This may just seem silly and superficial, but I find the demonstration picture with colored indenting would actually be quite useful. Perhaps not coloring the code itself but more the number of tabstops until the code.
Seriously? 3 pictures, poor use of 'Hack', and posted to YC News? The end result being "don't put too much ice in your drink"? This is one of the few times I could downvote.
Well, for some people it is the case that choosing the personally optimal product configuration from the set of options provided by a vendor is considered hacking, even if it does not present a new phenomenon nor does it represent an unexpected benefit.
Personally, I think that anyone over the age of seven has figured out that there is a lot more soda in the cup if you skip the ice, but it is colder if you include some ice.
I'm more surprised at Wired than I am at this getting posted here. When did Wired become this Tired?
I am actively engaged with a lawyer who knows about equity deals. He and I agree and our position is to find out what's in the stock agreement without signing anything first. I just keep getting the runaround which is "oh you have to sign this nda / contract first and then you get your stock agreement". As my lawyer says "I'm gonna call bullshit on that".
The NDA might be legit; but he should be prepared to hand you the stock agreement within about 2 seconds of you handing him the NDA. And of course, you don't have to sign the contract first.
To be honest it's too slow to be of any use. It just feels clunky. I would use it if it were fast, but having to wait for the javascript to catchup is pointless. The autocomplete doesn't help when it pops up after I have paused for a second. If I type "you" very fast and hit tab, it won't always autosuggest in time. To make things worse, you are going to be directly competing against Ubiquity.
Another big annoyance is how dumbed down it makes a terminal. If I want to do a youtube search i feel like I should be able to simply write "youtube blue man group". I don't want to have to add in "search for" or add in square brackets around my query.
The main problem is that I can see that it's there. I use a terminal to avoid having to interact with an interface. I agree with Google's Chrome philosophy, that they don't want you to notice the browser at all. Spend your time figuring out how to make it faster and easier and then you've got something you can show off. I would be worried about Ubiquity though as a browser plugin can work so much faster than javascript.
Make it four. It's really frustrating to have to read two words at a time in places. To shorten the video and keep people reading combine slides. There were two that were "...global community and..." "...diversity..." that could have easily been one. The point is to get your message across, not show me as many pretty pictures as you can.
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, part of the point with the pictures was to try to get a certain kind of feeling/mood across. Text is pretty bad at doing that. However, if it is too long and things need to be combined, then I think we can still get the general feel across with combined words and slides.
First - if Microsoft managed to somehow make a more powerful search with PowerSet then they are still lacking in reputation. Rep alone will get a large portion of Google users to stay with them.
Second - People in general don't like Microsoft. Sure they have some great products (don't knock Windows and Office, the world does run on them even though there are other great platforms/editors) but they have lost face due to poor support options and annoying aspects of the interface
Google's strength, thanks to PageRank is in Ranking, or, in other words, determining the best page to answer a given query.
Like I've argued here before (and I'm no Microsoft fanboy) Powerset's version of Wikipedia might just be enough of a base for Microsoft to topple this. How, you ask?
Simple... As most people will agree Wikipedia's content is pretty good. By having it semantically linked Powerset effectively turned it in to a giant fact database. Now... Microsoft engineers can with a reasonable amount of work use this database to, in a way, fact check the pages they come across. Pages with good content will be ranked higher, while pages with poor or inaccurate content will be ranked poorly, regardless of the number of links they might receive. This would, of course, spell the end of the "Google bomb"...
... and would make a lot of different in what is usually called the "dark web", where, by it's very nature there aren't many (or sometimes any) inbound links.
Now, you might argue that Wikipedia doesn't contain all the facts in the world. And I would agree with you. You might even argue that not all the facts there are trustworthy. And once again, you would be correct. But it's a damn good starting point, and, in the right hands, it can "spread" by validating other sources of information. Say, if one page that contains a "new" fact has a large number of correct facts, it might be ok to assume that the new one is correct as well. Specially, if it is formulated similarly in different places of the web.
In summary, you can imagine it as the seed of a "factrank" that is then used to rank pages. As you well pointed out, however, inertia is a relatively large deal on the web, but not as much as in the physical world. People didn't used to be in love with Google until a few years ago... I'm sure that give the right arguments they can fall in love with another search engine.
