Disqus - Latest Comments for Breck

Re: Free & Proprietary

Breck — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:26:38 -0000

I don't agree with RMS' zealousness either, but I thank him for all he's done. Sometimes you can't separate the end results from the methods. I don't think he would have been as effective and influential on the world had he been more reasonable in his approach.

Re: Don’t Mistake Ambition for Entitlement

Breck — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 21:32:33 -0000

Amazing.

Re: The question is wrong

Breck — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 23:04:10 -0000

Thank you! I almost wrote the same thing but didn't want to get into a comment war. Glad someone corrected him.

Re: The Cult of the Product

Breck — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:20:00 -0000

I really liked "To test this you need to get real bullets in your gun as fast as possible. This means talking to potential customers and getting their feedback, implementing simple prototypes and measuring their performance, etc. Put your product and product ideas through the most rigorous process, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative feedback.

Then, using the data you gathered from your measurements and tests, iterate. It might turn out that nobody was willing to pay more than $20/month for your a simplified version of your product. This data lets you form new hypotheses."

Iterating is so important. Chances are you are going to always be wrong, so you always have to keep iterating. Especially in the early going.

Re: Search Y Combinator - Feedback

Breck — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:33:19 -0000

When I'm still using a website on a regular basis after a number of months, I know its a winner. Thanks guys.

Re: Dear Web Applications: Where Are My Files?

Breck — Sun, 18 May 2008 13:55:57 -0000

Great article. I never really thought about Facebook like this. I have always wanted to download my Gmail though, because if that ever went down then I seriously don't know what I'd do.

@Paul - I think more features does equal better. What makes things worse is when you put too many features in plain view. For instance, on Google there are many hundreds of features that are available right from the search field (Site search, inbound links search, math calculations, translations, unit conversions, advanced searches, etc)...The trick is to create the useful features that 20% of the population or less would want and just hide them from plain view. And even Apple has a tremendous amount of features that I discover everyday(being a Windows user most of my life)...Once again though, many of them aren't obviously there.