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Hi Frej, your MVP landing page is beautifully designed, but it it does not tell me why I would need your product, or really what it is. There are lists and lists of features, but no demos or examples to explain why they are useful. Sell benefits, not features. Good luck!


Hi, thanks for your feedback, appreciate it, you are right, I fell in the classical trap of feature selling. I was aiming for a video to showcase the app, but it would have been a lot of work just to validate a simple idea: is this useful, do people need this?


"but it would have been a lot of work just to validate a simple idea: is this useful, do people need this?"

I would say the opposite. You could easily do rapid experiments to validate the idea before investing any development time, figuring out why you are building the product, and how people would use it. It's the whole purpose of UX experimentation and idea validation before investing code time. Not that I'm saying you wasted time, but rapid experimentation, prototyping and storyboard mockups is the opposite of a lot of work, its rapid validation that can help you start off on the right foot. I recommend this video "creating a culture of rapid experimentation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-WLX8gc8WY"


Sorry, I missed your comment.

The initial plan was to release a viedeo of the app, like Drew Houston did with Dropbox. But in my mind the video needed to be perfect, not showing any signs of bugs or misshaps, so I got a bit stuck with that. So instead I decided to go with a good landing page and screenshots insted. Thats way I thought it would be a lot of work in making a video demo.


Looks useful. You might want to have a friend copy-edit your page. There are quite a few grammar errors on here. "Your Feed allow" -> "Your Feed allows". "when your team need them" -> "when your team needs them"


Thanks. Ohh man, I'v had 3 different people proof read the page multiple times. Guess you can't have to much copy edit. =)

I'v corrected your suggestions, thanks!


You might check out http://www.criticue.com -- I use them as a quick grammar/WTF check before press pushes.


Thanks, will definitely look them up. It's hard when you're not english speaking. =)


Love the "As not yet soon on:" logos at the bottom which tweets to those publications about Snapbugz. Great marketing hack.


Selection bias? Unpaid founders are more likely to be young and roaming HN than the Founder/CEO of a venture-backed startup.


I'm neither, but while roaming I forked to our profile and saw you are doing this: http://krit.com/

What is that pricing in US dollars? That is a great idea you should bring it to the US.


It's close to $4, $8 and $12.


As a white foreigner who has considered travelling to the US for a holiday or working in the Valley, these types of reports have a long-term chain reaction on my willingness to start thinking about packing my bags for the States. I wonder if the powers that be understand how far-reaching bad treatments of foreign travellers can be. Or maybe I'm just one developer and my sentiment has no effect in the long run. Do other developers feel the same?


You're not alone, I feel the same. I'm becoming increasingly hesitant to go to the US for a vacation, despite there being some places I really want to visit. I've even turned down two very good job offers in the US.

My other developer friends seem to have similar, though not quite as advanced, feelings about the US. When I mention not wanting to go to the US I get plenty of "yeah, I don't blame you" responses.


You are not alone. I'm a white foreign developer currently in the valley, not working, just visiting and getting involved in the startup scene. The border and customs BS is the number 1 reason I dont think I could stay and work in the US long term, even though my home country(australia) and profession(dev) are on the 'blessed' lists. I'm frankly terrified of the US border/customs for 3 major reasons:

1) I'm afraid some ignorant/overzealous border guard will ask about all the startup events, conferences, hackathons etc that im going to and deciding that im looking to 'work' here, regardless of that being untrue.

2) There's no rules! There's only guidelines! Buy a $2000 ticket to come over to visit? No guarantee you'll be let in, its all completely arbitary and totally up to however bad a day the boarder guard is having. Turns every visit into a (low chance) potential nightmare. It's stressful, doubly so when the attitude you always face is 'prove to me your're not a danger to the US'

3) I have an 'interesting' recent history, did a bunch of travelling over the last year, including through Iran and a bunch of former soviet states, and a few uncommon asian countries. Again, if i get a border guard having a bad day I could easily end up like the OP

I hate the borders, they are arrogant, arbitrary, stressful and unpleasant, and will always make me think twice about future US visits.


US immigration can be complicated, but if there is nothing that would raise flags in your passport, why don't you give it a try for holidays so you know what you are missing (and what not)? It's at least an interesting experience. I love staying in the US for holidays, even if I probably wouldn't want to work in the US.


