Travis

37 ms·

331.
by Travis 16y ago
There have been other HN discussions about seeding your site, and the consensus seems to be that it's OK if done ethically. I'd say paying users to generate stuff is fine. Just don't steal copyrighted material, don't pay people to reword
332.
by Travis 16y ago
When I first started writing web apps in 2004, I tried to make everything nice and accessible. CSS, semantic HTML, etc. However, it was a huge pain in the ass. So now, for my b2b startup, we ignore that. We move quickly and try to push t
333.
by Travis 16y ago
I'm the programmer in my startup. I'm also the guy with the day job. We weren't making the necessary progress until we actually analyzed why I wasn't being as productive as we needed in the evening and weekend situations. Turns out that I
334.
by Travis 16y ago
It sounds like you're pretty green in this area, so I'll give you a few tips from what I've read. * You may not be allowed to crawl everything, and your use of that data may not always be in line with sites' terms of service. Just be aware
335.
by Travis 16y ago
Same way you evaluate writing skills. Look for consistency of formatting, look for descriptive variable names. Read other sites (stackoverflow, google groups, etc.) and you will very quickly learn to tell an expert from a noob.
336.
by Travis 16y ago
I've charged rates from $60 (totally spec'd out product with full page designs and everything how he wanted it) to around $100 (lots of hand holding). Depends on location and type of work. I'd say that $45 is a bit low.
337.
by Travis 16y ago
Agreed with what marknutter says. You should start learning it yourself. Start attending other meetups. Your willingness to learn will pay dividends down the road for your startup: 1) it's signaling. Tells a developer that you're seriou
338.
by Travis 16y ago
Do you have a coder working with you? If so, (and they're familiar with PHP), they should be able to extend the functionality you need. If not, I'd recommend finding someone on odesk type sites. Find someone who specializes in WP customiz
339.
by Travis 16y ago
Agreed with johng. Further, don't think about scaling yet. Seriously. You should be able to scale to thousands of users without much thought, if you're using a reasonable shared provider.
340.
by Travis 16y ago
@mattmaroon a salary cap has worked in football, but the CBAs and relative strengths of players unions are very different between the sports. It wouldn't work in baseball (read my post above). Worth repeating the Gammons quote: "In those 3
341.
by Travis 16y ago
Your understanding of the issue is a bit superficial. 1) MLB has been increasingly profitable for 10+ years now. Economically, there is nothing wrong with the game. 2) The Dodgers are 4th in club value, and 4th in revenue. Not sure where
342.
by Travis 16y ago
Agreed 100%. I was more suggesting that the first month or two be a more trial-like basis; thus the exclusion of equity from that period.
343.
by Travis 16y ago
I would not only LOVE something like this, but I'd also like to be able to subscribe to the page updates (so I can read followup / interesting comments in a thread). I think I can do the latter with the RSS feed, but just haven't set it up.
344.
by Travis 16y ago
Start small. As in, hand him small assignments to do in exchange for cash. Working with him, you'll quickly learn whether or not you want him on your team. If not, it's better to make a clean break (rather than him owning 1.2% of your com
345.
by Travis 16y ago
From what I've seen, cc fees are usually about .40c + up to 3% a transaction. A big cut (25%) of a $2 charge, but far different than suggesting it's 100+% of revenue.
346.
by Travis 16y ago
Do you know that these routers work fine on other people's networks? Did you see different results in router latency when you connected via wired, vice wireless? (Sorry if you answered it -- your question had a lot of info in it, and I coul
347.
by Travis 16y ago
Sorry to hijack your thread, but I've had some questions from cofounders about screen scraping. Am I allowed to scrape information from their websites and use it to populate my system? Isn't that effectively what google does? Is there a li
348.
by Travis 16y ago
Your numbers seem a little low for a high priced sale, but if your goal is to recoup server costs and some dev money, you should try selling it. Will it sell? Only one way to find out!
349.
by Travis 16y ago
messel, Best of luck to you. Don't love your drive or passion just b/c of your recent layoff. That's more important than any paycheck. And I've found that working even in the best environments can strip that passion from you. Good luck.
350.
by Travis 16y ago
I'm a big fan of Coda for the actual IDE. Well, more of a text editor, similar to TextWrangler. Not free, but it has the built in SFTP client, so it covers that. Also suggest balsamiq as an alternative to omnigraffle; both are excellent p
351.
by Travis 16y ago
Wow, this is a question that can really fracture a community. My two cents, from pretty extensive linux experience and one short Solaris experience: do what aligns more with your IT admin's philosophy. My feel for Solaris is that everything
352.
by Travis 16y ago
I suspect it's two things. 1, the need for shared resources (users shouldn't have to connect to server71231.example.com, they should be connecting to mail.example.com. (2) performance (via fiber link or something)
353.
by Travis 16y ago
Out in Southern California (high but not as high cost of living), we found that angels were OK with salaries of around $60k / year for the founders. If this is your startup (so you're a founder, not first hire...), then figure out how muc
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by Travis 16y ago
Regarding their reputations: Paypal is probably what people associate with online payments. However, there are a LOT of people who have been ripped off or treated poorly by paypal or scammers. So while it has a broader reach (WRT users ma
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by Travis 16y ago
I think what unavoidable is saying is that photoshop, specifically, isn't a necessary step. Personally, I hate mockups in it. I try to use paper and pencil, if it needs to be formal, I use balsamiq. I do agree that you need SOME sort of m
356.
by Travis 16y ago
More on this -- realize that the "insider" you're talking to will have some dissonance of his own going on. After all, if he's in the industry and hasn't done it yet, (to him) the idea's not worth doing! If he thought it was a good idea, h
357.
by Travis 16y ago
This this this this. Caveat emptor. Now, there are some cases (health standards, for example) where the laws prevent a lot of bad things that we wouldn't otherwise be aware of until something damaging happened . But, really? Limiting the
358.
by Travis 16y ago
Ugh, more laws. NO Thank You! Ever see that youtube video of a law professor discussing why you NEVER EVER talk to police? His point is basically, "we have so many laws that you never know which ones you're breaking, so you could be confe
359.
by Travis 16y ago
Haven't used Amazon payments or Spreedly, so I'm not familiar with their cost structure. What're you looking for, primarily? Same recurring payment month after month, for the same amount? I think Paypal has a recurring charge option that
360.
by Travis 16y ago
You're not going to be able to write your own payment gateway. That's the short version. The long version is that it'll be much more expensive to write your own, than it is to use an existing one. I would guess it'd cost at least tens of

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