The big question is... does Microsoft have what it takes to pull it off?
First and second are similar yes, however Google is not just a search engine. They have a dedicated base of Gmail users, they have a great advertising service. They have youtube (although are thinking it less and less likely to turn a profit). It would be a huge blow yes if Microsoft somehow overcame Google in search functionality, however it would not be the end of Google.
If you honestly want to be "green" you can make changes to your personal behaviour (such as using CFLs, recycled packaging etc.) and not rely on some company to hold your hand and make you feel like you're making a difference for a little extra cash.
I personally tend to lose respect for companies that try to upsell their "green" options, much in the same way I am dubious of extended warranties.
I also hope you realise that even if they were to offer a "green" option it probably wouldn't mean they're going to stick a windmill on top of their colo, they'd just use your extra cash to offset the environmental cost of the electricity you used, much in the same way you can.
Don't get me wrong, I a happy Slichost customer and have made efforts to recycle and use public transport for the environment's sake since I was a child, but this recent rash of "green" buzzwording really ires me as it seems to be used in a most insincere and vapid manner, instead of people actually taking a rational, pragmatic approach to environmental efficiency.
If you honestly want to be "green" you can make changes to your personal behaviour (such as using CFLs, recycled packaging etc.) and not rely on some company to hold your hand
But surely hosting is by definition an area where you need a company to do it for you? Things like what you eat, how you travel, etc, you can control yourself, but the whole point of shared hosting is that you don't own or even see the server.
The other point I made was that even if they were offering "green" VPSs it doesn't mean they're going to have a "green" and "non-green" power cables running in to the building and they put your VPS in the rack hooked up to the "green" one. They`d probably just do exactly what you can do yourself, pay someone to offset the environmental cost.
One of the main things about purposefully choosing "green" companies, often at increased cost, is that you are influencing the market based on your preference. Choosing environmentally friendly products encourages companies to offer them (I also appreciate that this is why many abuse the term).
Furthermore, if you wish to brand your site or company as "green" you should probably do a little more than choose a "green" VPS provider lest you further obviate the term.
I have no idea who agreed with you, but I am against the major theme of your reply.
I never said I wanted something gimmicky, I never said I wasn't personally environmentally conscious. I like to do everything I can in all aspects of my life to try and leave as small of a footprint as I can. I have never owned a car, I became a vegetarian for its environmental (not animal rights bullshit) reasons (10 pounds of grain or a pound of beef?), and leave the furnace off for a good part of the winters even though I am Canadian.
I'm not wanting some company to hold my hand and make mne feel like I'm making a difference, because I know I am. I'm saying I want a company that cares as much as I do. I want one that does power its servers off of 100% renewable resources. and not to say to my customers "LOOK! I CARE!".
I understand the best I'm going to get it someone purchasing offset credits, but that's better than nothing. So please sir do not judge me before you know me, do not make assumptions about what I am doing. I don't want a buzzword, I want solutions.
He probably wants a "green" option so he can advertise it on the site itself -- that will make it popular with the hipster crowd, the kind who has the Facebook widget "My Profile is Carbon Neutral" (ignoring the obvious fact that the greenest Facebook profile is no profile at all)
Automatically purchases renewable energy to offset CO2 emissions due to your clients, network, and servers, independently of your hosting provider, so you can use it with Slicehost.
I largely agree with the other replier about most green options. I suspect that if you want to do that, the easiest thing to do is make sure you don't use more computing resources than you have to, and the second is to host it yourself and power it yourself (that can be very impractical).
There are places that are trying to offer green options, that aren't that slimy -- I have met the follow that runs http://burlyhouse.net/, and his operation is nice. His prices are high, but I think most of his customers are people who also hire BurlyHouse for programming or other services.
I'm actually building a web app with a small start up, and we just do not have the time to make our service ie6 compatible. We are going to let users know that and redirect them to a very plane jane site where you can still get the information but not very efficiently. However our market is mainly tech savvy people so it should work out.
Sorry, that widget just gives that little dropdown redirecting to their site? I meant that I was going to just provide an info page where the user can still get the information on my site, just not in the same flashy page as everyone else.
Fair enough, but sometimes tech savvy people use computers of tech unsavvy people (friends and relatives, internet cafés, corporations with reactionary IT departments...)
