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I found the article interesting as someone born and raised in Latin America. It's not uncommon to see colorful houses here and street art. It leads me to wonder if areas with houses painted in bright colors are noteworthy at a global scale.


>"We make analyzing a rental property so easy Grandma can do it!"

There are lots of grandmas who are engineers, scientists, doctors, and inventors. There are plenty of ways to land that message without carrying forward the spirit of 1950s Madison Ave. Plus, that copy doesn't tell anything about the product, it's fluff.

"Analyze deal potential without leaving Zillow"

"Automatically analyze rental properties as you browse"

"View critical deal metrics as you browse"

etc


> There are lots of grandmas who are engineers, scientists, doctors, and inventors.

And there are a 100x multiple of grandmas who are not any of those things.

Your virtue has been signaled. It’s just a figure of speech.


Thanks for the tips!


Grandma already owns all the property nowadays.


The article is saying that Zapier is ripe to be unbundled.

Meaning it does many different things across many verticals, and that some of them are big enough that a company could be created around building a more specialized / better version of zapier just for a specific vertical.


Unbundled implies that the company it's self splits up and focuses on a specific "vertical"

In this instance I would argue that the author is saying clone the idea but make sure the APIs offered are for a specific subsection of an industry.

Or more succinctly: jump on the bandwagon in the style of hipstermatic/instagram gold rush.


You might enjoy this video, Stanley Tang of DoorDash talking about how they got their first few orders... masterclass in 'minimum amount of initial work to validate a concept'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQOC-qy-GDY


Thank you for your amazing work! It would be great to document that supported subset for Bodymovin to AVD — the Lottie supported features[1] matrix is awesome, and it would really create a ton of value to also document AVD support for Bodymovin in the same way. It's so black box right now, troubleshooting involves tweaking path nesting, exporting, diff xml, tweak, export, repeat.

[1] http://airbnb.io/lottie/supported-features.html


I would recommend filling in real address details in Mailchimp. After I entered my email and was taken to the confirmation page I immediately regretted it when I saw the "1234 B St LA, California 90210" address. Not a good signal for legitimacy.


Yeah. I work from home and I didn't want my address public. I understand your concern.


P.O. boxes are your friend


In São Paulo they have the "clean city law"[1] which banned outdoor advertising in 2006. Pretty crazy, here's a flickr gallery: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tonydemarco/sets/7215760007550...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa


Is a company's name on their building really considered advertising? I mean, if I owned a nice building for my company, I'd take pride in having our name on the front.


What's the purpose of putting the company name on there. If it's to solely to allow people to find it then that's not advertising - if it's to say "look how awesome this building is and it's our companies" then that's advertising IMO.


> What's the purpose of putting the company name on there.

Well, for the owner's it's a sense of pride over all the hard work they've gone through to get to the point of being able to put their business name on the wall. Why do people buy flashy sports cars? To show off success.

I don't think having a name on a building like "SomeGuy's Sawmill" is really an advert, if anything, it's a brand.

Not to mention, say you're trying to find a location like the closest clothing store, or restaurant. How will you locate it (or the right one) if every building is just plain and looks exactly the same?


There's a difference between having a sign at street level for passers-by and having a neon sign that fills half your building though.

No-one is saying you can't have a nice sports car, nor that you can't be proud of it - here they're saying that you can't put spotlights on it and erect a hoarding saying "I'm awesome, look this is my car", just park it on the street like everyone else.

How will you locate a building. Numbers, street names - map or GPS : those are the usual way.


> How will you locate a building. Numbers, street names - map or GPS : those are the usual way.

That would only work if you knew ahead of time you were specifically looking for that particular location. There's been plenty of times I've driven by some place and decided to go take a peek inside just based on their name alone.


I'm a bit confused about your claim, then, because that sounds exactly like advertising.


"Al's Furniture Store" isn't advertising to me, it's the store name. I decided to go look inside based on what it was.

If 'Al' wasn't able to put his business name on the building (or advertise in any form), then he'd probably not make very many sales.

It surprises me where the conversation has gone -- this being HN and all, we're mostly startup/biz/tech people round these parts.


I intuitively understand what you're getting at, but I think it's difficult to draw a legal line between a name sign and advertising.

I guess plain signs reading "bakery", "clothes", "cars", "hipster coffee", etc. could be allowed if you try this.


You can put it up there I believe, but it has to be small and can't be flashing.


> Is a company's name on their building really considered advertising?

Yes.

> I mean, if I owned a nice building for my company, I'd take pride in having our name on the front.

I'm not sure why the fact that the advertiser would make it any less advertising.


This is crazy, these pictures look like they're from a dystopian future. Can you imagine if this happened in the U.S.?


Some might say it looks like a utopian future :)


Exactly. I live in a place with a bit less ad clutter than usual, so it's the US cities that look dystopian to me :).


