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Marketing ideas for my book "The Geek Atlas" | ganley: I have no useful suggestions, but like @pchristensen, you had me halfway through the title. Most excellent idea. I'm reminded of an old Wired piece by Neal Stephenson entitled "Mother Earth, Mother Board" in which he talks about the 'hacker-tourist.' The only thing that could make it better is to suggest nearby non-geek attractions that I can use to sell the trips to my wife. :-) |
Marketing ideas for my book "The Geek Atlas" | davidw: I think the coolest things... actual maps, links to wikipedia, user comments from people who have been there, and so forth, might eat into sales of the book. |
Should I take the plunge? | lionhearted: One thing to consider: Lots of situations can wipe you out in cash (family member gets ill, you get ill or injured, new child born, etc) BUT if you go for it now, you'll know if your cashflow is good enough to keep going or if you have to get a new job. You seem qualified, intelligent, and responsibile: You should be able to find a job pretty quickly if the entrepreneurial thing doesn't work out.Faster you jump in, more likely you are to do it. There's tons of things that can come up to make jumping into the unknown a very bad idea. But right now, you can try your hand for 6-10 months and see where your cashflows are and if your business is growing. If it doesn't work, you've got 8-12 months to find a new job before you're broke.Also as an employer, trying your own hand in business is a huge plus on the resume. Staff that can think strategically/managerially are really cool to work with. You'll learn a hell of a lot on your own, you've got a long time to make things work, and then if something changes, you'll know if your biz is viable to support you and your family. |
Are you a Firefox Extension Developer? | thorax: More information on Tyba, I found on his blog:"The startup is Tyba and it’s a simple concept: You download a Firefox extension which allows you to rate web pages and append tags (a feature I like is that when you come from Google or Yahoo the search term is automatically sent with your rating). The rating and tagging is simple, done by clicking stars or using keyboard shortcuts. Then when you feel like it you can login in to the web interface and organize the links you’ve rated into groups. These groups become public and anyone can view them. The other Tyba users can follow your groups and you in turn can also follow other people’s groups. When you follow a group you can do two things, see when new links are added to them and you can search through them. It’s a bit like building your own search engine with the links you rate and the groups other people make. Right now all this functionality is there in its most basic form."I've developed a few Firefox extensions, though I'm not available to help as I'm driving my own company.What kind of platform-specific code does the extension use that makes it difficult to run cross-platform? I'm surprised it has problems because no extension I've ever coded required much more than visual tweaks across Mac/Windows/Linux. Some extensions clearly are tied to a platform, but from what is described here, I'm not seeing a piece that can't just be XUL/JS.Good luck, regardless! |
Which Functional Language to Implement for Learning? | qhoxie: Haskell is probably a good option. |
Which Functional Language to Implement for Learning? | kasharoo: Why don't you try Sche.... Oh. Never mind. |
Hacker stuff to do in Philadelphia? | apgwoz: I work in University City and don't really have any suggestions, except to take a trip to 33rd and Walnut and find the remaining pieces of ENIAC. I think it's on display in the Moore building.Other than that, there are some hackers in old city at Indy Hall, who are probably nice to visit with, but that's a subway ride away (only $2.60 round trip, get off at 2nd st, get on at 34th and market). |
Should I take the plunge? | MaysonL: Something you gave no mention of: what if any revenue is the site generating? Ads? Paid premium service? |
Review my webapp. | qhoxie: Two main positives:* The interface is incredibly slick* The API looks solidMy big question is, what sets this apart? |
Review my webapp. | siong1987: It's good to put a tag line under the logo. The first thing I always will look at is the tag line when I stumble upon a new web application.And, remove the small gap at the top of the page. Then, your UI will be near to be perfect. |
Review my webapp. | jcapote: Looks incredibly slick. I'd suggest making the signup process more instant (skip account creation altogether, or do it later). |
Review my webapp. | vulpes: One suggestion: bang out free iPhone app as soon as possible and get going on a gmail widget, and you will win doves of users that do not want to pay for RTM premium features (myself included) |
Review my webapp. | debt: Add the ability to drag and drop items on the list. Also, the app runs a bit slow. |
Review my webapp. | zacharye: The design is awesome, most definitely. My only comment that hasn't been covered is the tour page - I would much rather have a short video than scroll up and down to match numbers with their descriptions. Great work. |
Review my webapp. | teyc: Love the design. Did you do it yourself?1. OpenID?
