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You can follow the blog link to read the full story(of which I propose since it is of better quality) but just in case you can't access the site here is some of the contents that the blog contains.
Note: Some resources such as images might be missing and also I didn't have enough time to format the content properly
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Links to some of the resources contained in the blog
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https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/mocality-wordpress/audio/douglas.mp3
http://blog.mocality.co.ke/files/2012/01/Incoming_Call-Redacted-20111221-1133502.pdf
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I’m very proud of the business that we’ve created here at Mocality, but I’m especially proud of two things:
1. Our crowdsourcing program. When we started this business, we knew that (unlike in the UK or US, where you can just kickstart your directory business with a DVD of business data bought from a commercial supplier), if we wanted a comprehensive database of Kenyan business, we would have to build it ourselves. We knew also that if we wanted to build the business quickly, we’d have to engage a lot of Kenyans to help us. So we built our crowd program that utilises M-PESA (Kenya’s ubiquitous Mobile Money system) to reward any Kenyan with a mobile phone who contributes entries to our database, once those entries have been validated by our team. Over two years, we’ve paid out Ksh. 11m (over $100,000) to thousands of individuals, and we have built Kenya’s most comprehensive directory, with over 170,000 verified listings. Personally, I regard the program as one of THE highlights of my 18 year career on the internet.
2. From day 1, we aimed to target all Kenyan businesses, irrespective of size. As a result, for about 2/3rds of our listed businesses, Mocality is their first step onto the web. That’s about 100,000 businesses that Mocality has brought online.
Please bear these two facts in mind as you read what follows.
Our database IS our business, and we protect and tend it very carefully. We spot and block automated attacks, amongst other measures. We regularly contact our business owners, to help them keep their records up-to-date, and they are welcome to contact our call centre team for help whenever they need it.
In September, Google launched Getting Kenyan Businesses Online (GKBO). Whilst we saw aspects of their program that were competitive, we welcomed the initiative, as Kenya still has enough growth in it that every new entrant helps the overall market. We are also confident enough in our product, our local team, and our deep local commitment that we believe we can hold our own against any competition, playing fair.
Shortly after that launch, we started receiving some odd calls. One or two business owners were clearly getting confused because they wanted help with their website, and we don’t currently offer websites, only a listing. Initially, we didn’t think much of it, but the confusing calls continued through November.
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The Forensic analysis
==========================
What follows is necessarily a little technical. I’ve tried to make it as clear as I can, but two definitions may help the lay reader:
IP Address – the numerical id by which computers identify themselves online.
User-Agent - When a browser requests a page from a webserver, it tells the server what make, model, and version of browser it is, so that the webserver can serve content tailored to that browser’s capabilities. Webservers keep a log of both these details for every page requested, allowing us to do interesting detective work.
If you’re not interested in the technical details, you can always jump straight to the Conclusion.
At the start of December we analysed our server logs to look for a common pattern for the businesses that had contacted us with these confused calls. We found a single IP/ User-Agent combination that had accessed all these businesses:
=================================
IP Address: 41.203.221.138
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/14.0.835.186 Safari/535.1
=======================================================
The user agent is unusual for Kenya: the stable version of Google Chrome released on 20 September 2011, running on 32-bit Linux. With the exception of this IP, it barely appears in our logs.
We looked up the ownership record for 41.203.221.138 via WHOIS.
=======================================================================
% Information related to '41.203.220.0 - 41.203.221.255'
inetnum: 41.203.220.0 - 41.203.221.255
netname: Fixed_Wimax-Fiber-Rollout-Central-Kenya
descr: Fixed Wimax and Fiber Roll out for Central Kenya Region
country: KE
admin-c: OC406-AFRINIC
tech-c: OC406-AFRINIC
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: ONECOM-MNT
remarks: Wimax and Fiber Roll out for Central Kenya Region
source: AFRINIC # Filtered
parent: 41.203.208.0 - 41.203.223.255
=======================================================================
So a Kenyan ISP. But how were they accessing us? We did some analysis.
Graph of accesses to Mocality.com from 41.203.221.138
Of the 65,851 requests, there were 33,261 requests to a Business Profile page, i.e. accessing the contact details for a business.
Further details:
No evidence of automated scraping, this appears to be a team of humans.
Since 3 Nov, requests originate from a WIMAX connection in Nairobi (41.203.221.138). Prior to that, various addresses.
Business profile requests are referred by Mocality search result pages having 100 results/page
Peak rates are 2500 pages per day (1.73 per minute)
The User-Agent originated from many different IPs starting on 4 September, started scraping on 12 October, abrubtly stopped on 29 October, resumed on 3 November from the Safaricom Wimax IP.
Pattern of access is mainly 8am-6pm Weekdays, a few hours on Saturday, and never Sunday.
No other non-robot (IP,User-Agent) combination has such a pattern of activity at that scale (2500/day).
So a person or (judging by the access rate) team of people were systematically accessing our database, during office hours, and it looked like they moved into a new office over the weekend at the start of November. But who were they, and what were they doing?
The Sting
We decided to find out. We made some changes to the site:
For visitors from the 41.203.221.138 address, we changed the code to serve slightly different content 10% of the time.
Instead of the real business phone number, we served a number that fed through to our call centre team, where the incoming calls would also be recorded. Our team were briefed to act like the business owners for the calls.
We switched the new code on December 21st.
When we listened to the calls, we were beyond astonished.
Results
I’d like you to meet Douglas. On this call (first 2 minutes) you can clearly hear Douglas identify himself as Google Kenya employee, state, and then reaffirm, that GKBO is working in collaboration with Mocality, and that we are helping them with GKBO, before trying to offer the business owner a website (and upsell them a domain name). Over the 11 minutes of the whole call he repeatedly states that Mocality is with, or under (!) Google.
Between 10am and 1pm on December 21st, we received 6 others just like it (from 5 different Google Kenya employees) before switching back to normal service. We estimate that this team were calling 20-25 Mocality business per hour, since 7 calls over 3 hours, only 10% of calls redirected: 7*10/3= 23.3. calls/hour)
On all calls, the same script is followed – A Google Kenya employee calls a Mocality business and tries to deceive them into signing up for their competing product, by claiming that we are working together.
It gets worse: Here’s a complete transcript ( with translation of the kiSwahili portions) of a another call, in which the caller goes further, claiming that Mocality engages in bait-and-switch practices to try and charge businesses upto Ksh. 20,000 ($200) for their listings. Mocality has never and will never charge for listings. The irony: on the same call, the caller tries exactly that tactic for GKBO’s hosting fees.
I have redacted the details (except first name) of both parties on the call, and highlighted key sections in YELLOW.
What happened next?
Having gathered our evidence, and needing to wait for transcription and translation (as parts of the conversations were in kiSwahili (the local East African language)) of the recordings , and feeling pleased with detective work, we had a lovely Christmas break. I started writing this blog post.
So that we had the latest stats on our return to work, we re-analysed the logs, on Monday 9th January.
There were no further accesses from the IP address 41.203.221.138 after 4pm 23rd December. Co-incidence? or had someone realised we were onto them?
