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How to choose a name for a web app? | LPTS: Some of these suggestions are awful.This explosion of companies named phoodcaphe.com and this dropping the e is not a good trend. It's cheap knockoffs of a few successful companies and products that did it well, like iMac and Flickr. You will not get the same advantages is terms of uniqueness and descriptiveness unless you do it well, which, if you're using nameboy, you're not.Also, if you aren't inclined towards verbal skills you really should delegate the decision to someone who is. You need a visionary idea that distills all the hard creative and technical work you did down into a word or two. Harder then haiku or poetry, and the result of that decision is going to be the lens through which the world views your technical work. A bad decision here could cripple your company, and a good one could make everything from funding to securing partners to advertising easier. Take it as seriously as any other part of your business. |
One page site/app + advertising revenue? | alaskamiller: It really depends on what you want to measure on an Ajaxy webpage. If you can discern metrics you can sell some form of ads based on that. Also, consider making the ads iframes/includes and refresh that at a given time interval. |
One page site/app + advertising revenue? | allang: AJAX changes the CPM (cost-per-1000-impression) advertising model, so you'll need a different type of ad network. The more mainstream ad networks haven't really addressed the issue for smaller sites, despite the fact that AJAX's popularity is peaking.There's something called CPI (cost-per-influence) advertising, which isn't based on pageviews. Only one network comes to mind (Coudal's "The Deck": http://coudal.com/deck/) but maybe some Googling may lead you to some others. The Deck will pay you with a predetermined sum that is not pageview based.It seems like it might be an opportunity for one of us here. Definitely and interesting project idea. |
One page site/app + advertising revenue? | noodle: i'd consider trying to solicit sponsorships for lengths of time. i.e. a banner that maintans a persistent banner ad for a month for the monthly sponsor or something similar.this would make you independent of pageviews and clickthroughs. you might not make as much $, but you'll not be as open to traffic changes and higher tech folks blocking ads. |
One page site/app + advertising revenue? | rob: Use a CPM company instead like ValueClick where you get paid per impression, regardless of click. |
How to choose a name for a web app? | dbreunig: Pretend you are in a rock band or own an ad agency that pretends it's a rock band. Give yourself a non-sequitur of a name that doesn't attempt to communicate your already in-definable style.If you're stumped, take an adjective and a noun that don't go together; combine. Strawberry Frog. Velvet Underground. Zeus Jones. Led Zeppelin. Rick James. Got the hang of it?Now check to see if your name has a .com yet? It does? Eliminate all vowels and check again. Still stuck? Put a few of them back in. Got it? Good.(If you STILL can't get a dot come with no vowels, consider making your app a mobile one and get the oft-ignored .mobi address. People will make fun, but stick to your guns. You're an innovator.)Let's walk through a demo, just to make sure we're all on the same page:1. Adjective: Tasty, Noun: Shirt.