2. How do I try without an account? |
Review my webapp. | rickharrison: I have been looking for an application like this for a while. However, as other people have stated, getting an iPhone app out there right now is crucial. Even if you charged a dollar or two for the app, I know I would snatch it up right away. Remember the milk premium is just too much for me to get the app.If you are looking for a partner in developing these widgets , please email me at rick AT rickharrison DOT me - I'd love to help you with these. |
Review my webapp. | izak30: First of all, looks good.I would suggest a few things:
Let me make a list w/o signing up. (check out how stack overflow does anonymous stuff..it's good.)
Don't tell me "there's no post-signup xxx" and then make me confirm my e-mail. (for that sake, don't make me confirm my e-mail, use oid or something, what's my e-mail really worth to you anyway?)
"You've been activated (hopefully)" -- Unsure your software works?
Don't make me login after I activated. This is three times I have to put my password in before I can use it.
What is the exclimation icon next to an item?
Advertising your competitors? are you sure?
How are items sorted? They're not draggable, but they don't seem to be in a instantly recognizable order either.
Could I get a hover state on the bin so I can tell that I'm going to commit to an action?
Could I undo the bin?Re: twitter. Here's the way I did it. 3 step process. first, you must follow me. second, input your twitter name on my site. Third, I send you a dm, you input the code to confirm, that's it, now you're tied.That's all I have at a quick glance. Looks good, with a good api, and a simple purpose. |
Review my webapp. | blakeperdue: Why do you ask my country? Why do you want to confirm my email? Just trust me... Don't make me go that extra step, it just puts up another wall for me to climb before I get to try your app. |
What do you consider "making it"? | rgiar: convergence; when i cease to have to ask myself which competing urgent task i will complete, i will finally have peace of mind. is it too much to ask to lead my own startup and have only one job?after that, i agree with others that it is nice be able to ignore money -- to me that again speaks to peace of mind. |
Review my webapp. | glenstein: Please, I don't want to have to sign up! |
Review my webapp. | bob_dole: The most beautiful useless webapp ever. seems like it does the same thing as tadalist |
Review my webapp. | lacker: There needs to be a tl;dr analog for "Takes too long to figure out what website did; didn't use." I proposetl;du |
Review my webapp. | whacked_new: I'm not in your target market, so this is just a 5 second impression. Again, good design. One glaring gripe, the tagline: "... may be free..."I don't understand why you put yourself on the defensive for your own product. It does not work in your favor at all. |
Are you a Firefox Extension Developer? | aupajo: I'll forward this on to a FF extension developer I know. |
Where to find freelance/contract iPhone work? | jdg: After my 4th app went into the store, I get e-mails all the time now. Release something fairly popular within its niche and the opportunities will start to come your way.In the meantime, just keep trawling the usual sites. e.g., 37signals job board etc. |
feedback on my startup? | vaksel: you should move the "how it works" link up top, because right now the whole thing is very confusing and the how it works link is way on the bottom, in a neutral color which you can barely see |
feedback on my startup? | gaika: Cool, that's exactly what I need, yet, even after skimming "how it works" page I'm still not sure. |
feedback on my startup? | mstefff: so it's analytics for a single page of content? why wouldn't i just use my regular analytics?i dont get it |
feedback on my startup? | staunch: Is this like an openly paid Digg or something? Needs more explanation. |
feedback on my startup? | unalone: It looks nice. That's a good start.I can't figure out what it is or why I should be interested. That's not good. But at least you've got the aesthetic look down. |
Scalable framework for web apps? | qhoxie: I'll give my top recommendation for each language you named. I have used all 3 of these with great success. I have also used competitors for each of them.* PHP - Kohana* Python - Django* Ruby - MerbI used many PHP frameworks a while back and eventually settled on CodeIgniter (which is very good). After Kohana spun off from CI, it began to gain advantages and has continued to.I've used Pylons and TurboGears before settling on Django. It's quite fast, and can be made faster when paired with psyco.I used Rails for a long time before approaching Merb. I have followed its development since shortly after the pastie that Ezra made of the initial code. Merb is making a lot of great choices and is and will be my framework of choice. |
feedback on my startup? | mbuchanan: It looks good and I bet it's very useful... but i don't understand it either. |
Review my webapp. | SapphireSun: I just took a look at the opening page, and it took me a few seconds to figure out what it was. The block of text in the center should have some sort of description of what the service is. |
feedback on my startup? | eterno: I spent half an hour going through the main links and the "how it works". I still have no clue what this site does and why should I use it. |
