YC reject ourdoings.com navigation overhaul -- big improvement?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22417

by brlewis • 19 years ago

4 15 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

brlewis6• 19 years ago

I have another iminlikewithyou invite to reward good feedback, or you can just do it for karma.

Please go through the demo and see if it's easier now than last time I asked for feedback.

I've also added an ad-supported option. There may be kinks. Please try it.

This site is implemented with Scheme as the language and Java as the platform. I use PostgreSQL 8.1. I'm curious as to who else has any of these elements in common.

With Paul Buchheit inquiring about how to simplify upload of image files, I'm concerned that some tough competition in the "amazingly simple photo sharing" space may be on the horizon. Any feedback would be super helpful.

http://ourdoings.com/

willarson• 19 years ago

Just a quick list of impressions on seeing the site, don't want to sound really negative, just trying to convey my thoughts quickly.

No direct login on front page. Front page is very busy. I would put the "ourdoings" image at the top, and drop the "ourdoings.com" title. Its just a lot of raw data. Don't really care for the use of hyperlinks on the frontpage. Seems like it is pushing pricing a bit too early, I don't know anything about your product, and you are talking to me about money, I feel insecure ;) Need backwards links, for example on registration page I want to go to your front, but it has no link to do so. As noted above. Front page - Tutorial - Edit leads to a crash.

I assume you are using SISC scheme on top of the JVM, which seems fairly reasonable, but I'd take a quick look at liftweb.net , which is a pretty pleasant scala web development environment (it isn't Lisp or Scheme, but I think Scala is pretty decent to look at (once you get over typing functions...), and being able to grab Java libraries is pretty handy, although SISC is giving you that too, the Scala syntax for doing it is dead simple).

brlewis6• 19 years ago

Quick impressions is what I'm after. Don't worry about sounding negative.

Your feedback on the front page is definitely useful. The only part of your feedback I'd push back on is taking pricing off. Everybody was asking me how much it cost before I put that there.

I'm using the Kawa Scheme compiler, which on some benchmarks was 200-300x faster than SISC, the fastest interpreter. I don't need to bring in Java libraries all that often, and Kawa's FFI syntax is plenty good enough for me to quickly write a Scheme API, as I'm sure I'll do with s3. Basically all I'm doing is translating form inputs to data, and data to HTML, with escaping where appropriate and lots of conditionals. I've already got the perfect language for that.

I fixed the demo early this morning. Please have another look.

budu3• 19 years ago

http://ourdoings.com/whatnext.html - Error Argument to 'cdr' has wrong type

brlewis6• 19 years ago

I really need a good regression test. I tested the demo after I changed it, but later I made non-demo changes and didn't test how they affected the demo. Actually as I made the change it should have occurred to me how it would affect the demo. I need more sleep.

I fixed the demo early this morning. Please have another look.

rami• 19 years ago

I got the following error:

Error Argument to 'cdr' has wrong type

Additional debugging info: (more...)

Tue May 15 23:44:32 CDT 2007

Argument to 'cdr' has wrong type at gnu.expr.GenericProc.applyN(GenericProc.java:72) at gnu.mapping.ProcedureN.apply1(ProcedureN.java:29) at atInteractiveLevel$frame.lambda1info(Unknown Source) at atInteractiveLevel$frame.apply1(Unknown Source) at gnu.expr.ModuleMethod.apply1(ModuleMethod.java:85) at atEvalLevel.lambda1(/usr/local/jetty-6.1.3/webapps/bigsite/WEB-INF/tpl/whatnext.html:1) at atEvalLevel.apply1(/usr/local/jetty-6.1.3/webapps/bigsite/WEB-INF/tpl/whatnext.html) at gnu.expr.ModuleMethod.apply1(ModuleMethod.java:85) at gnu.brl.progfun$frame1.lambda3(progfun.scm:276) at gnu.brl.progfun$frame1.apply1(progfun.scm) at gnu.expr.ModuleMethod.apply1(ModuleMethod.java:85) at kawa.standard.callcc.apply(callcc.java:19) at kawa.standard.callcc.apply1(callcc.java:44) at gnu.brl.progfun$frame0.lambda2(progfun.scm:272) at gnu.brl.progfun$frame0.apply1(progfun.scm) at gnu.expr.ModuleMethod.apply1(ModuleMethod.java:85) at kawa.standard.call_with_output_string.apply1(call_with_output_string.java:10) at gnu.brl.progfun.brlResult(progfun.scm:269)

brl servlet 2.2.2pre

brlewis6• 19 years ago

Fixed.

