Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

Quick idea: Perhaps some functionality which pays attention to which music you play during your run. At the end of the run, let the runner "grade" how they feel after their run. Help the user generate playlists for future runs based on this data. (Although, after typing this, it sounds gimmicky and probably doesn't work well for the hardcore runner audience which probably want a clean and simple app with a small set of strong features than a bunch of weak one. I guess it depends on what your app does.)

Your top priority should be to be available for as many people as possible. If you can get more than 1000 people on your server at once then you need to take advantage of that momentum to build a buzz about your product. Putting artificial roadblocks in the way is fine, but at least create the CORRECT roadblock.

Instead of a "Server unavailable" when the user attempts to try things out, maybe have a separate server running a static version of your product which can be served quickly from cache that a user can play around with while they wait for availability. Or find a way to improve the caching on the website so support a higher number of individuals.

You could offer them access to the live application if they leave their email address with you. And then you could stagger the invitations for live accounts over a longer period of time without losing any potential leads.

Do you collect personal information upfront? I personally think you should let the customer play with as much of the application as possible without forcing them to commit personal information. The fewer barriers there are, the more time the user will have to explore your value proposition.

If you have limited server resources, it might be worth it to invest a few bucks for a couple of days on a beefier server just for your launch. You probably won't need it longer than that and you can probably afford an AWS instance for a few days.

I personally don't use Foursquare (or any other geo-location app or feature) primarily for privacy reasons. I'm pretty open about most things on the web, but my location is not something I want people know about.

That being said, I think socialized geo-location is a feature. Not an app. Clearly, there are a lot of people who disagree with that position and Foursquare is using it to create great value for people and businesses. Aside from mass adoption, Foursquare doesn't have a lot of market advantages that justify their continued success with their current business model. All it would take is some "Me-too" to provide a better experience in a stand-alone app (I can't think of any that have gotten adopted in the mainstream) or even bundle it with some other value proposition (ahem, Facebook and Path). There's nothing particularly compelling about what Foursquare is doing anymore (as far as I can see, though I'm open to enlightenment) that can't be recreated more easily or better.

I think they were in the right place at the right time and unless they shift their business model in the near future, I'll bet that during their market decline (within 3 years) they will be absorbed by some other company to include Foursquare as a feature in their own app.

Whether this is "failure" or not, that's a religious question that I'm not prepared to answer. It's certainly not the word I'd use.

1) I've found this library (http://pylit.berlios.de/literate-programming/index.html) which might help with your objective, but I'm not sure if it will solve your specific application. I'm certain you could create some sort of shell or wrapper script that will handle the pretty printing. If I understand you right, you could feed the MathCAD input into the wrapper which prints the appropriate source expressions, and then translates and runs your MathCAD into Python for evaluation. Does that help?

2) Short answer, yes. However, you should expect a certain amount of error in your readings and then you'd need some way to resolve the constants in your double integration. If you had some initial bearing, that might suffice if you have two simultaneously captured samples to feed in for the two constants.

I assume you want only accelerometers and want to avoid an external source for capturing your bearing. It would take a clever solution to decipher your bearing without some external source, but I'm not willing to say it can't be done. If you can't find a way and end up with some sort of external source/reference for bearing, you might as well use dead-reckoning to determine your position.

4-6 accelerometers in realtime? If you just processing raw data, I think you could find a way to do it onboard in quasi-realtime (important to note that the arduino is not a realtime device and this could skew your results as well). However, you'll probably want to do some processing on the data to get a normalized sample for integration.

Yes, you could easily transmit the data to a PC OR save it to some external storage for realtime processing. Lots of modules available which provides that functionality (bluetooth, xbee, x10, wifi).

Hope this helps.

Test it! Make a landing page which identifies the key improvements. Make a demo instance people can try out. Make it easy to install. Offer licenses for business use, free for personal use. Build a community. See what happens from there. :D

You'll either become too overwhelmed without cash to support it and you'll scale back your efforts. Or it'll start generating some real income. (You don't have to use my suggested business model, but it's worked for many open source projects.)

Have you tried Mechanical Turk?

I don't have a good grasp on image libraries, but this might be a fun project to attempt:

Build a script that imports ZIP files full of JPEGs or a single JPEG. After import, display each photo in succession. Prompt the user to select the contiguous space that is unwanted (either the space around the single photo or the space between the multiple photos). This would work similarly to the Photoshop Magic Wand (with a slider to manage tolerance). The script could then pull out the positives (the areas to keep) and rotate them so the bottom is parallel to the x-axis.

Here's a StackOverflow link for Python image libraries: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/94875/image-processing-in...

And i'm pretty sure a magic wand tool could be implemented in javascript to give you a responsive front-end. Import image into a canvas element. Capture the canvas element in a bitmap array object. Iterate through object (which are pixels) and flagging the ones within the tolerance of the clicked color.

Find a way to serialize your mask selection (output from the magic wand javascript function) and send the request back to the script for processing with the image lib. Make it spit out the resulting image or ZIP of images.

I looked for an existing implementation of the magic wand javascript function, but a cursory search wasn't yielding much. I don't want to trivialize the task, but I think it's doable over a full weekend for someone with basic programming chops.

If it's not jumping out at you with any reasonable locations, consider that it doesn't belong in your "New Acct" workflow. Besides, if they are new to your service, you might not want to bombard their friends until you establish the relationship first.

You could offer new FB account users to "Like" you as a final (optional) step (maybe in the Welcome modal) and that might not be too pushy. But maybe you should remind them in a few weeks of active use to invite friends and "Like" you again (if they didn't already) at that time. They'll be more familiar with your brand and service and can share their appreciation more confidently.

PS: plus signs (+) are a valid email address character when before the at sign (@).

I usually try to add my personality to the letter while still observing the typical business etiquette. Even though this is subjective, I find this helps guide me toward a cover letter which is personal, friendly, and urges the reader to want to work with me. (Or at least find out more about me.)

I've tried the full gamut, from way-out-there to the-status-quo. Of the more unusual ones I've written and published can be found here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2545033 (No response with that one.) But there is a trick to it that doesn't improve without some practice.

If you'd like a critique, send it via email to <my initials> (at) nobulb.com

I'm not clear on what you want help on here. Are you looking for a custom shopping cart solution or improve on driving traffic to your site?

I'm going to assume you're trying to improve your traffic, but it's not clear on what you've tested or tried. There's a wealth of knowledge on the web, but from your initial request it doesn't sound like you've done your homework and you want me to point you in the right direction. So start with this: http://blog.appsumo.com/getting-the-most-from-setting-up-a-n... for starter information.