Ask HN: Review my webapp.

http://wipeelist.com/

by slavingia • 18 years ago

41 41 18 years ago

wipeelist.com

qhoxie• 18 years ago

Two main positives:

* The interface is incredibly slick

* The API looks solid

My big question is, what sets this apart?

bazookaaa• 18 years ago

Came here to mention those two points. Excellent job. FYI though, the big image above the sign up and tour buttons didn't appear until I disabled Safari AdBlock.

vulpes2• 18 years ago

I was excited for the twitter integration until I tried to figure out how it worked and was met with "email us because regular people are not worthy" note on the blog. Not helpful. Is it that much work to write a blog post explaining how it works and then link it next to the twitter setup field in the preferences?

zzzmarcus• 18 years ago

It definitely looks nice, but like qhoxie says, I don't see anything extremely compelling about this vs. the dozens of other list sites out there.

No nested items, no syncing, what is the real advantage to using this over using Remember the Milk or something else?

You don't need a ton of killer features to differentiate it, but one is a minimum.

netcan• 18 years ago

There are quite a few of these aren't there?

slavingia4• 18 years ago

"What sets this apart?" Right now I do agree with this statement and it definitely needs to be addressed. Do you (or anyone) have any needs that aren't currently addressed by other to-do list applications?

I want what sets this apart to be something that is actually useful (instead of a neat looking but pointless gimmick).

ZitchDog• 18 years ago

Sorry, but I would never start a project without answering this question. The design is nice. Unfortunately "What sets this apart?" is my question #1 when I look at a webapp. I don't care if it's ugly as sin, I can always use stylish to pretty it up. I want it to somehow make my life easier.

siong1987• 18 years ago

It's good to put a tag line under the logo. The first thing I always will look at is the tag line when I stumble upon a new web application.

And, remove the small gap at the top of the page. Then, your UI will be near to be perfect.

jcapote• 18 years ago

Looks incredibly slick. I'd suggest making the signup process more instant (skip account creation altogether, or do it later).

vulpes2• 18 years ago

One suggestion: bang out free iPhone app as soon as possible and get going on a gmail widget, and you will win doves of users that do not want to pay for RTM premium features (myself included)

amackera• 18 years ago

Agreed! I am using Remember The Milk currently, but if you can make a better GMail widget I would for sure switch it up.

SwellJoe• 18 years ago

Android app market doesn't yet have a glut of todo list apps the way the iPhone does. It might be worth grabbing some land in an as yet undeveloped market, rather than being the 148th todo list on the iPhone.

debt• 18 years ago

Add the ability to drag and drop items on the list. Also, the app runs a bit slow.

zacharye• 18 years ago

The design is awesome, most definitely. My only comment that hasn't been covered is the tour page - I would much rather have a short video than scroll up and down to match numbers with their descriptions. Great work.

teyc• 18 years ago

Love the design. Did you do it yourself?

1. OpenID? 2. How do I try without an account?

rickharrison• 18 years ago

I have been looking for an application like this for a while. However, as other people have stated, getting an iPhone app out there right now is crucial. Even if you charged a dollar or two for the app, I know I would snatch it up right away. Remember the milk premium is just too much for me to get the app.

If you are looking for a partner in developing these widgets , please email me at rick AT rickharrison DOT me - I'd love to help you with these.

izak30• 18 years ago

First of all, looks good.

I would suggest a few things: Let me make a list w/o signing up. (check out how stack overflow does anonymous stuff..it's good.) Don't tell me "there's no post-signup xxx" and then make me confirm my e-mail. (for that sake, don't make me confirm my e-mail, use oid or something, what's my e-mail really worth to you anyway?) "You've been activated (hopefully)" -- Unsure your software works? Don't make me login after I activated. This is three times I have to put my password in before I can use it. What is the exclimation icon next to an item? Advertising your competitors? are you sure? How are items sorted? They're not draggable, but they don't seem to be in a instantly recognizable order either. Could I get a hover state on the bin so I can tell that I'm going to commit to an action? Could I undo the bin?

Re: twitter. Here's the way I did it. 3 step process. first, you must follow me. second, input your twitter name on my site. Third, I send you a dm, you input the code to confirm, that's it, now you're tied.

That's all I have at a quick glance. Looks good, with a good api, and a simple purpose.

pstinnett• 18 years ago

Was going to post about the advertising competitors thing. Even if it is sending you some cashflow still not a great idea I would think.

Also, the app interface doesn't seem to match the signup process. Seems kind of weird.

Nice clean app though.

blakeperdue• 18 years ago

Why do you ask my country? Why do you want to confirm my email? Just trust me... Don't make me go that extra step, it just puts up another wall for me to climb before I get to try your app.

slavingia4• 18 years ago

No country reqiured anymore :)

guruz• 18 years ago

btw: you could use Geo IP to set a rough default for that

glenstein• 18 years ago

Please, I don't want to have to sign up!

bob_dole• 18 years ago

The most beautiful useless webapp ever. seems like it does the same thing as tadalist

lacker• 18 years ago

There needs to be a tl;dr analog for "Takes too long to figure out what website did; didn't use." I propose

tl;du

whacked_new• 18 years ago

I'm not in your target market, so this is just a 5 second impression. Again, good design. One glaring gripe, the tagline: "... may be free..."

