Posterous Blog

swombat, thanks for the suggestion!

Hm, I'll whip something up and post back here when it's ready (hopefully in the next hour).

====================

UPDATE: It's taking a little longer since I'd like to get some really slick syntax highlighting going. It's 3:25 am and I'm still recovering from a cold so I'm going to call it a night, but expect an update on the Posterous blog tomorrow: http://blog.posterous.com

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UPDATE 2: I couldn't sleep, so I kept working on it. I've just popped an early version of it live for you to try out. All you have to do is surround your code block with the following tags:

[code]
your code here
[/code]

Additionally, if you want to get fancy, you can specify a language with the following syntax:

[code lang='java']
public static boolean isAwesome = true;
[/code]

This should work for both through the web interface and through the email interface.

The available list of languages is:
'cpp', 'c', 'c++', 'c#', 'c-sharp', 'csharp', 'css', 'delphi', 'pascal', 'java', 'js', 'jscript', 'javascript', 'php', 'py', 'python', 'ruby', 'rails', 'ror', 'sql', 'vb', 'vb.net', 'xml', 'xhtml', 'xslt', 'html', 'xhtml'

Current known issues: HTML formatting might be a little spotty at the moment. Will be fixing asap. I also see some intermittent errors where the code isn't getting properly recognized.

Please report any bugs to me at garry@posterous.com. Thanks for all the support and ideas. Please do keep the feature ideas…

is it only me or there is a (just one) line of code gone wrong on ed's comment handling server?

{"post_id":131434793,"html":"\u003Cdiv class='p_response_container' style='display:none;'\u003E\n\u003Cheader class='clearfix'\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"http://edweissman.com/it-takes-6-days-to-change-1-line-of-code\ class=\"p_view_all_link\"\u003EView All 16\u003C/a\u003E\n\u003Ch1\u003EMost Recent Responses\u003C/h1\u003E\n\u003C/header\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class='p_responses_list clearfix' data-posterous-responses-container\u003E\n\u003Carticle class='p_comment p_response' style='display:none;'\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class='p_info'\u003E\n\u003Cspan class='p_icon'\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\n\u003Ctime pubdate='1337295601'\u003E14 minutes ago\u003C/time\u003E\n\u003Ca href=\"http://tomakefast.com\\u003EPJ Brunet\u003C/a\u003E responded:\n\u003C/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class='p_comment_body'\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class='p_profile_photo'\u003E\n\u003Cimg alt=\"\" src=\"/images/profile/missing-user-35.png?1337287723\" /\u003E\n\u003C/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class='p_comment_text'\u003E\nHilarious, I love it.\n\u003C/div\u003E\n\u003C/div\u003E\n\u003Cul class='p_action_links'\u003E\n\u003C/ul\u003E\n\n\u003C/article\u003E\n\n\u003Carticle class='p_comment p_response' style='display:none;'\u003E\n\u003Cdiv class='p_info'\u003E\n\u003Cspan class='p_icon'\u003E\u003C/span\u003E\n\u003Ctime pubdate='1337296138'\u003E5 minutes ago\u003C/time\u003E\nkkudi responded:\n\u003C/div\u003E\n\u003Cdiv…

The author, Mark Hughes, is correct in his write-up and comes up with a few suggested scenarios where it would be "ideal". Unfortunately for Color those ideal situations where a critical mass makes the app useful are few and far between. How could Color have demonstrated themselves better? Maybe by launching a SXSW where a tech savvy and experimental crowd would give it a go, see the benefit, and continue on using it. Come to think about it, that is exactly what Twitter did. Now, imagine if twitter launched like Color did. You are posting with no followers, no one you knows sees any reason to use it so your feed is empty. Now add that you are anonymous, can't "follow" anyone, and wait until some random stranger in your vicinity post something but meanwhile your stream is empty. That's Color.

Oh, and as for the group event image sharing thing... didn't Posterous launch Events at SXSW? Yes they did (and for $41m less). http://blog.posterous.com/introducing-posterous-for-events-a-place-for

There is a rash of this kind of marketing I see cropping up on Hacker News, marketing which promotes one company while badmouthing another. We saw it from Posterous, Adioso, and now DuckDuckGo.

* Adioso vs. Bing: http://blog.adioso.com/sorry-bing-adioso-is-still-the-worlds-only-na

* Posterous vs. Tumblr (and others): http://blog.posterous.com/hey-tumblr-users-got-comments-want-video-grad

Setting aside whether or not you want to be perceived as cutthroat or just straight-up douchey, the real question is whether or not this the most effective spin.

I think it might be better just to talk about how great privacy is at DuckDuckGo, perhaps in comparison to other search engines in general.

DDG calling out Google individually, Adioso calling out Bing individually, or in the case of Posterous, calling out other startups, isn't how I would play the game.

Here are my thoughts on registration forms:

You should always have absolute minimum number of fields required to start using the service.

Don't have any optional fields (there are plenty of better places to ask for that information).

If there is information required to use certain parts of the service then ask for it when they want to use that part.

http://tumblr.com and http://posterous.com examples of this. I'm actually a fan of the single password input too... I implemented a similar form recently: http://hellohype.com/accounts/register, only with a username field instead of a url field.

I'm not a big fan of going to the extreme of Instapaper though. They don't require a password at all, so a malicious user can access and modify another user's account.

I thought Matt Mullenweg, WordPress founder, left a great comment on the "top 5 reasons to switch from WordPress post" at http://blog.posterous.com/top-5-reasons-to-switch-from-wordpress-to-pos that clearly communicated his commitment to serving his customers.

"Do you mean WordPress.org or WordPress.com in this post? The graphic
isn't entirely accurate for either, but would be best to specify. Also,
if you get a chance, WordPress usually has a capital P if you wouldn't
mind fixing that up.

Also, do you guys still support posting to WP? I sent a few people your way
including Jason Calacanis before we had our own email feature, but I can't
find info about that on the site anymore.