This is really cool. I've read a lot about ideal working environments, and it seems the general consensus is that working alone, isolated, and for long periods of time is the best. This might be true for heavy thinking tasks, but I've realized that its very, very nice to go work at a pub or a coffee shop on campus. Especially on campus there is a good chance of encountering someone who is doing the same.
Couldn't agree more. Working isolated works for some tasks (like getting "in the zone" while developing) but I definitely thrive off of the ambiance of a coffee shop environment.
The process of attaching a document is entirely unnecessary. Why distinguish between formats? If you want to give somebody a spreadsheet, just send them a spreadsheet, not an email that happens to have a spreadsheet attached.
@ChuckMcM That sounds right, but to entertain another perspective for a second, maybe the point being made is that the amount of power Google has over publishers is unhealthy. The Publishers seem to think that search engines should be fighting for their business, not the other way around. Its hard to tell what such a drastic change in the system could do, but maybe it doesn't have to be bad.
I for one believe that in order to have the most accurate search results, the rankings should be based on content, not money.
"Maybe the point being made is that the amount of power Google has over publishers is unhealthy."
Framing it in an adversarial way may confuse the issue. The #1 challenge for any business is getting customers. When ever a business emerges that has a large influence on customer acquisition, it annoys businesses.
Lets re-frame the debate into one from the last century. In the US the telephone company knew the address and phone number of every business in a city by virtue of providing the service. One of the ways they leveraged that is they would publish a book, called the "Yellow Pages" which listed every Company and their number. Because the information was collected into one place, the it gained economic value (information economics being an interest of mine). It had so much "value" to customers that it was the first place they looked for the phone number of a business. Businesses realized that for generic things like plumbing, locksmiths, auto repair, being at the front of the list was better than being at the end of the list. Since the list was lexicographically sorted you started seeming names like AAA Locksmith, and A1 Plumbing. Hacking the name to be at the front. Then the Phone company decided to offer up "ads" where you could place an add on the same page as the listing, now even if your name was Zlotnicks Plumbing you could put an advertisement on the first page where plumbing started. That got you business. The complaint then was "Since everyone uses the Yellow Pages, I am forced to pay high prices to get an ad in their pages just so that people will know I exist."
By that same logic businesses may end up paying search engines to appear (and they do for Shopping links according to Bing's Scroogled.com web site).
And this comment: "I for one believe that in order to have the most accurate search results, the rankings should be based on content, not money."
I can totally agree with that, but I may internalize that differently that you do. I think that giving a search engine a choice "pay us or don't crawl us" they will simply opt not to crawl. But to understand why that makes sense economically you have to think about how the information involved gets its value. In this case a collection of 99 versions of a news story for 'free' is more valuable than 100 versions of the same news story. And its worth is exactly zero for uninteresting stories.
Cool idea, but one question. Are you talking about developers ripping off non-techies buy building the idea from scratch, or the non-techies themselves trying to build it from scratch because they don't know better alternatives?
I've been thinking the same thing lately. I go to university in Vancouver right now, its not very easy to meet people who are truly passionate about hacking - its just not the vibe out here. Vancouver is about being a weekend warrior.
I'll be at my local ski hill to go to the unofficially annual igloo party. The igloo gets bigger every year - last year there were 5 rooms, a dance floor, and kegs...
