Sorry we’ve been so quiet lately. We didn’t know when we be able to diagnose let alone fix things, and then, when we started thinking about shutting down, we wanted to be sure before we said anything.

We lost the hunger

The main problem we’ve been facing is that none of us were passionate about Newshutch anymore. Yes, the move to Joyent has been problematic¹, but we’re glad it was because it forced us to face facts.

I sincerely believe that scrappy upstarts can upset and displace entrenched competitors. If we’ve learned nothing else from the last ten years it’s that creative destruction is alive and well.²

However, the key ingredient for the underdog is passion. We started working on Newshutch in early 2006 because we were scratching an itch. Like email clients, RSS clients make more sense as web applications. At the time the only big web based reader was Bloglines, and it remains unbelievably hideous to this day. These days however, to meaningfully compete with Google Reader, AND Bloglines, AND who knows how many other RSS readers, we’d have to do nothing else but work on Newshutch, and frankly, it wouldn’t be worth it. The problem of developing a usable web based RSS reader has been reasonably solved, so we’d rather pour ourselves into new projects where we could make a bigger impact.

No regrets

We thought it would be emotionally hard to shut down what we’d worked so hard on, but instead it’s liberating. Now we’re free to find new things to work on that will be even better than Newshutch.

One of the things that bothers me about Newshutch and other readers is that they?re great at hitting you with tons of information, but I’d rather be hit with the right information. Better still, I’d rather have tools to help me create things. Whatever we work on next will place a higher value on creation than consumption.

Another reason shutting down feels right is that it doesn’t feel like failure. We set out to make a newsreader that didn’t suck and we succeeded. Even better, we learned more about technology, design, project management, customer service, and business in one year than we would have in ten years at a normal job. At a typical job you’ve got an army of system administrators, marketers, and project managers, to back you up and nobody takes the heat when things go wrong. When you’re responsible for a live application from top to bottom you get smarter faster.

Even if you know you’ll fail (and you should always assume that you will) you should still try to build a product for yourself. Looking back it was almost hubris to attempt to build a newsreader (they’re very resource intensive), in Rails (Doug was a Java guy), with just two people, but we’re glad we did. We may have failed but what we’ve learned more than offsets any sting of failure.

What’s next?

Newshutch will shut down on November 10th. Before then, we’ll begin shutting down pieces of functionality until only OPML feed list export and account management remain. That should be enough time for you to migrate to other feed readers.³ The Newshutch blog will remain up indefinitely and we hope that you’ll stay subscribed to it because we’ve got a few more posts coming on the joys and pitfalls of building a web service. Also, we’ll announce future projects on the Newshutch blog (and at nathanbowers.com). Micah has already launched a new personal productivity service called Making the Chain, so be sure to check it out.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who complained about, contributed to, commented on, and used Newshutch. That’s another hidden benefit to starting your own web service, you hear from all sorts of people, and usually they’re pretty cool. We’d still love to hear from you, so if any of you have ideas about what we should do with our codebase, or what you’d like to see us work on next, fire away in the comments.

1. Joyent is a fine company with good service, but they weren’t right for us. This issue deserves its own post, but the bottom line is that Newshutch was too resource intensive for the three Accelerator slices we had, but to get enough Accelerators we’d end up paying more than we did for dedicated hosting. We weren’t in the Joyent sweet spot. If you start small with Joyent and scale up organically, that works fine. If you’re Twitter and have huge scaling needs and budget to match, also fine. If you are already up and running somwhere else, think long and hard before pulling up stakes to move to a new environment. Risking a move like that was a horrible decision on our part, but on the other hand I’m glad we did it because it forced us to make a decision about our future.
2. See also: The entertainment industry vs. Apple, Detroit vs. Japan, IBM vs. Microsoft, Yahoo vs. Google, The Pony Express vs. the telegraph, etc…
3. I still don’t really like any of the other readers out there. Google Reader seems to have the best functionality, but it’s just so damn ugly! Content viewed in a feed reader should be even easier to read than the feed publishers’ website, but every other web based feed reader botches design and typography so badly that it’s invariably worse. If I was Google I’d drive a cargo container of cash to 37signals’ or Dan Cederholm’s offices and say “Congrats, you’re the new EVP of UI at Google.” Since that probably won’t happen, your best bet is probably to use Google Reader with Jon Hicks’ theme.

