Top Hat is hiring for a couple roles: mobile dev (native iOS, Android), full-stack web developer (Python, Django, Javascript, React.js, NodeJS), and test engineer (test automation framework management; mobile and web). We also hire interns so please feel free to apply for that as well. Salary ranges based on experience from $70k to $100k.
We're a profitable (and valley VC funded by some of the best funds in the world) education startup that helps make class more engaging. We've got some really cool problems to work on and your work would be impacting a huge number of students daily.
If you're not based in Canada or the US but are willing to relocate feel free to contact us, because we do cover relocation expenses and will help you manage the work permit process.
Send your resume/github account to chris at tophat dot com.
I gave this site a try and added pizza places that I like in Toronto, ON.
- I was disappointed that I couldn't add any comments, notes or tags (you could even display badges for top picks in categories like "cheap", "organic", "fast", "high end" on your map). It would have been cool to link to the boingboing.net article referencing Massimo pizza or to recommend my favorite types of pizza at each place.
- I had issues where the green marker pins would be placed in the wrong spot if I: shared a restaurant, typed in the name of another restaurant, and clicked OK. This happened twice (FF 3.0.6 on WinXP).
- I like the look and feel design of the site but I partially agree with some other posters here who ask what distinguishes your site from the mass market players like yelp. Being pizza-only makes using your site really easy to use, but I'm not sure if that's enough. My random brainstormed thought: Could you make recommending and searching for great pizza places into a game that's fun enough to pique the interest of a first time visitor?
In the case of Amazon, perhaps the Associates Web Service APIs could allow the creation of tool allowing user-defined sorting functions. I've never used these APIs, but I found some details on them that lead me to think it would be possible. See http://aws.amazon.com/associates/#details
That said, asking honestly, are you entirely convinced of the mass appeal of user-defined (or user-selected) sorting algorithms? I find that the current algorithm usually gives fairly sane results.
I wasn't quite sure how to interpret this part of that article, but I think Professor Eichengreen later explains that his traditional answer ("it can't happen again") is no longer true.
"We can be confident, I always answered, that there will not be another Great Depression because policymakers have read financial histories like mine. At least that was my line until recently. Now I have stopped taking reporters' calls."
While he could mean that he's now getting so many requests that he can't be bothered to return them any more, I wonder if instead he meant that he can no longer give the "it can't happen again" message. Lending credence to this interpretation I think, he goes on to point out the ways in which the problem could continue to worsen without drastic action.
I think that for some user types and in some applications sacrificing capability for simplicity can actually be a good idea in product design. It seems that most humans experience "decision fatigue" when dealing with extremely feature-filled products and find their productivity decreases when using it.
By decision fatigue I mean that it seems that on average, people make worse decisions if they've had to make a lot of other decisions recently. Furthermore, it seems that accepting that a certain option will not be chosen also contributes to this. [1]
Relating this to product design, each new feature represents an additional decision that must be made when a user attempts to accomplish a task where the feature is presented as relevant -- "should I use this feature, or shouldn't I?" Even if the feature is not used, it's presence as an option contributes to decision fatigue.
I agree with Prof. Norman's point that good design helps alleviate these issues by giving us the mental models to avoid considering irrelevant features during interaction. The problem is that both the users of these designs and the designs themselves are imperfect, leading back to the fatigue caused by consideration and decision making about irrelevant details and options.
Maximizing capability is as incorrect as maximizing simplicity. I believe that the ultimate goal should be one that balances simplicity with capability in a way that takes the user's humanity into account such that productivity (whatever it means for a certain product) is maximized. [2]
While it's good to mentally prepare one's self with the knowledge that startups are (usually) a long hard road, and success is far from guaranteed, this article seemed a bit too negative for negativity's own sake. For my tastes anyway.
It's important to try to do great things, and it's noble to encourage others to do the same. ("Yay YC," you know?)
Seth Godin has an old post on this that I think serves as a good reminder, and still rings very true to me. A key quote:
"The thing is, we still live in a world that's filled with opportunity. In fact, we have more than an opportunity -- we have an obligation. An obligation to spend our time doing great things. To find ideas that matter and to share them."
I totally disagree with the assertion that it's important to try to do great things, or at all noble to encourage others to do so. For some of us it is, for some of us it is not, and it isn't universal. I don't think it's safe to assume that it's what is is best for everyone and try to encourage them to do it. It clearly is not the best course through life for most people.
It's incredibly selfish to try to convince others to sacrifice their own happiness to make the world a better place for you and to do what you think is important. If someone is happier working at Wal-Mart, and it means they won't author the next web-based [insert MS Office product here] why try to convince them otherwise? Because you want that social network for [insert hobbyist or demographic here]?
"I totally disagree with the assertion that it's important to try to do great things (...)"
I must admit, I respect your difference of opinion, but I find it very hard to relate to your point of view. Your statement seems to be contrary to a basic aspect of the human condition; that is, the desire to improve our lots in life.
