No. All the button appears to do is open spotify and play the requested song. It does at least sync that playback to the widget though so you can see the song progress and interact with it etc.
Great idea. Mixing the past with the present, even if it's novelty some of these are classics. I'm not proud of myself, since I'm supposed to be being healthy, but I just ordered some.
Fascinating article. The difference between a minimum viable product and a minimum product is a complex one. I've been involved in many software companies that thought that they couldn't launch until things are pixel perfect and suffer from the exact opposite problem though.
I think I agree that in some cases it makes sense to open source things and in some it doesn't. I think when you look at a site like Teambox it makes absolute sense to be an open source product.
To play devils advocate to your point though what about mysql, that's a downloadable product that makes it's money from commercial support or to a lesser extend tools like Phusion passenger. Most people don't pay for them for the thousands of Rails websites passenger hosts. However, for those larger enterprises it's much better to employ the experts for support.
The key is looking to see if you business fits exactly as you say.
I got introduced to talker app a while back while working with the guys from Teambox. I'm based in the UK while they're all over (Spain, US, UK). I didn't really see the point at first and figured Skype/IRC would be better but the more I used it the more I never stopped going on about how cool it was. I'm a little surprised but super excited that it's now free!
I'd like to know what the cost of getting this response was, sure the icon's expensive but at that rate it probably cost another couple of hundred to give all this information (I know it's internal and not a contractor but someone has to do it).
Having played with the SES api they're just not the same thing. Sure ultimately they deliver email but the functionality you get from an app like SendGrid is far higher. SES might make sense for some transactional emails but for anything marketing I don't think I'll be moving away from SendGrid/MailChimp.
I think this must have always been a concern for companies like Sendgrid. As someone who operates a service to allow incoming email (CloudMailin) there's nothing more worrying than the big boys coming along an sweeping you up. However, so long as you continue to add value people will choose your product over the competition. Moves like this can ultimately lead to a far better product in the long run.
Having tried the service it's currently clunky and command line based too! I wouldn't actually call these comparable products. SES seems more like it replaces transactional emails that users might have previously event sent without a lot of a anti-spam measures. The value that companies like Sendgrid/Mailchimp/Postmark add outweighs the price for me and, at least, in the short term I won't be moving anywhere.
