Happy Holidays HN: our new web app for easy sharing with your family

by markbao • 18 years ago

33 37 18 years ago

We're just sharing the app right now with close friends and family. Mark and I spend a ton of time on HN, and consider you guys family, so we wanted to share it here. We'll do the whole press, launch,etc. thing in mid january.

crxnamja• 18 years ago

this is cool. nice work.

qqq3• 18 years ago

what do i share with them?

it wasn't obvious what the app does, so i left.

jasonlbaptiste7• 18 years ago

hey, so how can we make it clearer. We stated it in a few places, but this is a first version. either let us know here or email personally j@ramamia.com

qqq3• 18 years ago

umm i looked again. the top right and huge banner don't say what you share. but i found this in a list with some other stuff:

- Easily share photos, events, messages, and interesting links

ok, but i can do that with email. it's not clear to me what's the point?

kbrower2• 18 years ago

I like this. I am curious about privacy. robots.txt seems to allow everything at the moment. When I tried to go to the page I created for my family I get:

"We're sorry, but something went wrong."

Tell me more.

jasonlbaptiste7• 18 years ago

hey were on it now, it's an isolated issue which is good. email me: j@ramamia.com , ill personally email you when resolved.

Let us know what you'd like us to do regarding robots.txt . We'll get that done asap. thanks!

kbrower2• 18 years ago

Well I am curious what is supposed to happen when you go to a family's page. Is it just privacy through obfuscation? In that case you should disallow everything except non-family pages in robots.txt, and maybe make those url's a little longer.

markbao5• 18 years ago

Just fixed that. Thanks for letting us know.

WRT privacy, I'm working on getting the pages and content protected. It's difficult to find a balance between allowing people to email page links, and security.

fuzzmeister• 18 years ago

Very cool, I'll have to get my family using this.

jasonlbaptiste7• 18 years ago

many thanks! If there's anything you ever need email us founders@ramamia.com

swombat• 18 years ago

I really like the idea, but the interface looks way too busy for my family to use.

You should try to work on adding a lot more white space, less text, and more clearly emphasizing what the likely action of the next user will be. Most families are full of non-techs that would need a fair bit of hand-holding here, because it's not clear what they need to do next...

shawndrost• 18 years ago

I think you could cut some clutter, but mostly you need to use design cues (boxes, color, font size) to guide the user. Good candidates for removal: the "share with others" link, the "ShareThis" widget.

PS. I accidentally put my family's name in lowercase, and it looks like that can't be fixed.

markbao5• 18 years ago

>I think you could cut some clutter, but mostly you need to use design cues (boxes, color, font size) to guide the user.

You're right. The design right now is pretty open. I will work on getting the design on track in terms of compartmentalizing things, adding images and icons to things, and the like.

>Good candidates for removal: the "share with others" link, the "ShareThis" widget.

We're removing ShareThis (since it goes against the privacy idea) but Share With Others public links can be emailed to people that aren't in the family, where non-family members can view and comment on the items. The public links are, however, secure, as they don't lead back to the main address of the family. So I think it's good to keep them. (Let me know if you think otherwise!)

>PS. I accidentally put my family's name in lowercase, and it looks like that can't be fixed.

I will implement changing the family name soon.

daveambrose4• 18 years ago

It's not necessarily the "white space" or "less text" that is throwing me off, rather, it's the arrangement of boxes on the page.

If you're looking to loop in the entire family, I'd try to get the most important stuff above the fold somewhere (i.e. the awesome overview video you have). I've watched the way my parents use the web and interact on their screens, and the first thing they'll look at is something right in front of them - in your case, show them the overview video above the fold while keeping your core message. Example arrangement: http://www.campfirenow.com/?source=applist

My $.02 at first glance but looks/feels great!

daveambrose4• 18 years ago

So, some other thoughts along the "aha" factor on the page:

For, the "Why Use Ramamia?" section alongside the video, there are some points here that don't fit IMO:

"Get started for free in under 5 seconds" - That's not a reason to use the app. I wouldn't place this in the why section.

"Easily share photos, events, messages, and interesting links" - How? Can you tell me how in one a line point?

"10x easier to use than other family sites" - Again, how? Also, what's a "family" site in this sense?

"More private than using Facebook or MySpace" - Just covering all areas here, but do you think your target audience will know FB and MS well enough to showcase it here in this point?

"Add something and your entire family is updated" - Maybe say "anything" instead of "something" here. "Add ANYTHING and your entire family is updated IMMEDIATELY"?

ryanwaggoner2• 18 years ago

A bunch of random thoughts:

- good idea, seems like there would be a market for it

- I think I get what you're trying to do with the login / obfuscation system, but it's non-standard and that makes it somewhat confusing for me at first glance. perhaps sell the benefits on the homepage?

- sell me on why this beats email

- I like how quickly you can jump in and check it out

- why not auto-capitalize family name?

- do you really need time zone? if so, perhaps you could default via geo ip?

- the "keep my page" button is cut off in ffx 3

- the "sharethis" option doesn't really make sense if you're trying to obfuscate these URLs...

