Tell HN:Launched Cloudomatic(start): all your startup's web apps. one place.

http://start.cloudomatic.com/

by jasonlbaptiste • 16 years ago

25 30 16 years ago

start.cloudomatic.com

Hey guys! This is pretty much an organic product we made and think you'd find useful. Some backstory on why we created it /how here: http://blog.cloudomatic.com/company-news/new-product-launch-... Feedback is definitely welcomed. We spent a lot of time polishing some loose ends, but there's always a ton to improve on. So yeah, rip it apart.

mdolon• 16 years ago

In the video I noticed the password to your demo account was 4 characters, so naturally I tried out demo for kicks and it worked. I guess it doesn't matter now since you've already made the video but just thought I'd let you know (in case accounts are deletable or something).

jasonlbaptiste12• 16 years ago

im pretty much a trainwreck of no sleep, comcast outages, host upgrade downtimes, random bits of code being written, and random meet and greets+press events through today. so yeah, the password is demo. username: demo@cloudomatic.com / password: demo. Nothing is deletable from there. Add some cool apps at least :).

bmelton2• 16 years ago

I'm not sure that I get it. Is it a directory? By the introduction, I was expecting it to be a hosting service -- or a way to consolidate the management of various cloud services through APIs. Upon looking at the page for the first time, I thought perhaps it was an inventorying utility. After stumbling on some good searches, I guess it's a directory I can search for business-ready applications?

Are these services hosted on cloudomatic? Are they one-click installs? Wait -- nevermind, it looks like I can set up services with a variety of different services, and this acts as the directory for me -- like a PageFlakes for my services.

(Sorry, the format of this might seem like I'm being a douche, but I typically start typing in these posts so you can see my thought process.)

Okay, now that I know what it is, I'll say that the design is pretty, but the UI is VERY non-intuitive. Also, some searches return nothing -- this would be okay, if it actually SAID it returned zero results, but all I see is the ajax-loader image disappear.

jasonlbaptiste12• 16 years ago

no no this is what we WANT. Point is this: You or your startup uses 5-10 web apps, you want a central place to access these apps from with the url pre-configured. No more: "yo, whats the login url for basecamp or google apps?" and clicking around.

Yeah, so my hypothesis was that some of the ui wont be intuitive enough, so we left it blank in areas to just get raw feedback:

- how do people know what to do out the gate? should we have some apps there from the start? a demo video on the homepage?

- for no results, were planning on adding: submit an app along with "no results found".

Hope this helps, but youre feedback was actually really helpful. thank you!

jallmann• 16 years ago

You should put that description on there. The copy on the page is not too clear about what the service does -- keeping my webapps in one place? Oh, my webapp LOGINS in one place.

bmelton2• 16 years ago

Yeah, I wasn't really critiquing so much as just pouring out my train of thought. As for 'how to get started', you could do a video, or probably even a well-worded description of what it is for would help... there is just zero instruction at the moment.

The description you gave above is actually pretty close to what you probably want on the homepage, but now that I've figured out what it is, I might just be 'intuiting' the answer from knowledge I already have.

deppp• 16 years ago

Heh, you probably should put some description on your front page and a video after that description might be nice. I opened an url and immediately closed it because i could not understand anything and don't want to spend time random clicking. You can't do Google style design, no one knows yet what you're after ;) The idea is nice though.

jasonlbaptiste12• 16 years ago

that's my assumption: quick "how-to" text with short video that explains it. thinking it goes away after you add an app, BUT then if you misclick like before then the help goes away.

terpua• 16 years ago

Might want to fix your misspelling.

jasonlbaptiste12• 16 years ago

What misspelling? Fixed it. Thank you Terence :).

stanleydrew• 16 years ago

<title>Cloudmatic(start)</title> should probably be Cloudomatic(start) right?

apsurd• 16 years ago

heh, also some grammatical weirdness possibly?

  Clodomatic(Start) lets you keep all your company's web apps in one place

Should be either:

  Cloudomatic(Start) lets you keep all your companies' web apps in one place

Or for better understandability (imo)

  Cloudomatic(Start) lets you keep your company's web apps in one place

jasonlbaptiste12• 16 years ago

agreed. went with the second one. thank you :).

duck• 16 years ago

Hmmm.... Basecamp points to Highrise.

jasonlbaptiste12• 16 years ago

the caching should refresh the url stored (may have already, just not my machine). If you save the page, you can edit the url's to point to your subdomains/login urls anyway. thank you for pointing that out.

alexsolo• 16 years ago

I found it a little confusing at first (couldn't figure out what it does at first glance), but once I searched for an app and added it, I got the idea right away.

One gripe: lots of webapps, such as the 37signals suite of apps, or the app offered by my startup (PagerDuty), use subdomains in the URL. So if I wanted to quickly access my Highrise account, I'd go to something like acme.highrisehq.com instead of highrisehq.com. Maybe you can add an option to customize/override the default URL?

jasonlbaptiste12• 16 years ago

you can do that already :D. Just save the page to customize URLs.

// Updated style.css to make #form_register be 670px and the button text to be: "Save to customize URLs"

maxklein2• 16 years ago

This is very confusing! By default add 6 apps on the first page, which the user can then customize and change afterwards. Only after I had an app on the first page did I understand what the service was about.

maxklein2• 16 years ago

And when sending the confirmation email, don't use my name: From: My Name <register@cloudomatic.com>

jasonlbaptiste12• 16 years ago

Agreed. We think we're going to add 6 apps by default since there's 4 per row. Thanks Max, most of our goal was to test that hypothesis: is this confusing at first glance with no idea what to do? and is having default apps / better copy the way to fix it?

asmosoinio• 16 years ago

Bug report:

customize URL => copy paste in an URL from browser with https://xyz => the link becomes http://https://xyz and does not work.

Seems to fail at http:// at start of URLs also. For me the natural thing was to copy&paste it in from a browser window.

almost• 16 years ago

I'm not sure I get what this does that a folder of bookmarks doesn't? Or one of the online bookmark services if you don't want to be tied to a specific machine. I assume it does something more but I just can't figure out what...

papaf• 16 years ago

One of the things I like about google apps is that I can set up a DNS entry to point mail.mydomain.com at google's servers and it puts me straight at the login prompt. It feels good to use it.

Would it be possible to do this with Cloudmatic(start), so that I could set up basecamp.mydomain.com to point to cloudmatic which would then redirect to the correct url?

jasonlbaptiste12• 16 years ago

We're looking at more advanced features / customization. Maybe this is one to add? that's what I do for my personal domain. Also thinking about: custom skinning/css and logo changes.

olegp• 16 years ago

It would be useful if you could add apps which aren't in your database. For example, I have a self hosted instance of Sugar CRM - why can't I add that to the page?

Overall I really like the service. Nice, simple and something that a lot of companies really need. A number of businesses I know (including some very big ones) simply do not have a single master list of all the web apps they use.

jasonlbaptiste12• 16 years ago

That's coming next for the exact reason you mentioned: intranet / self hosted apps / custom built apps.

Tell HN:Launched Cloudomatic(start): all your startup's web apps. one place.

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