It's interesting: when I look back on my life so far, I don't feel like my path has been messed up significantly because of any particular piece of advice.
There were times in my life where acting on a particular bit of advice kept me from getting what I wanted. Those were frustrating times. But those times caused me to learn to deal with being frustrated; to stop and reflect on why I was reacting with such emotion.
There were times when the advice that I received was unclear, which made it easy for my motivation-to-follow to falter. I would waste time and not get homework done. Familiarity with a topic would grow more faint and my class performance would show it. And then I started to learn how to best use my time to learn the material. (In small groups, using multiple forms of engagement; reading/writing/speaking/listening)
The advice that, on-balance, seemed least helpful at the time:
* "such-and-such will happen when you least expect it"
* "don't ever give up"
* "don't run with scissors"
But in later reflection these lead me to different conclusions about these same items:
* The advisor understands that you're in pain, but really likes who you are when you're not moping. They're trying to help you get there, but they're not sure how.
* Admitting defeat is OK, and you can change focus (pivot) without stopping (giving up) entirely. This is a loophole. Use it.
* This has always been a good idea. Still is.
The advice I would offer would be to use advice wisely. Don't follow it blindly; reflect often, and be adaptable.
Great job learning a language (and an infrastructure) with such speed!
I've been building something with a similar aim on and off for a long time now, and it's neat to see in the comments that there are at least three others already out there.
I wonder if there is something that will lead to more widespread awareness/adoption of sites like these. Or are we better off trying to pick a target market smaller than [all book readers]?
Some good food for thought as I try and finally finish my own entrant into the space.
Having only just launched I don't know what the market looks like. I strongly suspect that the site will end up gravitating towards one kind of user. But who knows! 22books.com (mentioned below) gets used by quite a lot of school teachers so there are plenty of niches out there.
Let me know how you get on - happy to share thoughts :)
Even cooler is if you did manage to find a Madagascar that hadn't developed any widespread variant of its own either, you'd have the chance to design and introduce it. It'd be a neat social hack.
That's an interesting algorithmic problem. Assuming that you knew the structure of ad-hoc networks in terms of wifi range in a smallish region (for example, by wardriving in a dense urban area), you could pick geographical regions to target for introducing your local "adhoc network meme", which would just involve standing in strategically placed locations broadcasting that ad-hoc network SSID. That would vary with the geographical distribution of WinXP computers in the region. I think the whole social hack could be doable with detailed wifi maps of a region and a laptop. Wonder how much work it would be to implement.
I'd expect they use the data in aggregate to figure out what sizes of clothing to stock where to keep latency and transportation lower.
It doesn't seem that much of their variable cost would get shaved off by already having one's measurements, which makes me think this wouldn't help them with a lowest-price strategy. Maybe a higher-end market focus.
But as other have already said: body size data can be expected to expire often. I'm an edge case, but my weight has oscillated between 195 and 165 a few times in the last year.
One of the most difficult things to do is to create an effective mechanical way of measuring that student has learned the subject matter.
Naturally for some subjects it is more straightforward than others, but the problem is still challenging on balance.
Early childhood development requires a lot of psychological growth, in addition to knowledge growth. Abstract thought is not always acquired at different rates, and recognizing its emergence isn't very deterministic.
A solely software-based system also requires that the user provide honest input. It's hard to diagnose a lying patient.
Some parts intuition, some parts adaptability.
As the ability of software to handle these tasks improves, it will surely become a larger part of the equation. I don't think it will replace live humans in my lifetime though.
Claiming it is an Apple product in such a case is probably a bad idea.