Well after a month of sacrificing all my free time... this is what i came up with

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22928

by twism • 19 years ago

14 52 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

twism23• 19 years ago

I thought id share with you guys... feedback is very much appreciated... Im taking the weekend off

http://www.theother9to5.com/

zaatar• 19 years ago

Please consider supporting OpenID logins.

twism23• 19 years ago

Will do... And probably will in addition to the regular login

staunch• 19 years ago

+ The comments count ("5 comments") isn't a link to the comments, unlike most sites, so that's unintuitive.

+ The error message "Phrase Erorr!" had me cracking up because I'm pretending it's intentional?

+ Everything is a bit too dark for this computer's dimming LCD.

+ Signup text inputs should probably have a maxlength attribute to reduce resubmissions. Not for security of course. It'd be neat if signup was identical to the way login works.

twism23• 19 years ago

- comments link will be implemented

- i need to hire a witty copywriter

- i will bump up the contrast

- will add maxlenght to text input

sorry my replys sound short... Im reading and replying on my mobile phone

thank you very much for the feedback!

danw• 19 years ago

Im taking the weekend off

I've learnt from experience that you should take the time off before shipping the app. That way you're there to gather the feedback, do the bugfixes. Then try to do a second release within a week with a few little extra features that have been requested to show the community you listen to them.

Nice site, keep up the good work.

twism23• 19 years ago

There was a lot more half baked features i took out cause i just wanted to put the site up with minimal bugs... U guys are the first people to see it

twism23• 19 years ago

thanks!

natrius• 19 years ago

Why would someone use this instead of Facebook or upcoming?

immad• 19 years ago

I am guessing because fb is limited to private events generally and upcoming is still only really used by tech demographic (at least in London) and doesn't have a digg/reddit like voting structure.

I am also thinking he only did this idea to learn and test it out rather than as a serious business venture but then he should still have done a more unique concept since their are plenty out there....

twism23• 19 years ago

Its supposed to be really fast and to the point to find events posted not by olny organizations, But events posted by individuals who are in the know....djs, bartenders, event promoters, etc... or if a you and/or a group of friends are hitting up a local bar or restaurant

leisuresuit• 19 years ago

Cool. Did you use web.py to make this?

twism23• 19 years ago

Nope... Java (please dont stone me)

sethjohn• 19 years ago

I'm sick and tired of Reddit-knockoff social vote-on-something sites, the idea is simplistic and derivative, I can't imagine taking advice from 14 year old internet trolls about what I should do with my time...

...and yet, for reasons I can't fully explain, I really liked it! It's simple, local, and with the opportunity for vicarious thrills imagning other's experiences...

My only suggestion is that a site like this (more than Reddit/Digg/YCnews/etc) would benefit from having multiple different groups or interests to filter with. Maybe front page is most popular events all around, but you can filter the list to show only the most popular events by music, or bicycling, etc.

Nice work, looks like it could become something great.

twism23• 19 years ago

thanks!

gyro_robo3• 19 years ago

I see event #2 is "Drinking beer". So in the "Search for events" I type "beer".

Sorry we didn't understand what you meant by search for events beer, try using "in beer"

So I search for "in beer".

Search result "for events in beer" yeilded 0 match(es)

Keep working on it.

twism23• 19 years ago

I took out the "with" command... For some reason but should work within a couple hours if you type "with beer"

twism23• 19 years ago

"with beer" now works

andreyf• 19 years ago

Would be nice if there was a way to filter by just one city... NYC, for example. Maybe make it like craigslist?

twism23• 19 years ago

i was thinking about that... in the form of nyc.theother9to5.com... i could implement that in no time

twism23• 19 years ago

think reddit for events

mattcarbone• 19 years ago

I love the idea.

twism23• 19 years ago

thanks

wastedbrains• 19 years ago

I tried searching tonight in Denver and it returned Boston results. Might also want the front page to start with most popular or something since it started really empty. I think the black and dark colors make it a little hard to read. Cool idea and could really work if you got a group of friends all using it to meet up and decide what is cool any given night.

Just my initial thoughts / 2 cents.

Sam_Odio• 19 years ago

with most popular or something since it started really empty.

I agree - put the most popular or upcoming on the main page. This is especially important at the beginning, when the majority of search queries will return empty results.

palish• 19 years ago

Phrase: "tonight in st louis"

1. [vote up] this is a test Venu (Boston) on May 17, 2007 (tonight), posted by twism 2 weeks ago 2 points | 8 comments

2. [vote up] twest The Rack (Boston) on May 17, 2007 (tonight), posted by twism 6 days ago 1 point | 7 comments

Whoops..

twism23• 19 years ago

yeah i need to fix that... ive had no test users and limiting the functionality to the greater boston area

twism23• 19 years ago

fixed.

mattzitzmann• 19 years ago

I like the idea. It's simple and to the point.