Review my webapp. | eterno: There was a time when "change the world" used to mean something. Go out and feed a few homeless,poor ppl, but please dont make the 1 millionth todo list app and claim to "change the world".Nice design though. |
feedback on my startup? | rksprst: Why would I pay to have my site linked to on your site? Do you have enough traffic?How is it sustainable? After a while, all the top sites would be paid and thus of no interest to users who visit your site. |
Scalable framework for web apps? | patio11: Scalability is the last thing you need to be worried about. Worry about the business model. If you get the business model right, and you have scalability problems (i.e. "Oh shucks there are too many people trying to pay me money!"), then you can just pay to get them resolved. |
feedback on my startup? | thomasswift: I think it's a pretty cool idea, good luck with it.Likes: I like when you X out of something it replaces the content, pretty smooth.Dislikes: the wording of the yep nope buttons, while it made me laugh because a yep nope is a mullet reference, but your site seems to be fun but still serious site(analytics)
Maybe: Yea / Nay | Yes / No | Advertiser / Visitor |
Scalable framework for web apps? | shutter: If you're looking for flexibility, give Pylons a shot. It's often paired with SQLAlchemy, which is an amazing ORM that can be configured to do a lot of things which will make scaling easier in the long run. (Whereas Django doesn't have multiple database support, for instance; SQLAlchemy can even handle sharded data transparently.) |
feedback on my startup? | grag: Not sure I understand either. Is this website supposed to be a destination where users go to find good content / entertainment? |
feedback on my startup? | gojomo: I like the model of mixing fully disclosed/transparent paid placement with another default noneconomic ranking. Goto.com won big with that and more recently Stumbleupon.The name Elephino is somewhat weak but might work if you had the domain 'elephino.com'. I have a hard time imagining people telling their friends that they visit 'el-eph-in-o-inc-dot-com', especially since all the Elephino syllables have multiple plausible alternate spellings. |
Scalable framework for web apps? | brianr: +1 for Pylons. We're currently serving around 20 million dynamic requests a day via pylons from a handful of servers; pylons probably won't be your bottleneck.What I like about it: python, promotes good code organization, relatively small code base (you can just read the source code if you're not sure how something works), and for the most part it stays out of your way. |
Scalable framework for web apps? | alexkay: If you absolutely need scalability and don't mind a Google lock-in, check out Google App Engine. It can run Django, app-engine-patch makes this extremely easy. |
feedback on my startup? | tontoa4: I like the idea, just needs to be refined |
feedback on my startup? | gills: It looks nice and behaves well, very clean. I couldn't immediately tell what value I would derive from using your service -- eventually found 'How it works' at the bottom. Maybe there's a way to make it painfully obvious for people like me.Using ul/li for your central list, instead of nested faceless spans, will make it a little more accessible too. |
Review my webapp. | slavingia: First thanks for the comments. I'm going to implement all of these changes shortly.I've turned off e-mail verification as many people have asked. I've also turned off Countries (seems a bit pointless and shouldn't have had it in the first place).A "sort by" UI element is in the works. It's almost ready but I need do add remembering the preference in the app (or you'll have to change it every time you refresh the page).Twitter is not fully completed, hence why it wasn't talked about. I'm creating a dedicated page for Twitter so no one gets confused with using it :)A hover state for the bin should be done today as well.FINALLY, iPhone and Gmail apps are in the works. |
Review my webapp. | slavingia: The design is done by me. If you're interested just email me (sahil at slavingia dot com). I do not mean to spam my services, but many people have asked. :) |
feedback on my startup? | mikkom: I went to your site and have no idea what it is. Some short "about" page would be really helpful. Why is there a "buy now" button (that btw does nothing at the moment - too much traffic?)edit: I found how it works - link at the bottom. Would be very good idea to link it on the top of the page somewhere.I don't understand the concept for the visitor, why would I want to visit a social news site that has easily manipulated voting system? |
Review my webapp. | Tichy: I don't get this obsession with to do lists that is flooding the web lately. How many people really use them in the end? |
feedback on my startup? | btw0: What's this? I can't figure out. |
Scalable framework for web apps? | jrockway: You might want to revise your choice of languages. Common Lisp is as expressive as Python or Ruby, but many times faster. Haskell and OCaml are even better.Clojure is another option; theoretically you have all of Java's web frameworks, and Java is also faster than Python or Ruby. I can't recommend it, since I haven't used it yet, though. (I don't want to be a Clojure fanboi ;) |
feedback on my startup? | nittwerp: What is the meaning of "Current" and "Previous" in the Statistics section? Previous to what? Today? I'm kind of confused. |
