Show HN: Breakpoint.io - Share and get feedback on your side projects

by drewtemp • 13 years ago

150 63 13 years ago

goldfeld• 13 years ago

I can't help but feel all these websites miss out on what makes Hacker News great: density of information leading to a quick scan of the zeitgeist. I just feel constrained looking at this website's frontpage.

binarymax• 13 years ago

I agree. This is a good idea but the giant thumbnails are very hard to parse since they clash with each other. Would be nicer if it was a simple uniformly styled text list with taglines, and user interaction (mouseovers/expands/something) to show thumbnails?

thomseddon• 13 years ago

Hard to parse + frustratingly unfruitful. I just want to know what the things does, screenshot is a bonus.

drewtemp10• 13 years ago

Thanks for the feedback. Prior to the current styling, I had a screenshot with title, author, description, etc to the right. I found it cluttered and difficult to read through a list of projects. I'll keep working on it and see if I can find something.

arkitaip• 13 years ago

Since most of us check HN multiple times throughout the day I don't think it matters that much, especially since the rate of project submission will be relatively (to HN) low.

jweir• 13 years ago

I agree: density would be much better.

The screen shot is less important than the description and the discussion. A thumbnail will suffice.

expralitemonk• 13 years ago

Many side projects don't have eye candy. Maybe skip the screenshot altogether, and just give a summary + link, which is what "One Thing Well" did. http://onethingwell.org

Great idea though. (I might use it soon.)

drewtemp10• 13 years ago

Interesting idea. Thanks for that :)

justhw• 13 years ago

Nice work. I'm glad you are tackling it [1], now it's off my table. Hopefully your site is back up to let me signup. The UI could benefit from simplicity.

[1] = http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5030945

drewtemp10• 13 years ago

I started the project a few days before that was posted. Seeing that only inspired us to continue.

EDIT: Yeah, the site is getting hammered right now.

nns• 13 years ago

It'd be good to have the projects tagline on the mouseover display - so one doesn't have to navigate away to see what a project does. Great Job!

drewtemp10• 13 years ago

Thanks, I'll add that soon.

jqueryin• 13 years ago

I was about to comment the same thing. I'd really like to see short descriptions on hover of each thumbnail. I still can't tell what those sites do.

drewtemp10• 13 years ago

Added.

tristanoneil• 13 years ago

Awesome idea. Just added my side project :) https://breakpoint.io/41-furnace

j-m-o• 13 years ago

Cool. I threw my side project up there:

https://breakpoint.io/48-ringo/

http://www.tryringo.com

Given that most Show HN's never hit the front page (mine was in the 1st page of the 'new' tab for just 20 minutes!), hopefully this fills in a niche that seems to be missing from HN. Good work!

drewtemp10• 13 years ago

Thanks for the feedback! I really want to turn it into a community where others provide great feedback on their side projects.

wwwtyro• 13 years ago

I like this quite a lot. I hope you keep iterating on it. I've added my project: http://breakpoint.io/50-underspark/

drewtemp10• 13 years ago

Thanks. I plan to keep working on it. I've been working on it for a bit of time now on the side and finally decided to release it.

johnrampton• 13 years ago

you need more too it... What's the wow feature?

illyism2• 13 years ago

I love the idea! But I think it would be great if people would be able to change their thumbnail screenshot that is shown on the popular and latest list. I've added my project[1] but I changing the lead screenshot is not possible which is a shame. It's also not possible to delete screenshots, which should be a must-have feature.

[1] https://breakpoint.io/65-instaghent/ http://www.instaghent.com/

machbio• 13 years ago

cache problems with images of Breakpoint - still showing the same image even after i changed the screenshot of my side project

BryanB55• 13 years ago

Nice idea. I added one of my projects: https://breakpoint.io/84-quotepress-turn-your-customers-into...

Although it looks like one of the screenshots I added is not displaying. Could just be hackernews traffic maybe, I noticed there is also an image error with the ad in the sidebar.

[edit] Looks like both screenshots are showing now.

TallboyOne3• 13 years ago

Amazon takes awhile to get up to speed from when I submitted mine.

drewtemp10• 13 years ago

A mix with Amazon + backend processing. The server was getting hammered so there was a bit of a delay.

mootothemax• 13 years ago

Very fun, I've added one of my projects here: http://breakpoint.io/43-trackchat/

As others have said, the screenshots management bit needs to be improvement - it's a bit of a guess as to what'll work best right now. But I imagine that will come with time.

Good luck!

pcorsaro• 13 years ago

Very cool idea, I put my project up here: https://breakpoint.io/101-grouvee/

mayank• 13 years ago

Great idea and execution, but it's somewhat telling that some of the "side projects" people are posting really don't look like side projects.

marknutter• 13 years ago

What exactly is a side project supposed to look like?

rschmitty2• 13 years ago

An uncustomized bootstrap app? :P

bduerst• 13 years ago

Mobile apps that haven't been released yet?

