Disqus - Latest Comments for markbao

Re: New York

Mark Bao — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 11:20:14 -0000

My mainstays: places with a good atmosphere.

• Whynot Coffee — West Village and LES / Power + Wifi / WV location is a great atmosphere
• Berkli Parc — Chinatown / P+W / great food, bit crowded with laptopers
• Grounded — West Village / P+W / great vibe
• Toby's Estate — Williamsburg / W / great light/big windows, no power
• Ost Cafe — East Village / Wifi ends at 5pm / turns into a wine bar at night
• Double Dutch Espresso — Harlem 110th St area / P+W / great option in Harlem
• Ground Support — SoHo / P+W / great front area but no power up front; better for meeting/reading

Re: The Good Patrons of 750 Words

Mark Bao — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 19:26:53 -0000

As @JemBijoux said, you can just go to https://750words.com and use the secure version. I'd love a little feature to make that the default, though.

Re: The Beginning of a Thunderstorm ambiance

Mark Bao — Tue, 28 Jan 2014 18:16:33 -0000

Exactly this. 'Thunder, Crispy Bang' (channel 4) doesn't fit in if you're trying to create a mellow environment.

Re: Comparing alternatives to ZenDesk

Mark Bao — Sun, 26 May 2013 12:16:29 -0000

I've been using Uservoice's helpdesk solution, which has been excellent. My requirements were the same as yours (especially not making users create a new account to put in support emails... why would you ever do that?) and it's worked out pretty well.

Re: ‘Always choose to be happy’ is toxic advice – it prevents you from changing yourself

Mark Bao — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 18:48:50 -0000

Hey Marius, thanks for your opinion! That's a good point. I'm definitely for the idea that going out of our comfort zone is the way we progress, but it's true that it does bring about unhappiness with it, since that's part of going out of your comfort zone.

Going along a middle route ("everything in moderation" comes to mind) is the sensible thing to do. I don't think you should always force yourself to be unhappy about everything to solve some sort of underlying cause, such as if the underlying cause is something insignificant. Being unhappy because you received bad service at a restaurant doesn't warrant unhappiness, since it's not something that matters. For the things that do, though, we need to be more receptive to being unhappy about those things.

Thanks again. I love that picture – describes the concept so simply.

Re: ‘Always choose to be happy’ is toxic advice – it prevents you from changing yourself

Mark Bao — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 18:21:00 -0000

Hey Dalia,

I know what you mean, and I've definitely been there before. I think that being unhappy is distracting, but some respond to that by trying to ignore that distraction and not doing anything about it.

If we can still be happy and change the underlying root cause too, that works equally as well. It's just more tempting to be happy and avoid solving the problem.

Re: Rant on Email Notifications

Mark Bao — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 17:55:46 -0000

Thank you for writing this. This is exactly how I feel.

Services with 1) are just terrible. Having to log in to a service, probably having to do forgot password, hunting for the notification page, unchecking the little checkboxes without an "Uncheck All" button...

Or having to enter my email again to unsubscribe from something. Dude, just unsubscribe me and give me an undo button if it was an accident.

Nobody accidentally clicks your eggshell-white, 6-point, non-underlined "unsubscribe" link, anyway.

Re: What We've Lost And What We've Gained

Mark Bao — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:29:49 -0000

The inspiration that Steve gives us every day is a lasting legacy that will hopefully make the world better even without him here. But it's up to us.

Re: Steve Jobs’ magnum opus

Mark Bao — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:30:03 -0000

+1.

Re: Stolen Laptop Revenge: Student Posts Thief's Dance Video on YouTube

Mark Bao — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:45:56 -0000

By the way, I go to Bentley, not MIT. I wish I went to MIT, though. Thanks!

Re: Weeks After Going Viral, Threewords.me Is Up For Sale

Mark Bao — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 20:19:29 -0000

my inbox is open

Re: Threewords.me and displaying your words in an HTML document using YQL

Mark Bao — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:35:44 -0000

Nice work, Chris! Thanks :)

Re: OnSwipe Raises, Like, A Million Dollars

Mark Bao — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:09:58 -0000

Great success! :p

Congratulations, Jason!

