We also recently released an early version of the Airtable API. It provides an API that's specific to each database you've configured in the app:
https://airtable.comhttps://airtable.com/api
Thank you! We don't do auto-increment keys but is something we're considering (or at least auto column types like date created). We will definitely be adding more analysis features soon. One thing you can do (which may not be too discoverable) is select a range of number cells in a column to get a summary at the bottom.
We require that you oauth in via a Google account purely for authentication right now. We don't request permissions for your email, calendar, contacts, or other data--only your name, email, and profile picture (which is used in the UI). We're working on support for email/password based signup, as well as oauth support for other services.
Thanks for your comments!
We're actively working on performance improvements needed on both the client side and server side, but right now it would be very sluggish at that scale. We do have immediate plans to expose an API, probably sometime early 2015.
Thanks a lot for your feedback, these are definitely things we're looking to tackle.
We're planning on improving scrolling performance soon, it's definitely a priority for us to improve our performance for large datasets.
As for the linking, we definitely want to do more to help you normalize your data. We can also infer column types to help with the import process. Doing this type of thing on paste is an interesting idea.
We have some ideas for how to make it so that you don't need a primary column. One thing that you can do now is make the primary column a formula, and then reference other columns to generate a key.
Sounds like Airtable would be pretty ideal for that. You can import that CRM spreadsheet to get started! You can actually start today, just click the "Get it started" button here: https://airtable.com/invite/a3sz9t7b
"On the fully commercial side, the mobile revolution is creating a logistics revolution in farm-to-retail marketing. Farmers and food retailers can connect directly through mobile phones and distribution hubs, enabling farmers to sell their crops at higher “farm-gate” prices and without delay, while buyers can move those crops to markets with minimum spoilage and lower prices for final consumers. "
They must leverage basic cellular technology in pretty creative ways. I can't imagine these farmers would have advanced smart phones with data plans. Is this all done through sms? Does anybody know more about this system?
Android could potentially have a large impact in developing countries. It could provide open source location based services on cheaper handsets. All it needs is a good distribution system (like app store).
The game's storyline involves a protagonist who recently made some mistakes and broke up with his "princess", and needs to change some things in the past to fix this.
My guess is that this "fantasy" storyline is autobiographical. The dude probably had a bad breakup and got over it by sitting in his basement for 3 years making a great game. I feel like drugs may have played a small part in the design as well.
As they mentioned, laptops used to only be useful for sending emails, browsing the web, writing documents, etc.
Mobile phones are now taking this simple portable computing role that laptops used to hold, and then some.
Only problem with portability is screen space and ergonomics. Somebody needs to come up with a universal way to dock portable devices (laptops, mobile phones, etc.) to a desktop keyboard/mouse/speaker/monitor setup quickly and easily. I guess they have proprietary docking stations that do this but something standardized would be nice.
I would guess that their research only shows that light can be bent around a simple object like a disk or sphere, and not an arbitrarily shaped object like a tank or ship. I don't think they'll have the technology in the near future to create a metamaterial that bends light around any sort of vehicle or non-trivial object. In order to bend light around an object, the metamaterial needs to be anisotropic, meaning the index of refraction changes throughout the material in three dimensional space. While this can be done in the lab with a simple object, it would be incredibly difficult and expensive to produce an anisotropic metamaterial that would hide something large and arbitrarily shaped, and the methods to produce or mass produce such metamaterials are still a long way off. This is especially true with visible light, where the metamaterial must be built on the nanoscale.
In any case, this is still an incredible breakthrough. It hasn't taken them too long to move this technology from the microwave spectrum to the visible light spectrum, so progress may be fairly quick. Especially considering the huge amount of money the military is probably sinking into this for obvious reasons.
Here is some of the original metamaterial invisibility work on the microwave spectrum:
http://www.ee.duke.edu/~drsmith/cloaking.html
I actually worked in this lab for part of a summer writing a ray tracer to test these concepts. Maybe I should have stuck with this stuff...
I think that if it were this easy to predict the success of a startup, VCs would have figured this out a long time ago. Applying for funding would involve filling out a simple form of variables to be plugged into a magical equation.
I don't think that this site accounts for the high probability of FAIL inherent in any startup. Probably just assumes that the company will continue along the growth path of previous SUCCESSFUL startups that were included in their historic data.
Mobile technology advances much faster in Japan because it is so much easier to maintain and upgrade the infrastructure. In such a small country, it is considerably cheaper to upgrade to the newest mobile data technology. In a country the size of the US, not so cheap or easy just because of the geography.
Japan telecom companies were able to adopt 3G technologies much quicker than other places for this reason, and this technology became commonplace before it did in other countries. So mobile computing has had more time to develop and permeate their culture.
In any case, it's probably good that mobile internet in the US is developing more slowly and cautiously around the open internet instead of the carrier's content.
From my experience, Ryanair doesn't seem very concerned about PR. Their only real focus is to preserve a reputation as the cheapest no frills airline in Europe, and do everything possible to make their ticket prices appear lower than competitors. Or maybe they're just one of the sleazier companies out there.
While their base ticket prices may seem incredibly low, they make their profits by tagging on extra "service fees" that appear on their website after you've begun checking out. For example, a few years ago I remember I had to pay extra for "baggage insurance", which ensures that your bags do eventually make it to their intended destination and don't get lost, something that is usually implicitly included in the original ticket price of other airlines. The UI of the Ryanair website stresses the importance of this baggage insurance with a popup window. Other airline comparison sites probably have decent UIs that don't push these options to the extent of Ryanair.
They also go to great lengths to cut any cost. I've heard that employees are not allowed to charge phones at work in order to save on energy bills. And from my experiences, their employees really don't seem to have any sort of customer service training. Or maybe they're just grumpy because Ryanair treats them so poorly.