Seriously, I think Tappr and several others are just using this to advertise.

coolbrow2• 13 years ago

Great idea! Hope I get good feedback on one of my newer projects: https://breakpoint.io/103-awdio/

danenania• 13 years ago

I like the idea a lot. Nice work!

One slightly negative impression: while there are already lots of good submissions and it looks like people are using the heart button, there are very few feedback comments so far. I particularly like the idea of a smaller, more tight-knit group of HNers giving each other feedback, since it seems nearly impossible these days to get any attention for a Show HN post without preexisting internet fame or a voting ring, so I found it a bit unfortunate that Breakpoint seems be starting out more in the direction of show-off gallery than a place for substantive discussion and critique in the HN vein. I'm not really sure how to remedy this. Perhaps placing more emphasis on discussion vs. screenshots could help?

coolbrow2• 13 years ago

I totally agree. I think the main issue at this point is in order to have really good, constructive feedback, you need actual users. Maybe over time, once people start using projects, there will be more feedback.

bennyg2• 13 years ago

Everyone wants feedback, nobody wants to give it. I'm gonna' try and go through a bunch here in a minute. This is a beautiful site to navigate.

vanni• 13 years ago

"(...) there are very few feedback comments so far. I particularly like the idea of a smaller, more tight-knit group of HNers giving each other feedback (...)"

This is one of the reasons behind my Google+ community for and about Internet Startups [1] - currently the largest one about this topic - where you can post under the "Introduce your startup" category and get precious feedback.

[1] https://plus.google.com/communities/100445483815501942968

callmeed• 13 years ago

I really like it and I hope you're able to get some traction/traffic with it–but also balance it with having a solid community.

Frankly, submitting "Show HN" posts here is now useless and a bit frustrating. Most of them seem to get lost.

c0d3sl1ngr• 13 years ago

Hi, I am sure you are aware, but as I tried to load my project, your site crashed. I ran this on a VM with a spoofed IP as well, so Im not sure whether it is all domains or not...

TallboyOne3• 13 years ago

Internal server error

illyism2• 13 years ago

It did survive for almost 2 hours.

rschmitty2• 13 years ago

Not much.. but something http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

thoughtcriminal• 13 years ago

The name "breakpoint" seems almost prophetic now.

drewtemp10• 13 years ago

Sorry about that. Memcached errors. It's back!

sirchadlington• 13 years ago

I'm getting an Internal Server Error

TallboyOne3• 13 years ago

http://breakpoint.io/45-pineappleio/

littledot5566• 13 years ago

Site is down.

holgersindbaek• 13 years ago

Down

atte2• 13 years ago

I like the idea and the design. This has some overlap with Launchsky (including a similar UI): http://launchsky.com

The main difference is that we're a platform for sharing ideas, and you're sharing projects that already exist. In any case, good luck with this!

acedip2• 13 years ago

It says launching in early 2013. so when is it? BTW interesting concept, I'm one of those "would be" users and shared it too :P

atte2• 13 years ago

We are launching the beta next week. Really glad to hear you have been spreading the word!

georgelawrence• 13 years ago

Cool site!

Suggestions: - Use Gravatar for the avatar - Add a field in the profile for GitHub

Also, just added mine... http://breakpoint.io/116-straply/

rk0567• 13 years ago

Cool :) few minutes before it was inaccessible but now it works fine! I added my recent experiment : https://breakpoint.io/121-railyo/

acedip2• 13 years ago

You could make signup quicker by adding login with facebook. In this case probably twitter as you are also taking in the twitter username in profile.

ajryan• 13 years ago

Another site that tackles this from a non-social angle: http://criticue.com Interesting 1-for-1 review model. I've used it with good results.

christiangenco• 13 years ago

I'm getting server error 500 when I try to upload my project (dbinbox.com) :(

Edit: The developer (thanks Drew!) emailed me within ten minutes of posting this, figured out what the issue was, and pushed a fix. I'm impressed.

Here's my weekend project dbinbox: https://breakpoint.io/144-dbinbox-makes-it-easier-for-people...

ribeto• 13 years ago

Nice idea. I think it's a great way to discover what other people are working on as well

vertis• 13 years ago

Just added my project. Thanks for making something awesome :)

drewtemp10• 13 years ago

You're welcome. Thanks for the comment and adding your project!

inthewoods• 13 years ago

Nice - posted my own side project - would love some feedback on the idea from HN. https://breakpoint.io/153-bento/

bozho• 13 years ago

I'd suggest adding features to keep people coming back. E.g' rss and email subscription for 'hot' projects. Otherwise it might get pretty lonely when you get off the hn front page.

voltagex_• 13 years ago

Needs a login-with-github button - most of my side projects are on GitHub anyway.

pseut• 13 years ago

The phrase "hand-whatever" has lost its novelty. I'm reluctant to make such a short and flip comment, but I can't be the only person who cringes every time I see it.

Show HN: Breakpoint.io - Share and get feedback on your side projects

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