However, there were some NEW strange messages from business owners- they’d apparently been contacted by a call centre in India with the same promise of a website.
So we reran the whole analysis. We quickly identified a new IP/User-Agent combination.
Results (2)
We found another IP address and User-Agent that accessed two businesses that had been contacted:
IP Address: 74.125.63.33
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.912.63 Safari/535.7
WHOIS Information
NetRange: 74.125.0.0 - 74.125.255.255
CIDR: 74.125.0.0/16
OriginAS:
NetName: GOOGLE
NetHandle: NET-74-125-0-0-1
Parent: NET-74-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
RegDate: 2007-03-13
Updated: 2007-05-22
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-74-125-0-0-1
OrgName: Google Inc.
OrgId: GOGL
Address: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
City: Mountain View
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 94043
Country: US
RegDate: 2000-03-30
Updated: 2011-09-24
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/GOGL
OrgAbuseHandle: ZG39-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Google Inc
OrgAbusePhone: +1-650-253-0000
OrgAbuseEmail: arin-contact@google.com
OrgAbuseRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ZG39-ARIN
OrgTechHandle: ZG39-ARIN
OrgTechName: Google Inc
OrgTechPhone: +1-650-253-0000
OrgTechEmail: arin-contact@google.com
OrgTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ZG39-ARIN
These new accesses were coming directly from Google’s network.
The IP address 74.125.63.33 made 17,645 requests (15,554 to BusinessProfile.aspx). Activity really kicked off on 22 December 2011, with 8 different user agents mostly running Chrome on Linux: The top 3 are :
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.912.63 Safari/535.7 11249 64.268982
Mozilla/5.0 (Ubuntu; X11; Linux x86_64; rv:9.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/9.0.1 4247 24.264412
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/535.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Ubuntu/10.04 Chromium/15.0.874.106 Chrome/15.0.874.106 Safari/535.2 1000 5.713306
Search for “tag=mo.request 74.125.63.33″ from 20 December 2011 to 9 January 2012. Found 17,049 requests
Graph of accesses to Mocality.com from 74.125.63.33
On 10th January, we re-enabled the Sting code. Again, within a couple of hours, we’d received calls from the new call centre to our dummy numbers.
Here is Deepthi, from Google India. On this call, you can hear her talking about her partnership with Mocality, and offering us a free website.
It looks like Google has now outsourced the Getting Kenya Businesses Online operation to India!
Conclusion
Since October, Google’s GKBO appears to have been systematically accessing Mocality’s database and attempting to sell their competing product to our business owners. They have been telling untruths about their relationship with us, and about our business practices, in order to do so. As of January 11th, nearly 30% of our database has apparently been contacted.
Furthermore, they now seem to have outsourced this operation from Kenya to India.
When we started this investigation, I thought that we’d catch a rogue call-centre employee, point out to Google that they were violating our Terms and conditions (sections 9.12 and 9.17, amongst others), someone would get a slap on the wrist, and life would continue.
I did not expect to find a human-powered, systematic, months-long, fraudulent (falsely claiming to be collaborating with us, and worse) attempt to undermine our business, being perpetrated from call centres on 2 continents.
Google is a key part of our business strategy. Mocality will succeed if our member businesses are discoverable by people via Google. We actually track how well our businesses place on Google as a key metric, and have always regarded it as a symbiotic relationship. We are in the business of creating local Kenyan content that Google can sell their adwords against. More than 50% of our non-direct traffic comes via Google (paid or organic). For us, the cost of going elsewhere is NOT zero.
Furthermore, we spend a very significant sum on advertising with Google Kenya. I wouldn’t be surprised if we are one of their largest local customers, between Mocality and our sister site Dealfish.co.ke.
Kenya has a comparatively well-educated but poor population and high levels of unemployment. Mocality designed our crowd sourcing program to provide an opportunity for large numbers of people to help themselves by helping us. By apparently systematically trawling our database, and then outsourcing that trawl to another continent, Google isn’t just scalping us, they’re also scalping every Kenyan who has participated in our program.
I moved to Africa from the UK 30 months ago to be CEO of Mocality. When I moved, Kenya’s reputation as a corrupt place to do business made me nervous. I’ve been very happily surprised- until this point, I’ve not done business with any company here that was not completely honestly conducted. It is important for global businesses to adapt to local cultural practice, but ethics are an invariant. As a admirer of Google’s usually bold ethical stance around the world, to find those principles are not applied in Kenya is simply… saddening.
Someone, somewhere, has some questions to answer.
These are my personal top 3:
If Google wanted to work with our data, why didn’t they just ask?
In discussions with various Google Kenya/Africa folks in the past, I’d raised the idea of working together more closely in Kenya. Getting Kenyan businesses online is precisely what we do.
Who authorised this? Until we uncovered the ‘India by way of Mountain View’ angle, I could have believed that this was a local team that somehow forgot the corporate motto, but not now.
Who knew, and who SHOULD have known, even if they didn’t know?
Stefan Magdalinski
Nairobi, Kenya
stefan@mocality.com
+254710103500
Below is information about the website, any ideas how I could go about selling it and how much it is worth?
I have tried flippa, but haven’t had much luck.
What it does?
Dingadeal.com is aimed at groups of 8 people or more, we take the hassle away from your group trip by giving you a platform where hotels can tender for your group. Tell us some details about your trip and we will contact all the applicable hotels on your behalf ensuring that you get the best deal possible!
What it is has?
- Microsoft stack - asp.net/c# mvc, ms sql, azure. Html 5, javascript, jquery is also used in parts
- High quality design.
- Inventory of hotels who are actively engaged in the site from the UK and Ireland.
- Ranks high for certain keywords such as "hen party in Killarney" and "group golfing in killarney".
- An SEO strategy that works and can be replicated worldwide.
- 497 followers on Twitter
- 512 likes on Facebook
- Google+,Linkedin, youtube channel.
- Good relationship with developers to continue development work.
- In built room management and group payment functionality.
- Explanation video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1j3ylK00SU
What it needs?
The current revenue model doesn't work. We rely on the group to complete the payment online when they usually need direct contact with the hotel before payment is completed.
The ideal revenue model would be a mix between getting paid when a group completes a payment and offering hotels the option of being a "partner hotels". This would give them higher ranking on the results and maybe further information about the group such as the lead group members telephone number. You could also sell auxiliary services around the group trip. e.g. if a group planned on going to Killarney you could put them in touch with hotels, golf clubs etc in Killarney. These could be your "partner golf club" in this area. These services would pay a monthly fee for being included in the Dingadeal mails.
A number of websites with a similar idea have implemented revenue models that work.
http://www.hotelplanner.com
http://www.iknow-uk.com
http://www.meetingsbooker.com
Who would it suit?
Someone already in the hospitality sector, ideally if they were selling into this space they could add this as an add on to their existing product. No reason why someone who is not in this space,but with technical expertise could also make it a success.
