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Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

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Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#101

Post by dougbarrett »

novitaOnCT2 wrote: post #88
dougbarrett wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "apps" page was the homepage previously. I'll try to cut down on the faqs on the homepage, and try to make it more visual. What do you mean make it easier to post discussions and comments? Should I allow them to post comments, and on the next page have them sign-in/sign-up HN style?

When I see this page http://www.dcmntr.com/app-profile/dcmntr , it gave me the impression that the Discussions table is something like a forum, and people can comment. But i didn't see an editor box or something for people to post comments..

Good point. It won't show you the box to comment if you're not logged in.

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#102

Post by Qworg »

jpallen wrote: post #7

I'm trying to expand my online LaTeX editor into a viable business. My cofounder and I think there is potential for a great enterprise product where we could really improve the workflow in publishing houses and teaching, where LaTeX is used a lot. We've had enough feedback from individual users to think this, but we're struggling to get our foot in the door with the people we'd need to talk to about selling to them o…

I've written any paper I've worked on in the last 7 years in LaTeX as soon as it gets over 5 pages or has any math of any kind in it.

I'm currently writing a book with a publish house that uses Word templates (dear god!) and it really sucks. =)

Here are a few pain points you need to solve (esp. for academics):

- All the formats: If you can offer all journal/conference formats (especially those that don't have LaTeX formats), you would be a godsend. - WYSIWYG -> LaTeX editing: Sometimes you don't want to handle all the boiler plate. - Integration with reference software.

Pain point for book houses: - Converting their carefully designed styles into LaTeX templates and back again. Can someone design up a doc template in Word or whatnot, then bring it to your site and make a LaTeX template from it?

A few questions: - How does your collaborative editing work? Can multiple people work the same file at the same time? Also, it is pretty rare that this happens in my experience - most papers are written by one person with some help from others. - In the end, without formatting or the other things mentioned above, you've got a place to store/share LaTeX docs. Given that, your pricing is a bit odd. However, with the features listed, I think it'd be a great product (at an awesome price).

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#104

Post by phzbOx »

snikolic wrote: post #92
phzbOx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried the app a couple of time in the last few weeks. I've been a bit disappointed by the music recommendation and what was suggested to me. I.e. I don't care about "What everyone is listening" as I don't like it. I have no friend on it. I understand that with friends and probably lots of like/dislike of music, it'll be easy to narrow down my taste. But, I think you need to find a way to get the user started wit…

Thanks for the feedback! I think you're right. Our recommendation system has seemed a bit weak, especially for new users - I think we're going to bury this somewhere as a Custom option rather than emphasizing it as one of the four major streams. Orienting new users is probably our biggest challenge at the moment, and I think our product's biggest weakness. We have some solutions in the pipeline, but we still don't ha…

Maybe. Ask the user for a couple artist/song he likes. And then, try to find an existing user who liked these songs. So, implicitly, the new user could follow that existing user and get his/her recommendations. Does it make any sens?

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#105

Post by phzbOx »

chetan51 wrote: post #49
phzbOx wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my kind of app; I really like it. Particularly how you can do everything from the big textbox and how can send stuff by sms. Things I'd make better: - Provide a rest API; I'd love to be able to use it from my console - [Tab] would be really useful (To complete tags or date) - When I click "out" of the textbox when editing a todo, I don't want the [cancel] [save].. just save it. - I've tried to twitter it but…

Thanks for all those suggestions! Those things are definitely in the pipeline. About clicking out of the textbox to save an item, I actually had it like that, but I found that if I wanted to edit a long item and switch away to a different tab to refer to something and come back, it would have automatically saved it, and I would have to edit it again. So I consciously chose to have the current behavior (note that you…

For the bug:

Create a new account, play a little with it. Then go in your account page and add your phone number and email.

Then, click back in the main screen. There should be a textbox added explaining that you can send an email to automatically add a task. Inside this textbox, there are some a href=mailto escaped.. I think it might not be supposed to be in a textbox at all.

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#106

Post by mikegreenberg »

hernan7 wrote: post #67

Hi Mike, thanks for your kind offer! We have an old Windows XP machine that I would like to replace with a newer Windows 7 one. However, my wife is used to the old machine; in particular she has Internet Explorer manage all her auto-complete's and username/passwords for different sites she uses. I looked around for tools to at least copy the passwords to the new machine but 1) Microsoft says it's not supported 2) the…

You could try the Files and Settings transfer wizard (In Start, Accessories, System...) and see if that works for you. I'm not aware of any tools off the top of my head, but (on principle) I would not rely on any auto-complete/password storage to ensure I could do my day-to-day computing.

