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Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Please include URL

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421–430 of 633 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Please include URL

#421
https://www.mailform.io/

It's a simple way to send any document (form, letter, receipt, invoice, tax document) via USPS mail, right from your browser.

We built it because we're too lazy to go to the post office at times, and we've since realized that most documents sent in the mail begin as a PDF on a computer, so now we're working on bringing down the cost (currently we have to pay both Lob and stripe for every mailing, which means lots of fixed costs).

Our next step will be enabling you to automate sending physical mail, the same way you can automate sending emails (for invoices, thank you notes, receipts, mailers etc, which lots of small businesses still use)

You can use the promo code "LIFEHACKER" to get 20% off. Would love your feedback!

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Please include URL

#423

I created a completely new branch of advertising, which basically superimposes advertisements directly over images in a way that actually benefits consumers: http://pleenq.com/ . Here's a demo video (fairly old, have to still update with the latest look): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GfKBvs53Ss Say you have a picture on a blog post showing a car engine, explaining how to fix something inside of it. You could high…

Are you just going to use affiliate feeds or are you looking for advertisers. I am happy to test advertising for one of my clients (ecommerce home decor space).

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Please include URL

#424

I created a completely new branch of advertising, which basically superimposes advertisements directly over images in a way that actually benefits consumers: http://pleenq.com/ . Here's a demo video (fairly old, have to still update with the latest look): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GfKBvs53Ss Say you have a picture on a blog post showing a car engine, explaining how to fix something inside of it. You could high…

Interesting. This reminds me of VigLink and other players in the space that essentially sell link inventory to e-commerce companies. For example, you mention Microwave Model #3023 in a blog post, create a hyperlink, and then e-commerce companies selling Microwave Model #3023 bid on each new visit to point the destination URL to their product page.

You, my friend, are spot-on with this. It's a part of the long-term plan of PLEENQ, but requires enough market penetration to make sense.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Please include URL

#425
Agora Voting: https://www.agoravoting.com

Secure, secret ballot, fully auditable, universally verifiable electronic elections. It has been used twice in the Spanish parliament, it scales up to millions of votes per election etc.

It's quite interesting if you are security oriented. Of course nothing is 100% secure, but the problem probably won't be on the server side, which is fully verifiable.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Please include URL

#426
post #259

Spyce: Python in outer space! Basically, a very much work-in-progress pile of code to plan orbital trajectories and interplanetary travel. Its also quite handy when doing simple computations: >>> # distance to the Sun, in light-seconds >>> Earth.orbit.semi_major_axis / c 499.00650691887006 >>> # Martian year, in (usual Earth) days >>> Mars.orbit.period / Earth.solar_day 686.9944644093075 >>> # ping to New Horizons (l…

Very cool! We're in the processing of building up an open-source stack for the space industry. Engaged with a few partners already. Would you be interested in having a chat?

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Please include URL

#427

I rewrote https://www.w3counter.com from scratch over the past month, and just put it online two days ago. W3Counter was a 12-year-old website offering web stats reports and hit counters with 30-something-thousand users. I ditched all the old code, and the data model, and the business model, and started from scratch. New framework, new way of storing and analyzing stats that scales better and provides more value, and…

Comparison between old and business model? Was it worth it to rewrite?

Old: Free web stats for one low-traffic website per user, in exchange for displaying a counter or badge on their site. Back when hit counters were more common, that wasn't a big ask, and seeing one was the way other people with websites found out about W3Counter. I included ads on the reports, and offered a paid subscription that would let you add multiple websites to the account and not display a counter on your site. All reports were based on a circular log of about 20000 page views per website.

New: Web stats reports for as many websites as you have for free, with no requirement to display a counter/badge, and no ads on the reports. It's no longer an ad-supported service, just freemium. Users can now upgrade individual websites in their account to paid plans while others remain free, like Cloudflare (I really like how their subscription model works). The per-website upgrade unlocks extended data retention so you can run reports further into the past (no more tiny logs), real-time dashboards, daily/weekly/monthly e-mail summaries of your stats, and conversion tracking features for businesses that sell things and want to track their advertising/promotions.

Was it worth it? From a business standpoint, I don't know if I'll make any more or less money this way. I take big risks that way sometimes. Time will tell. From a personal standpoint, I'll be much happier any time I need to dive into the code to add or change something. Old code needs to die eventually one way or another, just because you can't rely on old language/environment packages forever, lest they pass their EOL and stop getting security updates.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Please include URL

#428
Item Hut: https://itemhut.com/

There is no single solution that integrates warehousing, inventory control, order management, customer relations, email ticketing, shipping, and channels management.

The goal is to build a system that is fast, accurate, and minimizes mouse-clicks. Most other solutions I've worked with and evaluated were slow, couldn't properly -1, and were a UI maze.

This system is awesome because it simply does not exist anywhere (Odoo is the closest approximation), it is targeted to small and medium businesses, and it has infinite customization in mind. Last but certainly not least, it is FLOSS, and I plan to offer off-contract support for the open source users.

Re: Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Please include URL

#429
http://samsarajs.org

A JS library for the mobile web. Originally a fork of famo.us, where I was Chief Architect.

Check it out if you're interested in bringing complex 60fps animation, physics, gestures and 3D rendering to a website.

It's awesome because, you can push UI on the web further without sacrificing on performance. Moreover, it sets a path to decentralize apps. No app stores, distribute your app with a link. No install/uninstall. Index apps with pagerank. Deep linking for free. App updates on refresh. Etc etc.

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