If interested contact kevin@dingadeal.com
I just started building an MVP for a piece of software with a co-founder. We have a couple of clients who will pay, including one who is actively involved in sharing insights on the problems she faces and why she would need this software. We're looking to have the beta into our customers' hands in about a month. It will have taken 6w to build on nights and weekends. I'm starting marketing efforts in earnest, and ranking highly for key keywords is doable.
The software is for self-employed people who do a certain type of work (let's call it A), but it can be used by self-employed ppl who do other types of work too (B-Z).
There is a market for this software for organizations that employ many of these individuals under a larger brand (let's call them BigOrgs). The problem is that this software is overly complicated for self-employed people like my initial customers. So, we're aiming for simple and focused on the self-employed market. Also, most of the offerings in this space are visually complex and don't leverage the things many of us take for granted (social media marketing, APIs, Ajax, widgetization, clean interface, etc. Not that these make for a good product, mind you, but when used in the right doses they can make for a much better experience than one built in the late 90s, which is when many competing products were built).
Me and my co-founder are not trying to build a multi-million dollar biz. A biz with $500k of sustainable annual revenue (it's a high margin biz) would put us in a great position to build more products without taking on outside capital.
Now, the issue:
Just found a competitor who knows what they're doing. They're funded (a small round) by the who's who of SV angels. They're aiming at the BigOrgs, but their software appeals to the self-employed folks I'm building for too.
They're ranked highly for valuable keywords and have been around for three years. Their marketing strategy basically emulates mine, and they've gotten press amongst the usual SV blog suspects, along with sites like the NY Times. Articles claim they have 10s of thousands of users.
Their site looks pretty but isn't as easy to use as ours.
My analysis:
I'm not worried about the funding - we're happily bootstrapping off of a long term, flexible consulting contract. It also means they are required to go big (growth uber alles) and land big clients, which excites me - we're not interested in the BigOrgs market. The self-employed one is the underserved one in my analysis.
Their high keyword rankings are worrisome, as are their press mentions and 3 years of learnings.
My question:
Do we continue on as planned, nichify (market our products for self-employed people who do A, B, and C even though D-Z can use it, and then grow after we have a stable base?), or pivot (there are a bunch of other lucrative products for the same market that we can build, but aren't related to the core product we're building right now).
Thanks for your help!
I am looking for real world examples of developers choosing HTML5 over native app (or vice-verse). I would appreciate you sharing with me some of your experience with this choice.
It would be helpful to know:
1. What kind of an app? (Ie. game, service, standalone or extension to Web site, or existent product - anything about what is it and why do you built it.)
2. What did you choose and who have made that decision? (Any insight into decision making process would be great to know.)
3. Are you happy that you have made this decision or not?
4. What you wish you would knew before you've started?
5. Do you do anything of the following:
a) monetization
b) analytics
c) collect leads
d) performance-sensitive ops
e) rich and interactive interfaces
This also might be a good place to showoff your app, if you have it built already. :)
Thanks!
I am writing up the reasons we are building with jQuery and why we want to use it site-wide. So I'm posting my argument below, because I would like to get some other folks' opinions about this and turn this into a mini-document that other developers in our situation can use in your own companies.
(unfortunately HN comments eat tabs and spacing for breakfast.)
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The javascript written to enabled dynamic interactions within our site is written with the jQuery javascript library. The intent is that jQuery will become the standard way we implement javascript across all of our site.
The benefits provided by jQuery
a. Ease of development.
i. Code written with jQuery is more compact, easier to read, and more maintainable than javascript written traditionally to do the same thing.
ii. It is possible to quickly achieve required results using jQuery that might take 10x as long to achieve with standard javascript code.
iii. Using jQuery does not prevent us from using regular javascript where necessary. jQuery is written in javascript simply makes it easier to do most things.
b. Automatic cross-browser functionality
i. jQuery is designed to get rid of cross-browser differences between javascript implementations.
ii. Adding/removing events and DOM manipulation are things that are easy with jQuery that require excess code and development time to have them function the same in all browsers traditionally.
c. Advanced UI features
i. jQuery comes with many built-in visual effects.
ii. See http://docs.jquery.com/Effects and http://docs.jquery.com/UI for examples.
d. Excellent overall performance speed
i. Thousands of users of jQuery have helped to contribute code and fix bugs in the library that have made it very fast compared to other libraries and traditionally written javascript.
I’m Max, co-founder of Lassoo.io a 'headless analytics' platform for data teams built around Postgres. “'Headless analytics” is a term we’re coining to describe our approach. It’s analytics at its core, decoupled from the overhead of conventional tools (reporting, dashboards, BI, etc) , and it’s something we think the HN community, especially those mired in data work, will appreciate.
Consider the usual route - tools like Google Analytics paired with BigQuery, or niche analytics APIs. They’re powerful, no doubt, but they weren't built with the current demands of data teams in mind. The rigidity, the API fetch limits, the convoluted schemas, the compliance headaches - it's a lot. We imagined a different path, where SQL access to behavioral data isn’t just a feature, it’s the foundation.
Lassoo was born from our team’s experience in marketing attribution where we collected customer behavioral data (millions of data points a second) and mashed it with ad data (cost per clicks for each granular ad) to get an idea of which ads are credited for any given set of sales. We found many data teams going beyond attribution and saying “just give me the raw data''. So that’s what we did; in the simplest, most robust way possible. That’s why we built Lassoo to be headless - its analytics stripped down to its most potent form.
Here’s what Lassoo offers:
Direct SQL Access: Query your data directly. No API middlemen, no gatekeepers.
Governance by Design: Data quality and compliance aren’t afterthoughts; they’re baked into the platform.
Effortless Autotracking: Capture everything users do online with a simple JS snippet. No more convoluted setup or onerous instrumentation
AI/ML-Ready with built in features and classification: Your data comes prepped for the future - whatever algorithm or model you throw at it, Lassoo has it ready.
We chose PostgreSQL for our backend for its reliability and community support. It’s also compatible with every ETL tool on the planet. But Lassoo is so much more than another database service. We offer our data as a fully managed Postgres DB, hosted securely on AWS, with robust security controls accessed through the Lassoo UI (IP whitelist, user credentials, etc).
Currently we offer direct Postgres access and streaming replication using Postgres’ replication slots.
The schema is a data team’s dream. Simple, intuitive, and designed with your workflow in mind.
Want to know the impact of user behavior on sales? Our schema turns complex questions into straightforward queries.
Here’s an example to whet your appetite:
SELECT DISTINCT p.person_id
FROM person p
JOIN event_click c ON p.person_id = c.person_id
WHERE p.orders_total > 100.00
AND c.element_tag = 'button'
AND c.text_content = 'add to wish list'
AND c.timestamp_ BETWEEN '2023-05-01' AND '2023-05-31'
This snippet finds customers who’ve clicked “Add to wish list” in May and have a lifetime value over $100.
It’s just a taste of what’s possible. Oh and the above query was auto-generated by clicking on the actual “add to wish list” button on an e-commerce site running Lassoo.
We’re here to empower data teams to do more, with less. If making your data truly work for you resonates, I invite you to explore Lassoo use cases. Visit us at http://lassoo.io and see what headless analytics is all about.
