Sites to Get Your Web/App Project Into the World

Thanks to: sideproject

http://news.ycombinator.com – (duh), post with Show HN, easy submission, will get listed on http://showinghn.com/ and http://hnshowcase.com as well.

http://betali.st – quite well known, moderated, gets a decent amount of traffic if you get featured, not too many form fields to fill out.

http://www.kickoffboost.com – moderated, and relatively new, easy submission

http://www.reddit.com/r/sideproject – moderated, easy submission

https://www.sideprojectors.com – relatively new, easy submission

http://thestartuppitch.com – moderated, has quite a few more form fields to fill out than others

http://www.erlibird.com/startups – paid $149, last time checked out

http://forrst.com – Easy submission, used to be a great community for feedback – not sure now

http://www.bootstrappist.com – a mailing list of bootstrapped projects – has quite a few subscribers I think.

http://angel.co – Angelist, of course – new startups gets tweeted via various accounts

http://crunchbase.com – Crunchbase – similar to Angelist

Posted in Action!, Vocation & Profession, Web

Best Comments in Source Code

Working with other people’s code is like driving someone else’s car. Sometimes it is more fun than your own car. And sometimes you are going 60 when you realize there are no brakes.

// For the brave souls who get this far: You are the chosen ones,
// the valiant knights of programming who toil away, without rest,
// fixing our most awful code. To you, true saviors, kings of men,
// I say this: never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down,
// never gonna run around and desert you. Never gonna make you cry,
// never gonna say goodbye. Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.
//
// Magic. Do not touch.
Exception up = new Exception("Something is really wrong.");
throw up;  //ha ha
//When I wrote this, only God and I understood what I was doing
//Now, God only knows
stop(); // Hammertime!
// I dedicate all this code, all my work, to my wife, Darlene, who will 
// have to support me and our three children and the dog once it gets 
// released into the public.
// I'm sorry.
// At this point, I'd like to take a moment to speak to you about the Adobe PSD
// format. PSD is not a good format. PSD is not even a bad format. Calling it
// such would be an insult to other bad formats, such as PCX or JPEG. No, PSD
// is an abysmal format. Having worked on this code for several weeks now, my
// hate for PSD has grown to a raging fire that burns with the fierce passion
// of a million suns.
//
// If there are two different ways of doing something, PSD will do both, in
// different places. It will then make up three more ways no sane human would
// think of, and do those too. PSD makes inconsistency an art form. Why, for
// instance, did it suddenly decide that *these* particular chunks should be
// aligned to four bytes, and that this alignement should *not* be included in
// the size? Other chunks in other places are either unaligned, or aligned with
// the alignment included in the size. Here, though, it is not included. Either
// one of these three behaviours would be fine. A sane format would pick one.
// PSD, of course, uses all three, and more.
//
// Trying to get data out of a PSD file is like trying to find something in the
// attic of your eccentric old uncle who died in a freak freshwater shark
// attack on his 58th birthday. That last detail may not be important for the
// purposes of the simile, but at this point I am spending a lot of time
// imagining amusing fates for the people responsible for this Rube Goldberg of
// a file format.
//
// Earlier, I tried to get a hold of the latest specs for the PSD file format.
// To do this, I had to apply to them for permission to apply to them to have
// them consider sending me this sacred tome. This would have involved faxing
// them a copy of some document or other, probably signed in blood. I can only
// imagine that they make this process so difficult because they are intensely
// ashamed of having created this abomination. I was naturally not gullible
// enough to go through with this procedure, but if I had done so, I would have
// printed out every single page of the spec, and set them all on fire. Were it
// within my power, I would gather every single copy of those specs, and launch
// them on a spaceship directly into the sun.
//
// PSD is not my favourite file format.

Read more: here.
Posted in Amusement, Cleverness & Wit, Fiddling & Time Wasters, Technical Geekery, Useful Code, User Interface Design, Web

On Writing

David Ogilvy on writing:

The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well.

Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.

Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:

1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.

2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.

3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.

4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.

5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.

6. Check your quotations.

7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it.

8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.

9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.

10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.

David

Posted in Amusement, Copywriting, Editorial

The Shifting Dynamic of Consumer Purchasing Decisions

 The Internet Has Made Us All Passive-Aggressive

One of the most interesting dynamics of the huge, recent shifts in consumer behavior is that we need more information before making decisions – we hyper-research everything now. But, we use synchronous interactions with other people less and less to do that research. This truly is the era of self-serve information.

How many times have you purposefully chosen to not fill out a contact form on a website because you didn’t want to be called, or even emailed? I’ll bet more than a few times. Even if it’s a product in which you have a genuine interest, you’ll avoid filling out that form until the last possible moment, preferring instead to kick the informational tires yourself, often via a mobile device.

 

Read the whole thing: here.

Posted in Vocation & Profession

Self Awareness: It Can Make or Break You

Who are you and why are you doing what you are doing? More to the point, stop doing things you aren’t going to be one of the best at. Nice editorial on the subject: here.

Posted in Editorial