I was curious about the no passwords feature so I started a page. I logged out, and then tried to create a page with the same family name. Wow- still valid. "username" isn't a limited resource. neat.

passwords/usernames are rolled into a single url with a long random sequence tacked onto the end. Hardly something I could remember, though the 30 day login might be sufficient. I wonder what kind of feedback you get about this.

Neat attempt at not having usernames/passwords.

(Ramamia developer here)

We get some negative feedback about not having passwords. So I think the way we're going to approach this is allow people to use their instant login link anytime, so they can bookmark it, keep requesting it from the homepage when they aren't logged in, etc., but also allow them to set a password in the user settings.

If they aren't logged in, and set a password, they can log in immediately with their password. If they didn't set a password, or forgot it, they can request an instant login link be sent to their email again.

A big portion of the family market are people that aren't insanely knowledgeable about the internet. They can bookmark the instant login link when they're logged out, or they can check their email to get it again. For people on the go, this will allow them to check their site by just logging in even without an instant login link.

In fact, the new period that we remember you for is 6 months. As long as you don't clear your cookies, we'll remember you for that long and you won't have to login again.

Also, re: usernames, nope - even if there are thousands of Smith family accounts, it doesn't make sense to stuff them into one family.

cool.

perhaps i misunderstand things, but it seems that anyone who gets a hold of the url (friends? search engines?) has both viewing and editing power.

Yeah, which is why we're phasing out the family URLs. Also, search engines are prohibited from indexing that content.

Thanks din0bot! Some insight:

So the cookies are set at one year. Each person also gets an email when something is posted, with their unique login link. The only time a user would really need to access that url again is in two pretty rare scenarios:

a) theyre not at their own computer b) they clear their cookies. this is for everyday people, and that just isnt an often occurrence.

Obviously though not often, these are occurrences. To deal with that, we let people recover links my having it sent to their email address.

We may let people set an optional password. Any thoughts or other ideas?

Without wanting to sound negative, you've assumed that family names represent families.

This might have been true 50 or 100 years ago, but now many families are non-nuclear. It isn't unusual for a family to include three different last names. By overlooking this, you're alienating your potentials.

I was thinking about a "Facebook for families" just yesterday actually :)

When I started to think about it though, I realized that one thing is that you tend to be part of families that overlap. For example: my in-laws don't really know my siblings and even less my siblings' in-laws (whom I don't know very much myself) So, the schema tends to become exactly like Facebook: focused on user accounts linked between each other rather than families with members. So, I figured it wouldn't be easy to make it work since, as with any social network, moving over to a new one or managing multiple ones, is not easy. What are your thoughts about this? How do you deal with that?

Don't get me wrong though, I have been thinking about something like this for my family!

Also, what does the name Ramamia mean?

Wouldn't the all nighters be a maximum of 46? That is not countless...

I am a fan of the idea (family sharing and communication online is something I am interested in since I moved across the country from my family) but the design of the site is not the best, and I don't think I'd use it regularly.

I am very partial to well designed web apps, though, since I am more of a front end coder / designer than a hacker.

Thanks for the feedback!

We tried to keep the design as simple as possible to not clutter the interface.

How would you improve the design? Are there any areas that are particularly badly designed?

I am a fan of simple designs, my goal in any project is to never do something that "looks nice" for the sake of looking nice. But parts of the app just appear somewhat disjointed to my eye - it feels like a decent design, but not one that is completely pulled together.

Also, my reason for not using it is not entirely based on the design - I realize my initial comment sounded like that. I also think getting my less-than-tech-savvy immediate and extended family to use a website to keep in touch would fall on deaf ears. They think Geni is a crazy idea, I think it rocks. There is a disconnect there.

Seems to me as if IE isn't your only problem. I'm using FF3.0.4 on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy and things are looking a little crazy: http://i42.tinypic.com/35bfl0l.jpg

Looks like you have Javascript off, or the page hasn't fully loaded, perhaps.

Can anyone else confirm this is happening to them?

Oops, I've been caught.

EDIT: Saw that you edited to ask if anyone else has the problem. I gave temporary permissions to everything on the page in NoScript and it renders perfectly, so hopefully no one else has any issues.