Show HN: CaptainObvio.us - a place to share ideas

by Aaronontheweb • 15 years ago

109 72 15 years ago

I made this in the course of a couple weekends and wanted some feedback on how I can make it better. I've heard email notifications for comments and easier social sharing features so far, but I would love to know what else I can do to make it better.

citricsquid2• 15 years ago

Please drop the "s around everything. The picture being there and the context forces me to associate it with a person and not the site, the "s are redundant. Especially in comments. Also scrolling is insanely laggy for me, I have no idea why, but I assume it's all the JS.

Aaronontheweb23• 15 years ago

Just pushed a new build that removes the quotes - that was one of those things that looks better on a mockup than it does in production.

As for the scrolling issue, it could either be the Twitter @Anywhere hovercards or the background (used some CSS hacks to make it scale with the window when you resize) - could you let me know what browser you are using?

jarin3• 15 years ago

Great idea and great domain name, but I would suggest that monospaced fonts and #6A6A6A text on white are not exactly the best thing ever for readability.

You can probably leave the colors the same if you just switch to a proportional font, add a smidge more of padding, and bump up the line-height just a bit: http://cl.ly/3x1n103K472Z1J2t3Q3k

Aaronontheweb23• 15 years ago

Jarin,

your mock-up looks FANTASTIC! Could you tell me what font that is you used there? I'm not a designer by any stretch of the imagination and am generally clueless about these sorts of things.

auritus• 15 years ago

I think the key missing feature is being able to register interest or activity for an idea.

It would be extremely useful to see if anyone else is working on an idea, who they are and what their focus and status is.

e.g. When seeing the idea about selling twitter names, it would be helpful for everyone if I could say "Oh yes, Twitter are launching this next Friday" or "Like the idea, have a prototype, need a designer."

Comments do help, but a structured solution would make things much easier.

Ideally this wouldn't be only first-person, so that people can report other projects which seem similar. You'll need moderation either way (votes or active moderation, whatever.)

If implemented well enough, this could breed a sort of communal start-up site. Maybe the originator of the thread gets to choose from respondents and splits equity among them, at which point the idea is locked.

elbrodeur2• 15 years ago

Here are a few simple CSS tweaks that can improve readability. I only spent a couple of minutes, but I think it helps: http://pastebin.com/WEKswHND

EDIT: Here's a screenshot preview: http://cl.ly/022H381a2N2p1N0h3q0k

Aaronontheweb23• 15 years ago

Elbrodeur,

Dude, you are a life-saver. I'm going to use this and deploy it soon after I try to patch that scrolling lag issue people have been reporting - is there any way I can give you an acknowledgement or something in the footer of CaptainObvious or on the about page?

mryan2• 15 years ago

Very nice improvements... I hope you are online when I do my own ShowHN ;-)

awfulcoder142• 15 years ago

I love this idea. Good implementation too, the only thing i'd change is:

1) Add an overview page with a much bigger list of ideas.

2) Decrease the font size a bit. I could only see two or so ideas at once on the home page.

3) Perhaps add a voting system of some type?

You also might want to seed it with a bit more content, otherwise you'll have a hard time breaking out of the chicken and egg problem (that's what ended up killing me).

EDIT: I'd also add some indication that you aren't going to tweet as me.

Aaronontheweb23• 15 years ago

Voting and tagging are on my roadmap. I'm working on seeding it with more content too (just posted an idea myself!)

As for your comment in the EDIT - does it make you think you're going to end up tweeting your idea without a chance to opt out? Currently it doesn't tweet anything out if you comment or submit an idea, so if that's not clear I'd like to improve it.

awfulcoder142• 15 years ago

Great :)

Nothing about your site indicates you'll spam me, but plenty of sites do. I am, and i think a lot of people are, reluctant to log in with Twitter without some reassurance that they and their followers won't be spammed. Just a quick note can't hurt imo.

swlkr• 15 years ago

this is a great idea about... ideas

pero2• 15 years ago

I found scrolling up and down the page to be very laggy--without much investigation, it appears to be caused by the background image.

Aaronontheweb23• 15 years ago

Could you let me know what browser you're using and what your machine specs are? You're not the first to report the issue, so I'm trying to see where I should begin testing.

quickpost• 15 years ago

Same problem here. Firefox 3.6ish / Mac

pero2• 15 years ago

Chrome; Win7 x64; 2.4ghz duo; 4gb ram

mviamari• 15 years ago

@aaronontheweb

Are you tying the resize of the background directly to the window resize or scroll event? You might want to consider using setTimeout(customResizeFunc, 100) just to keep the scroll event from blocking

Aaronontheweb23• 15 years ago

I'm using some CSS hacks to do it. Here's what that code looks like:

body { font-size: 75%; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #232323; background: url('img/styles/blue_bg.jpg') no-repeat center center fixed; -webkit-background-size: cover; -moz-background-size: cover; -o-background-size: cover; background-size: cover; filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='/img/styles/blue_bg.jpgg', sizingMethod='scale'); -ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='/img/styles/blue_bg.jpg', sizingMethod='scale')"; background-color: #00689c; height: 100%; }

thecroth• 15 years ago

I also love this - funny cause I think that every creative/idea-generating mind with any regard to the internet has had this idea before, but I'm glad that someone is finally making it happen.

