I guess I'm just not used to it. I don't want to come off like I'm advertising my niche.

Also, it's still hard for me to envision myself as a regular member. (I'm still surprised I'm mentioned in that category here) It was more like you guys were hospitable.

I think until I coded a NANY I'll never feel I belong in the ranks of those who truly made DC what it is.

This was answered but I thought some may like to discuss it further and feel neither side gave a satisfactory answer:

The part of the talk where he talks about the day care experiment has strengthened a worry I've been having for a while. The worry that the "app culture" introduced by the iPhone will break the free software culture. Why should anyone work hard for the greater good of humanity when others become millionaires by selling crap to people? (Sorry for putting it so bluntly but what else is a "flashlight app"?) I actually know people who were free software advocates (and still are) but nonetheless now try to make a quick dollar by writing mobile phone apps.

-Christian Mertes

Why should anyone work hard for the greater good of humanity when others become millionaires by selling crap to people?"

Now that the free software culture is here, I doubt it is going anywhere. Which is not to say software should not have associated costs, like service and hardware, but that once people start making things for the love of the practice, its a bit hard to remove that activity from people. This is really part of Clay's argument. It is increasingly easier for people to participate in activities due to their love of the activity, including the production of software. I think the decrease in difficulty, combined with the increase of love(interest) makes for a cocktail that isn't going anywhere, and if anything, gives quite a lot of hope for the future.

-Travis Ladner

Let's hope so but frankly, I'm not so optimistic. Writing apps gives practice, community feeling including positive feedback *and* a few extra bucks (with the potential to be set for life if your thing really takes of). Free software was made possible because it was easy to share. With apps it's easy to share and easy to make money doing so. If there was an app store for lolcats, I don't know what would happen and Clay didn't discuss this recent development.

-Christian Mertes

Comments underneath: http://www.ted.com/t...hange_the_world.html

First off, I apologize to app and mouser for not informing them before linking to this old comment of theirs:

Source http://cranialsoup.b...exchange-your-2.html

sometimes i think there are only two viable approaches to writing blogs.. one is if you just say F it and don't ever worry about getting readers, and mainly just write for yourself, and pretend in your mind you have millions of viewers and try to not even look at the hit counts, etc. and the other way is to actively try to get readers and engage them, which can sometimes seem like a very frustrating process. surely there must be some good middle ground approaches but that's just my gut level feeling. im not sure which approach is better. my experience with DC is that if you want participation you have to really work at encouraging it until it reaches some threshold of participans and then it mostly becomes automatic.. but until that threshold of participation is reached no one really wants to be the only one talking.

I recently opened (or rather registered) for a free forum service and while I'm already pming someone about this issue and the forum itself doesn't have a wide net of subject that can apply to most everyone...it is a general forum open to everyone but with a particular slant towards Hikikomories (my niche if you may...sorry if I keep stating this term, I don't think lots of people read my posts)

Two other points I'm sorry of:

I didn't mean to avoid searching the forum before posting this I just didn't know what terms to search for. I already have the One Year Report linked bookmarked. I just haven't gotten the time to read it yet.

I'm sorry if this comes off like indirectly spamming the forum I hope the lack of forum link shows my sincerity and really I just wanted to use this as background for this post and I am truly interested in the history of DC and not so much gaining random member numbers to the forum. I really am not interested in the member count as much as encouraging a community to participate and share their posts and no I doubt, I have silent readers. Maybe silent spammers who occassionally spam the anonymous board but I doubt I have any silent readers and I don't plan to copy everything DC does. In fact, I want to educate myself so that I can pave my own path for the forum rather than be forced to copy an advertising methodology. Even from my niche, there are already forums well suited for most English speaking people who call themselves Hikikomories. I just wanted to create a [temporary] forum for those few who feel alienated/left out/outsiders in the other Hiki forums/boards and DC has pretty much been the only forum I've been active in lately.

Interesting new answer from those who don't keep up with the Quora link:

Jonathan Joseph said:

I'm going to go a different route here. Campaign finance reform, lobbying restrictions and the other suggestions already in this thread are all good suggestions, but the most effective thing we can do to fix government is to bring private sector principles to the public sector. Yes, shockingly, sort of what W had suggested .

