I am near you, in Chandler, so cannot help test SF but would be interested in PHX. After reading your JavaScript I have a question: HTML5 geolocation returns lat/lon so what are you using that isn't shown in the script to get neighborhood?
Oh I see, it passes coordinates to your rest api which returns neighborhood based on fences you have created. Cool. I can imagine this would be useful for drawing fences around businesses and making an app that changes its display of closest businesses as the user drives around town.
Yes, you are correct that is how it works. I’m still in development and have about three major bugs I still need to work out, plan on doing that this weekend. And performance is bit slow due to I have not minified the JavaScript yet, also a weekend project. The goal of “I Am Near” is to associate content and services to specific geographic locations. Currently content and services can take the form of full blown applications, embeddable widgets, or SOAP/RESTful web services. The basic premise is that a user’s experience should change depending on where they are. For example if a user goes to http://www.mcdonalds.com in their home they would be presented with general information about McDonalds and listings of the closest locations. If a user is in the same shopping mall at lunch time they would be presented with specials and deals to help entice them to go to the McDonalds 50 yards away. If they are in an actual McDonalds they would have the ability to order their lunch and even pay for it using their smart phone/mobile device. The HTML5 geolocation API gives you the latitude and longitude but often that is meaningless. As a developer I would much rather be given information such as “user is in Old Town Scottsdale” or “user is in Store #2345” than “user is at 33.26552, -111.89116”. Fundamentally that is the problem “I Am Near” is trying to solve. If you get chance please play with it. Right now it’s just me so any additional developer input is greatly appreciated.
Impressive attention to detail. I love how there is a slight difference between the way the second hand ticks, between models. Did you start each one with a photo as scaffolding and draw the SVG on top? Did you use Illustrator or Gimp? Beautiful execution.
Yeah, for each illustration I started with a front-facing photo and lined up the center of the face with the exact center of the document. From there I make sure every circle I draw is perfectly centered and I draw all the hands facing upwards.
I'm confused then because according to founder Greg Kidd 3taps does not get its data by scraping Craigslist:
"...We didn't get the data from them anyways. We're finding it from other sources which have already indexed it like Google, like Bing, like other search engines that are out there."
If you read the fine print (which is in various documents linked to on 3Taps' website), you find that it's not quite as simple as that. 3Taps started out getting the data from Google; but when Craigslist found out what they were doing, they restricted Google's access in a way that made it necessary for 3Taps to scrape Craigslist's site directly.
It's notable that, in these documents (which are written by 3Taps), the fact that Craigslist sent them a C&D letter is never mentioned. So it's not clear where, exactly, in the process the C&D letter came in.
You are correct, it is off by the height of the bar at the bottom of the window. It uses fixed positioning -- not absolute positioning as was prescribed in the hack. Also he sets the modal height to 50%. The CSS of the demo is not the CSS of the write-up.
One thing I would like to know about Alibaba is how to best distinguish between good and bad suppliers. One of the criticisms levied upon Alibaba is that there is no way of knowing which of the suppliers can be trusted and which are not even close to being set up to carry out the services they are advertising. How does one best approach the problem of due diligence when using Alibaba?
Most product pages I have seen on Alibaba are confusing. It's not clear what the product is, what the price is including shipping, and what the end-to-end process for me will be including how defects and returns are dealt with. What strategy do you recommend for approaching this problem?
One product I searched for was custom playing cards. I was thinking of ordering 100k decks or so, with a custom design printed on the front and back of each card. A lot of suppliers on Alibaba are listed in this niche. So I thought, great, I have a custom request -- I want to design the front as well as the back -- so I should be able to do a request for quote and send it to all of them, right? Wrong, there is no standard form I can send out to all of them, I have to contact each of them individually. I also wanted to know how much it would cost just to buy the cardboard boxes that playing cards come in, but again it seemed I would have to contact each supplier separately which struck me as a suboptimal process. Any thoughts on that, I would love to hear.
Also I would like to know how samples work. If I request a sample of something relatively expensive, does the supplier eat the cost of the item or do I have to pay for it? I assume I have to pay for the shipping. Are there any ways within Alibaba that I can fill out one form and get a bunch of samples sent to me, or is this something that I have to set up supplier by supplier?
Which product categories offer the best savings versus what would be available in, let's say, the United States?
What tips can you share on shipping?
I have read that Alibaba is not the best website for outsourcing manufacturing to China. However I have not come across strong viable alternatives. What are your thoughts on the competition? Specifically it would be helpful to know if there is anywhere online that you know of where suppliers are vetted for legitimacy and integrity, as these are routinely cited in forums as problems for Alibaba.
I signed up for your crash course. Thanks in advance. Good luck.
You could use Flickr's API to acquire the images. Filter on interestingness, favorite tag and size. If it is only for your personal use, there are no limitations -- otherwise filter on license.
I'm in the wrong section of the industry apparently. I have been focusing my efforts on building technology when what I should have been doing is writing blog articles about user interface design. I suspect many more people will buy the $198 paper being sold here than have ever purchased software written by me. That is not to indulge in self pity but I can't help wondering if changing my name to Nielsen and sharing my observations about skeuomorphism and rescaled design would be a better investment of my time than writing code.
I don't really understand what your actually criticizing here. Are you upset that you aren't making enough at your current position? Are you upset that a group that specifically focuses on conducting user experience research is selling their results for a price that you don't want to pay for it? Do you not feel as though their work is valid enough to justify charging for it, even though they've been an established group within the field of user experience for years?
I am saying it seems much easier to write about compelling user experiences than to create them, and given the price they are charging for their product it makes me wonder if I should be writing papers about user experiences instead of programming them.
Well, try it then. It actually isn't that easy. Sure, everyone can try to write something about design. But that is not what Nielsen is selling, mere writing.
Not everyone can back his writing up with self-conducted user studies, for which one needs (a lot of) time, money (the equipment alone) and people. This is what generates the value of those reports.
Then you should be creating $198 papers and hoping someone buys them.
EDIT: It's easy to be dismissive of a company, occupation or field of business. Nielsen just happened to at the right place when the web became big as a commercial medium (mid-1990s) and if they get to sell expensive papers, it's because their expertise is seen by user experience designers and marketing professionals as useful.
Perhaps you would sell more software with better marketing, which, in a way, is what the people buying those papers hope to achieve.
"Evolution, so far, may possibly have blocked us from being able to think in some directions; there could be unthinkable thoughts."
Which prompts today's startup idea:
1. Use Silk Road imitators to send hallucinogens to Amazon Mechanical Turk workers
2. Ask workers to solve impossible problems
3. Pass responses into machine learning algorithm
4. Gain godlike insight
5. Rescue humanity from self-destruction