I don't understand why you put yourself on the defensive for your own product. It does not work in your favor at all.

GBKS• 18 years ago

I agree about not putting yourself in the defensive. Sentences like mentioned above or "It could be the worst piece of software on the planet, and people would still use it..." don't convince me to sign up. Tell me instead what I can do on your site, what makes it so cool that I have to sign up right away.

SapphireSun• 18 years ago

I just took a look at the opening page, and it took me a few seconds to figure out what it was. The block of text in the center should have some sort of description of what the service is.

eterno• 18 years ago

There was a time when "change the world" used to mean something. Go out and feed a few homeless,poor ppl, but please dont make the 1 millionth todo list app and claim to "change the world".

Nice design though.

SingAlong• 18 years ago

Well, I too thought the same way, but was reluctant to post it since I later felt it would discourage someone from developing a better one.

Just a few weeks back I was like "heck why do people even make such apps. its all the same thing under different skin". But in a few days I found myself in a total task-war with a lot of things to do. Thats when I realized when these apps are actually useful and heck, I spent a couple of hours searching for such an app for my s60 phone.

But I do have one suggestion for these guys developing apps which are 1000-in-one. Don't make another signup form. Consider using universal logins. OpenID, Google Account, Yahoo Account, Windows Live Account, etc. The easiest thing to do is to implement something like ClickPass (http://clickpass.com).

slavingia4• 18 years ago

First thanks for the comments. I'm going to implement all of these changes shortly.

I've turned off e-mail verification as many people have asked. I've also turned off Countries (seems a bit pointless and shouldn't have had it in the first place).

A "sort by" UI element is in the works. It's almost ready but I need do add remembering the preference in the app (or you'll have to change it every time you refresh the page).

Twitter is not fully completed, hence why it wasn't talked about. I'm creating a dedicated page for Twitter so no one gets confused with using it :)

A hover state for the bin should be done today as well.

FINALLY, iPhone and Gmail apps are in the works.

slavingia4• 18 years ago

The design is done by me. If you're interested just email me (sahil at slavingia dot com). I do not mean to spam my services, but many people have asked. :)

Tichy• 18 years ago

I don't get this obsession with to do lists that is flooding the web lately. How many people really use them in the end?

romanski• 18 years ago

How to delete an account?

hopeless• 18 years ago

I refer to my comment on the last todo list app that was presented here (err... all of 3 days ago?):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=379293

Seriously, the drag'n'drop thing is neat but is that the only thing you could come up with to differentiate your app from the other billions of web-based todo apps? Hell, you could have differentiated yourself just by coming up with a business model but failed on that too. If you developed the site purely to scratch your own itch, then congratulations it's really quite stunning but don't pretend that it's more than just a personal project.

vizard• 18 years ago

Hey I noticed you can get RSS feeds. This is a huge security risk : If anyone knows my email then can just find out the list I made :(

Not cool. Allow it to be disabled.

trevelyan• 18 years ago

I don't want to have to sign up either, although I did to check out the service. What would make this more useful for me is a simple URL that I can use to access my list anytime, ie:

http://www.wipeelist.com/list/MYUSERNAME

All you need from people is that username. Just make the lists public and writable by default and ask users for a password/email if they want to make their lists private.

Also, I didn't see the "Add an Item" right away. Perhaps I am blind. I'd suggest you add an onclick javascript event in the GIANT WHITESPACE that takes up most of the screen when you login. I clicked on the blank space expecting something to happen. It would have been nice if something did happen.

Third, it would be nice to be able to rearrange items by dragging them around. There are jquery plugins for that (Sortables) and is it not hard to implement them.

modoc• 18 years ago

Unless you're praying for a $$$ acquisition it doesn't NEED to be extremely compelling vs. the other sites out there. If you just want some good user base, and you want to make a few bucks with ads or premium features, having a great UI (which you have) and adding new features is enough.

When I wrote 10MinuteMail.com, it was just to learn Seam. If I'd bothered Googling around, I would have found a dozen existing sites that did the same thing, and I wouldn't have released it. However, the market size for the problem is apparently larger than the existing dozen sites, and I do some pretty solid traffic/ad revenue on there. It's not a million dollar sale kind of thing, but if I wanted to I could be leasing a very nice german sports car on the ad revenue. It really depends on your metrics for success.

The to-do list potential user base is enormous, and having an easy to use, pretty looking site, that has good integrations with other systems (e-mail, rss, ical events, gcal, etc...) could do very well, even amongst many existing competitors.

I agree with the comments that you should making signing up as easy as possible. Especially with a free service, the barrier to entry needs to be as low as possible.

scott_s• 18 years ago

Todo lists are becoming the web application version of Hello World.

kailashbadu• 18 years ago

As has been said before: it’s fine if it’s a personal project and your only intention was to test your technical expertise or give your ego a shot it’s arm; if you want to pick a couple bucks by slapping AdSense or something, it’s still fine. However, you are in for a big disappointment if you are expecting a dime more than that. Nice app, but not just as nice business value.

ralph• 18 years ago

Minor point: Consider the international audience and drop the "anyways"; it's slack.

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