Anyone who has ever worked in a non-public sector job knows that career and financial success are, more or less, directly tied to performing some task a combination of better/faster/cheaper than either other people in your organization or in competing organizations. Managers incentivize employees based on relevant metrics for success and the result is free market capitalism being the Darwinistic engine that has propelled American greatness.

But the government, and any organization funded by the public sector, does not work that way. When you work for the public sector, you can't get promoted faster for doing better work than the person next to you and you can't make any more money for doing a job twice as good as the next guy.

Your performance is irrelevant, all that matters is your place on the annual-budget food chain. Congress allocates $X for your organization this year in the budget. That's how public sector power is allocated, how much budget $ you are allocated. So what's the incentive to do it better/faster/cheaper? All you can do is lose budget, lose power.

I assume that at this point, a number of you are thinking that I am off on a bizarre tangent. So here I'll add that I spent 7 years at In-Q-Tel, making investments in startups that were developing technology relevant to the Intelligence Community. On regular occasions I tried to introduce cutting edge technologies to users at relevant government agencies and was told that there was no benefit to better/faster/cheaper. Or "we don't work that way". I'll spare the government the embarassment of getting into specifics, but trust me you'd be appalled by some of the examples. This is not nickle-and-dime stuff either, we are talking about potentially saving $billions from just what I have seen.

This explains perfectly why every government agency continually grows in size and budget and all are completely inept (FEMA? MMS? SEC w/ Madoff?). It's what they are incentivized to do.

Slap a P&L on every Federal Agency and allow free market-principled compensation for Federal employees (this would need to be done delicately and subject to regulation, however) and you'd see things turn around much faster than anyone thinks. There are easy answers, they just won't work in the current environment.

Nielsen conceded that the differences in reading speed between the two devices were not “statistically significant because of the data’s fairly high variability” — in other words, the study did not prove that the iPad allowed for faster reading than the Kindle.

A total of 24 participants (10 is about average for a usability survey) were given short stories by Ernest Hemingway to read in print and on iPads, Kindles and desktop PCs. Hemingway was chosen because his work utilizes simple language and is “pleasant and engaging to read.” The narratives took an average of 17 minutes and 20 seconds from start to finish — enough time to get readers fully “immersed” in the stories, Nielsen explained.

Too sleepy to comment but this seems like an interesting take. Speed is now more important than pick up and play...err...read?!

---

from Mashable

This Quora topic may interest you: http://www.quora.com...killer-landing-pages

I also gave my answer there but it's kind of long and many either don't apply or no longer exist.

Also subscribe to the official Wordpress blog. They often announce new themes there like the recently popular (but I didn't like) Wu Wei - http://en.blog.wordp...14/new-theme-wu-wei/

Tumblr themes are also generally high on most people's list of great themes.

I've also recently praised Posterous' new M82 theme in Twitter but I'm not sure you're looking for a blog theme.

Some suggestions that may narrow down the choices:

--top menu driven navigation scheme (not sidebar)

Nowadays with blog services allowing for both, it's really an issue more of "does this ABSOLUTELY mean no sidebar?" or just top menu driven navigation scheme?

It just seems weird because then you mention two columns but generally two column design is sidebar plus body.

--I'm very interested in nice color schemes

Could you narrow it down to dark/white/minimal...that kind of thing? For example Wu Wei isn't viewed as having nice color schemes in the sense of colorful but it works.

Generally any set of color that mixes well with contrast checkers work.

The feel I want for the website is like when you walk into the library of someone's 100 year old, well-maintained mansion.  There's a nice leather armchair, with mahogany tables around, and on the table is a book.  The book is my content, the room is the aura.  That's the feel I want.  This doesn't mean I want a mahogany wood background.  I'm just talking about the feel.

Feel is relative. (Although this may be because I know nothing of design)

The description you mentioned goes in contrast to:

--not one of those flash-heavy sites where there's a lot of animation and very creative movements, shapes, etc.  A lot of musicians' websites do this.

