I live in Berlin and have just walked to work - I love it (even on a rainy day like today) - time to think.
Whilst Berlin is spread out I have found that you normally stick to your own "kiez" (neighbourhood). If you are lucky you'll be able to live and work in roughly the same area, and therefore walking (or cycling) is a great option.
As a previous commenter said, there are a number of shared car options available. I don't use these as I have no need, but they seem very good.
Also, the public transport within the city is very good.
There is, however, one danger of walking. It is very easy to find yourself stopping for a coffee or a beer on a sunny day!
Slightly off topic, but has anyone read "Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age"[1]? It's been on my wishlist for ages, but I've not got round to buying/reading it yet.
Thanks for the info. We haven't hit near that number yet, we mainly use it for the autoresponder stuff and some simple mailings to a few hundered addresses.
Masters of Doom is a fantastic book, really enjoyed reading that.
From that I then also read the Making of the Prince of Persia[1]. This is Jordan Mechner's journal from his time during the making of this game. Not just about the game but about some of his life in general too. Not as riveting as the Masters of Doom, but still a very interesting little read.
Edit. Oh yes, just remembered. For a real trip down memory lane you might want to check out Speccy Nation[2] too. It took me about an hour to flick through but it was so much fun, afterwards I had to call up my best friend from the time (another ZX Spectrum addict) and tell him to buy a copy!
Are the three videos running at the same speed? Or are they constantly adjusted so they keep up with each other so we can see more clearly any changes in landscape?
I can actually believe that the journey time hasn't increased since the 1950s. However, possibly the clock at the end of the film is there to indicate the differing journey times?
But then you look at Egypt. It once seemed so hopeful and now it appears to descending ever more into violence and civil war. What's to say that even if they do have fair elections unrest will continue.
Yesterday my wife and I were discussing the UK vote on intervening in Syria. It is such a horrible plight for people trapped in the middle of this, that both options of going in or not going in are equally awful.
The conclusion was that we don't know what the right answer is, but there must be some better way. We've got to stop thinking that military action is the only alternative.
We need to seriously do some bigger, different thinking. Possibly the UK granting opening it's doors to anyone who wants to flee this hell? I don't know.
Initiatives like Hire Programmers from Syria are a great start to thinking differently. I have no idea if it will be successful at achieving its goals or not, but I still applaud the effort.
Regarding target audience, I think if the screencasts were "emacs for beginners and elisp for beginners" it would be too much and there would be no real audience: people who are starting out in emacs don't need to bother about elisp yet, people who are starting out in elisp probably know at least the basics, if not more, of emacs.
So either do emacs for beginners (of which there are already quite a few screencasts) or do elisp for intermediate emacs users but those new to elisp
Disclaimer: I am being amazingly selfish here as I've been using emacs for quite a while, but only now getting into elisp (and lisp in general)
I've just watched all 3 screencasts and found them really very useful. Not just the elisp stuff, which is great, but also the modes that help you use elisp (smartparens etc).
I would happily pay/gittip for a series that aimed at programmers who already use emacs (or can figure out the editing/movement functions) that takes you from no elisp to being able to write your own (useful) packages. Tips for getting the most out of emacs for the development of lisp would be a huge plus (for example, an episode on setting up/using smartparens, eldocs or whatever).
But talking to customers is exactly what these guys did:
> So we talked to a few artists who said they thought it was a cool idea. BOOM! Our idea had been validated!
The idea had not been validated at all, just been told it was "cool". What they should have done next (or possibly at the same time) is spend a couple of hundred dollars on adwords to see if a cool idea converted into something people would actually want to buy.
What they should not have done is
> stopped talking to artists for a year and built (and rebuilt) the software until we thought it was acceptable
My point is that I would far rather spend $200-$500 on adwords and not on 1 year development of a product that is thought to be cool, but no one has actually had the opportunity to come to it fresh and click on an "order now" button.
> Is it because i drew the wrong crowd? Is it because they don't know me? is it because adwords conversions are usually very low so do i need to pay for more traffic?
You don't just put up one ad using some keywords and be done with it. You constantly tweak, seeing what keywords people are using to find your ads, which keywords have the highest click through rate.
When I did this for a little idea I was thinking of doing, this was incredibly helpfu
The product I was think about doing was related to niche websites. I thought most people would use the word "niche" to describe them, it quickly became apparent that the real word people used was "affiliate" I saw "affiliate" appear a lot with related keywords and in the stats on the site, so I added an adword targeting that and related keywords, CTR doubled.
Using adwords helps you define and recognise the crowd you draw so you can best cater to them.
> If it actually is because my product sucks, then cool.. But what do i change?
Again, don't keep it static. In my experiment above, the first 100 clicks saw no interest. I changed some wording, a tiny improvement (less bounces etc). I changed the price, less bounces. I added FAQs, less bounces, I tweaked the available functions - possibly people would want feature X. Bang! people clicking on the "order now" button. Feature X is what people want
> There is no way to know this; which is why i believe the buy button is not the way to go.... at the beginning.
Firstly you can learn how other people describe the type of product you are offering - not necessarily how you describe it. With Adwords you'll see the types of keywords that people are typing to have your adverts displayed, some of these keyword phrases may include words you haven't considered. You then add these new words to your list and see the results. Rinse and repeat.
Now people are coming to your site you can track what they do. What price point has the most clicks, what wording bounces the least, etc.
I have done exactly what erikpukinskis described and it serves to not only validate (or not) your idea, but the great thing about this is I learned far more what real people are actually wanting, not what I thought they wanted.
A couple of weeks investing in a quick wordpress site and some adwords to validate and modify an idea before building is so much better then building it then seeing if they will come.
Whilst Berlin is spread out I have found that you normally stick to your own "kiez" (neighbourhood). If you are lucky you'll be able to live and work in roughly the same area, and therefore walking (or cycling) is a great option.
As a previous commenter said, there are a number of shared car options available. I don't use these as I have no need, but they seem very good.
Also, the public transport within the city is very good.
There is, however, one danger of walking. It is very easy to find yourself stopping for a coffee or a beer on a sunny day!