We had more downtime than expected yesterday and today as we moved to a new host. But we’re up now. We’ll post more about the move to Joyent after a few days of experience with it.

Here are Micah (left) and Doug at the front desk of the belly of the beast. It was a treat to eat pizza on Bill Gates’ dime.

The event was 45 minutes of socializing, an hour of 4 presentations, then 45 minutes of socializing and shop talk.

Ron Evans talked about MERB, a way of speeding up resource intensive Ruby applications running on Mongrel. This pricked our ears because speed and scalability is still a big concern with Ruby on Rails.

Woody Pewitt (above) gave the requisite Microsoft presentation. I expected a presentation on VisualStudio or something more “developery”, but instead he talked about Silverlight. It wouldn’t be a Microsoft demo without a product falling over; Woody had to login to a Silverlight demo site via Passport, but Passport wouldn’t cooperate. That aside, Woody ran a tight demo and is smart and friendly.

Woody and his boss (I can’t recall his name) were great guys, and hey, free pizza, though they definitely fit the profile of “product evangelists”. I asked Woody’s boss the following question: “How does Microsoft plan to reach out to young web developers building the next big thing when the cost of the Microsoft development stack presents a signifigant hurdle.” The answer was along the lines of “We’ll offer VisualStudio Express” (i.e. crippleware). Hmm. I’m sure the Microsoft stack is the best product for developing most Windows desktop software, but Microsoft is mostly irrelevant at the leading edge of web development. It’s terrible to lose that leading edge because the young people building hot stuff today will start in the free and open source world and they’ll tend to stay there.

If you’re looking for a day job or startup project I’d recommend these types of Meetups. During open floor announcements people talked about their projects and the type of developers they need. Casual events like this - instead of big junket style conferences - are a great filter because just showing up on your own time signals that you’re a passionate developer or tech employer.

I’m happy to announce that our friend Micah is now a member of the Newshutch team. Some other things are in the works, but the main thing is that you can expect the pace of Newshutch development to pick up. Stay tuned for updates.

If you want to meet Doug, Micah, and me in person, we’ll be at these web developer meetups in downtown Los Angeles on June 13th:

• http://web.meetup.com/34/
• http://ruby.meetup.com/84/

Newshutch user Tim Curran has written a Windows script that polls Newshutch and lets you know if there’s anything new. Thanks Tim!

Finally, I’ve launched a new personal blog at nathanbowers.com. It’s mostly about technology, product design, and business.

A venture capital firm called today. It turns out that we’re not quite hot enough for VC investment yet.

VC: “So we typically invest in companies with at least $500,000 in quarterly revenues…”

Me: “HA!”

Though I won’t be buying a Porche and an eight ball tonight, the call was productive. The partner I talked to was friendly and informative. He said that we should get seed or angel rounds of funding then talk to VCs.

It was nice of them to call though. We must be doing something right if we look expensive enough for a reasonably well known VC to call us up unsolicited.

I do feel like it might be time for us to seek investment to take us to the next level. Having to worry about consulting and day jobs is like driving around with your parking brake on.

9 out of 10 doctors agree, the Newshutch ad placement sucks.

Clearly the main problem is that it takes up a lot of real estate that can’t be reclaimed by scrolling. After using Newshutch today I started to feel the same pain as everyone else. Your eyes scan the bottom of what you’re scrolling, but that static chunk stops you like a brick wall. The result is tension and awkwardness with how your eyes flow over the page.

We did test this before rolling it out, but we fell into the gap between testing a feature and really living with it. Newshutch’s strength is readability; anything that hinders readability must go.