feedback on my startup? | shawndrost: This site is broken. You had an idea for a business model for Digg -- a better way to sell eyeballs, perhaps. But you don't have any eyeballs, and you don't seem to have any way of attracting them.Side note: I think the title of this site is a reference to a joke I've enjoyed since I was 5: "What do you get when you cross an elephant with a rhino?" |
Review my webapp. | romanski: How to delete an account? |
Review my webapp. | hopeless: I refer to my comment on the last todo list app that was presented here (err... all of 3 days ago?):http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=379293Seriously, the drag'n'drop thing is neat but is that the only thing you could come up with to differentiate your app from the other billions of web-based todo apps? Hell, you could have differentiated yourself just by coming up with a business model but failed on that too. If you developed the site purely to scratch your own itch, then congratulations it's really quite stunning but don't pretend that it's more than just a personal project. |
feedback on my startup? | hopeless: I've no idea what the site does. I think it needs a big (1.5-2") banner with 2-3 sentences/graphics at the top explaining the purpose and process of the site. I just don't understand what it means to buy the xkcd:sleet story?From reading the comments here it does sound interesting but such a new/different/unusual site that it needs a lot of explanation. |
Review my webapp. | vizard: Hey I noticed you can get RSS feeds.
This is a huge security risk : If anyone knows my email then can just find out the list I made :(Not cool. Allow it to be disabled. |
Review my webapp. | trevelyan: I don't want to have to sign up either, although I did to check out the service. What would make this more useful for me is a simple URL that I can use to access my list anytime, ie:http://www.wipeelist.com/list/MYUSERNAMEAll you need from people is that username. Just make the lists public and writable by default and ask users for a password/email if they want to make their lists private.Also, I didn't see the "Add an Item" right away. Perhaps I am blind. I'd suggest you add an onclick javascript event in the GIANT WHITESPACE that takes up most of the screen when you login. I clicked on the blank space expecting something to happen. It would have been nice if something did happen.Third, it would be nice to be able to rearrange items by dragging them around. There are jquery plugins for that (Sortables) and is it not hard to implement them. |
feedback on my startup? | timae: I'm surprised that people are confused by this. It's seems straightforward to me.I purchased the top spot for my site for $5, but afterward I did some clicking around and couldn't find it. After taking about 10 mins to write this post, I went back to the site and it is there, however the logo didn't come through (It was there in steps 3 and 4 of the adding process while in "preview" mode). Could you look into that?Overall, it could work, if it becomes a way for startups to show off their webapp or blog and doesn't get infiltrated by garbage. However the downfall might be the quality of the content. To get on the front page of digg, the content has to be interesting; to get on the front page of your site, all you need is $, which makes it easier on the publisher, but will make the content less interesting to the viewer (which = less viewers). |
Scalable framework for web apps? | mindaugas: If you really want to play... you could use erlangNitrogen - http://github.com/rklophaus/nitrogen/wikis <- quite newErlang web - http://www.erlang-web.org/ <- serious enterprisey guys.Erlyweb - http://erlyweb.org/ <- ROR for ErlangAnd one more for the scalability fetish - http://www.metabrew.com/article/a-million-user-comet-applica... |
Scalable framework for web apps? | blader: Scalability has nothing to do with your choice of framework or language. In terms of scalability, Cake, Django, and RoR are more or less equivalent (the first two are RoR clones after all). |
Best way to implement natural language commands for todo's, reminder etc | slig: Try searching for NLP - natural language processing |
Best way to implement natural language commands for todo's, reminder etc | astrec: DateJS (http://www.datejs.com/) might have some interesting ideas you can borrow. |
Best way to implement natural language commands for todo's, reminder etc | AvengerPenguin: The old unix reminder system, "remind", is what I use as the core of my calendar system. It's very good at parsing dates in different formats and is based on text files with lines such as "REM <date string> MSG <text relevant to event>".The reason I like it is the fact systems such as your idea there could possibly be built on top of it. Say you parsed out any portion you saw as a date string and put that at the front, it might be smart enough to handle several date string formats. |
Best way to implement natural language commands for todo's, reminder etc | AvengerPenguin: "Remind" might solve the date side of it, but you'll still need to parse it out. I've thought about a similar thing before and the approach I was looking to take was using something like: http://www.nltk.org/ to create grammar trees (read up on how grammars/parsers work at least on Wikipedia) for an acceptable subset of English.You might notice things like a time is always after "at", a date "on" and a relative date "in". Ideas for rules: Event -> Title When
Title -> <anything>
When -> TimeSpecifier When
TimeSpecifier -> "at" Time
TimeSpecifier -> "in" RelativeTime
TimeSpecifier -> "on" Date
...