See this site for example: http://www.boscoffeeclub.com/

I'm not sure if that's working because it's currently isn't on my part but it's a flash site that gives a feel of the type of environment you are describing to me...but it's a flash site.

The biggest issue is this:

There's a nice leather armchair, with mahogany tables around, and on the table is a book.  The book is my content, the room is the aura.

This often connotates movement and in fact your eyes have to shift to get this sensation if this were a physical room.

The only static theme that I can think of is the general design for Ubuntu but many feel the design of the operating system is very "dry" and ugly with a mix of orange and brown.

You could try the main page or the Ubuntu Wiki look but that's not exactly a vivid image of a library.

You could try searching for Parchment templates like this:



Source: http://www.eblogtemp...t-templates/page/12/

...but they aren't exactly "out of the book" if you know what I mean.

Still you could combine them with things like this:



Source: http://www.themza.co...e-library-theme.html

But generally my guess would be that you'll end up discovering and liking a theme that doesn't match with your description (or only barely matches that) based on how you are currently describing your design.

Still... I'm no designer. I'm not really trying to criticize your original thread as much as elaborating where I think you could be much more specific.

Finally going back to the book is your aura thing. You might be interested in how ubook looks in case you haven't known of the application before. You could theoretically zoom that out into a background showing a library of any kind and it would seem the book is the focus.



Source: http://dearauthor.co...p-ereading-programs/

You seem to claim that voter apathy (great word that I have been looking for by the way) is caused by, and a symptom of, the system being broke.  I propose that the voter apathy is the problem that causes the system to appear broke.  It is just the founding premise that we disagree on.

I'd like to introduce a third option: Voter apathy is the problem that causes the system to appear more broken than it is which then results in voting apathy. (A situation where a person's vote holds less value to them than their vote on which person becomes the next Reality TV star)

Edit: Although this wasn't the reason given for my account suspension, it seems highly unlikely that my fake name didn't contribute to this so just a warning for those considering joining Quora - the real name requirement still holds.

(It was still in the Terms of Service but at the time of this review, I've been participating in Quora for quite a while without even being warned so I assumed they have been much more lenient in that aspect of the rules.)

Yeah, that's the problem but see that is the Hikikomori and NEET lifestyle. (although the person in this post I would categorize more as a parasite single because of his extreme form of leeching although generally we all seem that way to outsiders)

I can't justify to you though how there is very little difference but my family provides for me. (They don't want to throw me out on the streets in my case) ...but it is as you said, it does not teach autonomy however that's kind of another catch 22 with it too.

Most of the culture or the people aren't very autonomous generating. I for example never learned to cook or wash my clothes for a very long time even before I was a hikikomori. In my case though, it's not so much of an excuse which is why I am a hikikomori as much as I failed to run away or commit suicide and eventually my lack of skills makes it more convenient for me to choose the provided lifestyle instead of constantly running away at least until the internet dies out.

As you spread that out to multiple personalities, some will do it in such a way that they have a home business and provide for their family (I have no knowledge of that unfortunately especially as I don't have an account.) Then there's people like in that article that abuses it almost to the point that it sounds like a psycho movie.

The little difference though comes from the sense of satisfaction. Many hikikomories just like people who provide for their families while living with them all fall into the spectrum that there is at least two people in that relationship that is satisfied: the provider and the person who stays connected to a family and the most common social chain link for this is the concept of Amae at least for the Japanese.

Potential related video as far as incentive is concerned:

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=qu7ZpWecIS8

It is for the most part but sometimes in a volatile economy as Japan or any poor country where it's much less practicable to live paying for your own needs (i.e. in the Philippines there are married couples that don't get married because of poverty but live in together) it's not as clear cut as it is.

Family culture is also linked to this. In America or Europe I think, it's much more common to leave your parents where as in Asian countries it's much more respectful and kind to live and provide for your family.

Same as my last post but in more detailed software form:

http://www.osaka-gu....Opt980607/eTR-1.html

Note: I didn't really test the actual program.