You should also check out going.com (formerly heyletsgo.com). They are a Boston-based startup that has about 90k users. Going.com is a social network, but they try to get you out to events. I know this site started by using research from MIT's Media Lab to find events automatically. This might be worth checking out because all you need to do know is (a) seed the site with events and (b) get users.

tx2• 19 years ago

I think you need to get out of this mode of thinking "hm.... what kind of SELECT statement you can run on a table and turn it into HTML"

Focus on PROBLEMS that need to be SOLVED. Finding what's going on around is not a problem anymore. Have not been for like what... 10 years?

castlenut• 19 years ago

:-))))

tx2• 19 years ago

How about this: - You ask a visitor: "what is your name" - He says "Bob" - You generate AJAX page that says "Hi, Bob!"

How's that?!

BrandonM2• 19 years ago

I like the color scheme, actually. I am quite partial to the color scheme because I agree with Maddox (though I don't read his site much anymore) that looking at a white background is basically the same thing as staring as a light bulb. If the entire Internet used dark backgrounds, it would be a much warmer experience, in my opinion.

That said, perhaps the text needs to be just slightly lighter in order to give it a little more contrast with the background. Also, the size is minuscule. I know that Ctrl-+ is not too hard to press, but if that's the first thing that every visitor has to do, it's kind of a waste of time. On my display, at least, the size of event titles is about the same size as the normal text on this site. I would personally increase the size by 25-50%, but I tend to like larger text, so take that recommendation with a grain of salt.

I agree with the other comments that the front page should have a little bit more useful information. It could be something like a list (in order of decreasing popularity) of the events that are happening that day. The search seems somewhat strange, because if I was using that site, I think it would be in a situation where I'm like, "Hmm... what am I going to do tonight?" not a situation where I already know what I want to do and just want to figure out when it is happening (although that is a legitimate use case as well).

In spite of the criticisms, I'm liking the idea, and I wish you the best of luck with it. Have you considered trying to tie it into e.g. Google Calendar so that people can easily add events? Of course, ideas like that are just added features, but I'm curious where you plan on going with this.

twism23• 19 years ago

bumped up the font... i made the search show up across all of the list views and added a "with" directive. As for "what am i going to do tonight?" You could ask for a search of events - "tonight in " then expand from there with "with ".

BrandonM2• 19 years ago

That's great! I really like it now; it's easy to read and it all looks very good.

I like the additional upcoming links on the main page for now. I do like the idea you mentioned of putting up events that are similar to ones you have voted on, but until there are enough events in any one person's area, upcoming local events may be your best bet.

After reading the search description and trying out a sample query, I like it. It's rather intuitive and it performed correctly as far as my brief testing was concerned. One slight gripe -- I don't think you should use "u". That is, "as you would say it when u fill in the blank" should be, "as you would say it when you fill in the blank."

Anyways, I'm glad to see you taking the feedback seriously and making such quick changes. I really do like this idea. The more I think about it, I like how it connects an online community in the real world. I think this has some great potential, and again, I wish you the best of luck with it.

yubrew• 19 years ago

how about seeding events automatically from other bigger sites first?

twism23• 19 years ago

hmm...will think about it but im trying to get events of a different kind than what their users typically post

sabat• 19 years ago

tiny nitpick: "dont" should be don't. :-)

danteembermage• 19 years ago

I signed up for an account and submitted an event "Checking out the site." The trouble is, in order to post an event, you must select a venue and there are none in the database at the moment so no one will be able to submit events.

Obviously this could be fixed by populating the venue database, but I'm wondering about letting users submit their own venues. It would be really nice to be able to submit "Tupperware party at my house" and provide the address, but then you worry about "Toga party at Steve's house" that Steve doesn't know about.

twism23• 19 years ago

venues are from a web service(yahoo pipes) that was pulling from just boston and 20miles north of boston (where i live).. I just updated it to pull your location from your ip and search 20miles around your location fro venues..

budu3• 19 years ago

I love the design.

twism23• 19 years ago

thanks...im not a web designer at all ...in fact i hate web design... my css is all bloated and i dont even think over half of the directives actually do anything (from me trying something and scrapping it)

daniel-cussen• 19 years ago

I have trouble typing in new venues...I mean, sure, I'm probably the only user in Santiago, but I feel like I should be able to create my own venues and then, if possible, pick from a list of close matches others have typed in before. Overall, though, good alpha; the color scheme is good, it's simple, and it's pretty glitch-free. Congratulations.

ralph• 19 years ago

2007-05-19 13:12:52 +0100: The text is too dark. The copyright at the bottom is barely visible, same with upcoming, popular, new. submit event is a bit more visible. The "Enter a date..." is readable but hard work. This is on a CRT that's fine for the WWW at large. Edit: Oh, and previous and next weren't visible at all. I've only just seen then by doing "select all text". :-)

twism23• 19 years ago

Cool... Thanks for the feedback.. Im thinking just make the entire web page black and see how it looks

tachim• 19 years ago

'near pittsburgh' doesn't work. I like the idea, though.

Well after a month of sacrificing all my free time... this is what i came up with

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