Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

What do you think made Picplum go the route of the consumer needing an account?

As apposed to me just sending Picplum the customer's information, and having the hard work (printing, mailing, etc.) be handled for me.



You've upset my entire worldview by using the phrase "as apposed to". I started off planning to say that 'apposed' is not a word, and that you've made some sort of grievous error. I opened up multiple tabs, firing off google searches looking for a "common errors" page or at least a definition of "opposed" and the google page redirecting a search for "apposed" to it -- but then your counterstroke hit.

Google returned "apposed" just fine, and gave its definition as "Place (something) in proximity to or juxtaposition with something else."

Didn't faze me. "Google must just be reporting the error because it's crept into common usage", I told myself. I went deeper.

Brian's corner of common errors speaks to this briefly[1], but in the context of saying "I appose your decision", not in the context of the idiom. It also mentions "as a pose to" where "as opposed to" is intended, and assumes "opposed" instead of "apposed"[2].

I wandered into english-usage-debate forums and found that 'apposed' is disliked for being rare, but not disallowed[3], and an interesting bit of discussion came up about intentionally chosen differences[7] -- which do seem detectable in the modern definitions: "place beside", versus "place against". I also found discussion about british/american meanings for "as opposed to" [4].

The online etymology dictionary ([5] and [6]) says that since the 14th and 15th century, these have been marginally separately derived words of ... roughly identical meaning.

To sum up, through redundancy 'apposed' seems to have fallen out of favour in contemporary english and taken on a nuanced definition to some of those who still use it. If there were something for me to criticize about your usage it would be that you've chosen a sentence that leans more toward "place against" than "place beside", so the contemporary idiom to use "oppose" would likely apply. But I think you could justify it if you want to. :)

[1] http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/appose.html

[2] http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/more.html

[3] http://www.essayforum.com/grammar-usage-13/as-opposed-as-app...

[4] http://www.englishforums.com/English/AsOpposedTo/hkvbq/post....

[5] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=oppose

[6] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=appose

[7] http://www.englishforums.com/English/AsOpposedToOrAsApposedT...

edit: I messed up the references pretty badly on my initial take.


Thank you for both pointing that out and doing so in such an a well researched way.

For the record, I would tend to agree with 'opposed', this was me just writing with my ears. :)


Thanks for clarifying that, I saw the original comment and wondered the same thing myself.


Definitely, white labeling this is the way to go. Plenty of apps could use a feature like this, but would be much more ideal if it appeared to be all a part of that app to the end user.


Same thoughts. I feel my users would really be confused.


Billing. I can imagine if you incur costs for physical manufacture (printing photos), you would want to be very sure that you're going to get paid.


that risk can be mitigated by having the API customer (say, an iPhone app developer) buy API credits that are exchanged at the time of API call between the app and picplum. Then it's the app developer's job to collect payment from their app user and PicPlum won't get burned.


Or when a user signs up for our app we have them sign up for Picplum in the background, when they buy credits it goes through picplum in the background and the same for when they use the credits?


It'd be best to be transparent about that handoff rather than just silently doing it in the background, but yeah, that would also work.


+1




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: