The App Store is slow, so I built App Store Instant

http://appoftheday.com/instant

by jsatok • 16 years ago

88 60 16 years ago

appoftheday.com

bballbackus• 16 years ago

Haha I see your logic.

Guy creates ytinstant.com, gets hired by google.

You create App Store Instant, and (hopefully) get hired by apple.

judofyr• 16 years ago

Ehm, the logic is right there in the headline:

The App Store is slow, so I built App Store Instant

code_duck2• 16 years ago

I'm not supporting the above statement, and the blithe logic it displays, but I can't go along with this, either. If that is as deep as the analysis of motivations goes on Hacker News, none of you should ever be allowed to vote.

chris24• 16 years ago

The JavaScript (and a bit of the CSS) looks awfully similar to iTunes Instant which was released a few days ago: http://labs.stephenou.com/itunes

Edit: according to a few people I've heard from, Stephen (creator of iTunes Instant) did help out / supply some of the code for App Store Instant. My mistake. :)

charlesju• 16 years ago

My game GloSnake isn't showing up :(

jat8502• 16 years ago

When I searched for GloSnake, it showed up briefly and then disappeared. I can't seem to get it to come back again.

(edit) When getting as far as "Glos", it shows up. If I type beyond that, it seems to disappear.

jsatok9• 16 years ago

Found a bug in my code. Try searching now!

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

I have 'instant' overload.

gojomo• 16 years ago

Time for a 'slow search' movement to go with 'slow food' and 'slow news'!

ThomPete2• 16 years ago

I have been wanting to do a slowfeed movement for years

feross• 16 years ago

My friend built http://ytsloth.com as a parody of my http://ytinstant.com.

leftnode2• 16 years ago

I'm going to make an instant instant searcher - it instantly searches for searches that instantly search.

mgrouchy• 16 years ago

http://macournoyer.com/instantinstant/ not quite the same thing, but an instant search for instant searches.

phoenix242• 16 years ago

Instant is good, but suddenly everyone's making everything instant instant now this ain't as interesting.

or do we really need everything to be instant?

magic52272• 16 years ago

I just want to point out, re: all these "instant" things, Google instant is useful not because its instant, but because its finishing queries for you.

Partial queries are not useful.

My 2cents

jsatok9• 16 years ago

I agree with you. I didn't build App Store Instant as a replica of Google Instant. With the APIs available, there isn't a reliable way to predict apps.

I built it because iTunes is slow. Try searching iTunes and clicking on an App (to read the description). It takes me 5+ seconds. This takes ~1 second.

magic52272• 16 years ago

Yea not this specifically, just in general.

joshd• 16 years ago

Are you logging your queries? If you have enough searches you could build your own predictions. You're also proxying results, so you could use those to build an index too.

martingordon• 16 years ago

The thing that sets this one apart from the others is that it can actually generate revenue (via affiliate links).

theprodigy• 16 years ago

Will this be a new hacker news meme or something? Being bored or current search tool on site is slow so I built (Insert Name) Instant.

SoftwareMaven• 16 years ago

There are worse memes than actually building something.

eclark• 16 years ago

It seems to be missing some of the apps that I can find from the itunes store. We Rule isn't showing up. While another of the We series is.

I like the design a lot simple, fast, and calming.

aresant2• 16 years ago

Although I've got "instant overload" too this is the first of the instant apps with a built in, scalable business model - each of the links on this site is iTunes / linksynergy affiliate enabled - that's truly smart :)

jsatok9• 16 years ago

Thanks. I'm excited to see how it scales!

aresant2• 16 years ago

Share when you get some data :)

fabiandesimone• 16 years ago

I need to contact you, but your contact us form is not working. Any other way?

marklubi• 16 years ago

FWIW, you may want to test the linksynergy links through a non-US proxy. I implemented linksynergy on our app's marketing site to hopefully glean an extra 5% on the sales, instead we found there was a bug where international users were being dumped into an infinite redirect loop.

The issue occurred a few months ago but after losing a large amount of sales overseas before we tracked down the problem, we decided we would rather have better control over our sales channel than the extra 5%.

It would take us more than 6 months of sales via linksynergy to make back what we lost in the short time the issue was occurring. It's not worth the risk for us.