Sam_Odio• 19 years ago

Plans seem pricey. What about using Amazon S3, and marking up what they charge by 50%? This will reduce your prices (and costs) significantly.

My other immediate question is, how are you different than SmugMug? SmugMug costs less than your "Gold" plan, and seems to offer more features / space.

For those that don't want to pay, flickr offers to host 200 high-res photos, how does this compare to bronze / free plans?

I understand the differences you've outlined on http://ourdoings.com/about.html - but it seems that competing services offer most of this as well.

Find what differentiates your service, and focus on that.

brlewis6• 19 years ago

Amazon s3 is something I plan on using this summer to bring price down. The responsiveness of the service isn't good enough for me to just throw all images into it, but just putting the full-size printable versions in s3 could be used to cut costs a lot.

How it's different from other services becomes obvious in the demo; sorry I broke it, but take a look now. You'll see that how the photos are organized and presented is different from all the other sites. I think it's much more suitable for people whose photos tell a story, e.g. kids growing up or people traveling.

I used to have much more text on the "about" page that explained differences, but I ruthlessly cut it down because people don't read.

I used to not have a pricing link on the front page, but everybody asked how much it cost. Generally people new to photo sharing exclaim how cheap it is. And it is cheap. I charge by usage, not by limit, so it can be very cheap if you're not using a lot of space.

I'm very focused on simplicity. Existing photo sites are focused on the photo enthusiast, who will be spending a lot of time on each individual photo anyway. People with little time but lots of photos will benefit most from ourdoings.com.

mhidalgo• 19 years ago

Since it photo-sharing site, I really think you need to invest in a designer to improve the look and feel. You need to come up with a logo....

dawie2• 19 years ago

I am going to be frank: Don't think "YC Reject" is going to save you. I would reject you too.

Your site still sucks. "MAKE SOMETHING PEOPLE WANT" I don't want a shitty photo sharing site. Have you used smugmug, flickr and even picasa web albums (my current favorite). These sites are close to perfect and you will NEVER catch up with them. They are easy to use and I don't think it can egt any easier.

Change you business plan/application to do something else. Do social networking -- (jokes)

PS: Keep your invites

brlewis6• 19 years ago

If those photo sharing sites are close to perfection for you, that's fine. They aren't at all what I want. I want to mix text and photos to tell a story chronologically:

http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-demo-stock/

It's a mistake to look at photo sharing as a single finish line that these various sites are racing to. Different people will have different purposes for sharing photos, and these will lead to different sites. For example, Smugmug didn't have an email updates feature with embedded photos for more than two years after ourdoings.com had it. This is not because Don is a slow racer; it's just that that feature has less appeal for his user base than it does for mine. He's not trying to catch up with me; I'm not trying to catch up with him. There are millions of people out there whose photos sit on their hard drive never to be seen. I think a lot of those people would be best served by doing what I've been doing for years on ourdoings.com with my own photos; I just want to make it accessible to them.

dawie2• 19 years ago

"I want to mix text and photos to tell a story chronologically" - Is that not the same as comments or a photo blog.

I am sorry for being so negative, but I just can't see this going anywhere. Also it doesn't seem like you take people's advice. Your site still have loads of text painfully explaining stuff. In the past nearly everyone said the same things they said here.

Do a better design. Drop the text. Make it intuitive/easy to use.

maxklein2• 19 years ago

Dude, you seriously need to hire a designer. It makes all the difference in the world. Bad design will make an excellent product flop, and yes, your site is badly designed.

I hired a good romanian designer on rentacoder for $160 and he gave me an excellent photoshop mockup. Hired another guy for $50 and he converted the the mockup into neat cross browser compatible html.

Do the same, because your design sucks. EVERYONE thinks they are good at user interfaces, in reality, about 1% of programmers do it properly. Why do you think so much software is so difficult to use?

Oh and by the way, EMPHASIZE how you are different from all the other photosharing sites. Make sure everyone knows about the picture story part of your app. Let them not think it's just a regular site like flickr.

And reduce your prices. You are way above current market prices with a worse product. I hope you've bloody got an excellent marketing team, otherwise you're in for some floundering.

maxklein2• 19 years ago

And WAY too much text all over your site. One simple command is all that people will read. If you want me to recommend a designer to you, I can do so.

YC reject ourdoings.com navigation overhaul -- big improvement?

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