That being said, we’d like to offset our hosting costs. Having two dedicated boxes isn’t cheap. Here are some questions we’d like you the users to help us with:

• Does anybody have experience running an app like Newshutch on a shared grid host like Media Temple grid server or Joyent Accelerator? Our bandwidth and storage needs are small. Newshutch’s overhead is in CPU cycles for parsing feeds and reading/writing them to the database.
• What about charging for an ad free version? What fee structure would be appropriate?
• What if we licensed customized versions of Newshutch?
• Doug and Nathan are always for hire. With more contract work we wouldn’t feel the pinch of hosting costs as much.
• Assuming that ads are a must, where should they go? Here are some options others have come up with:
  • In between every nth post, and at the end of a post with fewer unread items. Does anyone think it’s weird to drop our own ads in between the posts of a publisher’s feed?
  • Under the feed list on the left. The problem with this is that any “skyscraper” style ad wouldn’t work in “scroll panes independently” mode.
  • Only on the “welcome” page. The problem with this is that advertisers won’t pay as much for this kind of placement.
  • At the top of the page. I’d rather not, any opinions?

In the short term we’ll kill the big banner to free up some space so everyone can breathe again. Longer term we’ll take your ideas on how we can make ads not suck or do without them.

Annie Choi, long time friend of Doug and I, has written a hilarious memoir about growing up Korean in the San Fernando Valley. Annie and I grew up several blocks apart and now she’s a published author living in New York.

She’s got some readings coming up in Los Angeles (I’ll be at this one so say hi if you see me), New York, and Boston. See Annie’s blog for more about the book and tour.

We added some things and fixed some things:

• Added “test driving” for new users. Now you don’t have to sign up to start using Newshutch, though you will have to sign up to make sure your account stays alive.
• Fixed the annoying Safari scrolling slowness. It turns out Safari has a hard time when there are many items with CSS semi transparency. The “mark read” buttons on each post were the problem.
• Moved the instructions for hotkeys and adding feeds to a new header link, “Tips and Hotkeys”.
• There were other fixes and backend updates too numerous to mention here.
• We will now be accepting advertising, so we’re pitching it on the “welcome” page. We promise to keep any ads we accept neat and dignified. If anyone has any comments or suggestions for how we handle advertising, let us know.

Update: I forgot to mention that under the “manage” tab you can now rename feeds and see if they are stale.

Two weeks ago Micah and I went to Palo Alto for StartupSchool (Flickr photos). I’ll spare you a detailed recap of the event since you can get links to notes, transcripts, and audio at the StartupSchool Wiki, but here are some personal observations:

• Mitch Kapor is the world’s coolest and perhaps most virtuous tech entrepreneur. He talked as cheerfully about his failures as he did his successes. The short list of his achievements: Lotus 1-2-3, co-founded the EFF, founded the Open Source Applications Foundation, chairs the Mozilla Foundation. The main point of his talk is that startups tend to believe that they are meritocracies (“we only hire smart people”) when in fact they are “mirrortocracies” (“we only hire young techies that think exactly like us”).
• Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, is like a Bizarro Kapor. Zuckerberg’s message was that everyone in a startup must be young, technical, and unattached to family or friends. Tellingly, he was reluctant to talk about Facebook’s shortcomings or difficulties.
• For the first time I wanted a GPS navigator. We got lost twice: once when we took the 99 instead of the 5 north, and once on the way to SuperHappyDevHouse when I missed Sand Hill Road on El Camino. This was embarrassing since Sand Hill Road is both noteworthy and the major cross street of our hotel.
• Wikis are a great way to organize the peripheral ecosystem of a conference. This year the YCombinator Friday night meet and greet with free beer and Trevor Blackwell’s robots was invite only, so people met up by posting stuff to do on the official and non-official wikis.

After StartupSchool we rolled to SuperHappyDevHouse (Flickr photos) which was an informal gathering of many techies in a big house north of Palo Alto. People were demoing projects, coding, talking shop, and having beers. This event was so good that Micah and I resolved to start an Los Angeles sister HappyDevHouse, so if you’re interested, say so in the comments.