Then you use semantics stuff to get the parser to return some expression that you can use, say a Python call: event(title=<title>, at=<time>, on=<date>).Just some things to think about and if you don't know grammars, then read up until you understand the example I gave at least. I just wrote it off the top of my head too, so I'm sure someone might find a mistake with it :-)p.s. If you're as weird as me, you might even consider Prolog for parsing ;-) |
Best way to implement natural language commands for todo's, reminder etc | markessien: You're going up the wrong tree entirely. What you're trying to do is one of the oldest ideas in computing, and it does not work. They keep trying it, and it keeps failing. Not technically, but from a user point of view. Typing stuff out the way you want people to is not easy or convenient, and if there is even the hint of uncertainty, most people will prefer not to do it. Considering that you do not have a background in this, you will lots of unmatched items, and 2/10 fails will consitute too much uncertainty for your users.I have two ideas for alternatives that may or may not work, but at least have not been tried as often:1. Autocomplete. When the user is typing, autocomplete his message, such that there is always 100% certainty that the command will be executed properly. Also, simplify the syntax, so I write 'remind' : 'December ...' : 'Dentist'. Your syntax has to be consistent, so once learned, there is no relearning. I don't want to have to figure out what the system wants me to type in as a command.2. Visual. Use blocks and lines to create the actions. Humans have a very good sense of geometry and relationships between physical objects. Leverage that to make your app. Models of physical things are one of the few things we can actually say is inherently intuitive for human beings. |
Best way to implement natural language commands for todo's, reminder etc | olefoo: The cheap and cheerful way to cheat this problem is to use a restricted grammar that allows synonyms. And one of the many libraries that wrap strptime for date parsing.In other words; schedule, remind, tell, add; might all represent the same operation.If you go this route, do write a BNF grammar, do test with a reasonably large corpus of 'live' requests.here is a link that should get you started.
http://www.antlr.org/wiki/display/ANTLR3/Quick+Starter+on+Pa... |
Scalable framework for web apps? | flexterra: PHP - CodeIgniter |
Best way to implement natural language commands for todo's, reminder etc | fugue88: It sounds like you want to rewrite Sandy (http://www.iwantsandy.com/), which is good because they're closing down.They show several examples of commands that Sandy accepts. That might help give you a little direction designing your system. |
Launched my free app, now what? | noodle: improve the application itself, first. before you start charging for anything, it at the very least needs some polish.as for development vs promotion, most of the work you'll do to promote your app will probably not generate much attention. figure out what will be most effective and go do that. you're on your own right now, so you don't want to waste a lot of time on things that may or may not work out. |
Best way to implement natural language commands for todo's, reminder etc | ahsonwardak: We already do that at ShareMeme - http://sharememe.com/welcome/quickmode. You have to a be registered user to use this, and we also offer up the simple forms as well. |
Review my webapp. | modoc: Unless you're praying for a $$$ acquisition it doesn't NEED to be extremely compelling vs. the other sites out there. If you just want some good user base, and you want to make a few bucks with ads or premium features, having a great UI (which you have) and adding new features is enough.When I wrote 10MinuteMail.com, it was just to learn Seam. If I'd bothered Googling around, I would have found a dozen existing sites that did the same thing, and I wouldn't have released it. However, the market size for the problem is apparently larger than the existing dozen sites, and I do some pretty solid traffic/ad revenue on there. It's not a million dollar sale kind of thing, but if I wanted to I could be leasing a very nice german sports car on the ad revenue. It really depends on your metrics for success.The to-do list potential user base is enormous, and having an easy to use, pretty looking site, that has good integrations with other systems (e-mail, rss, ical events, gcal, etc...) could do very well, even amongst many existing competitors.I agree with the comments that you should making signing up as easy as possible. Especially with a free service, the barrier to entry needs to be as low as possible. |
Review my webapp | jtoy: ui is a bit messy and hard to navigate, but overall awesome. I could see this useful for foreign language classes. |
Scalable framework for web apps? | garndt: You are focussing too much on the language and scalability rather than focusing on just building something.Every major language/framework out there has been used and scaled for large websites. Pick one that you would like to learn, provides you with the flexibility you are looking for, and run with it.Worrying about how you will scale an app that you have not built yet will be a major drawback. Also keep in mind performance and scalability as you're building the site, but do not spend much time worrying about it before hand. Just take an idea and run with it, tweak the app to scale as you go. |
