Specifically the following paragraphs:
"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation."
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. 'That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3.'"
If you've got some criticisms, how about stating them explicitly instead of so off-handedly insulting someone else's hard work?
I really meant it looks like a prank. So I don't see what the point of taking out the etiquette guidelines does in this case. The whole premise of managing twitter, facebook, tumbler, etc. all in one place sounds like a joke to me. What's next? Browse in IE, Firefox and Chrome all at the same time from one convenient location. Every single social app currently has the option of blasting every single thing you post on them to all the other ones and that kind of setup doesn't sound like a feature it sounds more like a bug.
And how many people still use FriendFeed? It is now overrun by auto quote bots and viagra spam. Also, I don't see how facebook approving of something makes the idea any less idiotic.
See, here's the thing -- thinking the idea of feed aggregators is a dumb one, and a net negative to society is one thing. But shitting all over a guy's work by calling it a prank or a joke in a venue that is predicated on the value of small-time entrepreneurs taking gambles on their ideas... How do you think that is ok?
Just to be clear, this guy didn't invent feed aggregators. There are a bajillion of them. You've got a beef with society, not this guy's work. He's trying to make money serving an underserved niche. I hope he makes a billion dollars.
I have nothing against society but I do have something against the OP. Clearly he and his friends have the technical expertise to make something but instead of doing something worthwhile they have created another weapon for the spin doctors. And yes he will make millions because campaign managers these days manage more money than some hedge fund managers but the rest of us won't be better off because of it.
May I point you to the etiquette guidelines for the proper way of shooing someone away. You have hurt my feelings by the blunt way you have expressed yourself.
You are being incredibly rude and attacking. This is a real pain for some people, and the OP has built a solution to solve that. Having a dozen distributed communication mediums that you have to manage and stay on top of may not be your pain, but that doesn't me its no one's pain.
I didn't say it's not a pain. I just think if you're trying to engage users then blasting them with updates on all fronts is the wrong approach and doesn't change anything about the current political setup.
This guy sounds like an asshole. If he is so concerned about the current state of affairs he should write an application and show the world real problem solving concepts. Instead he rages about something and in the end pretends to be smarter than he actually is.
In fact I think it does the opposite. This doesn't fix anything. It makes the problem worse. In our current politics there is absolutely no real dialog between the politicians and people. Blasting twitter updates and facebook status updates to your followers is the shallowest kind of follower engagement because even though everyone can retweet and comment on those status updates no one really does any real communicating in those mediums. For a guy who claims to want to fix the political landscape this is clearly a step in the wrong direction.
Ok, well, at least you are now saying something. But it may very well fix/improve the situation. We will have to wait and see. I think it's an interesting trial at least.
It's not about being passionate about politics and my background is in mathematics and cs, two of the least political subjects out there. If I was going to devote time and effort to doing anything political then it certainly wouldn't be about empowering the marketing/spin machine used by politicians. I would instead focus on tools to empower individual citizens and give them the tools to fight back the spin machine. This doesn't do anything of the sort.
That's a pretty silly list. Many formally trained programmers also lack understanding of several items on the list. How much can you really teach anyone on compilers and machine learning in two months? The easiest way to learn something is to use it. Taking tests and turning in homework assignments for 8 weeks only gets you so far. If you want to pick up the formal theory and functional aspects of programming then I highly recommend the course notes available at http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis500/current/index.html. If you get to the end I guarantee you'll know more about the theoretical aspects of programming than any "formally" trained programmer at a big name university.
Notifications are a bit of a problem with web apps. It's much easier to do everything client side on a mobile device and I haven't figured out how to elegantly implement a notification system on the server side. I could potentially do everything by email but that brings a whole bunch of other headaches with it if I don't want to be blacklisted as a spammer. Currently I'm looking at appcelerator and adobe air to make the app more accessible to a wider audience but that's a little ways away.
That would be fine if I had a server sitting somewhere constantly checking for prices. Currently I just push all the code that would be processed on the server onto the client. I'm not expecting to get millions of users but I'm also not interested in managing my own server. Making the whole process decentralized and getting the application on the phone to manage itself is a much better solution. There is no equivalent way to do that for a web app. No matter what I will need some kind of central location for people to push and pull their alerts from if I make a web app and there are plenty of services like that already.
That's interesting, so you don't have a server at all? Does that mean you don't collect any usage data? That's key to improving your product and building new ones.
This guy sounds like an asshole. If he is so concerned about the current state of affairs he should write some tutorials and teach some real problem solving concepts. Instead he rages about something and in the end pretends to be smarter than he actually is.
