That's great! However, I would like to be able to add places without the need to be on site at the time of writing (e.g using a geocoding service like Google Maps API)
I suppose it is a way to avoid spam though.
Show HN: Workfrom – The best coffee shops and cafes to work from
61–70 of 77 posts
Re: Show HN: Workfrom – The best coffee shops and cafes to work from
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've gotten a lot of feedback from business owners that the average patron staying to get some work done is a good steward of their space and spends money often. We hear stories of people staying for hours and hours, not buying anything - but we've found this is just not the norm. With that said, we do encourage our community to support businesses with their evangelism AND money.
That's nice to hear, I've always wondered about that. I grew up in a small town where every business for young people to hang out would fail. It was partially because we didn't have much money to spend, but I realized later in life that we didn't feel any responsibility for supporting the businesses in return. It's not that we were selfish necessarily, we just didn't understand how things work. Then when a business w…
Local coffee shop owner here in town echoed that to me last year. The teens hanging out rarely buy anything. Adults 'hanging out' are often working (or studying) and are far more spendy(?). He counted me in that 'spendy' lot, but I'd rarely spend more than a couple bucks every hour ($4 coffee, then a few hours later a coke, banana or $2 tea). So... the 'non-spenders' really are not spending (I feel like a cheapskate half the time I was there).
Re: Show HN: Workfrom – The best coffee shops and cafes to work from
#63A few things come to mind:
Price: For example at some places I might recommend there's a "per hour" charge. Examples: The Workshop Cafe in SF is $2 a hour. The Epicenter Cafe in SF gives you passwords that are only valid for 1-2 hours depending on what you buy. The Terminal in Tokyo is $3 per half/hour or $22 max for the whole day but if you buy a $20 yearly membership it's $12 max for the day. They include unlimited soft drinks (soda, coffee, tea).
I didn't see how I would list that stuff on your site.
Another is I'd like to be able to vote or rate, comment. Maybe like Yelp? I just got to LA, one place that was recommended was "Paper or Plastik Cafe" but I didn't find it very friendly to working. At least half the cafe is marked as "No notebooks allowed" and the area where they are allowed is very dark and uninviting. Maybe it used to be more friendly to workers which is why it was recommended a couple of years ago but I wouldn't recommend it now.
Re: Show HN: Workfrom – The best coffee shops and cafes to work from
#64I can not sign up for the life of me. I get my login link, follow it, and I'm not logged in.
Re: Show HN: Workfrom – The best coffee shops and cafes to work from
#65I can not sign up for the life of me. I get my login link, follow it, and I'm not logged in.
Hmmm, looks like I did log in, but the header UI didn't change. I went to https://workfrom.co/worker and it showed my account as logged in.
Aggressive caching issue maybe?
Re: Show HN: Workfrom – The best coffee shops and cafes to work from
#66I find my workplace distracting enough when trying to concentrate (thank god for August, most people go away for a month where I am). Do people actually find it productive to work in a coffee shop? There will be even more distractions and noise than my office.
you might find this an interesting spin
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/04/working-...
Re: Show HN: Workfrom – The best coffee shops and cafes to work from
#67I can not sign up for the life of me. I get my login link, follow it, and I'm not logged in.
Hmmm, looks like I did log in, but the header UI didn't change. I went to https://workfrom.co/worker and it showed my account as logged in. Aggressive caching issue maybe?
Thanks for the link. I am experiencing the same issue.
Re: Show HN: Workfrom – The best coffee shops and cafes to work from
#68I don't think I could do work from a coffee shop. They make their money on churn and my camping out in a chair for hours kind of prevents that. I really have to wonder how the owners feel about all the other people doing exactly the same thing.
I think that its all about managing what you buy. My thoughts on the matter is that so long as I always have drink/food in front of me (and I'm not purposely taking my time) then I'm probably earning my keep. I've never been at a cafe that's run out of seats, either.
Where are you? I've been to many cafes that have run out of seats. In fact I've had to turn around and leave because there was no place for me to sit down. 2 examples off top of my head. Coffee Bar in SF and Bricks and Scones in LA. Both are larger than average as well but very very popular. I've seen most Starbucks in SF and Tokyo full as well. Some of the ones in Tokyo even have signs which effectively say "In consideration of other customers please don't stay a long time".
Re: Show HN: Workfrom – The best coffee shops and cafes to work from
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmmm, looks like I did log in, but the header UI didn't change. I went to https://workfrom.co/worker and it showed my account as logged in. Aggressive caching issue maybe?
Thanks for the link. I am experiencing the same issue.
It was indeed due to some aggressive caching. If you hit refresh or try again, it should work again as intended.
Re: Show HN: Workfrom – The best coffee shops and cafes to work from
#70Adding new sites should be easier. I get that this is a tradeoff between rapid engagement and trust, but since the project is so new it's vastly more likely that a visitor will want to add something as opposed to successfully looking it up. Maybe the focus on cities, while great for the lookup scenario, should not play such a big role when adding data points. My suggestion: just open it up, have a form where any memb…
could you just your favorites here ? i was in germany in 2007 and 2010 for a total of 5 weeks and didn't find a single coffee shop that was conducive to working. thinking it's time to go visit friends again ...
That depends on what you're looking for, locally. Starbucks is always a pretty good option in Germany, but of course shops have varying levels of noise and connectivity.
The Starbucks in Frankfurt near the old stock exchange is pretty good if you can get a place at the big table it's even office-like, and generally shared by people doing the same thing. The Starbucks in Heidelberg works for me, but it's relatively small. There are also several non-chained coffee shops in these cities where you can feel right at home.
Also, if you're ever in Austria, Vienna is absolutely beautiful for coffee shop work.
The secret to finding these things in Germany is to know they come in clusters. For example, Berlin, Frankfurt and Heidelberg are pretty decent and you can find several nice coffee shops there. Find cities that are somewhat cosmopolitan, because size is a bad predictor for coffee shop density here. In between there are vast stretches of absolutely nothing, but then again distances in Germany are generally ridiculously small even though Germans don't think so.