Thanks for reading, and I'm eager to discuss any thoughts, questions or feedback you may have!
(1) There is a lot of talk about developing and delivering more in social media. The more might be from things new in each of data sources, data manipulation techniques, Web sites, or companies. There might be more in just the content or in social search to find such content.
(2) There is not much clarity about just how to have more in social media or just why to have it. For the "why", what users want it, and what would they do with it?
Here are two examples of some of the recent talk about social media:
First, here on HN is the thread:
"Sergey Brin: We’ve Touched 1 Percent Of What Social Search Can Be (techcrunch.com)"
at
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/20/sergey-brin-weve-touched-1-percent-of-what-social-search-can-be/
Second, is the thread "Building Better Social Graphs" at Fred Wilsons blog A VC* at:
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/01/building-better-social-graphs.html#disqus_thread
with a lot of relatively good relevant comments.
So, let's dig in a little: We can start with being more clear about our terminology. There are three terms:
(1) Social Graph:
So, in applied math, the relevant definition of a graph is a collection of arcs and nodes with each node much like a geometric point and each arc a connection between two nodes (usually distinct but sometimes the same). An arc may be directed or not: A directed arc is drawn with an arrowhead and is regarded as a one-way street.
In a social graph, each node is likely a person (or maybe the blog of a person) but might be a group of people. The people might be users of Facebook, Twitter, etc. or just people who don't use the Internet. Then an arc might represent friend on Facebook, a follower on Twitter, or some such.
(2) Social Media:
Examples would include Facebook, Twitter, etc., maybe even HN. Maybe a definition of social media would be some Web site where people interact.
(3) Social Search:
Given data from social graphs and/or social media, one could do searches of that data.
To continue: There can be a problem with the concept of a social graph: Too commonly it is left unclear just what the arcs mean!
So, consider a person's social graph: They may have an arc to each person (A) they went to high school with, (B) live on the same street as, (C) went to college with, (D) dated, (E) married, (F) worked at the same company as, (G) hired to plow snow from their driveway, (H) got their business card at a Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, etc. So, the point of these examples is that there is enormous variety on what the arcs can mean.
So, to make progress, maybe usually we should be more clear on what the arcs mean!
Now to something more substantive:
In Fred Wilson's thread "Building Better Social Graphs", there were two strikingly different themes:
First, Wilson started the thread with a post where he wanted to be able to download each of his social graphs and then curate them himself.
Second, in the comments, the theme was strong that given the data on the social graphs, we should have computer-based means to process the data for curation, etc. Curiously, the goal of this processing was Wilson's "Building Better Social Graphs" by stronger means than just Wilson's manual curation! That is, Wilson's title was stronger than Wilson's post, and the comments were closer to the title than the post was!
So, from 40,000 feet up, it appears that many people have some vague, ill-defined, intuitive, poorly identified and articulated visions of making progress with social graphs. Each of the broad subject of social, Facebook, Twitter, and the Internet, is so big that we should take the visions, as crude as they are, seriously.
So, there are a lot of people (e.g., 500+ million users of Facebook, etc.); each such person has one or more social graphs; somehow there should be some value in that data; we might process the data automatically to obtain some useful results; and the data might be good for doing related searching. Yes, for an ad supported Web site, the data might also be good for ad targeting!
Again, we should not miss the likely importance: From higher than 40,000 feet up, for people, networking has long been very important. E.g., about 120 years ago, some wealthy families built some large, expensive houses in Newport, RI. Why? So, in the summers the wives could hold big parties, network, and have their daughters meet good (i.e., mostly just wealthy) husband candidates! Sometimes even the husbands would get on a private railroad car in Manhattan, ride up to Newport, and show up at the party for a few minutes before going upstairs to read a book or play poker with the other bored husbands! E.g., in careers, long a common remark has been, "It's not what you know but who you know.". Well, the Internet is the biggest network of them all; it can in effect reduce geographic distances to zero; it has the power of computers and software to process data, and it might become much more important than anything before in "who you know", etc.
Descending a little from 40,000 feet, and thinking about what software we might write, we can identify three important issues:
(1) Meaning.
An arc in a graph from the definition in applied math has essentially no meaning in any sense social or even practical. So, if we are to make use of data from social graphs, etc., then we should make some progress, if only rough, on what the arcs, or other data, mean.
(2) Purpose.
We should identify the purpose of the software. That is, what will be the output of the software, and why will users like that output? Or, what do users want, or at least would like if they saw it, that such software might provide? What the heck is the darned purpose?
We might start by articulating just what is the purpose of Facebook, Twitter, etc.! The original purpose of Facebook at Harvard was to get dates. For Twitter, maybe the purpose is to follow selected other people and, maybe, ingratiate oneself.
(3) Techniques.
Given the data, what data manipulation techniques will we have the software use to get the results good for the purposes?
I raise one more point:
The US has something over 300 million people. In some important respects, this number is not very large. E.g., it is easy enough for current computing and data base techniques to have, say, 1 million bytes on each person and still be able to store and process that data.
So, it can appear that there is a chance that we could have a single, grand solution in the space of social graphs and social search. If so, then we will guess that the present efforts in social media are only tangential or indirect solutions for a central problem not yet identified, articulated, or solved and that a single, grand solution might be possible.
So, consider roughly 1 million bytes on each person in the US. It turns out, although not discussed very openly, actually there are data bases that have a lot of data on nearly every adult in the US. So at least in principle, there is a lot of data now. Keeping this data restricted in walled gardens forever may be unreasonable.
Here is a simple example: Just take the printed phone books, type in the data (or get a DVD from someone), and sort the data on state, city, and street address. Then, given a person and their street address, a simple data base query will yield the names and telephone numbers of all of that person's neighbors. In particular, such a telephone book can provide a case of a social graph for each person in the book.
When this person makes a telephone call, the telephone records provide another social graph for this person. When this person uses a credit card, we get another social graph. Each merchant who accepts a credit card defines a social graph.
Net, our society is awash in data for social graphs from sources much more general than Facebook, Twitter, etc.
So, generally we can guess that we can approach asymptotically 1 million bytes of data on each person in the US where this data provides a fairly complete description of that person.
So, we have potentially a grand answer to the issue what data.
Then we can move on to what purposes? What will people what to do with this data?
Okay, in some broad sense, many of the uses will be introductions. Or, "I see that you also bought a Golden Retriever puppy at the North Hills Mall Puppy Store and also have a son in the third grade at North Side Grade School." Uh, nearly anyone else could devise better purpose scenarios that that!
So, for introductions, there already is an industry, that is, romantic matchmaking. So, introduction can be for more purposes than just romantic, and likely both the data and the processing techniques used could be quite similar.
So, from 40,000 feet up, the purpose of social anything and of social search may be introductions that could be accomplished by starting with available data and processing it much as in current romantic matchmaking services.
Yes, the introductions could be for many purposes -- hobbies, careers, looking for a supplier, customer, employer, employee, date, spouse, cello in a string quartet, etc.
