To Be

https://to.be/

by of • 12 years ago

146 57 12 years ago

to.be

DiabloD3• 12 years ago

This is interesting, but the front page is rather cluttered and makes it hard to pay attention to the core message.

jstanek• 12 years ago

What exactly is this? It looks to me like a multiplayer vaporwave-inspired shirt maker.

at_• 12 years ago

Maybe I'm overreacting b/c this aligns with my interests pretty directly but this is outrageously cool + well-executed. And better yet looks like there's already a bunch of interesting users on there.

Completely eliminates the technical barriers to creating this type/genre of net art so it's gonna be interesting seeing the effect that has alone

How long has this been around?

of5• 12 years ago

to.be has been around since 2012 / 2013. I'm glad you think it's cool.

yabatopia• 12 years ago

The domain to.be has a long history in Belgium (.be is the CcTLD for Belgium). Before and around 2000 it was one of the most popular websites there, it was literally the place.to.be. I always liked the domain name, it was clever and with lots of potential. At one stage it was a well-known chat site, but a succession of pivots and different owners led to a obscure existence. And now it somehow resurrected as a t-shirt printing company based in the US.

arcameron• 12 years ago

Completely white page with NoScript, please add a <noscript> tag

of5• 12 years ago

That's a good idea. Why would someone downvote this?

yzzxy• 12 years ago

Because it's silly to ask web developers to cater to a specific extension used by a marginal minority of people. Much better to use a more general method for when JS is unavailable.

And people using noscript or similar tools (like myself) should know by now when a page fails to check that first.

kephra2• 12 years ago

This page follows a typical JavaScript antipattern of not showing anything to search engines, web scrapers and people who block JavaScript.

A noscript tag sould at least tell me, what the site offers when enabling JS, to give me a reasont to enable JS.

And it takes ages to load on a normal DSL line. I dont want to know how slow this page is when browsing with a cell phone.

I just checked. This page not only requires JavaScript, but also a Desktop environment. There is no drag and drop on my computer.

state• 12 years ago

Who owns the content?

of5• 12 years ago

The terms are here: http://to.be/terms

There's a long section on "Ownership" that I don't fully understand, but you can interpret if you're interested.

icebraining• 12 years ago

IANAL, but seems like a typical clause. Essentially you hold the copyright, but you agree to give them a perpetual license to do whatever they please with the stuff you submit (including allowing other users to incorporate it in their own works).

blacksqr• 12 years ago

|| !

rvern• 12 years ago

or not (to be)?

dinkumthinkum• 12 years ago

My advice is the demo video should show something compelling being created not a bunch of completely random nonsense that does nothing to evoke any kind of connection with anyone. Presumably you created this with this Hamletesque title to create memorable "Internety" experiences. Show one. Otherwise I think it is hard to understand. Sure, someone else could probably create something much better than is in that video but if even the creator can't create something compelling ... its a bit weird. Just my advice. It is an interesting drawing tool, otherwise.

jbullfrog• 12 years ago

I thought the same thing. Was wondering why the lack of anything substantial created. They made a video. Could have made a more complete project with their product for the video. :)

Regardless, cool idea.

r109• 12 years ago

Myspace and Geocities had a baby? But they're both dead?

pcthrowaway• 12 years ago

More like Google Wave and Google Docs had a baby.

codemac• 12 years ago

AdBlock Plus blocked this entire page, if anyone is seeing an entirely white page like I was.

GigabyteCoin4• 12 years ago

So did noscript.

I temporarily allowed the domain and it was well worth the click.

Kiro• 12 years ago

Don't you expect most pages to be broken when using noscript?

intrasight• 12 years ago

Yup - blank page. That's all I needed to know.

TazeTSchnitzel• 12 years ago

Perhaps the domain was previously used for serving ads and the block list needs updating.

grandalf• 12 years ago

Love it. A free form virtual world. Been wanting to build one of these for a long time.

quest88• 12 years ago

I don't get it.

Det_Jacobian• 12 years ago

The concept was a lot more interesting to me than the implementation. I thought I would end up being able to view a and click bunch of masked, active HTML items, instead it seems to bake it down into a single image. Editing tools looked neat, but "print on a T-shirt" was the last thing I expected, and a disappointment.

of5• 12 years ago

Hmm, I'm not sure what you mean by 'bake it down into a single image'. You should be able to drag around the HTML elements on the field, if you've made an account and are working on your own field, or pulled it from someone else.

hypron• 12 years ago

Looks like a great site to make dank memes with.

NiklasPersson• 12 years ago

I'm thinking modern art, make no sense, have fun, be "strange", create something raw and unique... yeah. Some people will have fun with this I'm sure. Not for me at this moment in life though, but that shouldn't matter to anyone.

Cheers

Orangeair• 12 years ago

It's like a hipster Web 2.0 version of YTMND.

bshimmin• 12 years ago

I feel like someone spent a lot of money on the domain and then subsequently tried to work out what the hell to do with it, "pivoted" a number of times, and somehow ended up with... whatever the hell this is.

Mahn2• 12 years ago

It looks stupid now, but in retrospect twitter and instagram looked stupid as well. It's the kind of startup that either fails horribly or explodes in usage inexplicably.

chunkiestbacon• 12 years ago

Tumblr will love it! ;)

WA• 12 years ago

Could be used to create "mood boards" for games, stories, art

unicornporn• 12 years ago

Target group:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seapunk

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=%22seapunk%22

emehrkay• 12 years ago

I haven't had a chance to read through some of the source, but does anyone know how the photo editing is done? Are there libs to handle those effects?

_almosnow• 12 years ago

No snide. The fact that most here don't get it makes me think this project will be, at least, moderately successful.

antihero• 12 years ago

Somehow, I'm not sure how, you've crippled the scrollbar on my browser :S

MyNameIsMK• 12 years ago

Well done! clap

nicwolff• 12 years ago

Safari 7.1, no extensions: blank page. Firefox 34.0.5, clean install: blank page. Chrome 39.0.2171.99, clean install: blank page.

To Be

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