2. TastyShirt.com? No. TstyShrt.com No. TastyShrt.com Yes.
3. Profit. |
How to choose a name for a web app? | gscott: I like to go to tdnam.com and click on 'Closeouts' sometimes there are really good names in there |
How to choose a name for a web app? | ssharp: Easy!1. Pick one word that is somewhat related to what you do. Make sure it ends in "ER" or "ED".2. Add .com to the end of it3. Drop at least one of the vowels, preferably the last one.4. Register that domain!Bonus points if you can find a word that ends in a top level domain. Then, just add a random dot anywhere else in the name. And Poof! You now have a three level domain that nobody will ever remember how to type in - but hey, it's sooooooo web 2.0. |
One page site/app + advertising revenue? | johnrob: Why don't you launch with no ads, and see if you actually get the traffic you are predicting? Worry about the ads later. |
How to choose a name for a web app? | mstefff: I'd just like to thank everyone again for their input. Hopefully soon ill be posting with not only a name but a live link. |
One page site/app + advertising revenue? | rksprst: Just have a timer that changes the ad every 30 seconds (or whatever time frame you want). Coding wise, should be pretty trivial. |
One page site/app + advertising revenue? | carl_: Start without ads, gain your traffic, ebay your adspace and then advertise these listings in the adspace your selling. Depending on your volume, niche and longevity it might work.Just an idea.EDIT: Sorry, just saw noodles point. |
One page site/app + advertising revenue? | gscott: Adbrite.com would allow you to sell ads for a length of time (day, week, month) instead of being based upon impressions or clicks. |
How to choose a name for a web app? | DaniFong: I threw together a script that could try to coin words (say, by taking any letter, plus a suffix that your really like) or attach words together, and then check that against whois.http://daniellefong.com/2008/03/01/on-naming-startups-and-ru... |
How to choose a name for a web app? | thetable: Follow brainstorming techniques. Write everything down, no matter how bad. Write down fragments that characterize your idea. Explore metaphors: If your site is about finance, maybe think about up/down movement, growth, even gambling and excitement. Visualize these themes and keep writing things down.I found that you don't want your name to be too descriptive (e.g. I find the name "FriendFeed" way too descriptive and boring), but on the other hand it shouldn't be yet another five-letter, random-string, 2.0 name.Twitter is nice because it plays very loosely with disseminating information to whoever's listening out there. It's better than smsfeedr.Google is nice because they've identified a large number as something that loosely characterizes what they do. |
One page site/app + advertising revenue? | goofygrin: OK, I cobbled it together this afternoon so HN gets an early (and ugly, designless) preview.http://www.mpghead.com/Basically allows you to determine how much you'll spend different from one vehicle to another just for gas.If you get 14mpg and you pay $3.50 a gallon, you're spending $0.25 a mile! It's almost cheaper to take a taxi! |
do you spend more time on HN when your work sucks? | brianlash: In a word, yes. I work for myself but that doesn't mean I don't get bored of the tedium of some of my projects. In those times I turn to HN. |
do you spend more time on HN when your work sucks? | suboptimal: Yes. Yes I do.But you should really eliminate the source of pain so you can get back to reading HN guilt-free (if that's possible).BTW they sound more like short projects if it's only two weeks (unless they're larger projects crammed into a two-week timeframe!). |
How to choose a name for a web app? | cmm324: Get a group of friends together, a bottle of wine and a laptop to record the stupid things you guys come up with. The next morning go through the list and whoola... most likely you have a good name that has a domain available.Good Luck,
Chris |
One page site/app + advertising revenue? | dbreunig: http://askyc.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/intro-to-advertising/ |
Lisp / functional programming freelance experiences? | ivankirigin: Have you considered joining a company that uses Lisp? Why do it on the side?I have a new theory about getting what you want. Just do it. It has worked splendidly for me so far.I would imagine freelance Lisp would be a good way to learn as well. Rather than toy problems, you can solve someone's real problem. |
Lisp / functional programming freelance experiences? | randix: If you follow the link: http://www.software-lab.de/download you will find a Lisp that the author (and I) has used in many projects. I believe he has been freelancing for over 30 years, and at least the last 12-15 have been using this (or predecessors of it) language. I have also been freelancing for 19 years and "doing what I want". I did python for 7 years and have now switched to using picolisp. randix.net |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | amichail: Try Google's GWT. |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | bprater: If you are familiar with web programming today, Ajax isn't a tough technology to master. There are hundreds of simple frameworks you can start with. Grab any of them, find a simple tutorial and start tooling around.The concept is simple: send and load information without refreshing the webpage. You'll use the same back-end technology. You'll use a smattering of Javascript for the browser. And you'll be in business! |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | breily: http://www.w3schools.com/Ajax/Default.AspThis gives a pretty good introduction at what is actually going on. The framework I've used (Prototype) abstracts away the details (like constructing the XMLHttpRequest) but its always good to know whats going on below the surface.If you know any python, this link - http://www.willarson.com/blog/?p=36 - is very helpful, it was how I got started. The actual AJAX