There are plenty of tools which help in this area which are guaranteed to provide better support than Microsoft will. Things like KeePassX (for password management) and (while I don't use it, I've hear good things about) Roboform are supported by communities who are invested in a long-term solution. I would really try to migrate to a new solution. Anything else would be putting a band-aid over a festering wound.

Good luck! :)

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#107

Post by phzbOx »

kevinburke wrote: post #55
jxcole wrote: post #48

Hi Mike! Thanks for offering to help. I am pretty good at programming but I know almost nothing about hosting or servers or hardware. I would like to make a website with a Go/MySQL back end (I know it's weird, but I love it). Do you have any recommendations for hosting? Should I use a cloud host like EC2 or Rackspace's cloud or should I use some other hosting service?

I've been using Webfaction, and I'm pretty happy with it. It's about $10 a month, you get SSH access into your box, and they have really good customer/technical support. http://webfaction.com

+1 For that. I really love webfaction and it was the best idea to go with that as I didn't know at first how to configure my server. It has great "default" configuration and practices. Also, as Mike said, the customer support is great if not the best I've seen.

And, as you'll become better at configuring your stuff and will want more control over all the nifty details, you could then switch to a vps.

Also, don't forget that Heroku now support more platform.. in fact, everything python is supported, but the platform is strong enough to support anything.. even if it's not as userfriendly as the ruby or python way.

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#108

Post by novitaOnCT2 »

dougbarrett wrote: post #101
novitaOnCT2 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see this page http://www.dcmntr.com/app-profile/dcmntr , it gave me the impression that the Discussions table is something like a forum, and people can comment. But i didn't see an editor box or something for people to post comments..

Good point. It won't show you the box to comment if you're not logged in.

hahah yeah i figured that afterwards

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#109

Post by [deleted] »

Achshar wrote: post #46

hello mike.. :D i be quick, i made a powerful media player inside the browser(html5/js) the response is average (for now). i would like to know what do you think about the idea. i understand idea is not everything and execution matters but it would really help if the base idea is strong.. app in question: goo.gl/kS86a i would like to know what should i focus on, user experience (fixing small bugs, polishing along as…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

#110

Post by mikegreenberg »

Achshar wrote: post #46

hello mike.. :D i be quick, i made a powerful media player inside the browser(html5/js) the response is average (for now). i would like to know what do you think about the idea. i understand idea is not everything and execution matters but it would really help if the base idea is strong.. app in question: goo.gl/kS86a i would like to know what should i focus on, user experience (fixing small bugs, polishing along as…

Hey there!

I really like the effort of this product, but it isn't usable for me as it currently is. Here are the things which are non-starter for me that I've found:

- Loading music is SLOW. I'm seeing a variable response of ~2-10 seconds PER song. This is when I dump a single track to the interface. It doesn't seem to matter which screen I drop the track into. This happens with MP3s and M4As.

- Doesn't automatically go to the next track after a track is done.

- No search field? It accepts my typing, but doesn't show it anywhere in the GUI.

+ The animations and the UI touches are admittedly nice and give it a nice polish. But it doesn't matter if the product underneath doesn't play music well.

You're asking me what you should do next with this, but it really depends on what you want to do. Do you want to build a business out of it? What would your business model look like? What is going to make people give you money for this?

You might have a hard time developing a business model out of this project as music players are a well-entrenched industry with many successful products already on the market. The only way you'll be able to break into this is by releasing a superior experience. And frankly, the other companies have a huge head start.

This is not a bad thing at all! It's okay for this to be a project without trying to make it into a business. The GUI skills from this will certainly help with future products you'll inevitably make!

Something that also concerns me is that you're willing to drop college to attend a startup program if they accept you. This should be a clear indicator to you that this is not a project worth dropping everything to work on (because you'd be working on this full-time and have dropped college already if you were that motivated). And even if an incubator sees something valuable in you to go through their program, I would ask yourself why you're even in school if you're willing to drop it for a 3-month program. Figure out what that answer is and see if there are ways to achieve that on your current path. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't drop school, or should/shouldn't apply for an incubator. It just sounds as if you're thrilled about the prospect of being a successful entrepreneur with all the recent buzz these last years. (This is great!) Just think pragmatically about what you REALLY want and find a way to get there within your means.

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