I didn't know http://www.ask500people.com/. Looks like an useful resource. I don't care about the map though.
Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup
41–50 of 59 posts
Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup
#42How is Google App Engine? Are there any pain points one should be aware of before using it?
Cold startup sucks - it's horrendous for Java and just bad for Python. If you have a popular app, this isn't an issue. If you don't, it hurts.
Couldn't you just set up a cron job to ping your app every 15 minutes until you start getting some real traffic?
Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup
#43Wait, no Heroku? It should definitely be listed in the Price-Scalable Hosting section. Like AppEngine it's also free starting out, and super easy to scale. Plus it's all rails, so you don't even have to learn any App Engine API.
I think it's a lot more expensive than App Engine though. You quickly get into hundreds of dollars a month range for just a few extra features and two running processes.
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Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup
#44How is Google App Engine? Are there any pain points one should be aware of before using it?
You mean besides lock-in?
Check out the AppScale project: http://code.google.com/p/appscale/
You can run your App Engine apps pretty much anywhere.
Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup
#45For browser compatibility: browsershots.org Litmusapp may be nicer and have summaries, but it's hard to beat browsershot's simplicity, breadth, and free-ness. Though I have yet to see any provide decent testing for anything dynamic (videos, perhaps?).
browsershots.org is good, but some generator nodes can be extremely slow (30 minute wait times). For IE-only screenshots, I like to use http://meineipadresse.de/netrenderer/index.php , which provides IE screenshots in about 7 seconds.
Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup
#46+1 for Pivotal Tracker. One of the most polished UIs I've worked with. It's a pleasure for development teams to use; I use it for both freelancing and the day job. Also helps management have its finger on the pulse of progress, and have an accurate answer to the question "when will X be done?"
Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cold startup sucks - it's horrendous for Java and just bad for Python. If you have a popular app, this isn't an issue. If you don't, it hurts.
Couldn't you just set up a cron job to ping your app every 15 minutes until you start getting some real traffic?
You could - but it would need to be every 1 minute. Google tears down your app after 60-90 seconds of inactivity.
Some folks have resorted to pinging every minute but Google discourages that since it ties up their resources. If everyone pinged their site once a minute then resources would never be freed....
Here's a good thread on the issue https://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine/browse_thre...
Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup
#48domai.nr is by far the best domain finding service and is also totally free. I've bought 8 or so domains with it.
+1 I used domai.nr as well, but less frequently than the other two mentioned. Domai.nr is great for finding shorter names and creative variations of longer ones.
I enjoy using instantdomainsearch for domain hunting.
Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup
#49For browser compatibility: browsershots.org Litmusapp may be nicer and have summaries, but it's hard to beat browsershot's simplicity, breadth, and free-ness. Though I have yet to see any provide decent testing for anything dynamic (videos, perhaps?).
browsershots.org is good, but some generator nodes can be extremely slow (30 minute wait times). For IE-only screenshots, I like to use http://meineipadresse.de/netrenderer/index.php , which provides IE screenshots in about 7 seconds.
browserlab.adobe.com/ is very fast and free as well.
Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup
#50I am working on simplified hosted accounting service for startups based upon open source sql-ledger. There will be a free single user version.
Keep yourself updated via blog or mailing list (see my info)