I second that. I think the best/easiest way to learn CSS is just to have a project that needs to be accomplished and get started. You'll be really slow, but you'll learn what you need as you go.
So, copyright law doesn't care whether you scraped the data or acquired in some other way. That is, either you can use the information under copyright law, or you can't. If you can't use it, then getting it through some method other than scraping won't help you -- and if you can use it, then scraping won't change the legality.
So you need to make sure there isn't a copyright violation, which is going to depend on the specific information you're looking at.
There's still a potential problem, though, unrelated to copyright. After eBay v. Bidder's Edge, it can be trespass to chattels to scrape data in violation of a site's TOS. In the eBay case, the court held that it was in violation of trespass law because the eBay TOS prohibited robots... so it would have been fine if Bidder's Edge had taken the data manually.
Basically, you need to make sure the data isn't copyrighted, and you need to make sure that scraping the data isn't in violation of the site's TOS.
I really enjoyed "The Goal" as an audiobook. It makes a good audiobook because it's structured as a novel. Definitely one of my favorite business books.
(it's nominally about running a manufacturing plant, but I think a lot of the takeaways apply just as well to startups)
In another post they had an interview with one of the researchers - apparently each of the test persons who comes in should have a goal (one of them was learning a new language). So this might not be so bad an idea after all.
1. Interface. Is there any way to rewrite it so that the user can just add tags naturally, and then let the program make suggestions? It's a bit frustrating to wait, after each term, for the program to search for the corresponding tag. If you could input your own tags, and then it could list an official suggestion beside each typed term, I think that might increase usability.
2. Very minor point, but the demo video should be easier to find. I could be alone in this, but I always try to poke around for one as the easiest way to quickly grasp a web app, and the link was buried at the bottom of the page.
Seems like a great app, though; the complete lack of structure for Delicious tags was always one of the things that stressed me about it.
Thanks for feedback!
1.I am aware of that problem, and i'm thinking about ways to make adding tags easer, like suggesting tags according to content. Your suggestion is interesting, I'll consider it definitely.
2. You're right. I added the link on the homepage
The problem there is that, even if it were possible, most people do not have the same astigmatism in both eyes... so which eye would you calibrate the monitor to correct for?
You made me google it; I had no idea those existed. At first sight, it looks like it should be able to do what you ask. Geez, it could even diagnose your (short|long)sightedness|astigmatism and recheck it every now and then.
Pretty sweet tech; I hope it gets commercially viable soon!
