That seems like a good idea, and I could see hotel visitors wanting to select a room overlooking the parking lot (to watch a vehicle), or wanting to be on a particular side of the building (avoiding highway noise), etc. People have all sorts of little preferences, so I think that feature would get a lot of use. They also like being familiar with a room, so I could see them booking the identical one on their next trip.
Since we're talking about hotels, I think the business in general has a lot of faults. I get more perks at a $10 per night hostel or $50/night Airbnb apartment, than I do at a $300 per night hotel.
When you book a hotel for $300 per night, they nickel and dime you for everything. Wifi? You'll need to register for it at the front desk, and pay $20 per day. Oh, want a bottle of water, or small snack, that's another $10. That hostel, or cheap-o hotel will give you free wifi. I'd say half of the Airbnb places I've stayed at left beer or a bottle of wine in the fridge, and a few places had a giant fresh platter of fruit on the kitchen table.
Why doesn't this happen with a $300 per night hotel? To me, this is a complete turn off. I'll avoid the fancy hotels, because I don't know where it'll end. They're trying to gouge me at every single corner when I've paid a premium, and instead of being an appreciated customer, I feel like I'm being taken advantage of. My parents are well off, and I know they feel the same way. When they go on vacation and stay at a high end hotel, they have to tip people left and right. They're forced to use the staff at the entrance for carrying their bags up to the room, and then they need their wallet ready to tip them for that 2 minutes of work. What kind of awful first impression is that? You're on vacation, paid a small fortune for a room, and within minutes you need to shell out more cash.
Yes, I know their thought process is they can squeeze absurd prices out of people that have money, but I think it's completely backwards and destroys their image and sense of luxury.
I think there's a business for a mid-range hotel with perks. Take a mid-range hotel with $150 per night rooms. Add $15 of free perks, and charge $165 per night for your rooms. With that $15, you could give every visitor free wifi, 2 bottles of water, a couple of bananas/oranges, bag of chips, couple of health bars, bottle of juice, 2 beers or a bottle of wine, and small bag of nuts. To me, that's a huge difference in service and experience for a small price. It would make me book that place every night of the week, and I'd recommend it to others. I'd put employees or clients up in such a place, knowing they're feeling pampered. Why doesn't this exist? Would this not be appealing to anyone else?
I read almost this exact question on reddit a few months ago, and here is the answer someone else gave:
Hotels don't cater to vacationers or casual travelers. They cater to business travelers. Business travelers who aren't using their own money, can expense everything back to their company, and don't really only care about convenience. Hotels know this, and prey on it.
Airbnb/hostels don't cater to business travelers, they cater to casuals, and casuals want everything included.
I did a quick google and found http://www.ahla.com/content.aspx?id=35603 which says that 40% of guests are on business and 60% are leisure travelers. This data is for the the USA for 2012.
Seems believable. I just caught an interview on television earlier today with the CEO of a luxury worldwide hotel, and he said leisure clients went up from about 35% to 45% in the past decade, so it's a growing focus for them.
Agreed, people are unreliable sources of information. It's not because we're trying to fabricate a story or lie, it's because our memory is anything but perfect. I remember seeing some good YouTube videos that demonstrated this, but I can't find any at the moment. Below is a random eyewitness video I just stumbled across...
I think the best part of that video is how the professor mentioned the robber had an odd nose. Later, the student recalls seeing the robber firsthand with an odd shaped nose, but they don't recall hearing anything from the teacher. This is basically inception, the teacher planted a small seed of information, and now it turns into the memory of the student without them knowing.
Not sure why you were downvoted, but I completely agree. I get the 'Unknown or expired link' message all the time because I'll write long comments, or write part of a comment, get sidetracked, then finish. There's no reason for this error message, and to have tokens time out after what feels like a matter of minutes.
Then of course this happens on the homepage too, when you click 'more', after being inactive for a while. Why?
And why is there no pagination?
Why do a click reply on a comment and get redirected to a completely separate page, instead of replying inline? And then when I submit that comment, it just redirects me to the top of the comment page, so I have no idea where I left off, and now the comments might be shuffled since votes have changed.
These feel like critical changes that benefit everyone, and require little work. Why are they never addressed after years?
Its because this website was designed using a neat and novel model, that ultimately doesn't work.
(Most links on this website (ones with ids at least) are associated with state, stored on the server as opposed to in the link / cookie / etc. As there are an absurd number of links accessible at any one time, the number of serverside state objects that need to be stored gets excessive, so they get garbage collected after a while.)
