC2 + S3 for five years (2007). I was looking in to the newer stuff (beanstalk, dynamodb).

Please add your feedback to the details pads so other people can use it in the future. That is why I posted it on hackpad and not my blog.

EDIT: thanks for the feedback.

Sorry if I wasn't clear of the purpose. I don't love the Amazon documentation and wish people would use Hackpad instead because it would be more up to date.

This is my effort to bootstrap that step by providing and overview and details rather than googling old blog entries ever time I want to setup EC2 with ubuntu.