Re: MobileRSS Backs Down, Will Remove Similarities To Reeder

Mark Bao — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 15:14:34 -0000

Honestly, what were they thinking when thy did this? I'm just baffled they thought the Reeder guys would be like "word, this looks exactly like our app, let's not do anything."

Re: AOL Acquires Personal Profile Startup About.Me

Mark Bao — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 20:32:02 -0000

Well, I mean, often times they are. Sad but true reality.

Re: The next step for BGR!

Mark Bao — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 20:43:48 -0000

Not a big fan, but just keep up the editorial format.

Re: 5 ways to ride the inbox zero train

Mark Bao — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 15:00:06 -0000

Here's what I said on Hacker News:

6. Set aside 1 hour sometime this week to go through your emails and kill them.

Seeing and thinking "1 - 100 of hundreds" is psychologically tiring. Get it off your mind. Set aside an hour sometime this week and get through it all. Set an appointment in MobileMe or Google Calendar or whatever. You might not want to inbox zero right this moment—that's okay. Just postpone it, but get it done.

Re: Twilio Slashes Prices As It Looks To Further Boost Growth

Mark Bao — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 15:02:23 -0000

Just wanted to say that I found your site while looking for a Yelp alternative where I can write reviews about two months ago. I love your site. Well done.

Re: FlipBoard Ends My Obsession With Bright Shiny Objects

Mark Bao — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:50:18 -0000

I think it might be worth sticking around with Flipboard to see what they're doing in the future. Their current content curation is pretty bad, it's limited to 7 items (plus Facebook and Twitter), and it's not a full-fledged reader (only excerpts, really), but I think it'll change based on their feedback (they're still pretty early and crashed into the mainstream by Scoble, which is probably the most bittersweet way to crash into mainstream.)

But yes, I'm currently caught in the reality distortion field as well. Or maybe these bright shiny objects are really that bright and shiny. Or perhaps that's just the RDF talking. Help me, Francine.

Re: How To Defend Your Reputation

Mark Bao — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 16:56:17 -0000

There are ways to prevent being 'poisoned' with awful comment threads. Part of it is targeting a non-mainstream, more professional audience (it seems like anyone in tech and social media are reading TechCrunch these days, understandably), and part of it is a comment worth system such as Liking (which Disqus does, but Reddit or even Engadget does better.)

I'm generally very pleased with the comment quality here. A VC is not a generally mainstream audience and comment threads have been established as areas for informed discussion with real names, so that definitely helps.

Re: Apple’s Own Silicon: What It Could Mean for the Technology Sector and Apple

Mark Bao — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:56:30 -0000

Definitely, I was alluding to the use of improved batteries, as it seems they improve battery life and speed every release.

Of course, all of that bit of the article speculatory and has absolutely no basis in fact. It's a prediction of what could come.

Thanks!

Re: the update | gemcutter | awesome gem hosting

Mark Bao — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 08:23:25 -0000

I definitely agree with this idea. It'd be really valuable to have generated rdocs (and make them pretty and searchable.) Take a look at http://railsapi.com/ — really nice documentation viewing going on here. I recall there was another site that generated really nice rdoc views, but can't recall right now.

Any chance this can be implemented? You can even version rdocs by gem version.

Re: Being Open and Honest About Startup Process

Mark Bao — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:01:32 -0000

This is a fantastic idea, Andrew! I feel a lot of times founders go through a startup launch walking in a dark room full of boxes while drunk, as it were. There isn't any set procedure (which is good for flexibility and bad because you don't know where you're making a mistake) and I think it would be extremely useful for the community to see how your launch goes—and learn from it!

Thank you, Andrew!

Re: New Android 2.0 SDK and rumored Droid launch Nov. 6: What Android 2.0 and the new Motorola Droid mean for Android

Mark Bao — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:27:57 -0000

Yep, you're definitely right. I had neglected to account fully for Java, and this was brought to light on Hacker News. I have since changed that statement. Thank you!

Re: The Y Combinator Startup School 2009 Summary

Mark Bao — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:28:21 -0000

He did. The order here is the order that they went in.