fsav

You might want to check out hackrtrackr.com . The creator talked about his site elsewhere in the thread.

First of all: thanks for the detailed feedback! More precise points:

- About the colors: you're not the only one to have mentioned this. I'll experiment with lighter background etc. and see what comes out.

- The Markdown is straight from http://www.freewisdom.org/projects/python-markdown/, but I agree that in most wiki markup syntaxes I'm used to URLs being linked automatically.

- google-code-prettify looks interesting. Not sure how to integrate it with Markdown, though.

- We'll move the controls up in the sidebar. Indeed the references etc. pushed them too far to the bottom.

Hey I just saw you're the one behind Review Robot. I saw your presentation @ CUSEC/Democamp last month. Prior to working on Clusterify I was developing an iPhone app (which I still haven't got around to publishing), so that was quite interesting.

Le monde est p'tit.

I'd absolutely see games as a good category of ideas, but very small-scale games. Of course we're not enforcing any time limits, so we'll see how the community actually evolves.

The "few hours" suggestion is due to our original intention: to target people who are busy, yet see meeting other coders as useful (&fun, of course!).

I love the term "projectiles"! :) And the branding idea is good in general. We already have "clusters" which we could use to denote teams, though.

What were you planning to do with the site? A list of profiles? (ie. dir as in ppl directory?)

No. I went to Polytechnique until last year (graduated in May 2008).

Thanks for the mention! And welcome (just saw your profile on the site).

That's exactly what we had in mind for the site: a way for people with restrictive schedules to meet other technical people in a project context (seeking cofounders is a perfect example of the need). We'll work on integrating geographic info.

Group/events/location features have been mentioned 3 times at least in this thread. For sure we'll be thinking about how to implement this properly.

As for the "how to make them aware" part, we'll try to find ways. If anyone has suggestions, go ahead!

We're not quite sure how we're going to implement the group/location feature but we'll have that in mind. Thanks for the offer.

Well I still wanted to smoke test it locally before deploying the change, so < 5 mins would have been a bit hard :P

Yeah sure you could just run away with other's ideas. But the focus is on meeting others while implementing the ideas.

I guess if you have a revolutionary idea, you better keep it to yourself :P But if you have a small project that'd be useful yet not likely a huge profit maker, by sending it there you can make it an opportunity to meet other programmers.

And it's much easier to generate buzz around your project if you 2-3 trying to do so than if you're alone. That's a reason why we suggest project members describe the project on their blogs when it's done.

Nope, haven't been to much Montreal tech events except CUSEC for the moment. I'll have to check it out.

Hey I _am_ in Montreal! :P And sure we'll add group/location features if they're useful to actual real-world meetups.

Thanks for the comment.

Thanks for the suggestions! Actually the intention was to make project administration happen through comments, but indeed some common pieces of information are likely to come back in every project and allow for better filtering and smoother/more straightforward project progression.

As for project length, the core idea is for projects to have low time demands, and "small" can be interpreted in many ways. Maybe we should change that to "a few hours", though.

OK so the registering process should now be much easier (for better or for worse -- we'll deal with misuse as it shows up, as you said). It's not as good your comment and shimon's propose, but it should at least be much faster: no activation, direct to profile.

OK thanks for pointing this out! URLs should be fixed in RSS feed now.

Indeed :P The design is directly inspired by StackOverflow's (so bad that we mentioned it in the about page).

The principle behind having people registering to post was to make it less confusing. At first we wanted to separate "ideas" and "implementations", so an idea could have many implementations and indeed you could have had anonymous ideas. Maybe we could still have a list of "parentless" projects up for grabs.

I like the idea of a proposal field with instructions. It could still be part of the registering process (it either ends up anonymous or as yours, depending of what you decide). I'll ponder on this.

Me and Aneesh have been working hard on an idea I described here a few weeks ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=450810): a site where you propose small coding projects and others can join. The goal is meeting new people and sharing tips while working on fun ideas. We've added a voting twist: you can vote for ideas, and then showcase completed projects on your blog for people to vote up.

We think some of you will be directly interested in this, and we hope for your feedback:

http://www.clusterify.com

Thanks to all who helped/are helping/will help us!

In fact, in my wild dreams concerning this idea, there's also a part for real-world projects: people could indicate an interest in such or such technology, yes, but could also filter by location, or a real-world meetup could be suggested when it makes sense.

And indeed I'd like it to be a way for people unfamiliar with a technology, but curious about its basics, to meet people of complementary/similar skills.

I understand that the location feature wouldn't solve the "sit alone in the dark" problem in and by itself, though. We'll have to come up with ways to market the idea, that's very clear (perhaps by targeting some niches first?). But I believe there's a potential to it, since I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in the situation, as you say.

(Looking back on this, mentioning Rails seems to not make any sense, but the reason is deep in my fuzzy subconscious: there's a Montreal meeting for Rails called Montreal on Rails)

Think we could collaborate on this? I thought about doing this we either Django or Drupal, but as you seem to favor Django, that'd be fine with me! Anyway I wasn't planning on doing this as a startup (ie. profit driven), but rather as a community project.

We could brainstorm a bit about it, perhaps have others join us in doing so.

Thanks for the idea. It's indeed a good example of the scope I was thinking about (as long as you're not trying to write a full-fledged GTD app with all the bells and whistles).

Example of a project: well the TODO list suggested in the other comment makes for a great example: it can be very small. But there could also be more original stuff, things which would not repeat anything out there. Another example would be a small iPhone arcade-like game. There are plenty such ideas, and that's the point :P Project Euler level of questions is precisely what I was thinking of (in terms of length), in fact, since working on some of its questions with a friend is a part of what made me think of the idea.

I really like your idea of Yahoo games style "programming room", but I think it'd be overkill in the beginning. I'm thinking of something more flexible, based on different (existing) technologies to coordinate the work, say simply IRC, SVN, some Wiki page, etc. It doesn't have to be a complex website: the functionality would be more at the level of getting people together and allowing them to comment on each other's work (ratings etc.). Where they go from there is suggested, but up to them.

The reason I was thinking of online projects has to do with having critical mass for a given technology (say Django) in a given place (say Montreal, where I'm located). In Montreal, for example, Rails seems to enjoy more popularity, and Django seems more isolated (just a feeling). So if I was to organize Django-themed meetups, the circle would be limited (again I'm not sure, but just to illustrate).

You could say I'm being picky here, but why not use the power of the Web which is a known solution for such situations? And btw real-world meetups often happen after online ones.

I don't have anything against real-world meetups, but I just came back from one, and there were presentations, but only a single project and you worked with people you already knew, mostly. So I didn't end up meeting much people, as chatting without a goal in mind isn't, err, my greatest strength. I'd really like something much more goal-oriented. The Six hour startup formula is really good, in that sense.

Thanks for the suggestions, though. I have heard of Free Hacker meetups in my area, for example, and I really should try showing up at one. Yet I think the goal is a bit different.

Do you still have the link for the thread (if it was here)?

I might try to develop it if more people show interest. Of course others would be welcome to join in the development :P Btw there's no need for a general consensus: as long as enough people are interested, there's a "market" for it.

It might even be some extension of JustHackIt, since the goal wasn't so far away, but I think Slinkset is a bit limited for the purpose (for structuring contests etc.).

Thanks for your reply.

Also, from times of yore: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192977