- having the "post something" options as radio buttons seems kind of odd

markbao5• 18 years ago

>- I think I get what you're trying to do with the login / obfuscation system, but it's non-standard and that makes it somewhat confusing for me at first glance. perhaps sell the benefits on the homepage?

That's a great idea. I think it might be confusing for people at first, but somehow explaining how it's better will be very useful.

>- sell me on why this beats email

Centralised site. Communicate without email clutter. Easier to follow a site and receive regular email updates. It's similar reason that it's better to use Facebook than emailing your friends. Thanks for reminding us why we need to make this clear.

>- I like how quickly you can jump in and check it out

Great to hear. That's the kind of simplicity we're looking for.

>- why not auto-capitalize family name?

I'll add that.

>- do you really need time zone? if so, perhaps you could default via geo ip?

I was thinking the same, to try to assume via Geo IP. I'll look into it, but last time I checked, it was an insane amount of money to license.

>- the "keep my page" button is cut off in ffx 3

Ah, okay. I'll resolve that.

>- the "sharethis" option doesn't really make sense if you're trying to obfuscate these URLs...

Good point - we'll be removing those.

>- having the "post something" options as radio buttons seems kind of odd

We thought this would be a familiar user interface element for people to understand. Perhaps it's not – I'll think about what could potentially replace it.

Thank you very much for your valuable feedback! Cheers and happy holidays.

mmelin• 18 years ago

For timezone identification, the MaxMind GeoLite Country DB has plenty of accuracy and is free to use. http://www.maxmind.com/app/geoip_country

ryanwaggoner2• 18 years ago

For free geo IP, this might work:

http://geoip.dmwtechnologies.com/

daveambrose4• 18 years ago

How long did it take you guys to get this up and running?

jasonlbaptiste7• 18 years ago

(We're going to do a separate post on this in a few days probably, but here's a long story short)

Late October is when we started. Put together a spec doc. At first it was like two pages, we basically said: in order for this to be simple enough, we have to get it down to one page. The goal was simple sharing with your family, no bullshit involved.

Mark got a proof of concept up within 24 hours (layout, basic functionality, database,etc.) From there, we spent the rest of the time tweaking things, testing, user vids,etc.

daveambrose4• 18 years ago

Very impressive. Hopefully you guys can shed light on how you worked long-distance, managing time, doing this as a "side project", etc.

It's certainly a great gift to share with friends and family this holiday season!

staunch• 18 years ago

Either you can't delete or it's not obvious how to delete posted stuff. That's an incredibly huge oversight IMHO.

jasonlbaptiste7• 18 years ago

completely agree. It'll be there soon by the time we do a more widespread launch. We'll make it so you can only delete your own stuff obviously.

shimon2• 18 years ago

The key problem in this sort of site is being evidently and memorably distinct from the numerous other similar options, from email to facebook to flickr. I'd have to register with you to figure out how you're different/better, which isn't worth the effort because I'm not convinced there's some obvious problem with the way I share photos & links right now that you guys have solved, just because you "applied the family perspective" or whatever.

You have to attach to an emotional need people have regarding their families. Here's one I think many of the folks on HN share: guilt about not staying in touch with family members that live far away. One way you might tap into that need could be to offer a "time-release" delivery option, where I can seed my family account with a bunch of photots, and your service can send them out to my family at a rate of say 2 per week. I'd get credit for being in touch with my family on a regular basis, and each email can be a starting point for discussions and stories that bring us together around a particular memory. Plus, we're coming back to your site again and again over time, and I wouldn't mind paying a few bucks per month if you could send printed photos to my grandma who doesn't use email.

jasonlbaptiste7• 18 years ago

hey shimon, thanks for the feedback. in today's app world, you definitely have to be quick with designating the advantage/differences over other apps. we removed the whole registration issue, by being able to get started without an email, password / "another account". Any suggestions on how we could accomplish that would be more than awesome.

That's an interesting approach. The goal is to let people stay in touch, when doing so is pretty much a bitch. Doing printed photos is a rev stream we're looking into ie- via qoop or an equivalent.

Thanks!

shimon2• 18 years ago

Low barriers to entry are important, but they're not a reason to use a site. When a site has a great and obvious value, people will jump through all sorts of hideous crap to use it; and conversely, when I can't figure out why I should care, whatever's behind my back button is going to seem more interesting.

It's admirable to pursue great usability and I like your registration scheme, but I still need to smell the bacon.

tommusic• 18 years ago

For our great-grandmother we ended up getting one of HP's Presto printers. You pay a monthly fee (for the ISP) and the printer dials out on the phone line and downloads and prints any photos that have been e-mailed.

You set up a whitelist to avoid the spam issue, and then make sure you train people not to send all of those exciting forwards and 60-pic messages.

She loves it.

chaostheory• 18 years ago

reminds me of http://famster.com

TapInko1234• 18 years ago

It looks great.

ralph• 18 years ago

Overall, I like it. Would be nice not to use Flash for multiple file upload though. Some folks just don't have it. Allow an alternative for one file at a time. Or unpack an uploaded .zip?

calebelston• 18 years ago

Pretty cool!

Happy Holidays HN: our new web app for easy sharing with your family

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