I simply can't believe that's the reason. It's an error message, not a warning. It doesn't check if new comments have been posted to that thread, it doesn't prompt you with the new comments, and ask if you want to continue with the post, and it doesn't make it easy to go back to the original thread to check if there are new comments.
Asking users to type in an external text editor, and then copy/paste isn't a reasonable solution for a message board.
Agree on this one. I imagine they factored the prices of business class flights into their bid on the project. People that are higher up in any industry want a few perks. I can't imagine telling someone that's at the top in the industry you'll need to send them on 64 flights to Shanghai, in economy class. That's basically a form of torture, so you need to put them up in business class and a decent hotel, otherwise they'll be walking out the door.
I would completely agree with all of this if the guy running the project was competent. If he was a licensed PE and he got the bridge built correctly, shit give him double for the travel expenses. But he was a lawyer bossing engineers around and making decisions far outside his realm of expertise. As such the criticism stands.
Do you know what companies never do? They never ask.
I see dating ads, cars advertisements, feminine healthcare products, insurance ads, etc. What do I want to see? Travel accessories, computers, hardware, games, tech gadgets, etc. I never see these ads.
Why doesn't Google say, hey, you're going to see Adsense all over the internet, advertisements before videos on YouTube, etc. Would you like to select a few categories so that time is spent seeing some cool products that are relevant to you?
I've been on the internet for 15+ years, and no one stopped to ask just once. I could select categories in about 20 seconds that would be more accurate than all this data collection and profiling that happens every day.
Instead, I just block ads, and install ad block on every computer I come across. I make my living off ad revenue, but ads are absolutely awful, irrelevant and too often malicious. If they gave me the option to select some categories in the past, I probably would have discovered some decent products to buy, and keep them turned on. But nope, I can't recall clicking an ad in the past decade.
But if they asked, you could lie to them. Lots of people would. There's a total presumptive lack of trust, which is part of why the whole business is so corrosive.
Yep, it's definitely a phone sized device, and you can see her scrolling with her finger in the reflection, so it's a touch screen. Now, what's actually unique about it that separates it from the millions of similar devices, I guess we'll have to wait and see. Perhaps the display stays square to your head? I mean, if you're viewing the screen at a slight angle, it skews the perspective to look straight?
There's a quick photoshop of a phone at an angle and the display square. Now, you wouldn't purposely use the phone at such an extreme angle, but when you're typing, playing games, in bed, etc, it might make things easier to use. Fairly straightforward, it would just be tracking the location of your head, and adjust the perspective of the display.
Well, that made it more confusing, so I click process at the bottom of the above page.
Now it sounds like it's a giant pool of money, anyone can volunteer for anything, and take some of that money. So, I can say I want to keep the elderly company and go play scrabble with them in the evenings, and take $10/hr from Gittip for my time? So, I visit the site directly to see if this is accurate...
Apparently not. Ok, now I'm suppose to enter a Twitter username? This is to donate money to Twitter users? Still confused, so I click a random profile of someone receiving money. It starts to make more sense, so these are just people marketing themselves, and asking for weekly donations. The about page confirms this...
Far too much work to figure out what's happening here. I still have no idea what I can donate money towards. I mean, how do I browse causes? If I want to support musicians, or people cleaning up garbage on their beaches, where do I go? I can't find any type of listings, or categories here. Is this just for programmers? I need to know their Twitter/Github username, or randomly click profiles on the site?
I give up, I've spent 20 minutes reading, and browsing this site, and my only conclusion is that it's a place to sponsor your favorite programmers, by giving them a weekly donation. I've been programming and freelancing for over a decade, and I can't think of anyone by name that I'd donate towards. This site gives me zero help in finding people to donate towards, aside from aimlessly browsing hundreds of profiles, hoping for someone to catch my attention. I don't have that kind of time.
This entire thing is too frustrating. I don't have a Twitter, GitHub, Bitbucket, or OSM account, so they won't even let me sign-up anyway. However, they say, 'Gittip's audience is everyone; it's intended to be a mass-market consumer product.'
Browsing the above, it looks like they spent way too much effort on over-analyzing everything. They have widgets, an API, browser extensions, but they're missing the most important thing, I working business model. It seems like the result of too many engineers and programmers in a room, while no one is spending a minute thinking about marketing, sales, or the user experience.
We're working on bringing disciplines besides programming into the mix. The challenge for us is that we run everything open source, which is a cross-cultural experience for most marketers, sales people, and product designers. I talk about this in the post.
If you are or know any folks with relevant skills that want to try out open source, by all means send them our way! :-)
The GP doesn't understand what gittip is for, what the overall direction is supposed to be or could be, and so can't reasonably submit a pull request to fix that confusion.