At times in the comments on the Fred Wilson thread, it appeared that one of the purposes was just the usual one of some women just wanting to meet with, get to know, and gossip with as many other people as possible, for no definite reason! That is, we have to accept that one of the purposes may be just to 'meet' people for no other definite purpose!
So, where am I going wrong?
What more is there to be said?
Where can we be more clear on the data, purposes, processing, and future of social whatever via the Internet?
Once I get these few pages coded, I'm good to go to do the rest of the site expansion.
Yes, I could absolutely lock myself up in a dark room and figure-out how to do it all, myself. That would take forever though, and I'm pushing hard to get this product built & partnership/biz things in place... and, well, to be more than one human on this project. So yes, I'm looking for help with where my skills lack the hardest.
I'm a 501(c)3 (but NOT your momma's non-profit), so can get you a tax break if you'd be keen to offering the services pro-bono. As of right now I don't have the budget to pay for this, but in the coming months I will have abundant budget to pay for lots of tech work that will be needing done.
Please email me: ninavizz at gmail dot com, if you might have some time to help me get my pages coded this week (the earlier the better), and I'll send you the skinny.
THANKS in advance!!! Also, happy to do trade.
Separately: also shopping for a CTO-type co-founder. End product will likely be in Ruby, and with lots of dataviz & db-intensive stuff.
This led to a predictable go-round about it being a free country and all, and Trader Joe's finally said okay, okay, you can come, but you don't get a tour. And as the investment company guy tells it, the tension in the air during the visit was thick enough to cut with a machete.
Well, you probably can't blame the folk at Trader Joe's. They've got a phenomenal thing going, and don't want to give it all away. Some observers think that sales per square foot at Trader Joe's are hovering at about $1,000 -- twice the level of typical supermarkets. And with between about 70% to 85% of its products being private label (depending on who you ask), Trader Joe's has reached a benchmark others don't even dream about on good nights.
Fast Turns
Last year the Pasadena, Calif .-based chain's stores -- believed to be approaching 200 units primarily on the East and West coasts -- turned in about $1 billion in sales, with profits said to be just shy of spectacular. Stores have no service departments and small footprints -- usually about 9,500 square feet "to keep the shopping experience intimate," some say. The total SKU count, designed for fast-turn of high-margin items, is generally estimated at 2,500 to 3,000. (Trader Joe's has in the past admitted to having "more than 800" private label products, but how many "more" is an open question.)
By now, you may have noticed some vagueness on the numbers. Sorry, can't help you. It's because trading partners, consultants, competitors, analysts and about 13,000 Web sites all offer different numbers and viewpoints about this extremely private -- and much loved -- company.
Actually, in some ways, Trader Joe's is an open book. Go to their Web site, (www.traderjoes.com) and if you drill down far enough, you're likely to find most anything. But some details are still kept pretty lowkey. A Trader Joe's flier says simply that the firm was sold in 1979 by its founder, Joe Coulombe, to a private, family-run company. True, but it still surprises people who didn't already know that the buyers were German billionaires Karl and Theo Albrecht, owners of the ALDI food chain. (We hear ALDI has the good sense to leave Trader Joe's alone.)
Anybody will tell you the folk at Trader Joe's are real regular. The brass, despite their dust-up with our financier pals from Boston, are the sort you'd be proud to count as friends. And in the stores? Cashiers will leave their registers to help you find Trader Joe's Organic Moral Fiber Cereal or Trader Jose's salsa. Clerks in Hawaiian shirts may actually be singing as they stock the shelves (honest!), and will readily offer their personal thoughts on Trader Giotto's Artichoke Antipasto or even the chain's official stance on the sale of duck meat. (And if that isn't good enough, they'll direct you to the flier, signed by Chairman/CEO Dan Bane, that explains how the chain is requiring duck farmers to certify that they are cruelty-free growers.)
A Misguided Quest
Clearly, Trader Joe's is not your average Joe. (Stole that line from www.thestandard.com, thank you!). Now, for those of you who may think we've finally lost our marbles, please understand that we're on a perhaps misguided quest to copy the writing style of Trader Joe's Fearless Flyer. Sort of. Nobody can exactly copy anything Trader Joe's does, which explains its success but not its anxiety about privacy.
The Fearless Flyer (Manufacturers don't pay to have products in it! But the product had better sell! Or else!) is Trader Joe's primary communication vehicle with its customers. No TV, no high-low, BOGO and off you go. Just sheer communication and fun, in-store and mailed locally to "Resident."
Bill Bishop, president of Willard Bishop Consulting, Barrington, Ill., says if you want to understand Trader Joe's, you have to sit down with the Fearless Flyer for an hour or so, and as usual he's right. "Let it sort of flow over you," he says (he must have been in California recently) "and you'll get it. It's pretty cool, like the President's Choice newsletter without the chutzpah pushiness. Anybody who is serious about understanding Trader Joe's should go to school on it. It will also help them understand that it won't be easy to respond competitively."
Curious? Here's a sampling from the 24-page-long May issue of Fearless Flyer: "The Good Ship Trader Joe's... Our mission is to offer the best food and beverage values you can find and the information you need to make informed buying decisions... Someone's in the Galley with Trader Joe... Our tasting panel samples every product before we buy it. We evaluate each product on the basis of cost, flavor and relevancy to our customers. If we don't like it, we don't buy it. Does it represent value? If we can't sell it for a great everyday low price, we're simply not interested! Does it meet our customer's desire for great taste or interesting food trends? Reel it in!"
"Seaworthy Buying Wisdom... We always try to buy direct from manufacturers (not middlemen!) We buy in large volume, bargain hard and manage our costs carefully (no trips to Tahiti for Fearless Flyer writers, for instance.) We always pay our suppliers in full and on time so they like doing business with us. These strong relationships enable us to secure terrific deals on high quality goods."
There's more, of course, about the product guarantee (refund or exchange) and all, along with lots of information about products in an equally chatty style. You'll learn about ginger almond scented oatmeal exfoliant soap, farm-raised American buffalo ($4.79 per pound) and other stuff. Ubiquitous fliers in the stores explain everything from the chain's policy to prohibit artificial flavors, colors or preservatives in its private label products, to how to buy and use olive oil.
"Trader Joe's has fun with its private label and doesn't take itself too seriously," says Michael Langenborg, chief strategist, Whole Health Marketing Group, Santa Rosa, Calif. "All their vitamins are Trader Darwin, with the tagline 'for the Survival of the Fittest.' The Hispanic line is Trader Jose's, and the Italian line is Trader Giotto. God forbid that Safeway or Albertson's would do that. But Trader Joe's does, and they know how to make a fun experience.
Trader Joe's glib, tongue-in-cheek style isn't gimmickry -- it reflects a genuine, fun personality to which customers can relate, according to Gretchen Gogesch, principal, Integrale Consulting, Chicago. She says Trader Joe's has integrated various facets of its corporate culture into one cohesive voice, and virtually lives its brand.
