Less is more: Stalkr

[ Posted by James Harton Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:17:25 GMT ]

A few months ago I launched on an (ultimately failed) effort to build a web-app a month for an entire year. I've managed to push out two; Flittr and Stalkr and got to work on a start-up, Sociable instead.

I wanted to talk about Stalkr, because I just removed it's "Alpha" moniker. Oh sure, I'm absolutely certain things are broken about it - but I don't really care. I built it mainly, like Flittr, just to see what would happen. Apparently what happens is not much, but with (the awesome) Heroku around to host my experiments there's a low barrier to entry when it comes to just giving it a whirl.

So, with Stalkr I decided to have a stab at solving one problem and solving it very simply: I'm sick of trying to figure out what services I'm using at someone else might be using. You start with something like "Do you use Skype?", to which they reply;
"No."
"Well how about MSN?" you say.
"No."
"AIM?, Facebook? Twitter?".
Eventually, after dealing with the confused looks, you discover that your friend only has an old Gadu-Gadu account left over from when his kid sister was on exchange in Poland. This whole conversation can be reduced to "Let's chat some time, you can find my details on stalkr dot cc slash jamesotron".

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Why are Apple's customisations so much over market rates?

[ Posted by James Harton Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:00:43 GMT ]

I was just browsing the Apple Store here in New Zealand and noticed that Apple is charging a heck of a lot for customisations, for example:
  • Apple says:
    8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB [Add NZ$ 2,090.00]
    PriceSpy says:
    4GB DDR3 SDRAM 374 prices $112.50
  • Apple says:
    500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm [Add NZ$ 420.00]
    PriceSpy says:
    Seagate 500GB 2.5" SATA Notebook hard drive 83 prices $167.63 0.34/GB
Now, this wouldn't be such a big deal, if it wasn't so fantastically easy to upgrade the new MacBook Pro's (unlike mine, which was a nightmare to upgrade the disk in). There's only 10 screws on the bottom and you're done.

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