part of it is the same no matter which server side language you use. |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | jsdalton: Try jquery.BTW, it's not so much that ajax is "hard" without a framework. The problem is with the varying ways different browsers implement javascript and the DOM. A good framework (like jquery) abstracts away many of these variations and allows you to concentrate on the more interesting hard problems. |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | jrockway: The other comments in the thread seem to tell you to use a framework, and that's great advice. But you need to learn plain javascript first. You say you've mostly done PHP, so there are some programming concepts that are essential in javascript that you haven't been exposed to, namely functional programming. So, learn a bit about functional programming, then get a javascript book (the oreilly one is good), and read that. Then you'll know the basics and can use a framework to abstract away some of the tedium. |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | Bluem00: I really liked the book "Pragmatic Ajax: A Web 2.0 Primer" (http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Ajax-Web-2-0-Primer/dp/09766...)It provides an overview of the more popular frameworks, and explains the ideas behind rich web interaction (and Google Maps in particular). |
Lisp / functional programming freelance experiences? | Zak: I've done a few paid projects using Lisp. It's usually not too hard to talk people in to when they aren't committed to a particular technology already and are hoping to get the best combination of cheap/fast/good. I have a project coming up involving small-business networking for a particular company's customers and I'm planning to use Common Lisp for that. |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | rms: start with javascript... |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | SwellJoe: If you don't already know JavaScript, and probably even if you do, Douglas Crockford's videos are awesome. He also covers the DOM, which is intrinsic to working with AJAX.http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/Start with "The JavaScript Programming Language", and then do "Advanced JavaScript" and finally "An Inconvenient API: The Theory of the DOM" (the latter two can stand alone, and if you're in a hurry, maybe get the DOM out of the way). That plus spending some time with Firebug and a few interesting JavaScript applications (and building some of my own) has been the entirety of my JavaScript education. I bought the "Definitive Guide" from O'Reilly, but haven't used it heavily.There are other useful videos on the same page, including one with Joe Hewitt introducing Firebug. I can't stress enough how helpful Firebug has been in helping me learn JavaScript and AJAX.Note that I haven't talked much about AJAX. AJAX is a tiny piece of JavaScript, but in order to build useful applications you need to know a lot more than AJAX. So, learn JavaScript and AJAX will come naturally.As others have mentioned, the good frameworks make dealing with browsers easier, since it hides compatibility issues as well as some of the complexity. Mainly a framework just allows you to spend more time thinking about your specific needs rather than the tedious plumbing work of getting stuff happening on the page. |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | tlrobinson: If you already know Javascript, all you need to become buzzword compliant is this: http://developer.apple.com/internet/webcontent/xmlhttpreq.ht... |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | pfisch: Whatever you do do not under any circumstances use plain javascript. It will not work at all in IE. Isn't it ridiculous that javascript is not even functional as a language unless you extend it with a framework?I advise prototype. |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | mxh: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/views/web/libraryview.jsp?...Particularly tutorial 5.It's a pretty good/quick overview of how all the bits of Ajax (JS, the DOM, XHR, Markup, etc.) work together, along with brief, functional examples. Should get you orientated in a hurry, then you can dive into the various topics as needed. |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | rantfoil: You need to learn Javascript before you learn AJAX. AJAX is really a simple set of method calls, the harder part is really understanding DOM manipulation, event handling, etc.I highly recommend the Sitepoint books -- "Simply Javascript" and "The Art and Science of Javascript." Between these two books, you get a very step-by-step, approachable tutorial of the basics of what you need to start out with.They teach you in framework-agnostic way, which is important because you want to be able to write JS without relying heavily on any one framework. In fact, one of the books goes into detail teaching you HOW some frameworks work their magic. It's fascinating.Good luck! |
Web API's That Allow Commercial Usage? | mstefff: forgot to mention..excluding those 'eye-candy' api's like google maps and charts, etc |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | axod: Instead of 'ajax' which doesn't really exist, I'd recommend learning javascript. Don't start with a framework or library, just learn the nuts and bolts of the language.The incompatibilities between browsers are really really over-hyped, so I'd say using a library isn't worth it. At least until you have a solid understanding of all things javascript. |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | tokipin: http://rajshekhar.net/blog/archives/85-Rasmus-30-second-AJAX... |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | Dylanfm: I found the book "DOM Scripting" great. There's a brief intro to javascript syntax, then alot of focus on using javascript with the DOM and making sure you do it according to some best practices. The book finishes with an intro to ajax and is followed by a book called "Bulletproof AJAX" by the same bloke.
