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Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

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131–140 of 648 posts

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#131

last.fm Although it didn't die yet, it certainly doesn't live up to its potential.

I know last.fm entirely as a site that you get in search results for song titles and lyrics but forces you to log in. What service does it provide exactly? Was it just a very early streaming site with great seo?

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#132

Chevy Volt. I wouldn't necessarily say it wasn't successful, but GM is killing it, and to me the irony is that I think it is a much better option for 90% of people than an all-electric vehicle. Yes, all-electric is the future, but right now being able to be on battery 95% of the time, but never having range anxiety because I can always get gas when needed, is wonderful. I can go on long trips and never worry about ha…

There are still Prius Prime and Honda Clarity.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#133

Notion Ink Adam Tablet [1] Pixel Qi Display [2] Altogether not a truly great tablet, but I loved the idea of the Pixel Qi display. Normal colored LCD when being used indoors with backlight enabled. But outdoors in the bright sun, the colors faded away and it became some e-paper like reflective display. That way you could use it for watching movies in the dark and reading books on the beach ;-) Sadly the tablet had a…

IMHO, Pixel Qi should have gone full-bore e-ink replacement. They’re color was always embarrassing. But, in black and white mode it was wonderful. Super crisp, 60fps and low power.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#134

Sega Dreamcast. All Sony had to say was "PS2 is coming next year" and everyone stopped listening to what they could get today .

Sony tried to do the same in 2005 when Microsoft released the XBox 360, only they kept pushing back the release date. Thankfully their E3 2006 press conference was such a flop that in a bit of karmic justice it forced them to stop resting on their laurels and compete for marketshare again.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#137
Google's Nexus 7 might qualify. A really great tablet at an affordable price that got one minor refresh then was cancelled.

I see Palm already mentioned. Neo Geo.

Obviously everything I have done was great--too advanced for its time to succeed.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#139
post #112
post #20

Usenet, IRC, RSS, XMPP, ... Well, still rockin'

The game Warframe uses IRC for its in-game chat. They've obfuscated the authentication though, so it's not possible to just login with something like irssi. I'm sure other games do this as well.

Not a game but twitch chat is basically IRC. You can indeed login with irssi if you wanted to.

Re: Ask HN: Which great products didn't succeed?

#140
Path. A private social network with a great UI. We set it up for our extended family and the children could use it without exposure to Facebook etc.

Path had nice UI innovations that were later merged into other platforms. I guess people prefer a bigger audience over privacy.

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