Same, I deleted Google+ last week so I don't have to look at it. I still use Google for Adsense, Analytics and search. I'm tempted to switch over to DDG, and explore one of the many alternatives for tracking analytics because quite honestly, I'm losing faith in Google to maintain my privacy. Adsense is tougher to replace, I use them for backup fill after selling direct advertising, but they're still one of the better networks.
I wouldn't be surprised if YouTube goes under in the coming years. Someone is going to create an alternative, and hit a homerun. YouTube is primarily about watching videos, and their video player is one of the worst available. Porn sites have offered much better video players for years, so what's holding up Google? It's been seven years, and they still haven't fixed it. Either it's not in their list of priorities, or they're incompetent. I don't care which one it is, they lose my support, and I'm ready to get behind the next alternative that's better in touch with the needs of users.
How would this work though? You have 4m worth of blacklisted bitcoins. What happens if you go to a legitimate store, like NameCheap, and buy a domain using those bitcoins. You're going to add NameCheap to the blacklist now, because these coins went through them?
Well, you could say NameCheap wouldn't accept those coins in the first place, but can you really expect every store and person to be using this list?
What happens if you take those 4m worth of bitcoins, send 3m to your own wallets, and distribute 1m to random wallets of strangers? How do you know which wallets to blacklist? All of them? You're just going to put tens of thousands of people in the dark, and say their bitcoins are now worthless and blacklisted, because they received a random payment?
Valve can squeeze all these stores out any time. Right now they're driving sales, distributing the game, and doing a large part of the work for zero profits on outside sales. This isn't going to work long term, and they're going to flip the tables. How? I have no idea, but here's an example.
Developers set the global price for their game. They can also set a unique price per store. All sales go through Steam, referral codes send a commission back to the store making the sale. For example, you're a developer with a game on Steam, $9.99, and you want to sell it on the Humble Store for a 24 hour sale, at $4.99. You set the Steam pricing coming from the Humble referral links at a 50% discount. Now, users browse the Humble Store, see the game at 50% off, click to buy, and get forwarded to Steam, or go through a Humble checkout that uses the Steam API. Valve takes the money, distributes a percent to the developer, and a commission to Humble. If Humble wants to send a part of their payment to charity, that's up to them.
Valve wants to encourage more user stores selling Steam games in the coming year. I imagine a new payment system will be announced in mid/late 2014 to accompany these changes.
Germany has a freelance visa that'll allow you to stay in the country for a year or longer. It's not the easiest to obtain, but do a quick search on Google and you'll find information on the process.
What did you think of Istanbul? I just spent the last half year living and working in Europe, and I was thinking about returning next year, with Istanbul high on the list for a month or two.
Same, noticed the Facebook button and walked away. Show me some live examples, and include a how it works page, and you might grab my interest.
Please people, stop requiring users to login to learn about your application or service. Why are you putting a giant hurdle at the front door? Signing up should be the very last step. For example, let me setup a Webbify page, and if I want to save it, I need to create an account. At that point, I'm invested, I'm much more likely to register.
I think that's only viewable in Canada, but Canadians, play the video and watch the first pitch.
These kids develop an iPhone app for tracking and recommending your workouts. They're asking $100,000 for 10% of their business. Their plan for generating revenue is converting users from their free app to pro at $4.99/mo, $29.99/yr. So far, 12,000 downloads on their app, and they say 1% are converting to paid. That means 120 paid users, averaging say $15 each, so they've made roughly $1,800 in revenue.
What the hell? $1,800, and they value their company at one million dollars? They're not even paying themselves, and they're in one of the most saturated niches in the world, with already countless others well established and successful in that market. What blows my mind even more, one of the investors offers $100,000 for 20%, with 25% royalties until they're paid back. They turn it down.
Don't forget simply being new and fresh comes with a lot of benefits. Why do kids make top secret forts, no adults allowed? Why do people go to those little hole in the wall coffee shops and restaurants, where there is only one or two tables, and an old women behind the counter? The food? Sure, but even more so because the atmosphere feels unique and unspoiled by the mainstream. Why do people always search out new bands that no one else has discovered?
People like to be unique. They don't like to be grouped in with the rest of the world. This is especially true with teenagers. You don't have to make a better Facebook, you just have to make a new Facebook. It needs that feeling of being fun and exclusive, which Facebook is quickly lacking and can never gain.