"This explains why other companies can't copy them," she says. "A lot of companies have well-crafted vision statements on their walls, but few can execute against that vision, much less have the kind of relationship with customers that makes Trader Joe's successful."
As Gogesch sees it, most retailers pay lip service to having a real relationship with their customers, but Trader Joe's lives and dies by it. This personal style extends to the chain's buyers, she says. Last summer, Gogesch wrote an article for PL Buyer's sister publication, Confectioner magazine, based on an interview she did (how'd that happen?) with Marie Forsyth, product manager for snacks and candy at Trader Joe's.
Tinkering Together
"She (Forsyth) emphasized the importance of being able to work with the supplier hand-in-hand in sort of on an artisan basis, working with small batches and tinkering together to find right product," Gogesch says. This illustrates a point, she notes: Trader Joe's buyers uses their personal relationships with customers to find out what they want, and then roll up their sleeves with suppliers to get the product right. To help this process along, Trader Joe's managers are required to read customer correspondence and get out in the stores and talk with people.
"A lot of organizations don't do that," she says. "They look at their own needs first, and then try to sell whatever they can make to the customer. It takes guts to truly take the approach of Trader Joe's. You have to resist market forces to dumb down your products or make them appeal to the masses. But a desk is a very dangerous place from which to view the world," says Gogesch.
Observers agree that Trader Joe's gives new meaning to the term "destination retailer," with many shoppers driving an hour or more to get to their nearest store. And there are many different opinions about what is behind the universally recognized "mystique" of Trader Joe's.
"Part of the big mystique is that they deliberately come off like a small, unsophisticated grocery operation or specialty shop," says Stephan Kouzomis, founder and CEO, Entrepreneurial Consulting Inc./MMSG, Louisville, Ky. "There's eye-to-eye contact and service, and shoppers always know there is going to be something new there -- whether private label or branded."
Bishop says Trader Joe's truly focuses on the quality of its private label products, and makes a special effort to have items that are unique. "I know it comes as no surprise, but Trader Joe's really does offer something different. And they also are able to authentically get people to feel the store cares about them. Perhaps it's because they are totally -- no kidding -- totally focused on the customer. And they're streamlined, so it all works."
You'd get agreement there from Frank Dell, president, Dellmart & Company, Stamford, Conn. Dell believes Trader Joe's has gone to school on European private label, perhaps by studying Sainsbury's old model of finding which product the consumer wants, and then finding a manufacturer to make it. By doing this, plus making sure the products are unique, the chain finds real differentiation, he believes. "Having genuinely unique products means they're not so much in a directly competitive price baffle," he says. "It's never apples to apples, it's always apples to apples with a twist. It's a truly brilliant way to run a private label program. And like so few retailers today, they make their money on the sell, not the buy."
'An Adventure'
Ben Ball, VP, Dechert-Hampe & Co., Northbrook, Ill., says the chain "is the food equivalent of a Williams Sonoma or Bath & Body Works. They make shopping an adventure. Central to this is that they understand branding in every sense of the word. Not just the standard corporate badging and consumer communication stuff. I'm talking about a fully-integrated brand persona, right down to having the name of the store include the personal description of the owner (Trader Joe) himself. Add to that the cedar store accents, the nets, the multicolor chalkboards, the label styles and, perhaps most important, the products themselves. Everything fits the theme!" Ball says.
But Trader Joe's does not fit into any of the usual definitions of retailer types, according to Steve French, senior VP/Managing Partner, The Natural Marketing Institute, Harleysville, Pa. Above all else, he says, Trader Joe's offers an entertaining shopping experience rather than shopping drudgery. The merchandise mix includes enough unique private label items interspersed with truckloads of branded in-and-outs to keep the shopper content to treasure hunt and make impulse buys, he says. This is quite different from stores where shoppers are more likely to arrive with a shopping list.
John J. Ruf, a principal at The New England Consulting Group, Westport, Conn., notes that "Trader Joe's program is unique because it started out as a private label retailer rather than as a supermarket for other brands. This is not a subtle difference in that consumers fully understand that the Trader Joe's label means great products at a good value. Supermarkets, on the other hand, use private label programs simply to provide the consumer a somewhat discounted price versus a name brand of the same product.
"Second, although Trader Joe's does have some similar products to branded items in supermarkets, many of their products are unique in terms of recipes as well as packaging and sizing.
"Third, it appears that many of Trader Joe's items are perceived as somewhat gourmet, yet at a reasonable price, thus further differentiating themselves from everyday supermarket branded and private label items," Ruf says.
"The ALDI ownership always struck me as strange," says Al McClain, publisher/founder of RetailWire.com, Stamford, Conn. "ALDI is about as low-end as you can get and a truly bare bones shopping experience, and Trader Joe's is on the other end of the scale. Yet Trader Joe's prices are excellent -- and they have great customer service. There's always something new there -- frequently they're sampling two or three items."
"Trader Joe's is a specialty retailer who happens to be in the food business," says Bruce Poole, principal, Strategic Business Solutions, Richland, Mich. He says the chain's private label performs double duty. "It reinforces the exclusiveness of the shopping experience for the consumer and also forms the bedrock of competitive defensibility. A competitor can open a similar store across the street, selling the same categories of merchandise, but he can't offer the Trader Joe's brand."
Trader Joe's item selection is very well thought out, with heavy input from shoppers, notes Langenborg. Store managers, he notes, have autonomy to choose -- and de-list -- products for their own marketing areas, and there are no forced planograms.
He adds that the chain also tests branded products to see how well they sell in the stores, and then approaches the manufacturer to make a private label version. The manufacturer's awkward choice is to do it, or let his competitor have the business. (Not to give them a free plug, but several observers say Trader Joe's has a penchant for knocking off or tweaking items from Nature's Path Foods, Delta, British Columbia.)
Trader Joe's price points are very competitive, especially when compared to similar items in natural food stores, Langenborg says, noting that "An almond nut butter they sell for $3.49 might be $6.29 at a large natural foods retailer. Trader Joe's is all about volume. They keep item selections very narrow, and they pick the best sellers from people's lines. They don't charge slotting fees or have a bunch of programs that erode margins, and they pay extremely quickly. Financial folk in manufacturer circles love them."
No Slotting
The chain doesn't put up a lot of barriers to entry, adds Langenborg. "No slots or TV ads -- you just have to pass the taste committee and then get in and perform. If they like your product, they'll put it in the Fearless Flyer, and give you a good shelf position."
So far, Trader Joe's essentially leaves wine brands alone, with little if any private label. But it has very heavy private label penetration in refrigerated and especially frozen foods. Local bakers are generally sought out to put the Trader Joe's label on breads in different markets, observers say. In choosing where to heavy-up on a national brand, categories are weighed on a cost accounting basis in an effort to reduce the burden against private label items when possible. This may (or may not!) explain why you won't find much in the way of private label cereals or energy bar-type items at the chain.
One of the keys to Trader Joe's success is the staff in the stores, who are known invariably for their courtesy, product knowledge and a sense of fun. Gogesch praises the chain for how it recruits and develops its workers, or "crew members" as Trader Joe's calls them.