The gracefully degrading and unobtrusive use of javascript is important, and the author of these books preaches it well. |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | brk: Lots of good comments here... http://www.miniajax.com has some cool ajax "widgets" that can help you tackle certain problems with digestible chunks of code. |
Lisp / functional programming freelance experiences? | tritchey: We do much of our web development at http://bitfauna.com in Lisp. Most of our clients don't care what language we use, and wouldn't know Lisp from Ruby or Python. At the end of the day, the client cares about whether the site is a) working b) economical.Lisp is not all we end up doing for clients, and we have the odd job where we maintain and update legacy applications in C# or ColdFusion. But, we have never found an issue using Lisp for new projects. |
Lisp / functional programming freelance experiences? | dlweinreb: I recommend that you get in touch with Clozure (www.clozure.com). They know more about contract Lisp work than just about anybody. There are many consultants who work, via Clozure, for companies doing work in Lisp.Or, apply for a job at www.itasoftware.com. I love working there. See http://dlweinreb.wordpress.com/2007/12/24/16/. |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | iraw: You should learn the basics before letting some higher-level framework do all the magic for you.There are some good articles about AJAX on the Mozilla Developer Center: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/AJAXYou can begin with http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/AJAX:Getting_StartedYou can also find some good pointers to AJAX toolkits and examples there. |
Web API's That Allow Commercial Usage? | nreece: Our startup - Feedity ( http://feedity.com ) - allows commercial usage (as part of our Pro account). The service basically allows anyone to create RSS feeds from virtually any webpage, and use the feeds for personal subscription, mashups, or online publishing. |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | JayNeely: Frocer, I'm in the same position, minus having had a fair amount of programming experience(only a couple of Java classes in college). Would you be up for exchanging IM or other contact info, so we each have someone to bounce things off of as we learn?My e-mail's in my profile, and the offer is open to others as well. |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | initself: Head First AJAX by O'Reilly. |
Test driven web development | rsa: Test Driven Development by Kent Beck is a good book to get you started. |
Where do I start if I want to learn AJAX? | posborne: The way I picked up AJAX was by looking of some of the simpler articles on the basics (don't worry about cross-browser to start with) around the web. The basic concept is quite simple and it is easy to get up-and-running if you have experience with client-side and server-side scripting.For me, the firebug tool for firefox was indispensable as it allows you to see the requests that are being sent out and received from the server, information you have no easy way to get at without such a tool.Once you are up and running with the basics, the magic of AJAX will no longer be so mysterious and you can move on to one of the frameworks for adding cross-browser compatibility (I like jquery personally). |
Intellectual property 101 | michael_dorfman: I'm not a lawyer, but I just went through a round with one on a similar issue. In my jurisdiction (which is outside the US) the principle was that code was protected, and ideas were not (unless patented), BUT if I went ahead and built a product that was suitably similar to one I had worked on before under an employment contract, the burden of proof would be on me to prove that I did not copy the code (and thus it was a good idea to throw in some novel features, and use a different programming language/framework/platform).Still: spend the bucks and ask a lawyer, if the issue is relevant to you. Better to have too much legal advice than too little (believe you me.) |
Intellectual property 101 | brlewis: The company holds copyright to all the code you write on company time.In theory, abstract ideas in the code are not patentable. Patents are supposed to be specific embodiments of ideas. In practice, you totally need a lawyer if you or the employer are considering patents. |
How do you work? | nurall: I came across this old article about how successful people work just recently. And I started wondering if there was some gap between how these guys work and how you guys work your time?My question is to you HNers: How do you guys work?Thanks!p.s: I am pretty a whole bunch of HNers will consider themselves fairly successful to answer this question. |
How do you work? | ojbyrne: Having worked as a programmer and spending time at B-school, I'm about to tell you the secret that explains all the conflicts between managers and programmers.Many is the programmer who's said "I get more done after midnight than most people do the rest of the day."But at B-school the saying goes "I get more done before 8 AM than most people do the rest of the day."And therein lies the problem. ;-) |