Google+ will never succeed. Yes, they've invested countless dollars and time from some of the brightest minds available, but the name Google is simply too big, and too well known. It's boring from day one, there's nothing cool or hip about signing up on Google+.
It's simple, you buy the beach next door, and wait for the popular beach to implement any of the above changes. Then you advertise as the beach without ads, the beach without admission fees, or the beach where you can build free sand castles. Then when the people come, you sell your newly successful beach, and run.
Pasting in a custom word list would be cool. Also, making sure you don't have two words starting with the same letter on the screen at once. This way you don't accidentally target the wrong ships.
I kind of agree. I can't imagine it being popular with professional web developers or designers. Working with modern HTML and CSS is fairly straightforward and quick for development. I see sorting out edge cases and bugs produced by code in Macaw would leave you better off writing the code from scratch. Plus, like you said, this has the benefit of being educational and transferring over to other work.
I also can't see it being accepted by people trying to get a simple site online for their mom and pop shop. Tools like WordPress are much better suited to their needs, and they can click a few buttons, get a theme, website, and CMS working in minutes.
What I would like to see is a tool to mockup changes to existing websites. For example, I enter a URL, and I can quickly drag and drop elements to different locations, adjust margins, widths, colors with a proper color picker, etc. I find I'm always using Firebug to try out style changes, but it's a little sluggish to constantly select elements, and manually modify CSS properties. Using an online app that's a little more interactive would be useful, and it doesn't need to produce proper code, since I'm only using it to visually see if these are changes I want to implement or not.
For example, I enter the URL to HN. I click the orange bar at the top, color pick it to green. Click the link headings, change them to bold red text, and slide up the line-height to add more spacing. I hit save, and it gives me a URL like jsfiddle that I can share with others. I can then post this to HN, and say, 'hey, what do you think of these changes to the HN layout?'. It's a quick way for multiple people to share ideas on improving an existing design, or users to share their suggestions with developers. It would be great for meetings too. Let's drag our left column a little bigger, maybe scale these heading down a bit, and drag our logo over here. Yep, that looks a little better, have the development team code those change up and push it live.
I think you misread, I mentioned in the first line I was simply sharing a story. None of the people involved were American, and I didn't claim this resulted in poverty or validated the article in any way.
I lived with a girl that seemed to make a lot of poor financial choices. I don't agree with the article, but I'm just sharing a story that seems on subject.
She had about $300 in her bank account, told me she was broke, and began selling off a few extras around the house. She ran her business from home and the holidays were coming up. I continued to work as usual, and ask what she's up to. Well, she was closing up shop for 2 weeks, because hey, it's the holidays, that means no work. I thought that was a little strange, you're struggling to pay bills, and not paying your one or two employees on time, but refuse to pickup the phone to make a few sales during the break. Anyway, we decide to make dinner for the holidays, so we go shopping. She wants an elaborate dinner, so we spend $300 on groceries and alcohol for the two of us. This seems outrageous, but I figure we'll have leftovers for a week, and I'm not broke, so I'll toss in my half. Anyway, great dinner. Next night, she doesn't want leftovers, she wants to go out for dinner. Ok, I'm down. Where does she suggest? A fairly upscale restaurant, and we burn another $150 on the two of us. The rest of the holiday she continues to complain about being broke, and I continued to scratch my head.
I also met another guy, who was completely broke, with all of his credit cards maxed out. However, he always insisted on paying for everyone. We go out for coffee with a dozen people, and he jumps up, and tosses it on his card. Out for lunch, he sneaks away to pay for the group. Broke, living with his parents, full of debt, pissing away money, and fighting to get finances for his project. Last time I talked with him, he was selling off childhood items, and business equipment to pay the bills.
I think that photo did it for me. Just the contrast between people with a smile on their face going about their everyday life, and someone a few feet away fighting for their life.
I wouldn't be surprised if YouTube goes under in the coming years. Someone is going to create an alternative, and hit a homerun. YouTube is primarily about watching videos, and their video player is one of the worst available. Porn sites have offered much better video players for years, so what's holding up Google? It's been seven years, and they still haven't fixed it. Either it's not in their list of priorities, or they're incompetent. I don't care which one it is, they lose my support, and I'm ready to get behind the next alternative that's better in touch with the needs of users.