Launched my free app, now what? | BlueSkies: As I improve the application, would it be reasonable to mark some features as "pro", but not charge for them yet? The idea is to let users know that these particular features are free for now, but will eventually require a subscription.I suppose I could include a checkbox to "enable" pro features rather than label them directly. |
Review my webapp | ObieJazz: "But I will, and I found that is very excited to eat icecream in winter."There needs to be some kind of quality control. I don't want to be the Hungarian in Monty Python's dirty phrasebook sketch. |
Scalable framework for web apps? | swombat: Scalability isn't a magic pixie dust you find in some boxes of cereals and not others.Scalability is extremely application specific. As your application grows, what will be the bottleneck? Maybe it's page-serving performance. Maybe it's the database. Maybe it's disk storage. Maybe it's synchronization of data. Maybe it's raw bandwidth. With no specific knowledge of your constraints, any specific advice is worthless and potentially harmful.The question you need to ask yourself is not "which framework should I use?" but "how should I architect my application to ensure that the most likely bottlenecks can be resolved simply when I get there?"If your likely bottleneck is bandwidth, for example, building your application with eventual use of a CDN in mind is probably very smart. If your likely bottleneck is disk storage, make sure you choose a host/infrastructure that allows you to scale that up practically indefinitely. If your likely bottleneck is page rendering performance, make sure you write very clean, unoptimised code, so that when the bottlenecks show up it's a simple matter to boost them without impacting the rest of the application. |
Scalable framework for web apps? | socksandsandals: If you want a framework with scalability "baked in", so to speak, you should take a look at GigaSpaces XAP (http://www.gigaspaces.com/). Its not the same model as the others mentioned on this thread but will prevent that "big rewrite" in the event that you do indeed become successful enough to need it. |
Launched my free app, now what? | trickjarrett: You need a dedicated audience first before you can begin charging money. You need to just build the app and make this app something the users come to rely on. Twitter is a service designed on simplicity of use and so it isn't exactly prohibitive for them to just not use your app. Charging money might see a few conversions but on the whole, you're not ready for it. |
Scalable framework for web apps? | charlesju: As much as I like to push the envelope, I'm going to go out on a leg here and suggest Ruby on Rails. I love it, a lot of people love it, that makes it easy to learn and deploy.Also with Passenger, it scales out just as easily as any framework or language out there. And if you need to jump to multiple servers, you ought to be making enough money to support Engine Yard which solves your scaling problems for you. |
Launched my free app, now what? | teej: Start work on your next project, or apply for a better job with this as a portfolio piece. To be honest, it's probably much easier to get a 5-10k raise somewhere else with this extra experience than it will be to get people to pay. |
Review my webapp. | scott_s: Todo lists are becoming the web application version of Hello World. |
Review my $1.99 iPhone app | scott_s: Is it possible for anyone to review your application without buying it? If not, then I think it's bad form to ask HN to review it. |
Review my $1.99 iPhone app | tialys: I don't have a highrise account, however looking at the screenshots it looks well done. I like the 'Text Message' option I see there as well.Did you do a write up anywhere of what your experience was with the app store and all of the process involved in getting in? I'd love to hear more as I've just started working on my first iPhone app myself.Edit: If you don't mind, would you be willing to give us a hint at sales at some point (not sure how long this has been up... has anyone bought yet?) |
Review my $1.99 iPhone app | hopeless: A little more information would have been useful. As it is, only those with iTunes installed can review the app.I hate the way iTunes tries to reinvent the web for their little walled garden |
Review my $1.99 iPhone app | jdg: Cool.So what frameworks did you use to build it? Are you using pure Obj-C sqlite access, or something like fmdb/pldatabase/sqlitepersistentobjects?What was the most challenging aspect of building it?How will you market it? The app store is great, but I've found that outside visibility has started to matter even more now that there are tons of apps.Also, you may want to change your application name in iTunes Connect to "hContacts - Highrise for your iPhone/iPod Touch" or something similar. Just be sure to have "Highrise" in it, so that your app name shows up in the table list when users are searching for the term "highrise" from their devices.Not to take away from your review, but for those people that use Basecamp I have a native iPhone client here: http://appremix.com/projects/ |
Review my $1.99 iPhone app | gsiener: Haven't used the app, but 2 things:1. Would be nice to support login via openid.