"Employees are drawn to the chain by its set of values," she says. "And don't underestimate how savvy Trader Joe's has been in how they structure what they offer to employees. They have an excellent menu of offerings and benefits, and they promote from within -- you truly have an opportunity to build a career with them."
"They incentivize the heck out of their store managers," says Langenborg, noting that six-figure incomes are not unusual. He adds that in-store shrinkage is low because employees feel like part of a team and are less likely to steal.
"The people in the stores really know the products, and they've usually tried them," says Kevin Coupe, content guy, www.MorningNewsBeat.com, Darien, Conn. "Occasionally, they'll see something new in my basket and they'll say, 'Hey, I haven't tried that. How is it?' That's remarkable in the food business, which is a shame."
Coupe suspects the store clerks are paid better than at other food chains, but also points out that without service departments the stores' manpower needs are not as great as traditional supermarkets. He adds that Trader Joe's training is thorough, and that when new stores open in the East, they often bring in managers from the West coast to do the start-up. The manager of the Darien, Conn., store, near Coupe's house, recently moved back to his home base in California.
French notes that the shopping experience is greatly enhanced by the employees, who make shoppers feel comfortable and more willing to try new items.
And just who is the target shopper for Trader Joe's? New England Consulting Group's Ruf says "Their portolio of items and their themes suggest they are appealing to an interesting group of niches rather than one consumer segment. These include the health food segment, tree hugger (environmentally concerned) segment, the discount shopper and the weekend gourmet chef segment. Taken together, these represent a fairly sizeable group of consumers, some of which may fit into more than one of the segments."
Ruf continues that Trader Joe's shoppers may shop supermarkets for basics and weekly purchases, but also prefer to shop every day or two for their evening meal. These shoppers may be buying for a small family -- or just themselves -- which means that Trader Joe's could also be appealing to the singles segment, whether they are 18-25 or 65-85, he says.
On a recent visit to a Trader Joe's near him, Art Williams, a former Dean Foods executive who is now a consultant in Napervile, Ill., saw evidence that might confirm these thoughts. On a visit to a store in his area, he noticed that most shoppers seem to prefer hand baskets over shopping carts, and were purchasing only a few items.
"The store reminded us most of Whole Foods, which caters to health-minded consumers," he says. He saw emphasis on healthy, organic, high-fiber, low-fat, soy, Kosher and environmentally friendly items.
"Oddly, the most notable categories that did not have Trade Joe's private label representation were milk and ice cream, the two categories that are among the highest in private label penetration in most stores."
This factor varies from market to market. A California observer says there is plenty of private label milk in his Trader Joe's stores, but also no private label ice cream. Williams, like the rest of us, can only guess why some markets lack private label in certain usually key categories. He thinks it might be because the stores don't have sufficient volume in some instances. His favorite finds in his store: frozen salmon and tuna steaks that were round to fit perfectly on a hamburger bun.
Another part of the Trader Joe's mystique is its lack of scanning (although some packaging has UPCs) and use of high-tech. Ruf says checkout counters are set up to take up a minimum amount of space -- which also allows clerks to be closer to the consumer. Other observers say Trader Joe's doesn't see scanning as worth the investment, considering its low SKU count and its practice of managing product based on purchasing history. And they agree that if a product does not move, it is off the shelf very quickly.
Few Stockhouse
"Trader Joe's has almost no out-of-stocks," says Langenborg. "They manage better than almost anybody I've seen, and that helps make them so profitable. They know how much to buy, and when, and they aren't always out looking for the deals. They get a price they want for everyday, and buy in large quantities."
"They're very good at getting a price image across," says one observer. "they might go to Switzerland and find some exotic and unique chocolate and buy a lot of it, and then go on the radio romancing the story. You know, 'We just went to Switzerland and got this great deal on stuff that is usually $5, and we're going to sell it for a buck eighty-nine.' It's done intelligently and credibly, and it gets people excited and into the store. There's intelligence and wit, sort of like the J. Peters catalogs. These people are really intelligent merchants. The closest anybody comes to it in a regular supermarket is Ukrops, down in Virginia."
Does anybody have a discouraging word to say about Trader Joe's? A few observers say the chain's produce department is weak, but noted that it's getting better. They've noticed more bagged salads, for instance.
And some people believe the chain may be suffering some growing pains. Mona Doyle, president of The Consumer Network, Philadelphia, notes that recent complaints have come from consumers about checkout lines and confusion resulting from store resets. "Until the last few months, we have heard nothing but praise for this innovative retailer who has created a private label that many consumers perceive to be superior in flavor and quality to most national brands," she says. "In the last few months, we have begun to hear a trickle of complaints and let downs that suggest growing pains. Trader Joe's has built a reputation that leads consumers to expect a lot from them. As they grow, whether or not they can continue to meet those expectations remains to be seen," she says.
Pace Picks Up
Trader Joe's is its usual taciturn self when it comes to announcing any growth plans. Its pace has picked up of late, spurring the usual questions about whether it can expand much further or will remain merely a spectacular niche player.
Observers believe Trader Joe's has all it needs to continue growing, so long as the company keeps its "crew" culture and doesn't overextend itself financially -- although its financial strength seems rock-solid. They see it keeping the same size stores (for a sense of intimacy with the shopper) and moving into specific geographies that meet its highly-educated but not necessarily high-income profile.
But there are no guarantees the road ahead will be smooth. Kouzomis thinks one of Trader Joe's problems going forward will be finding good locations without having to pay so much that it affects how they go to market. He believes it would be a good move for a supermarket to go after Trader Joe's as a strategic acquisition, if ALDI would ever sell. "It'd also be an interesting twist if someone tried to copy it on the C-store side," he says.
Says Poole, "While off to an incredible start, the next challenge that awaits Trader Joe's is its ability to sustain what it's started. Many specialty retailers get off to a fast start but then stumble when their uniqueness becomes cliched. Look at the Gap. The challenge of constantly reinventing yourself while staying relevant to your core market is the ultimate test of Trader Joe's. Still, it's great to see a food retail experience that's more than category management and the lowest price."
I'm excited to finally share Pillser, a project I built to simplify the process of finding and comparing supplements. Pillser makes supplement shopping easier and more transparent by allowing users to search based on active ingredients, compare prices across different websites, and find products that cater to specific needs and dietary restrictions.
How and Why Pillser Started:
Recently, I found myself grappling with fatigue and headaches, only to learn from my doctor that I had deficiencies in vitamin D and iron. Understanding the root cause was a relief, but finding the right supplements became a daunting task. Determined not to choose based on brand alone, I started meticulously entering data into a spreadsheet, comparing each supplement’s ingredients and costs.
You could say that the first prototype of Pillser was this spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BjiEbhJc3nmhkBoczd0w...
However, I also needed other supplements, and this manual process became overwhelming. I wished there was a way to automate this for every supplement on the market. That’s when I decided to create Pillser — a user-friendly supplement comparison website that goes beyond the limitations of a spreadsheet.
* I learned how to build websites using Remix.run.