Thoughts on Palo Alto and Silicon Valley:

• You need a car to get around. It’s suburbia, not San Francisco.
• The Stanford Park Hotel is fantastic. Come for the bathrobes, stay for the concerige service, late night complimentary coffe with cookies, free wifi, and eggs benedict.
• Scott’s Seafood: also fantastic.
• Silicon Valley contains a fantastic amount of wealth, but it’s not overt like it is in other cities. It’s more of a “still waters run deep” kind of thing.

How to have a great road trip:

• Bring a great copilot/iPod DJ like Micah.

I’m in Palo Alto with Micah for Startupschool this weekend. If you are in Startupschool or Palo Alto I’d love to meet a Newshutch user in person, so say hi or send me an email.

There are lots of developer gatherings this weekend. I’m really looking forward to meetings other tech heads. Being in the bay area makes the dearth of tech in LA pretty obvious, though I guess we make up for it in rock stars and underfed hipsters.

The warning:

I’m writing this post to warn everyone about the horrible experience I had with the domain name registrar Registerfly. If you have any domain names registered with them, stop reading this blog and transfer to a reputable registrar right now.

Top reasons Registerfly sucks:

• Nonexistent and/or incompetent support
• Unreliable DNS and MX administration
• UNBEARABLY bad administrative interface (slow, hangs, random logouts, terrible design)

The story:

Newshutch suffered some downtime this weekend due to a complete screwup by our registrar, Registerfly. I’ve used Registerfly for several years based on a good recommendation, and for most of that time they were fine. Unfortunately you don’t usually think about your registrar until something goes wrong.

On Friday afternoon I started getting notices from Uptime that Newshutch was down, then up, then down again. For me, www.newshutch.com was working just fine. Finally Doug emailed to tell me that newshutch.com was down and www.newshutch.com was working sporadically.

That’s when we realized that our registrar’s DNS records were broken. When we migrated to our new servers several weeks ago we had set “A” (for “Address”) records to resolve to our IP address like so: “*.newshutch.com A [ip]”. On Friday Registerfly decided to start interpreting the “*” as a literal asterisk instead of a wild card, even though it worked correctly in the past. The only thing I could do was create an “A” record for “www.newshutch.com”; there was no way to create a record for “newshutch.com”, so it remained dead.

“Ok fine, I’ll just get in touch with Registerfly support…” I thought. As of today, our support tickets from January 6th are STILL unanswered. I called support several times and got busy signals. Finally I did get through and had the pleasure of listening to dreadful hold music for 58 minutes. Finally some guy answered, but communication was difficult thanks to his heavy accent, the loud din of his bullpen, and what I assume was shoddy trans-global VOIP. I could not make the support guy understand my problem. He kept putting me on hold, presumably to talk to someone on his end with expertise, and then he’d ask me to try something that would fail. Finally I gave up and decided to transfer to a new registrar.

If you Google “Registerfly” many of the top results are sites about how incompetent and/or crooked Registerfly is. I prefer to assume total incompetence instead of malice, but that doesn’t mean they get a second chance.

We’ve been having some trouble with our DNS provider this weekend. We’ll let you know when it’s resolved.

We should be back up. It may take a while for DNS to propagate, so until then we’re redirecting from our old host to the ip address of our new host.

Tomorrow, December 16th, we will be down while migrating to a new host. Hopefully you will be outside getting fresh air instead of checking news feeds

We’ll be back up ASAP.

Sorry for the downtime today, the hard drive in our web server died. That server always was flaky, it would totally lock up every 2-3 weeks and require a hard reboot. An iffy hard drive could have been the reason for that flakiness, but it’s hard to say when you don’t physically have the machine in front of you.

Our hosting company took about 3 hours (grrr…) to get a new hard drive in. After that, Doug worked like mad to restore everything. Our database server was fine so we didn’t have to restore backups.

Thanks to Doug for a heroic Saturday afternoon save, and thanks to everyone for your patience.