How do you work? | wallflower: "How is managing a team of techies different from managing other kinds of office workers? Technical people are motivated by interesting work. They will put up with abominable working conditions if they get to work on something that interests them. I've managed people who had to be sent home at night. But technical people without interesting work are very difficult to manage. Their active minds tend to get them into trouble. A happy team is a group that is busy and too intrigued with their project to get mired down with internal politics. In contrast, I find office workers to be more interested in the overall job than the task at hand. Environment, recognition and security are more important to them.I've also found that technical people need to have adequate playtime. Ideas are exchanged and expanded while they play ping-pong or walk around the parking lot. Allowing people the freedom to wander when they need to returns high rewards that far offset the apparent lack of focus. Technical workers work all the time. Their minds are constantly mulling over problems and possible solutions. What looks like slacking off may be the most productive time they spend. Give them the freedom to work. "http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewA... |
How do you work? | calvin: I'm chained to an 8-5 shift currently.I do my "real" work (or at least interesting work) when I get home and work on my own projects.Generally, I pick one task to focus on and pound away on it for a few hours. I am assisted in the process by an eclectic variety of background music depending on the focus and the tempo of progress being made.If I begin feeling that no more progress can be made or that a different approach is necessary, I'll take a break or work on something else and let my brain stew on the previous project in the subconscious. |
How do you work? | ggruschow: A dozen accomplished people tell what works for them.If having a life like those folks is what's called "accomplished", I want to be a failure.To answer the question though, I do my best (most productive & efficient) work when I'm working 6 to 9 hours a day in an office with a few other smart caring coworkers, no travel, a good amount of sleep, and doing nearly no email / IM / etc.My best ideas come from the shower and sleep.I think the number of people I have a discussion with in a day has an odd relationship with the quality of my work. The peak is somewhere between 2 and 9. I think that's even true when I'm managing large numbers of people. |
best (toy) robotics platform? | noodle: another option is lego mindstorm sets.beyond that, there aren't any cheap, flexible, powerful home robotics kits. |
best (toy) robotics platform? | apgwoz: One of my college professors used to build all sorts of things with a http://www.fischertechnik.com/ set. I think he once mentioned that it was somewhat compatible with Lego blocks, but I see no evidence of that. Perhaps some pieces work... |
What load balancing software do you use ? | samueladam: http://blog.emmettshear.com/post/2008/03/03/Dont-use-Pound-f...http://www.igvita.com/2008/02/11/nginx-and-memcached-a-400-b... |
What load balancing software do you use ? | mattculbreth: I´ve used nginx in Rails and Pylons environments with good success. These apps don´t get much traffic so that wasn´t a consideration, but the ease and simplicity of nginx is fantastic. You never have to do anything with it once it's initially configured. |
What load balancing software do you use ? | blader: Nginx: http://highscalability.com/friends-sale-architecture-300-mil... |
What load balancing software do you use ? | SwellJoe: I've used pen, Squid, and LVS. All useful for different situations, though LVS is just not practical for the vast majority of situations.PerlBal looks really cool, as being written in Perl means it has some of the same kinds of flexibility that Squid has (a good reason for Squid is that you can write your own balancing algorithm in any language you like in a redirector script--I always used Perl, or Python when I was working with the Zope guys--so, you can actually do crazy stuff like choose the right server based on keeping them "primed" for the content users are asking for based on URL, or you can use destination URL hashing and achieve the same effect even if you have millions of URLs). Squid also has experimental support for ESI (Edge Side Includes) which is pretty awesome...build a page from disparate and wholly unrelated servers using a simple templating system, and caching them. I don't think any other Open Source product out there has ESI (experimental or otherwise). |
What load balancing software do you use ? | anotherjesse: I'm a huge fan of both Nginx and HAProxy - used together.[internet] <-> [Nginx] <-> [HAProxy] <-> [app servers]Nginx is a great webserver, but isn't a good load balancer. You can install a patch that improves the balancer - http://brainspl.at/articles/2007/11/09/a-fair-proxy-balancer... - but it still isn't as nice as HAProxyWith HAProxy the status of the system is visible. For the largest site I use HAProxy on I keep my status page public - http://userscripts.org/haproxy - but it isn't required.HAProxy is particularly good for rails since you can say each app server can only have 1 request at any time. This makes requests queue at the HAProxy layer, so if an app server has a request that takes a extra long time you don't have requests waiting for that app server to finish - instead you wait for the next available app server in a FIFO queue.Combining HAProxy with munin gives great stats for tuning your system - whereas just nginx with the patch had no visibility into where bottlenecks might be.I |
What load balancing software do you use ? | DenisM: Consider also using multiple DNS A records - the selection would be random thus balancing the load.