* I used ChatGPT to guide me through the best practices of SEO and accessibility.
* I fine-tuned ChatGPT models to assist in extracting attributes and organizing the data efficiently.
* I wrote hundreds of tests to ensure data integrity, making sure every piece of information is accurate and reliable.
* I optimized the website to score 100 on Lighthouse, ensuring it’s fast, accessible, and user-friendly.
I plan to extend Pillser to become a one-stop-shop to discover supplements & learn by browsing the associated research papers. However, you can already do a lot:
* Search Active Ingredients: Easily find supplements containing specific active ingredients like Vitamin D, Vitamin C, Iron, etc.
* Compare Prices: Compare prices across different websites (Amazon, iHerb; adding Vitacost) to find the best value per milligram.
* Filter by Attributes: Filter supplements based on dietary restrictions and certifications (e.g., gluten-free, vegan, non-GMO).
Check it out and let me know what you think!
I'm open to feedback and suggestions on how to improve the site further.
p.s. The linked page shows results for all ingredients that contain Ergocalciferol (vitamin D₂). You can modify the search however you like to search by anything that's mentioned in the supplement facts label.
Do not skip or skim words or communication of any kind. Don't read something assuming you know what it means; if you don't understand it, look around, ask someone, or google until you understand what you've just read. Then, you can move on.
The reason for this is that programming involves comprehension, not knowledge (more on that below).
Failure to follow this will make you a sucky programmer. You'll write buggy code. You'll piss yourself off when you think nobody wants to help you. Then, you'll end up really pissed because everything you thought you knew how to do falls apart, and you finally realize you're a bad programmer. This happened to me about 7yrs ago -- so, I'm trying to save you the trouble. After I realized this, and, after I learned how to program, not only did I quickly become very good but everything was 10 times easier and I enjoyed programming far more than I did before. Bad programming is exciting -- good programming is a party.
First, I want to tell you that learning a programming language and learning how to program aren't the same thing. A very simple metaphor to this is driving. You can learn how to drive, but, driving an automatic transmission sports car is completely different than driving a manual 18-wheeler. They both move on wheels and function the same, but, are very, very different. Also, if you were getting started, it would be easier to learn with a small automatic car than an 18-wheeler.
Programming and driving, however, are very different. Whereas driving is a mechanical task, which uses one part of your brain, programming is comprehension. When you're programming, you're not the driver, you are the mechanical engineer who invented fuel injectors, or the chemical engineer who invented run-flat tires. A programmer uses comprehension to write logic which instructs machines to create something material and useful.
The key when learning to program is that you create; bad programmers only know how to drive while good programmers know how spark plugs work.
So, I will share with you several things:
1) IMPORTANT: What NOT to do and why
2) How you should go about learning to program
3) About Java, Microsoft, and Enterprise
4) Failure and Practice
5) About Hacker News
1) IMPORTANT: What not to do and why
Often, when we read sites, books, etc., we're interpreting what we're reading and creating a story (perception) or associating it with something we already know. No matter what you already know from previous experiences with computers, learning to program is new -- it's like learning how to write -- you know the letters, you've seen it all, but getting your hand to draw such concise letters, words, and sentences, is a completely new experience. This is how you should take in programming; coding should be elegant, concise, and flow. Programming isn't glueing things to form a collage or mocking what you've seen. Just as you can't pretend to speak in a foreign language, you should never write code unless you fundamentally know what it does.
There's a lot of crap out there. Rails, most of PHP, a lot of Java, and most of what Microsoft developers come up with are pieces of crap cobbled together to make something which somehow works. The problem is all the people who are SOOOOO excited and exuberant about their crap. Some things, like Rails, started out awesome and are crap now. Unfortunately, people forget that Rails is just a tool; instead, they use it as a crutch -- even though it's now very worn and rusty. Don't trust or use something just because it's popular -- chances are it sucks. By sucks, I mean, it bites you in the ass a lot and/or forces you to do stupid things which waste your time.
Which brings me to my next subject of Tools. There's a saying "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". This is one of the many reasons you should learn a language FIRST and not do anything else first. Otherwise you will end up wondering why you're "hammer" isn't helping you with glue or screws. So, remember to use the right tool for the job.
Want to write iPhone apps? Learn Objective-C.
Want to write Android apps? Learn Java.
Want to use Rails? Learn Ruby.
Want to use Django? Learn Python.
But before you do all of this, learn one language first. The language I'm going to suggest you learn is Python, and there's a really good reason why.
The book I'll be referring you to is "how to program" and teaches with Python. As per the rule above, don't skip the introduction; read and do exactly what it tells you. I picked this book because it's excellent at teaching you how to program, and it's modern. The fact that it's free is just a perk. This is why I picked Python -- this book is awesome.
2) How you should go about learning to program
i) Start with Python. Learn Python by using this book: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index
ii) Learn how to write a basic Objective-C or Java program
iii) If you learned obj-c, install the iPhone SDK, If Java install the Android SDK
iv) Write a mobile application
v) now, you're prepared to explore other languages, platforms, etc. (java, jquery, rails, databases)
Unless it's required (for classroom or work), don't touch anything else to do with writing code until v).
Regarding steps ii) and iii)
This of course, is the hard way, but that's a good thing! You can't use Python with the Android or iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit), AND you'll never be able to create a web application with them. However, the Android and iPhone SDKs don't suck and are VERY pragmatic (pragmatic is a good thing!). These SDKs make it easy for developers to create mobile applications -- this is an amazing thing because mobile phones have limitations which servers and desktops don't have. They have limited battery life, a slow network connection, less memory, and a slower graphics processor.
By learning how to develop on one of these platforms, you'll learn how to do something with requirements and limitations, and, you'll learn how to apply you're knowledge of programming to a new language. Best of all, you'll write something you can use on your phone, anywhere -- way better than a web site.
Once you can work through writing an android or iphone app (which isn't that difficult, trust me!), then anything to do with web applications will magically become a no-brainer for you.
3) About Java, Microsoft, and Enterprise
The way you're going to learn how to program is completely different than the world of Java, Microsoft, and enterprise systems. It's different because these worlds are built on "information technology" and not on productivity. They're built to provide solutions, not solve problems. As a result, everything in these worlds are convoluted, complex, or expensive. Learning to program without these technologies will equip you if you ever need to work with them. In which case, you will better at understanding how the IT components in Enterprise are separate from the programming components. In short, you'll be able to see the forest from the trees whereas others do not. Most just get lost and try to find a corner they can hide in.
4) Failure and Practice
Programming is trial and error. You have to LEARN. Last, if you don't have good comprehension skills, it might not be for you. That doesn't mean you can't learn how to program well or be productive, but, you may have to work harder and might not enjoy it as much -- it could take some time for your comprehension to get up to par. This of course, is what practice is for (which is also covered in the book).
5) About Hacker News - http://news.ycombinator.com
If you want to program and develop software you should follow Hacker News. It's kind of addictive so be moderate. Hacker News has become a sort of "pay it forward" community where it's discouraged to put people down and you should always try to make positive contributions.