It's a great tool. All the information is stored inside a web page, which in turn means I can view it on any device that has a browser.
But what makes it more powerful is scripting support. One can not only customize its look and feel using CSS but also modify its behavior with scripts. Its scripting system is very powerful, for example, one user has a build a version control system for the TW notes using the TW scripting language.
For example, when Google shut down their free RSS readers, a lot of new RSS readers popped up.
NewsBlur, which existed even before the shutdown, had to close free accounts sign up temporarily to cope up with the heavy traffic it started to receive after RSS reader shut down.
After using Vim for couple of years, I recently made a switch to Emacs. Sometimes I regret it. I definitely miss Vim modal design and keybindings. Compare Vim's J (join lines) with Emacs go to the lower line and press ^ to join it with the upper one.
To copy a line in Vim you just have to press 'yy' but there is no copy line command in Emacs out of the box. What you can do is C-k, C-y, i.e cut a line into clipboard and paste it back to have copy line effect.
But trying and learning different tools is obviously useful. Emacs introduced me to ido-mode and org-mode. Now that I know of the possibilities, I can search for and use similar plugins in Vim.
You should give a try to http://www.newsblur.com/
It comes with an intelligence trainer that will present the new entries based on your ratings of previous entries.
It also have very simple keyboard shortcuts to view the entry on the original site without leaving the window at all.
The article you quoted is confusing for me. It says they store only one copy of each file and serves it to all requests originating from different users. Sounds good!
But how can it be viable? Like most files in my account are personal. Only few are such that others too might have them. Isn't it same for everyone? I think most people have mostly unique files in their account.
So how can dropbox rely on the model mentioned in the link?
Great question Andrew. That's why I think most people underestimate the power of what Dropbox has done, because most don't understand it.
Well, this is what I think happens. For some people, the majority of their files will be unique - but for many people, they won't be. The more people they get using dropbox (with the free account) is the more files they can get, which means the more things they have access to that they can charge for.
In other words, as their network of files grows and their user base grows, their costs shrink and their margins get wider - because the higher the likelihood that they are to be able to charge for files that are already there.
So to put some numbers to it.
Say when they had 100 users, 5% share the same files. That means, essentially they are charging 5 people for access to the same files. However, when they reach 10,000 users more people upload similar files I suspect that 5% increases to say 7%. That means that they can now charge 700 people for access to the same files.
Imagine when they reach 1,000,000 users and 10% have the same files - that's 100,000 users they can charge for access to the same files.
I don't know what the true percentage breakdowns are, but I suspect they will be much higher than many people expect. Double digits.
In any case, even if it is not higher than people expect, network effects work for their model - like nothing I have ever seen before. The more people join, is the more files they have which increases the % of their userbase that they can charge for. So not only is the absolute numbers of users growing, but the portion of the userbase they can charge to the same files are growing too.
Thanks. This makes sense. Numbers of similar files will surely increase with the increase in the number of users.
Also, there could be several users who do not consume the allocated space completely all the time. Using your argument, this too will have positive effect on their revenue model.
Exactly...see the thing is, in my model - I never even accounted for that case (the users that don't use up all their space), because technically that is like a current liability. In that at any time, those users can lay claim to their free space - so Dropbox has to be able to give them that free space.
So technically, it wouldn't make much sense for them to really consider that against their profit margins. Although, over time I am sure they have realized that X% of their users never use up more than say 1GB (and various levels) of their storage - so you may be right. But I didn't want to get into all of that because of the questions surrounding it.
It's really the structure of the way they charge for storage and the way they pay for it.
I can't think of any other company that can do what they are doing.
Amazon with their web services can't. A car rental company can't. Neither can a restaurant, retail store, manufacturer of anything, nor a hotel or anything of that nature.
I can't think of any other business model (in history) that is as lucrative of what they are doing.
I would love for someone to provide a counter example, because I think I am going crazy - because it is very rare that you find something 'too good to be true'. But this might be one case, for the founders and investors, that truly is.
Besides subsystems, tools like make and nmake utility can also reduce the compile time.
Make figures out automatically which files it needs to update, based on which source files have changed. It also automatically determines the proper order for updating files, in case one non-source file depends on another non-source file.
As a result, if you change a few source files and then run Make, it does not need to recompile all of your program. It updates only those non-source files that depend directly or indirectly on the source files that you changed.
HN offers Anti-procrastination feature which is fairly good to make it less like 'crack cocaine'.
http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html7 Nov: Anti-procrastination features
Like email, social news sites can be dangerously addictive. So the latest version of Hacker News has a feature to let you limit your use of the site. There are three new fields in your profile, noprocrast, maxvisit, and minaway. (You can edit your profile by clicking on your username.) Noprocrast is turned off by default. If you turn it on by setting it to "yes," you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. You can override noprocrast if you want, in which case your visit clock starts over at zero.
In any case, I don't think HN addiction is harmful, unless one uses it as an excuse to put off his responsibilities.
True! I am here because I like HN interface and look. There are other sites that provide articles, submissions and discussions on programming and technology. But none do it as well as HN.
One such site is so full of irritating ads, links to other articles and what not that it becomes nearly impossible to focus on the real thing. At another famous site, I am still unable to understand their comment and karma system.
HN is simple, nice and clean. I would say more productive.
It's also quick to load on my iPhone and the linked articles are generally longer and easier to read on said device because there is less context switching that is slow on the device.
But what makes it more powerful is scripting support. One can not only customize its look and feel using CSS but also modify its behavior with scripts. Its scripting system is very powerful, for example, one user has a build a version control system for the TW notes using the TW scripting language.