TheBurningOr

A few weeks back there was an article submitted on here by a guy who had a book-related app that he had been working on and had given it a substantial facelift with a few simple changes. I've spent the better part of the last half hour searching Evernote, Instapaper and Google to try and find the article, but to no avail. Does anyone on here recall the article and/or link?

Does anyone in the HN community use the old paradigm of the beta tester? That is, do you have a select group of tech-savvy, early-adopter, high-feedback users that you use to test new features or new products? OR do you just throw a MVP out there and A/B test every iteration on all your users.

The discussion earlier today about 'toxic clients' got me thinking that the reverse could be true too and that there could be a class of, we'll call them 'gem clients,' who not only use your product with minimum fuss, telling their friends how great it is, but who also provide valuable feedback and suggestions? It seems to me the idea of a beta-tester still has value in-so-far as you can use it to get these high quality users early on, lowering the feature-set and polish necessary for a product to be minimally viable and providing real-world feedback at an earlier stage in your product development.

So how do you get those customers to adopt your platform? Where do they come from? Are they as valuable as my musings think?

I am a mostly-self taught developer, trying to develop my skills and it seems quite clear that getting involved with open-source projects is probably the best way to go about doing that, but I am never really sure where to start. I have accounts on the major OSS hosting systems and have checked out the code for a few projects I like, but beyond that, I feel kind of lost. Most OSS projects appear to me to be either abandoned, barely maintained, or so complex that I'm never even sure where to start. Does anyone here have any pointers or advice for starting off with programming OSS?

After reading all the articles on here, Lifehacker and the New York Times, I got a standing desk a few weeks ago. Actually, it is just a kitchen island table I got from Ikea, but I love it and it works great for me. I feel more energetic, clear-headed and my back doesn't kill me anymore.

There is only one problem: My feet kill me. Even after a few weeks of it, my heels hurt like anything. I generally work from home, so I prefer to be barefoot if I can, but perhaps I should get a mat to stand on? or purchase some running shoes or something else super comfortable.

Any advice?