On a mac, so can't verify - but if it's an Arabic character, seems plausible that Windows just shifts to right-to-left mode, which can sometimes cause some quirks when trying to delete the first/last character, etc.

Maybe the YC startups are the products? :)

Quasi Meta Product Product

I am curious if it's satisfying to become an investor like Paul Graham, because that's a dream job I'm hoping to work in myself some day too.

I'd be happy to read :)

Sounds interesting! Would love some more details.

I got an old Craftman garage motor. It has the torque I'm looking for. I got a LifeGear rowing machine on Craigslist for $50. I like this one because the seat and track is used for the leg exercise, moving the leg back and forth. The extra arm and pullies I use for the arm exercise, using her good arm to move the other arm. That way, both arms are getting exercise. The base is built out of 3 in. PVC pipes. Since she's only 115 pounds, it's more than enough to hold her weight. And PVC are super easy to work with. Using a Raspberry Pi and a Gertboard to control the motor, I can set how far back and forth to move the leg assembly. My next step is to hook the Raspberry Pi to an iPod and let my mom control the speed and duration of the exercise.

Nicely done! Love the b&w look.

What do the different colors represent on the map?

Thanks! We've tried hard :) That would be genres colours. We're still trying to figure out the best way to explain this

I was somewhat involved in two projects, one which was a physical object (but no electronics) that failed on Kickstarter, the other had electronics but was abandoned before even reaching Kickstarter.

So while I can't comment on how to succeed, at least I could offer some insights on how to fail ;)

First of all - it's hard. I'm not saying software is easy, but it's harder to pull off a HW project with just a couple of hours on the weekends. It's also much more expensive. The two projects I was referring to failed because the team just couldn't allocate enough time to really push it forward. By the time the Kickstarter campaign launched, everyone was already exhausted, and just didn't have enough "juice" left to push the marketing portion.

But enough about failures, let's talk hardware development.

Note on the Memoto page how their working prototype looks. It's a whole bunch of different boards linked together with cables. That's a good way to start - you can find many "evaluation boards" for pretty much any component you could think of. In this case, they have a camera board, a GPS board, a processor board and an antenna all hobbled together.

Evaluation boards cost much more than the actual component (could be ~$100 for a EVB of a component that costs just pennies), but it's still much much cheaper than developing a custom pcb.

So you order what you need, and make it work. Than, it's just a matter of shrinking it down, and cost reduction. You either hire some freelance engineer who will take all the schematics of all the EVB's you're using, and redesign just the portions you need (normally you'll just be using a small subset of each EVB), or (depending on the overall size, etc.) you could find a couple of tiny modules you just need to connect with a smaller custom pcb. It's always a good idea to browse alibaba.com, and many of the vendors there will even modify their products to you if the order is large enough.

After you have the working prototype, but before you start spending money on shrinking it down, you may want to get an industrial designer to do a mockup of how the product will look. When you have a working prototype and a mockup, you can get funding (Kickstarter, for example).

Note, that investors (via Kickstarter or not) will want to know exactly how much it will cost to manufacture, so you have to do all the design and manufacture "leg work", just to get the numbers right. This is rather tedious, but a necessity.

Awesome! Thanks a lot. This was helpful.

I had not heard of some of that for sure.

Two things to note here -

1. The concept of "blackface" does not exist in Israel.

2. Looking at the picture, it was taken at the Dead Sea - where people go to put black, mineral rich mud all over their body (faces include). So this wasn't even someone pretending to be black, it was just someone putting mud on his face, taking a picture, than making a lame (private?) joke when uploading to Facebook.

Not only a non-HN story, but also just a non-story.

Your pricing table says "Number cards", which should probably be "Number of cards" or "Quantity".

I must say that putting a gmail address looks unprofessional and make me think twice. Why not put some contact form? And you can easily make your own "@cheergram.com" email address.

I'll fix that wording in the pricing table, thanks.

If you really think an @cheergram email is better I'll do it

I've been working on http://experimatch.com - a site for matching academic researchers with potential test subjects. Most researchers resort to posting flyers around campus, thus missing on a lot of people who are willing to participate for compensation (that is offered anyway). Already being used around London, and slowly growing.

I have experienced the same, but after updating raspbmc to RC5 it runs just fine.