Because what we apparently aren't making clear is that "Building Gittip" is a subsite for people building Gittip. It's not intended to be a starting point for people coming to Gittip for the first time as a potential user. The first impression should either be the homepage or a specific profile page (if you find us through a link from someone you know, which is how most people find us).
Ok, so you've been dreaming of a world changing startup at age 17, and you're 24 now. What have you started? It's been seven years, it sounds like you spend a lot of time learning, but you need to start launching products.
The common saying, 'finished is better than perfect', comes to mind here. You talk about the UI problems with HN and Twitter, but guess what, they have a functioning service. They're both successful in their own way, and they can continue to grow and resolve these problems in the years to come.
Expect to fail often, that's just the startup life. If you waste all your time perfecting your world changing startup, and it never sees the light of day, or it launches and goes nowhere, you wasted unnecessary time. You want to launch something in the shortest time possible, and check for traction. If it doesn't exist, you go in another direction, or drop it entirely, and move on.
It's like searching for gold. You visit a new location, and quickly scratch at the surface and sample the land. What happens when you find nothing? You relocate and try again. You don't spend a decade digging deeper and deeper.
Take your favorite idea, figure out how you can take the core concept and launch it within a week. Forget about all the extra features, forget about the perfect UI, just make it happen.
Note: Numbers below would be money in the bank, after taxes.
1 million: Takes the edge off, I could support a family, and live a reasonable lifestyle. I'd take up a hobby with the spouse, or work on personal projects to bring in some extra money and to keep busy.
2 million: Similar to above, but working is no longer necessary. I could life comfortably and be happy. Of course, I'd need to be careful with my spending, and not drop $1,000 on a bottle of wine. I'm not one for fancy toys, so this could easily be retirement money in my situation.
3 million+: Same as 2 million, but I'd just have the option to do everything a little bigger. Higher end cars, larger house, more expensive city, better downtown location, etc. Personally, not necessary, so I'd just bank it, or put it towards a startup.
In short, I'll say 2 million is FU money. It provides everything I need in life, it would support a family, and at that point I can leave the rat race.
Hmm, the first 10 minutes had my attention, and I was agreeing on his points that design is obviously subjective, and difficult to measure. With code, you can spend a week refactoring a section of your project, and conclude with certainty that it's better written. With design, you try to do the same, and get 60% of people agreeing it's the right direction, and 40% saying you're going the wrong way. This creates a lot of internal conflicts, and noise as you try to reach your goal. I was hoping this talk was going to go into some specifics of how we can measure great design, and how we can clear some of that noise and have more confidence in our decisions.
However, it seemed like the talk stopped after the intro, then it spent 30 minutes showcasing some odds and ends from his past work.
Since we're talking about hotels, I think the business in general has a lot of faults. I get more perks at a $10 per night hostel or $50/night Airbnb apartment, than I do at a $300 per night hotel.
When you book a hotel for $300 per night, they nickel and dime you for everything. Wifi? You'll need to register for it at the front desk, and pay $20 per day. Oh, want a bottle of water, or small snack, that's another $10. That hostel, or cheap-o hotel will give you free wifi. I'd say half of the Airbnb places I've stayed at left beer or a bottle of wine in the fridge, and a few places had a giant fresh platter of fruit on the kitchen table.
Why doesn't this happen with a $300 per night hotel? To me, this is a complete turn off. I'll avoid the fancy hotels, because I don't know where it'll end. They're trying to gouge me at every single corner when I've paid a premium, and instead of being an appreciated customer, I feel like I'm being taken advantage of. My parents are well off, and I know they feel the same way. When they go on vacation and stay at a high end hotel, they have to tip people left and right. They're forced to use the staff at the entrance for carrying their bags up to the room, and then they need their wallet ready to tip them for that 2 minutes of work. What kind of awful first impression is that? You're on vacation, paid a small fortune for a room, and within minutes you need to shell out more cash.
Yes, I know their thought process is they can squeeze absurd prices out of people that have money, but I think it's completely backwards and destroys their image and sense of luxury.
I think there's a business for a mid-range hotel with perks. Take a mid-range hotel with $150 per night rooms. Add $15 of free perks, and charge $165 per night for your rooms. With that $15, you could give every visitor free wifi, 2 bottles of water, a couple of bananas/oranges, bag of chips, couple of health bars, bottle of juice, 2 beers or a bottle of wine, and small bag of nuts. To me, that's a huge difference in service and experience for a small price. It would make me book that place every night of the week, and I'd recommend it to others. I'd put employees or clients up in such a place, knowing they're feeling pampered. Why doesn't this exist? Would this not be appealing to anyone else?