Greatness does not mean "startups for everyone". Perhaps the use of "our obligation" in my quote from Seth Godin meant "completely everyone's obligation" in your interpretation? For me, it meant the obligation of Seth's audience; that is, many of the same types with dreams of entrepreneurship who read YC news. In any case, my belief, which I believe to be the common one, is that greatness has a definition in many different situations.
Personal experience and my readings on the science of happiness (see "Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi) lead me to believe that the happy Wal-Mart employee is probably happy because they are able to regularly accomplish things that are meaningful to them in an environment they find suitably challenging. To say it simply, the happiness the employee finds in their work means they are likely a great Wal-Mart employee!
I think your interpretation of my statement on the nobility of encouragement alters the meaning very dramatically from the plain contextual meanings of my words. Perhaps I am not cynical enough, but to me, 'encouraging' another implies having their best interests at heart, not one's own.
For some of the readers here at YC News, we find ourselves with a startup dream inside of us that we are nearly dying to express externally. Indeed, I agree with you that those who plan to undertake a startup should take pause and not do so lightly. I believe that most of the startup bloggers you speak of at least suggest this. Encouraging people who have taken this look at the strength of their desire and their capability -- that is, freely helping this self-prepared group to reach the happiness they seek -- seems quite noble to me.
I feel I also ought to say something about the strength of your apparent disillusionment with the concept of startups. Life as a entrepreneurial success doesn't have to mean that all of one's old friends and new acquaintances turn manipulative. If it is a fear, one could simply give money beyond living allowance away to worthy causes and step back from the power game (see Woz). It's true there are relationship strengthening opportunities to be missed in starting a company, but there are also some to be gained. Co-founders may become best friends. Compatible significant others may be easier to attract when one is doing what one is passionate about.
As other posters have said, it's probably a bad idea to run your site from home if there's any chance of seeing a traffic spike. Most ISPs will cut you off at the worst possible moment.
The biggest counter example I know of for a site that started this way and ended up huge is Markus Frind's free dating site, Plenty of Fish.
"I was running the entire site off my home PC and ADSL connection for the first 8 months."
(not sure if this is the original site that hosted this interview, but it's the first one Google turned up:
http://www.traffick.com/articles/innovators/01-markus-frind.... )
While I'm not an American, it will be very interesting to watch how Mr. Lessig is able to raise awareness of government corruption and to see how successful his efforts are. Here in Canada, the government seems to be looking into updating copyright legislation in some, shall we say, suspiciously biased ways. If his methods are successful, I hope we can adapt them to the Canadian system.
The Canadian who seems to fill a similar spokesperson / visionary niche as Mr. Lessig is Michael Geist (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/). He was the figurehead in the fight against the recent proposed copyright reforms here and had a great grasp of the situation and how to organize a grass-roots opposition to it.
As an aside, I find Mr. Lessig's presentation style quite interesting. For online presentations, where one can't use the flesh and blood presence of the presenter, the frequent updates are a huge attention magnet. It would be a pretty big departure from the 10-20-30 rule, but I wonder how well a business pitch made in this style would work. Another example of a presentation of Mr. Lessig's that exemplifies the style (and is beautifully and passionately presented) is available at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/187 . ("How creativity is being strangled by the law")
pg has noted that the fluff stories that this site's target audience might vote up (the "dangerous" stories that would attract those mentally-14-years-old people who are ruining / have ruined reddit) seem to tend to be quick to read. Is there a way HN could keep track of how long a particular story was kept open?
It'd be a pretty contrary approach. Clicking on a link would probably have to open the story in an iframe within HN. Lots of people hate that, I know. Maybe it could be made optional? Would people sacrifice that for improved link quality?
The iframe would be set below whatever amount of HN chrome at the top pg wants plus an "I'm done" button. HN could keep track of time between clicking on the story and clicking "I'm done".
A big question I had was "what about fraudulent reports." It's interesting that this is somewhat self limiting because increasing ranking this way would, by definition, take more time. Also, using the existing anti-spam heuristics (E.g., mostly new accounts upvoting a story), HN could further filter out time reports from unreliable sources.
It occurs to me also that this could be done completely transparently if HN didn't have to deal with the so called "same origin" security policy. A plug in could probably be written for HN to get around it, but bypassing the single most important security policy of the web might just be an intrinsically bad idea.
Top Hat is hiring for a couple roles: mobile dev (native iOS, Android), full-stack web developer (Python, Django, Javascript, React.js, NodeJS), and test engineer (test automation framework management; mobile and web). We also hire interns so please feel free to apply for that as well. Salary ranges based on experience from $70k to $100k.
We're a profitable (and valley VC funded by some of the best funds in the world) education startup that helps make class more engaging. We've got some really cool problems to work on and your work would be impacting a huge number of students daily.
If you're not based in Canada or the US but are willing to relocate feel free to contact us, because we do cover relocation expenses and will help you manage the work permit process.
Send your resume/github account to chris at tophat dot com.