My guess to your idea's success is that you need to wire in with the right people and it'll explode.

BobKabob• 15 years ago

@CaptainObvio.us: There's always room for another great site about ideas, but check out halfbakery.com. You might get some ideas from their site. It's good, not great, but has an active user base.

Aaronontheweb23• 15 years ago

Is half-bakery meant to be somewhat silly ideas or serious ones?

joshu3• 15 years ago

originally it was meant to be silly ones, but the userbase got more serious over time.

i know the person that built/runs it.

netmau5• 15 years ago

You're welcome to check out Sparkmuse and steal any ideas on how we work. I can send you an invite if youd like, just shoot me an email.

sarp2• 15 years ago

I caused/discovered a bug :) http://captainobvio.us/details/buy-twitter-handles

Aaronontheweb23• 15 years ago

YOU KILLED IT!!!!

Probably an error with my controller that does writes to MongoDB - I'll check it out.

sarp2• 15 years ago

After OAuth, it couldn't retrieve my twitter username/picture, displayed them as null.

Eliezer• 15 years ago

Allow voting. -- Captain Obvious

Aaronontheweb23• 15 years ago

That's high on my list of things to add - that, tagging, and email subscriptions. Love the feedback :D

jarin3• 15 years ago

I might be the only person on the planet who still uses it, but RSS would be awesome!

p0ppe• 15 years ago

The link to the comments for ideas with one comment is currently displayed as "1 Comments". You might want to change that to "1 Comment".

bdr• 15 years ago

I'd like to submit anonymously

johns• 15 years ago

While I see why people would do this, I think it would ruin the site. When people are forced to use their real identity I've found the quality is always much higher.

GVRV• 15 years ago

Very nice v0.1

Just thought I'd let you know that if you ever need an official Tee (weekly best idea?), there's a good one on threadless: http://www.threadless.com/product/2537/Captain_Obvious

Aaronontheweb23• 15 years ago

Dude, that's a great idea and hysterical to boot! Thanks!

Spines11• 15 years ago

The background image is causing scrolling lag in Chrome. I turned the background image off and it fixed the problem.

hucker• 15 years ago

Is it mainly meant as a way of getting feedback on ideas, or throwing ideas out there for others to implement/use?

mtran• 15 years ago

This is really a lot of fun, and could even be a great tool for teams that are brainstorming ideas. I also love all of the feedback you are getting here and your receptiveness to it. I look forward to seeing how it grows. Nice work!

doctororange• 15 years ago

Great site, but I would lose the Courier. Might just be my preference.

drewbaumann• 15 years ago

I voted you up sir

tophat02• 15 years ago

I had this, err, idea! Congrats for doing what I wouldn't do and implementing it. Perhaps I should have just put the idea on CaptainObvio.us and let someone else implement it ;-)

Aaronontheweb23• 15 years ago

Guys, thanks for all of your feedback! Lots of great ideas and suggestions, and you helped me find two really nasty bugs that I didn't catch earlier.

I'm going to start hacking away on this the instant I get off of work on Friday - I can't wait to get started. Thanks, Hacker News!

michaelcgorman• 15 years ago

Just a tiny, trivial, aesthetic/grammar change: on http://captainobvio.us/auth/login you say "Login to Captain Obvious". I'd change that to "Log in …".

huuleon• 15 years ago

Something went wrong when i login with my twitter account.

joshu3• 15 years ago

I love this.

I had something built that is VERY similar (architecture - blobs of text with titles, twitter login, comments, voting, tags, flask+mongody) except for another completely different use: http://cluedb.com/

Might be interesting to share code?

Aaronontheweb23• 15 years ago

Josh,

Absolutely - I'd love to show you what I'm running under the hood. My email is aaron AT aaronstannard.com - what's the best way to get in touch?

Marwy2• 15 years ago

So you're not going to make the code public?

joshu3• 15 years ago

i emailed you.

karterk• 15 years ago

Well executed. I would love an RSS feed to subscribe to.

madhkrish• 15 years ago

I think www.iinspireus.com does a much better job at soliciting feedback for your ideas!

toufique• 15 years ago

Love it! Not sure if I'd remember to come to the site everyday, but I'd definitely follow a CaptainObvious twitter account if it tweeted newly submitted ideas.

k00k• 15 years ago

Feature request: Automatic URL linking/detection

Show HN: CaptainObvio.us - a place to share ideas

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