331–340 of 734 posts
A ticketing system that doesn't sux (I like RequestTracker, but it shows its age). Top players are ridiculously overpriced. My management style is like this: every task/request is numbered, placed in a queue and assigned to a professional. What I expect from my ticketing system: - every manager should be able to assign tasks to someone and set the order they must be executed. He needs know what his team is doing and…
A family member is a lawyer in the Worker's Comp, SS, and Family Law space. THE software for lawyers in this space is called A1 Law. It solves a lot of real problems lawyers in that space have (form letter generation, calendar integration, case management)... but it's so slow to use new technologies. They advertise PalmOS integration. My family member has to have their own server in a closet running the server versio…
Last time I had a consultation with my lawyer, she fired up WordPerfect. There is a blast from the past.
My impression is that the legal industry is most of the reason why WP is still being used.
Data management. 1) Cleaning the data as it comes in rather than in batches so we can use it sooner, invalid data is discarded, outlier detection, normalizing inputs etc.... 2) Warehousing of the data with proper indexes so you can perform some advanced queries on unstructured data 3) Some data is sent in bulk at the end of day, some of the data is streamed in fire hose style. How can we preprocess the fire hose data…
In real estate, developing with MLS data. - There are over 900 regional MLS providers each with different schemas. - You use RETS, a complicated, non web standards interface for downloading data. - MLS data is plagued with errors and denormalized data making queries difficult.
The entire Real-Estate industry is ripe for disruption. Exactly why are we paying 6% to "agents"? What are "agents" actually doing? 10+ years ago the need for "Real Estate Agents" was there as information was not readily accessible. Things like "what kind of area is this property in", "what are schools like" "what are prospects for this area 5 years down the road" and so on. All this information (and MUCH more) is cu…
I basically agree, but I will say that when we bought our house and the (FSBO) seller turned out to be a flake and/or an outright nutcase, the realtor we were working with earned every penny of his 3%. I won't go into what he did for us because some of it may not necessarily have been legal for someone who's not an attorney to perform. Let's just say it took a lot of hustle to hold the seller to his commitments and make the deal happen according to the contract... especially when some of the flakiness turned out to be our own fault, due to the (in)actions of our mortgage lender.
Most of the other realtors I've dealt with fit your description perfectly. Nowadays, my thinking is that they're like airline pilots -- most of the time you can take them for granted and even think about how to replace them with automated processes, but when things start to go wrong, you may find yourself appreciating their work more than you thought you would.
I posted a similar question last year great discussion there too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799007 I would suggest we make a monthly of these as they provide important insight into industries.
Perhaps Quarterly?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lawyer friend of mine told me his firm doesn't use software to check all the "hereafter referred to" are bound to their template and vice-versa. They instead have to print the document and go through it with a highlighter. The firm charges their clients on an hourly basis, so they don't really have an incentive to be more efficient.
I feel like charging on an hourly basis is a common pattern in many industries that opens the doors to competition from startups with different pricing structures...as long as the startup can do everything in a manner compliant with the existing industry. Logojoy, for instance, is an example of a service that supplants human labor with a single "good-enough" deliverable at a low price, and does so in a fraction of th…
To your second paragraph, I would add that it's hard for customers (and lawyers) to figure out what is "good-enough" in the legal setting. I'm a lawyer and there's a lot of stuff you can find on the internet that I personally think is good enough (I would use it in my personal affairs because the risk of the missing edge cases being an actual problem is slim) but I wouldn't be comfortable recommending it as a solution to a client because those missing edge cases are a real malpractice risk.
In the case of a logo, good enough is whatever the client thinks is good enough. In the case of a lot of legal solutions, good enough is often a murky risk/reward calculation based on legal concepts the client may not understand completely.
I still think there's enormous room for improvement, both in helping clients understand the concepts and the risks they're taking, and also in providing better automated solutions.
A family member is a lawyer in the Worker's Comp, SS, and Family Law space. THE software for lawyers in this space is called A1 Law. It solves a lot of real problems lawyers in that space have (form letter generation, calendar integration, case management)... but it's so slow to use new technologies. They advertise PalmOS integration. My family member has to have their own server in a closet running the server versio…
Note: perhaps my experiences aren't representative of the industry as a whole.
I posted a similar question last year great discussion there too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799007 I would suggest we make a monthly of these as they provide important insight into industries.
Do the problems change rapidly enough for the monthly discussion to be radically different than before? Perhaps Quarterly?
Normally I live in China, and rarely eat western breakfast. Recently I returned to Australia to spend some Christmas time with my extended family. A few mornings ago, I put some real bread I cut from a sourdough loaf in a toaster. Due to its irregular size, when it popped it didn't pop out completely, resulting in a sort of "toaster is too hot to insert fingers, toast is too hot to hold, toast is ready, find metallic…
They make toasters for oversized slices.
Imagine a giant (3-5m reach) monitor arm that can be operated manually, but that can also remember the moves and repeat them. All of that on a mobile base that can do the same, along with a stabilisation head that can do a pitch/roll/yaw. Must be usable with and without power.