It'd be splendid if antitrust cases happened more often, Google must be due a dozen at least.
Also: Gmail's spam filters are one especially egregious abuse of power. Email is another technology Google hates and which deserves to survive without Google hamstringing it
Email spam filters seem non-functional right now. Before I added a "allow all" filter to Google, the majority of email got sent to spam.
Microsoft isn't better in this regard though: they don't have an "allow all" filter possibility, and will delete spam emails after two weeks. I've gotten invoices, personal email, and job offers deleted this way.
The debit rates you are referencing are for in-person transactions where a pin number is entered. Debit cards can be used for online transactions but the interchange cost is more like 1.8% + $0.10.
Hopefully increasing the response time to > 2s (whether it's settable in the API or just has a longer timeout) is on the roadmap, I can think of lots of future use cases where you would want a human in the loop on authorizations.
Looks like a great product and props to you and your team for shipping this.
That's not possible. Transactions need to be approved at the POS within a reasonable amount of time. Waiting for a human is to respond is not reasonable.
You could pre-approve the transaction and then confirm it within 2 sec though.
I can also imagine of lots of future, intensely frustrating use cases where a user scans their card in a line at a point-of-sale, or is waiting on a "Confirming purchase, please wait" page on a website while your human in the loop puts this approval on hold for a few minutes until your cell phone finally rings.
Currently, human-in-the-loop approvals do happen, but they happen long after the purchase goes through - ever gotten a call from your bank's card services department as you were leaving a gas station on a road trip? Much more convenient for the common use case where the human approves the transaction than the rare cases when the bank is on the hook for the stolen gas.
Since this is an API, that means you just build this into your app. You could initially decline the transaction, send a push alert to the user's app notifying them that the transaction is in review, then update them on that status when approved/declined. At that point the card can be run again and approved if that was the decision. You could even allow a pre-request through the app, when when approved would enable your user's card for the purchase. The possibilities are endless.
One of the concept mockups says patent pending. If the author is attempting to patent this I can see why he wants to re-open the established standard, but there isn't much value in changing how the buttons are arranged. And frankly, if he's trying to patent this button layout, it doesn't matter if it's any better because it will never be used due to the patent.
The future is more likely dialing by voice than it is a re-arranged button layout.
I agree re: the patent pending and their trying to drum up some sort of support.
My opinion, what a monumental waste of time. I'm damn happy that I read tbgvi's comment before looking at the article, as the few minutes I spent browsing over it seem a waste.
What's next, let's design coat buttons to allow people to get dressed 0.5 seconds faster(after of course speeding hours relearning their muscle memory to actually do it -and don't forget the patented new button design giving them 20% of all sales of course)
Dialing by voice? Surely the future is not dialing at all?
I can't remember the last time I used a phone number for anything. Contacting friends is mostly done via social media. Talking on the phone is done via voice or video via same social media. Contacting companies? Via e-mail or their own webpage with some kind of chat support.
I only have a phone number, so that people without smart phones (my grandmother) can contact me.
> I can't remember the last time I used a phone number for anything.
Daily.
> Contacting friends is mostly done via social media. Talking on the phone is done via voice or video via same social media.
My friends aren't reliably on social media (and some of them aren't at all). SMS is quickest for small things, an actual phone call is quickest for a slightly longer discussion. E-mail for a group discussion or long-term planning.
> Contacting companies? Via e-mail or their own webpage with some kind of chat support.
I start with their online help or ordering system. For a tech company, e-mail might be the next option. For food, or something where I'm contacting someone local, it's almost always a phone call.
I'd have to think about the last time I actually dialed a number by hand, though.
Other than my work (which happens to be related to telephony apps) I rarely use the dialpad.
If I meet a new person I enter 10 digits and that is the extent of my usage. Not to say that the design in use is justified by limited use, but my point is that dialing a number is already antiquated. Most of the time I dial something from a saved/shared contact, maps, or from a link in an email or on a website - never actually typing in a number.
Voter registration data is available for purchase, but only by registered political committees and can't be used for commercial purposes. This also doesn't include a lot of the breached data like partial SS#'s and drivers license #'s. As a Chicagoan I'm not too happy about this breach, and there has been surprisingly little coverage of it locally.
This was created a few weeks ago for a local hackathon run by a sustainability focused non-profit in Chicago. Placed first out of around 13 teams and thought I'd run it past the HN crowd. Unfortunately we only have data for Chicago at the moment, but the team & I plan on making improvements and adding data.
Quora is a great resource for learning about how certain startups gained traction. There's even a specific topic geared towards it here: http://www.quora.com/How-Did-X-Get-Traction-1
Thanks for this, and I have read a bunch of them. I was more interested in some of the operational details and the data/numbers that founders can give.
Perhaps you can ask them directly? I know there are people who did , one example off the top of my head, someone asked how kickstarter got their initial projects, and one of the founders responded friend of a friend.
It definitely seems interesting and possibly valuable, but I'd be a bit apprehensive about it. IE. I feel like its much better to get introduced organically to and advisor than pay for it. When it's pay per minute it seems like they're incentivized to take on anyone whether they can provide solid advice or not. Also feel like there would be a stigma like "here's this guy who can't get an advisor so he has to pay for it".
Edit: I should probably just try it, potential value > potential awkwardness :)
I understand the concern, but I don't think the intention of the site is to connect you with "your advisor" but rather provide manageable access to advice, from willing participants.
I think strategy/tactics for getting initial users depends on what you're selling and who you're selling to.
Best advice I can give would be to figure out who needs this the most, find someone like that in your area, and start a dialogue with them. 1-on-1 selling definitely isn't scalable, but you can ask them things like 'how do you find out about new services you can use for your business', 'what blogs/news sources do you read', 'who's an influential person in your line of business' etc... Once you have this info it will be obvious (hopefully) where you should be focusing your attention.
Reading up on lean startup methodology (if you haven't already) would help get you up to speed on this sort of process. Good luck!