Also, it would be nice to find search results for iPad apps and to be able to browse beyond the initial 9 apps that are displayed.

meric• 16 years ago

Now we just have to wait for an Amazon instant as well. (With affiliate links, too)

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

I give it 24 hours or so. These things seem to pop-up near instantaneously.

akadien• 16 years ago

www.instantdomainsearch.com has been doing the instant lookup thing for a while.

asnyder• 16 years ago

Not to mention Domize (http://www.domize.com). I remember using them years ago, I still love it. It's funny, since I can't stand Google Instant, but really enjoy Domize, interesting how that works.

phoenix242• 16 years ago

http://domai.nr/ too is an instant domains lookup, and is pretty good at it.

city41• 16 years ago

What we really need is a better app store interface on the iPad. Apple's implementation is terrible[1]. AppShopper shows it would be possible to do. I'd even pay money for such an app. The app could include "spotlight apps" too, as another source of revenue.

[1] It is terrible because it always resets itself to the beginning everytime you launch it. Couple that with the fact that installing an app causes the app store to close, means you just can't search around very effectively on it. Simple example: navigate to the third page of top apps, find an app you like, install it, go back to the app store, you've been pushed back to the first page and have to redrill down to page three to keep perusing.

stevenwei• 16 years ago

Agreed. Browsing is especially difficult when you click on an app to find out more details about it, click back when you're done, and then find that you've been kicked back to page one.

Unfortunately I think this is one of the places where you're likely to get rejected by Apple for 'duplicating built in functionality', even if you've improved upon it, so I doubt anyone is going to do it

forgottenpaswrd• 16 years ago

Agreed.

bgray• 16 years ago

I also have instant overload but I must admit, this is one of the better instant apps I've seen! And no begging for a job. :)

mortenjorck• 16 years ago

Excellent work! Feature suggestion: iPad / iPhone filtering.

jsatok9• 16 years ago

Great suggestion. I thought about doing tabs when building it, but wanted to keep it as simple as possible. Any ideas?

ajg19772• 16 years ago

Nice idea but worthless results I'm afraid.

"secret of monkey island" - no hit, suggestions have none of these words.

"air video" - no hit, though at least suggestions include air.

"best camera" - ditto.

jsatok9• 16 years ago

Was a bug affecting apps that have spaced in them. Fixed!

(Air Video still doesn't show on top when you type Air Video as apparently Apple's iTunes API is ranking Air Mouse Pro higher)

ajg19772• 16 years ago

Still appears to be broken.

"Red Laser"

"Better Christmas List"

simplify• 16 years ago

I typed in "go" and SmartGo Pro was the first result. Impressive.

mikecane2• 16 years ago

OK, it's not working comprehensively. I think the search term "book" should bring up waaaaay more than the 9 results I'm getting!

jsatok9• 16 years ago

It's just a preview of the first 9 results. Apple only returns back a limited number. I need to find a better way of displaying if there are more than the 9 results. Any ideas?

mikecane2• 16 years ago

OK, too bad Apple limits it like that. It really kills its usefulness then. Books in the App Store (aside from the ePubs in the iBookstore) is a rat's nest that's hell to wade through on the desktop. An Instant like this would really help with that.

newobj• 16 years ago

Nice, too bad I don't shop the App Store by keyword search.

mkramlich• 16 years ago

very snappy, well done! it found all but one of my published iPhone apps, and very quickly, like Google Instant. Of course, one huge advantage you have is less traffic. And you've got less to render. You may also be showing more of a cached, less real-time view of what's actually in the store (guess).

bobwaycott• 16 years ago

My two cents ...

I find the results often unexpected as a result of matching a search term to several app fields. I search the word "instant" and receive AIM as the top result (presumably because AIM is an "instant" messenger application). Same thing occurs due to matching against developer names, causing what I'd consider to be false (or 'less true') matches to show up because the string matches a developer name, and yet matching app names are lower in the match results, even though the string is in the app name--and often the beginning of the app name.

It'd be worthwhile to consider tightening the parameters. I'd wager a typical user performing an instant search is not searching by developer name. I'd further wager an average user is searching by keyword and description less frequently on an 'instant' search than by app name. So perhaps you could try a bit of weighting, pushing X app name matches higher in the results, followed by X description matches, followed by X developer name matches. Perhaps tweak the UI to reflect this.

And, of course, I could be completely wrong and this is all just a matter of my expectations not being fulfilled after searching.

andrys• 16 years ago

How did you manage to scrap the Apple Store? Are you storing all the apps data locally? I guess it would be a huge overhead to send each of these queries to Apple...

The App Store is slow, so I built App Store Instant

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