2. I've been using a Highrise to LDAP proxy with moderate success with Address Book for OSX. I think I'd rather see that sort of integration with the address book than a separate app.
(proxy link: http://giantrobots.thoughtbot.com/2007/5/22/highrise-to-ldap...) |
Launched my free app, now what? | cmer: IMO, hire a graphic/ui designer. No offense, but it's butt ugly. |
Best way to implement natural language commands for todo's, reminder etc | eru: I am surprised that Bayesian Reasoning has not yet been suggested. |
Review my $1.99 iPhone app | tocomment: What's that site that lets you see iPhone apps in your browser? I don't have iTunes handy to look at this. |
Review my $1.99 iPhone app | bprater: This whole thing just doesn't taste right. I feel like our community is being taken advantage of with the whole 'AskHN' thing when I see this type of offer. This isn't about iTunes apps, it's about how you position the product for the community.The product costs money, he could have built a feature-limited free version for us to download and check out. The author didn't provide any insightful information here or on a blog.And a direct link right into iTunes, ugh, that's almost as bad as linking a PDF and not mentioning it.It's this exact type of thing that will eventually force the community to say: 'no more'. And that's sad, because not only do we get to see some really cool services early on, but we learn from the feedback the community gives. |
Best way to implement natural language commands for todo's, reminder etc | drewp: One trick for training users on your grammar is to have the program always talk to the user with it. If the program imports my existing calendar and talks about stuff like "lunch with fendale in 3 days" all the time, I'll talk back to the program in similar language. Making users learn syntaxes, especially with any punctuation that you don't pronounce out loud, is lousy.Then, don't be afraid of ambiguity. In many cases, you can Branch Both Ways. 12/10/2008 could refer to two dates, so put the item on both, showing clearly why it's there. "Lunch with Bill" could refer to a few people in my address book, so just link all of them. If your software manages to get some additional data, sort the choices so the likely one is on top. |
Review my $1.99 iPhone app | Ian00: Hacker news, posting a story I can't go to on linux, cuz its to a propriety piece of crap. hacker news? this site seems like it has become euntrepnurial developer news. |
Launched my free app, now what? | swombat: No one will pay you any money for a bookmarklet. Seriously. That's not a business, it's just a hobby at best. |
Review my $1.99 iPhone app | auston: A video would have been much more productive for you. |
Launched my free app, now what? | Sam_Odio: Like others have said, the site looks horrible. My first reaction was to turn and run. After trying it out, I actually found it pretty cool. It's similar to tr.im's bookmarklet.I'd spend the majority repeating the cycle of adding/refining features and getting feedback from users. Eventually you'll could evolve the project into something new & innovative.Don't spend too much time on promotion, but do a few things to get the word out. Do you have a business twitter account & blog? Use it to announce new features. |
Cheapest Mac for iPhone development | mattmichielsen: The Mac Mini would probably be plenty good. |
Cheapest Mac for iPhone development | answerly: +1 for the mini. They are cheap and portable. |
Cheapest Mac for iPhone development | cmos: Definitely the mini. When you are getting started you will want to throw it out the window with the joys of learning objective-c. Wait a day or two. It's not that bad. |
Launched my free app, now what? | webwright: I'd agree with some folks that there is no business here.If you envision a business here, I'd write down exactly what you're going to build that people will pay for, then ask 50 Twitter users if they'd pay for it. If 10% say yes (and you believe them). If not, punt. |
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