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Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

jasonlbaptiste.com

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Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#51

Post by rationalbeaver »

jeromec wrote: post #37
zrail wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS is not guaranteed to deliver, either within a certain time boundary or even at all. I can only really speak from my own limited experience on AT&T and Verizon, but those delays seem to largely be gone. I haven't had a message delay in quite a long time. If it's going to deliver at all, it'll deliver within seconds.

Yeah, I imagine the technology should have improved from a few years ago when the delays seemed prevalent. You're also right that some messages may not go through at all. I'll probably need to research deeper into the current technology and issues surrounding SMS.

Anecdotal, but I have experienced an SMS message delivery delay of about 7 hours within the past week (on Verizon). I would agree that delays are less common, but they're by no means over with.

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#52

Post by jeromec »

rationalbeaver wrote: post #51
jeromec wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I imagine the technology should have improved from a few years ago when the delays seemed prevalent. You're also right that some messages may not go through at all. I'll probably need to research deeper into the current technology and issues surrounding SMS.

Anecdotal, but I have experienced an SMS message delivery delay of about 7 hours within the past week (on Verizon). I would agree that delays are less common, but they're by no means over with.

That's what I was afraid of. Thanks for the info.

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#53

Post by callmeed »

"Transactions

I would argue they still are–especially on the mobile web. I was talking about this with a co-worker ... unless you want to give Apple 30% of an in-app purchase, it seems there's no easy way to sell an item or subscription on your phone. People don't want to enter their billing information–especially on a 3" screen.

Until we have some sort of secure/universal/mobile "ONE-CLICK" purchase solution that doesn't include usurious rates, microtransactions will continue to be a pain.

Facebook and Amazon are the only ones I could see pulling it off–though maybe it shouldn't be a single corporation doing it.

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#54

Post by [deleted] »

patio11 wrote: post #15
oozcitak wrote: post #13

Also worth considering: Build what is possible today in US but not in Europe/Asia. i.e. Watch what your fellow US entrepreneurs are working on and adopt it to your local.

There are any number of opportunities to bring e.g. Japan into the 21st century. By the by, this is true for lots of folks demographically dissimilar to this forum in the US. JavaScript is cutting edge in my market, no joke.

[deleted]

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#55

Post by brianpan »

todayiamme wrote: post #47

I loved the article, but there is subtle problem troubling me over here. How do you build the previously impossible without knowing the real extent to what is possible, or not possible? It's one thing to see trends, but quite another to take in depth domain specific knowledge across multiple interconnected topics and form a picture out of them. I can sit here and talk about trends in a lot of industries, but question…

The building blocks he lists are things that are possible right now. It's not a matter of figuring out the future, but rather seeing technology trends and creating a unique mix of those things that were previously impossible. It doesn't have to be in an unknown field or about unfamiliar topics. Technology changes many things, as it changes, can you do something new now?

This shifts the problem from the difficult (predict the future) to the straightforward (applying building blocks). It's not an automatic business plan or a bullet-proof vest, but the unwritten assumption is that by looking for the opportunities in the changing tide, anything you create will already have a first-mover advantage by default.

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#57

Post by ynniv »

mikeklaas wrote: post #50
ynniv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is off topic and my (irrelevant) personal preference, but please, pretty pretty please, find something more beneficial to humanity than convincing people to purchase things that they don't need. Innovation is exciting when it is about ending a war, or reducing pollution, or creating cheaper energy, or making it easier to find information. Every time people talk about "mining the clickstream to increase ad revenue"…

Greed has done more to improve humanity's standard of living than philanthropy ever will.

Greed has done more to improve humanity's standard of living than philanthropy ever will.

Standard of living, sure. Quality of life... not so much.

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#58

Post by freakwit »

jakevoytko wrote: post #24

To accomplish this, it helps to keep a list of important problems that haven't been solved yet. As you hear about incremental improvements, it may suddenly be within reach, when popular knowledge says otherwise. Online video was obviously going to be a killer app: one Victoria's Secret Live fashion show brought the Internet to its knees several years before Youtube existed. There just wasn't a way to do it well befor…

What sort of problems are people thinking of?

SSDs have been a big speed improvement - have they enabled new developments?

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#59

Post by portman »

callmeed wrote: post #53

"Transactions I would argue they still are–especially on the mobile web. I was talking about this with a co-worker ... unless you want to give Apple 30% of an in-app purchase, it seems there's no easy way to sell an item or subscription on your phone. People don't want to enter their billing information–especially on a 3" screen. Until we have some sort of secure/universal/mobile "ONE-CLICK" purchase solution that do…

Are you aware of PayPal's Micropayments feature? $0.05 plus 5%, meaning a $0.99 purchase only costs 9 cents (they round down).

https://micropayments.paypal-labs.com/

Note: this is the third time I've posted this link on HN in about 5 months, but each time people have thanked me for it so at risk of looking like a shill, here we go again...

Re: Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible

#60

Post by jfarmer »

freakwit wrote: post #58
jakevoytko wrote: post #24

To accomplish this, it helps to keep a list of important problems that haven't been solved yet. As you hear about incremental improvements, it may suddenly be within reach, when popular knowledge says otherwise. Online video was obviously going to be a killer app: one Victoria's Secret Live fashion show brought the Internet to its knees several years before Youtube existed. There just wasn't a way to do it well befor…

What sort of problems are people thinking of? SSDs have been a big speed improvement - have they enabled new developments?

RethinkDB thinks so.
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