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Do One Thing

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Re: Do One Thing

#131

Post by zeveb »

JoBrad wrote: post #32
zeveb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why use a web app to take notes when one has vi or emacs?

Because it's really convenient to be able to make a note on your phone or tablet, then access it and make additional post-meeting notes shortly thereafter, on a laptop, all in the same interface (so you have the same features, or at least a set of common features). That's just one, assuming you never want formatting, tables, pictures, etc.

> Because it's really convenient to be able to make a note on your phone or tablet, then access it and make additional post-meeting notes shortly thereafter, on a laptop, all in the same interface (so you have the same features, or at least a set of common features).

That's why I personally want emacs on my phone and tablet. I don't know yet the best way to expose its functionality with a touch interface, but it's still, hands-down the best way to edit information.

Maybe something where a tap in the minibar offers some sort of helm- or ido-like command-picking mode, and with taps on the side to enable quick execution of text-editing commands? I dunno, really.

> That's just one, assuming you never want formatting, tables, pictures, etc.

Emacs can handle formatting, tables and pictures if you want.

Re: Do One Thing

#133

Post by taco_emoji »

gopowerranger wrote: post #39
taco_emoji wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP was talking about web apps. What do Makefiles and npm have to with Evernote or Dropbox?

By "OP" you mean the author of the article then, no, the article is not about web apps.

Then we clearly read two different articles.

This is essentially the thesis statement:

> Unix has pipes, which make it easy to build complex applications from chains of simpler commands. On the Web, nobody may know you’re a dog, but we don’t have pipes, either. [emphasis mine]

It is explicitly lamenting the complexity of web-based applications as opposed to other kinds of applications. If you disagree that that's the premise, then you and I are living in rather distinct universes.

Re: Do One Thing

#134

Post by nathan_long »

Hardware suffers from the same "walled garden" mentality. Why the heck would I want a "smart TV"? A TV exists to display video. It should have lots of inputs and maybe some outputs for audio. If I want to get video from a VCR, a flash drive, or a web service, I should be able to plug in a device to do that. And unplug it when it becomes obsolete.

Re: Do One Thing

#135

Post by jdc »

mintplant wrote: post #100
jdc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fill your moats.

What do you mean?

The moat metaphor is common way to talk about a business's competitive advantage. In this case I'm talking about improving or at least not actively impeding web application data interchange, and maybe even exposing smaller, more granular services.

Take Wikipedia, for example, who already offer their compiled data. Now to take that a step further they could expose the transformations they use to compile that data as separate endpoints.

Re: Do One Thing

#136

Post by dlwj »

IMO there is a limited market for mature ideas that is often much smaller than the previous prediction. When startups start meeting this boundary, instead of reigning in expectations and become an efficient tool serving a small market, it's "go big or go bust" with desperate attempts to validate the previous market size predictions.

Sooner or later, you're bumping into the markets of other companies and it's impossible to compete against them b/c you're using your weaknesses against their strengths.

There is only so much money and attention (time) in the world for people to spend on things. The low hanging fruit in developed countries has already been plucked clean so it's quite hard to 'grow' new markets. Your new tv series better be REALLY good if you're competing with game-of-thrones and breaking-bad.

Interestingly enough, the Chinese companies actually have many more features and are often better (for their users) than the american counterparts. The population is more homogenous and has more of a crowd mentality. Network effects are huge. Monopoly-like companies also prevent too much fragmentation meaning technology as a tool becomes standardized. Rather than 20 different things competing for the attention of everyone, there is one big company with apps that do everything that is trusted and reliable and thus the 'best'.

While american companies compete for slices of a certain size of pie, one chinese company owns the entire huge pie. As long as the users have pie, they are happy.

In allocation of limited resources, this usually fails as equal distribution of resources leaves everyone poor which creates huge incentive for corruption and hoarding. For abundant resources that can be duplicated infinitely and have network effects to boot this is perhaps a better strategy.

After all, it's all about everyone having an abundance of pie, not who has more or less pie.

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