Point well taken! It would be nice to live in that city I must admit :)


It would be amazing, especially if they also tore down all the billboards instead of leaving them up and blank.


I don't think it’s so bad leaving the blank advertising stands. They act as a reminder for how things used to be. Humans are remarkably adaptable and it’s very easy for us to forget changes in our environment. As an example, my local city council banned HGVs (heavy goods vehicles) from the city centre about 10 years ago and it made a huge difference to quality of life for other road users (particularly pedestrians and cyclists) with regard to noise levels and air quality. However, within a few weeks, most of us just took the change for granted and forgot how bad things used to be. Every so often, I make a conscious effort to remind myself of positive changes that have happened as it’s far too easy to focus only on the negative aspects of one’s current situation. The empty advertising stands serve as visual cues for such appreciation. I’d also add that the bare structures have a certain symbolic value.


HGV meaning semi-trucks and other CDL class vehicles? Just want to be clear. I wish my city did that, or at least banned the multitrailer trucks where they have 1-2 more trailers attached.


I had to look up those terms. We use different terminology in Ireland but it looks like we're talking about the same class of vehicles (also generally referred to as articulated lorries [1])

The ban[2] specifically refers to trucks with 5 axles or more and proscribes them from entering the city centre between 7am and 7pm. Previously, there was a large amount of trucks driving through main thoroughfares to access Dublin Port but before introducing the ban, the local authorities finished constructing a tunnel and motorway to bypass the city so the truck drivers have viable alternative routes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_goods_vehicle

[2] http://www.dublincity.ie/hgv


One can dream...


In addition to the already mentioned Hawaii, there are already other limitations on billboards in the US:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard#Laws_limiting_billboa...


Correct. I grew up in Vermont. No billboards allowed and the State will come after you if you try to get funny about it and test the limits.


I can remember this technology being used on rap videos from the early to mid 1990s.


Yeah, US drivers wouldn't get distracted by flashing billboards.


Most forms of outdoor advertising are banned in Hawai‘i.


Seeing a city like that was so refreshing, it must be nice to live somewhere your attention isn't constantly pulled here and there, and where a sense of want is re-enforced every time you lift your head.


New Zealand has a similar law - you can't advertise on a building unless you own it and use it.. i.e. Coke can put a coke sign on their own building, but nowhere else.

It's beautiful.


I'm confused about this. NZ has billboards. I'm not sure exactly what you're comparing with. Do companies elsewhere just "tag" their names indiscriminately? I haven't noticed any differences between the UK and NZ in this regard.


This also made the city incredibly hard for me to navigate about a decade ago (no smart phone).


You could start from the lobste.rs source, available here: https://github.com/jcs/lobsters

There is a mirror floating around of news.arc[1], the original version of HN from pg, but it's pretty dated and missing tons of the secret sauce.

[1]https://github.com/wting/hackernews


TropicalMBA for startup business talk. Nathan Barry Show and Kalzumeus for inspiring, actionable content. Seth Godin's Startup School series is pretty timeless as well.


Great write-up, really piqued my interest in Rockefeller. Any good reads you can recommend?



I read Titan. Interestingly, it documents how SO's market share was declining steadily throughout the anti-trust trial, and Rockefeller was unable to stop it.

It runs against the conventional story of SO being an inevitable monopoly.


Well, at the time, the kerosene market was declining and there was nothing bringing it back. Right after the breakup, Henry Ford finally perfected the automobile, and Standard Oil came right back.


Market share isn't the same thing as market size. The point being, SO was losing to competitors.


Very true. From 1870 to 1890 SO was 90% of the oil market. By 1907 they were 68%.

Their main competition was from Russia oddly enough.


Thanks. The Prize by Daniel Yergin isn't bad either.


The Prize doesn't get into Rockefeller's business decisions as much as Titan though. If that's what you're after, Titan is a better choice.


It is meticulously researched, though, and the bibliography is as good a place as any to look for further reading on Rockefeller.

Above and beyond that, simply as a history of the most important substance in all of human history beyond sheer biological necessities, it's utterly fascinating. It's principally through Yergin's work that I came to pretty much diametrically opposite conclusions of the future of energy from his.


The documentary series "The Men Who Built America" is a really well done overview of some of these guys.


The problem with these american HC documentaries is that they are employ certain stylistic means which make them impossible to watch for me.


What stylistic means, if you don't mind my asking?


Overtly bias portrayals to an extent that it becomes celebratory in nature. While I can understand the need to do so, it has become so ingrained that it is impossible find any historically objective documentary that allows viewers to understand the mindset of the period.


Thanks. So, hagiographic? Or just plain biased.


Note that the person who answered your question wasn't the person you asked it of.


Something that's difficult to tell from HN's default 'threads' view :(

Thanks for the heads-up.


I wish this was on Netflix streaming. I find this type of history really appealing.


It's on Amazon Prime;)


Very nice, thanks!


You can also watch "The men who built america"


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