For example, do "nslookup google.com" |
What load balancing software do you use ? | swombat: We're hosted at EngineYard, which use nginx with a fair load balancer plugin that ensures that new requests are assigned to free mongrel instances (yeah, it's RoR).Works great.Daniel |
What load balancing software do you use ? | jrockway: I use perlbal, which is nice-n-simple. Add a few lines describing where your backend servers are to the config file, save it, and start perlbal.For our $WORK applications, we just have an apache that proxies to the backend FastCGI apps. We don't have a ton of load, so that works fine. (We might be switching to nginx, which is much simpler than Apache for this use case.) |
What load balancing software do you use ? | ubudesign: what is your app server? or is this only http? |
What load balancing software do you use ? | brianr: I'm using nginx in a couple different setups: nginx -> paste (pylons)
nginx on one machine, three other machines with 8 instances of paste each. Nginx proxies directly to the paste port (which incidentally is also itself a threaded server, but I've gotten best results by running several instance per box). Volume has been as high as ~8mm dynamic requests/day. nginx -> lighttpd -> php-fcgi
nginx on its own box proxying to 8 app servers each running 160 php-fcgi instances. Volume here is ~16mm dynamic requests/day.Both have worked pretty well so far. As anortherjesse said, there's not a lot of feedback, but it's done everything I need so far. |
What load balancing software do you use ? | thingsilearned: We use HAProxy because we're very session based (each user sees an entirely different thing) and HAproxy was a good choice for that. I wrote a post on setting it up a few weeks ago.http://leavingcorporate.com/2008/03/03/session-based-load-ba... |
What load balancing software do you use ? | holygoat: I like Pound very much: it's simple and robust.However, I recently noticed a memory leak. We use healthchecks on our production machines, which means a consistent rate of hits every few seconds, 24/7. After about 3 months, Pound had chewed up 1.7GB of RAM, which caused memory usage alerts in our monitors.Not a big deal -- you can always restart the process -- but I'm still evaluating alternatives. |
What load balancing software do you use ? | rcoder: I've been using Apache 2.2 with mod_proxy_balancer to do load balancing for PHP and Rails apps for over a year now, and had pretty good experiences with it. Since I support a lot of existing Apache servers, the configuration is easy for me to work with, and the ability to do authn/authz and SSL termination at the load balancer lets me keep the load down on my application servers.It's probably not as fast as Nginx, but I haven't found our load balancers to be a bottleneck. In fact, we've been doing load balancing on a pair of really, really wimpy servers (Celeron CPU and 512MB of RAM) running Apache on OpenBSD for about a half-dozen different apps for the last year, and never seen the average load climb up over about 0.5, even while handling upwards of 300 requests per second. |
What load balancing software do you use ? | azsromej: I've used nginx and have been able to adapt old htaccess rules to get everything I used to get with apache. It's good on memory and I've never had a problem. |
What load balancing software do you use ? | merrick33: ultramonkey in front of apache / php / postgresqlIt was very smooth to setup with debian, but my first experience setting it up was with redhat and that was tortuous |
What load balancing software do you use ? | subwindow: I'm using Pound right now in one large installation, and nginx in another smaller installation, but it still has decent traffic.I definitely prefer Nginx. It seems much faster, and has definitely given fewer headaches. It seems like an issue with Pound crops up every few weeks. My Pound config file is about 600 lines long now, and it is starting to get unmaintainable. |
