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I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

babyli.st

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Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#162
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People" will Google "babylist". Remember that the vast majority of the people using the web have no idea what a browser is, much less a URL. Even when they have a URL, that ubiquitous google box is the place it gets put.

...and google "babylist" returns surprise surprise babylist.co.uk It seems silly to try and compete with established players.

1. there's caution, and then there's 'thinking small'

2. the owner of the domain is a single-location brick and mortar retailer, with no e-commerce. that would inform my thought process, were in in the OP's shoes

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#163
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should team up or something... I made this baby names website a couple years ago when my wife and I were looking for baby names. I didn't like the sites out there too much and made this to help search. (since then I've been so busy with the kids and main job that I have neglected my baby names site). http://www.babynameclusters.com/ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=370745

Yeah, I did the same thing. The babynamewizard was a neat ooh, aah, tech demo, but (as of early 2008 when it was literally nothing more than a dynamically updating prefix-based stacked line graph) useless for actually helping choose a name. My contribution to the genre, with the goal of being helpful in choosing a name, was: http://nametrends.net

Nice job! I agree about the uselessness of baby name wizard. You did a great job making it more interesting. Are you having any luck getting visitors or higher in organic search?

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#164

I love the site, although I am certainly not your market (male, don't want kids). However, a month ago someone posted an almost identical concept to HN. I think it was for wedding registries though. Overall, great concept, attractive website, and a real need. My only criticism relates to it being fairly obvious. What hacker hasn't bought a wedding/baby gift and thought "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a registry for…

Alta Vista had a great search engine in the 90's. Google could have easily said "search is obvious, it's been done." Obviously this is a very extreme example, but almost every business will have some aspect that's "been done." In fact, as an entrepreneur, you almost always want it to have been done before. It is much easier to say "Amazon wish lists specifically for expectant parents" than it is to try to define a to…

I don't agree with this meme. Alta Vista had a terrible search engine in the 90s and so did everyone else. The need for better search was obvious and regularly called for at the time.

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#165

I didn't read through all the posts here on HN to see if this was already report (though I did do a quick search), but there is an issue with the "View By Store". If I look at the example registry and goto purchased items, there is 1 purchased at "etsy.com". If expand "View By Store" and uncheck "etsy", the item disappears as intended. However, if I uncheck "Amazon" and then recheck "Amazon", new items show up that w…

I think there's also a usability issue with this control. I would imagine a common use case is "Show me all the items at Store X, since that's convenient for me to drop by." Unfortunately, instead of selecting Store X, I have to deselect all the other stores. On the demo registry, that's 5 clicks where one should do.

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#166

Auto-register people. Circle back with people after 6 months and find out how they would have registered differently. Develop some profiles, identify the popular products, and you can allow expecting mothers to auto-register with the recommended items. And buy yourself some kid-o-potamus swaddles. We never would have picked that out but someone gave us one and that was a life saver the first 6 weeks or so. Never woul…

Swaddling is fantastic. I just used an oversized sheet after I got the hang of it.

Get a toy doll and practice. Took me a couple hours to get the hang of it.

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#168

I'm 8-months pregnant. When I went to create a baby registry I was pretty disappointed with what was out there (I ended up using Amazon Universal Wishlist). I found myself with some time on my hands waiting for baby, and decided that I'd build a better baby registry. I partnered with a great designer I met on forrst.com, and this is the result. I'd love any feedback, suggestions etc.

Very professional, I would say. Even though as a Dutchman I'm not really familiar with the concept, I immediatly understood what you are offering. The call to action couldn't be more straightforward and the "works with.." section does exactly what it needs to do. The safety pin is a nice touch.

Also, I can appreciate what you've done and why: I'm an allround developer, so when my wife and I were looking for a name for my oldest child, I quickly decided to build a name site myself. It's online in two languages: in Dutch as http://www.zeevannamen.nl and in English as http://www.valleyofnames.com.

I'd be happy to have a banner pointing to you site, if you wish? Maybe we can cooperate in other ways as well. Let me know if you have any thoughts on that.

Re: I'm a pregnant hacker. Please review my side project.

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a member, but not actively. I had the idea for the site and posted it ( http://forrst.com/posts/Any_designers_interested_on_collabor... but I don't think this link will work if you're not logged in) This is what I wrote: Hey, I'm a ruby on rails developer and I'm 5 months pregnant. Today I created a baby registry and it was a nightmare. I ended up using the amazon.com universal wishlist. It's a bookmarklet that l…

Can any forrst.com members send me an invite? I'd love to check out the site. My email is lalalee at hotmail.com . Thanks.

I also would like an invite: eric dot holloway at gmail dot com
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