What load balancing software do you use ? | andy: Why use software? I have a hardware load balancer at Softlayer and for $99 bucks a month it's totally worth it. |
What load balancing software do you use ? | jawngee: We use hardware load balancers, Cisco CSS 11501's. |
What load balancing software do you use ? | photomatt: Recently switch all of the WordPress.com load balancers to be nginx. They push a little over a gigabit of traffic right now and about half a billion requests per day, no sweat. We use Spread + Wackamole for failover, there's more info on Barry's blog:http://barry.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/load-balancer-update/I wouldn't recommend DNS round robin for load balancing. (We did it for a while, many problems and flaws in the approach.) |
Any users of SimpleCDN? | FiReaNG3L: Did you check http://cachefly.com/ too? I'm also shopping for a cheap CDN and this an alternative I know. |
Best IP geolocation service? | andybelike: i was recommended maxmind: http://www.maxmind.com/app/geoip_country |
Best IP geolocation service? | davidu: Depends on how you plan to use it... |
Best IP geolocation service? | technoguyrob: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=136091 |
Any users of SimpleCDN? | aaroneous: http://www.velocix.com/compare.php -- I saw these guys come across my feeds earlier in the week. They're a CDN offering up to 500gb (per mo?) of caching on their edge network for free.I have no clue as to the size of their map, or quality of service, but since it's free it may be an attractive option for bootstrapped startups who don't want to pay the traditional monthly commits of Akamai, L3, LL, etc. |
Any users of SimpleCDN? | jbyers: Haven't tried simplecdn. This pricing seems at first glance to be too clever, but if they can do it, it's certainly less than any competitor I've seen.We use Panther Express (http://pantherexpress.com). More expensive, but not nearly as much as Akamai and other big guys. No commits. Fantastic network. |
Any users of SimpleCDN? | danielrhodes: I haven't used them, but be careful of their offer. If you look at their pricing, the $1 is for one credit, and they charge you a certain number of credits based on the size of your file. Here's the catch: it could get very expensive for you if you have a site that is long-tail with lots of files, but on average few views per file. If you have a few files that need to be served, or a few popular ones, it's probably a good deal depending on the quality of bandwidth you need. However, CDNs are a good example of you get what you pay for. If you need Grade A bandwidth and a CDN with a ton of POPs (e.g. for video), my bet is that they won't hold up since it looks like they are more budget and new at the game. |
Transitioning From PHP to Django | aneesh: How popular is the app? Does it work nicely now? Depending on your answers to those, do you really need to rewrite? |
Transitioning From PHP to Django | goofygrin: The first thing I'd try is to reverse engineer the model from the database (this is something that django can do).As long as your database design is somewhat decent you'll likely be ok. if not... well you might want to build a new model and migrate your data :) |
Any users of SimpleCDN? | berkun2: We're using simplecdn to distribute 20 training videos on out site in HD... so far so good, no complaints, videos are real long which is why we went with them. |
Transitioning From PHP to Django | jjguy: I've worked with SQL for a long time, with a variety of implementations and front-ends. Django's object model hurt my head. I didn't get it. There's simply too much black magic.e.g, how is: Entry.objects.filter(
headline__startswith='What').exclude(
pub_date__gte=datetime.now()).filter(
pub_date__gte=datetime(2005, 1, 1))
(from http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/db-api/)easier than: SELECT * from Entry where headline like "What%" and pub_date... wha? see? wtf is that chaining filter actually doing?
my 2 cents: write your own DB access layer, fight the obscure black magic.(nothing but quibbles with the templating engine, though) |
Amazon flexible web payments? | thomasswift: I would love to hear anyones thoughts as well. |
Amazon flexible web payments? | kirubakaran: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive#t...http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47958http://searchyc.com/flexible+payment |
Amazon flexible web payments? | ivankirigin: we at tipjoy are designing a new payment system. If you have any ideas or design requirements for an API, especially for micropayments, let us know: http://tipjoy.com/feedbackI've used both PayPal & Amazon's FPS. I would accept both if only because enough people feel strongly about one. |
Which mobile platform is your favorite? | vlad: I like iPhone now through next summer, an iPhone/Android 60/40 split afterward over the following year, by which time (two years from now) RIM should be in trouble, possibly even worse than Microsoft, who knows how to make software, hardware, and SDKs, and might release a great business phone with 3G, WIFI, and a great keyboard by then (that of course uses Exchange ActiveSync instead of the required $60-100/mo per phone Blackberry connection plan that RIM requires.) |
Which mobile platform is your favorite? | DenisM: I will start myself having programmed both for Google Android and Windows Mobile.In the grand scheme of things, the two platforms are comparable in the amount of joy and pain they cause and it takes roughly the same amount of effort to get things done.Windows Mobile:+ C# (popular, easy to learn language)+ IDE with debugging- IDE costs money+ Decent compatibility, debug once - run anywhere- Compatibility is not perfect - there are two distinct flavors (touchscreen and non-touchscreen) and while its possible to write compatible code it still takes effort+ Native Emulators for different form factors- Network connectivity in emulator is a pain to configure+ Once you configure it you can simulate network conditions very well-- Windows Forms UI is quite primitive and does not have even basic layout. Huge pain in the neck. I hate it.- The View and Controller of Model-View-Controller are merged into one (class Form), as a result you can't easily separate View from business logic. Thus it is harder to test.+ Allocation profiler and unit tests- No regular profiler, no code coverage- Stagnant - very little has changed in recent times+ Large install base (10 mil)Android:+ Java - popular, easy to learn language+ Single UI model for all devices (touchscreen)+ Free IDE with debugging (Eclipse)+ Working network connectivity in debugger- Not as rich connectivity options- Debugging is half-assed - it hangs all the time (search for "19% bug") and you can't eval random expressions, only local variables. But then again it gets the job done.+ The Intent / Activity / View model is nice - View and business logic are separated. It's also quite cool that application consists of late-bound activities - basically you can expand existing application by developing a newer implementation of existing activity. In other words, it's hackable that way. The whole way how Google rethought the idea of "application" is very fresh and I like it - it seems to make sense to me.+ Regular Profiler (don't remember about unit tests and allocation profiler)+ Rapidly evolving- zero install base |
Which mobile platform is your favorite? | jamess: From the software engineer's point of view, there can be no question that Symbian is by far the nicest platform to work on. It's got the same two decades of heritage as pretty much every other popular operating system that exists today, but it shows what can be achieved if the people who designed the OS in the 80s were thinking clearly about the future.It's so refreshing to work on an Operating System where character sets aren't anything you have to worry about, that has Unicode designed in to every component from the file server on up. To use processes rather than DLLs as the basic unit of code reuse is just great, and with platsec to have a decent mechanism for policing access to those processes... Well, I could go on and on, but I better not.It also helps to have a quarter of a billion phone installed base, and almost 1 in every 10 phones shipped being a Symbian phone. Not just Smartphones, mind, all types of phone. |
Which mobile platform is your favorite? | davidw: Android: it's open source. It might not be an initial advantage against something like iPhone, but in the end, I think it's very compelling. |
Which mobile platform is your favorite? | mcxx: What about OpenMoko? It will soon become available to the masses, it's fully open, cheap, extendable etc. |
Which mobile platform is your favorite? | axod: The web. I just don't see the point in native apps these days when you can do pretty much all of it via webapps. |
Free (Quality) Financial/Stock Content/Widget? | mstefff: Oh yea..I'm currently using Google/Yahoo mobile finance quote pages in an IFRAME, but they are pretty ugly and I'm not sure if thats legal.. |
Is Facebook worth $15 Billion? | Hates_: IMHO - No. |
Is Facebook worth $15 Billion? | epi0Bauqu: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2008/04/facebook-back-of... (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=161583)http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2008/04/facebook-back-of... |
Why be an option/futures/day trader when it is zero-sum? | utnick: Don't some people, especially big organizations buy options/futures as hedges for another investment?... so it might not be a true zero sum game in the sense that some of the players aren't really playing to win.. they are just putting money in for insurance |