I opted to use TeamCity for all my CI exactly because of the UI. It's not perfect either, but I think it is vastly superior. Bigger install, though and relies on a JVM.


You might also want to look at Go[1] from ThoughtWorks* - the UI and first class Pipeline support is it +ves.

[1] - http://www.thoughtworks.com/products/go-continuous-delivery/...

* - I work for ThoughtWorks, but not associated with the Go team, and use Teamcity and Jenkins more than Go.


Superior? Depends on what you're building. Using TeamCity to set up builds for iOS is a royal pain in the ass, and their OS X support in general is greatly lacking. I've had to create a whole ecosystem of shell scripts just to produce signed .ipa builds for QA -- which is kinda the point of purchasing a licence to a CI system to begin with.


is it free?


The Professional license is free and gives 20 active build configurations & 3 simultaneous builds. I install extra instances if I need more.


The reasons to wear a black shirt are far simpler than the author purports: contrast & focus.

I learned this while presenting. If you wear clothing with a slogan, you are giving your audience a potential distraction, or something to read while they should be listening. Even a colored shirt can be a potential distraction, unless it is worn specifically for the purpose of brand association.

This is why you should not wear a clever slogan while presenting, even if it's your own brand.

As a light, Caucasian presenter, I prefer to wear a dark, featureless shirt because it highlights my facial features and directs the audience to my face and speech. Except for my hands, which I can use for pointing or demonstrating a process, in which case, I don't want a long sleeved-shirt to get in the way, and when there are plenty of lights, to stay cool.


Interesting. I prefer white or charcoal grey pocket Ts as daily wear. I've had some black Ts, but as a person of pallor I found the contrast a bit stark.

I think I look best in the white shirts, but for a presentation I can see the value of going with a dark one.


Even simpler, black is slimming.


> But my fingers don't naturally fall precisely in a line

Switching to a Kinesis solved this one for me. All the columns are perfectly vertical.


Until Jeff Atwood tries an ergonomic keyboard or layout other than QWERTY, I cannot take his keyboard cult seriously. I've owned three MS 4000s and have used QWERTY, Dvorak and Colemak keyboard layouts. Ever since I purchased a Kinesis Advantage a month ago on Colemak, going back to an MS 4000 noticeably hurts my hands. I don't type any faster, but it is far more natural to use my thumbs (our strongest fingers) for common keys like Ctrl/Space/Del/PgUp/PgDown/WinKey, especially as a climber.

I find it hard to believe a Model M could be easier on the wrists than my abhorrent Macbook Air 2012 keyboard, due to its equally straight, unnatural angle. Compared to my old Acer C312 tablet with a 5-degree angle, typing 90wpm+ for more than an hour is not sustainable.

Either Jeff types really slowly, or has golden wrists of the gods. After a few months of Colemak, I am up to 90% of my accumulated 15-year QWERTY speed, but my hands feel far more relaxed.

Could this be a medical condition on my end, or is there a real ergonomic case to be made for the aging Model M? Right now, I don't buy it.


> I find it hard to believe a Model M could be easier on the wrists than my abhorrent Macbook Air 2012 keyboard, due to its equally straight, unnatural angle.

I find ergonomic keyboards pointless, but I also don't have (or have ever had) wrist problems.

> Compared to my old Acer C312 tablet with a 5-degree angle, typing 90wpm+ for more than an hour is not sustainable.

Who types 90wpm+ when programming? We are programmers, not typists, we spend most of our time thinking and debugging, with only some intermittent spurts of typing activity. For spurts of typing, the Model M is perfect. If you had to write a lot continuously, I'm sure there are better solutions, but even when I'm writing a paper, the thinking/typing ratio is high.

> Could this be a medical condition on my end, or is there a real ergonomic case to be made for the aging Model M? Right now, I don't buy it.

Given that your work sounds more like stenography and not programming, it is probably just that this keyboard is not meant for you.


Sean, have you tried any of the ergonomic keyboards which you find pointless? Unless you have, your argument seems a lot like my ol' man's arguments against <Internet/Facebook/YouTube> a few years ago.

Atwood specifically addresses the fallacy of "thinking vs typing as the bottleneck for programming" with the statement [1]: "What I'm trying to say is this: speed matters. When you're a fast, efficient typist, you spend less time between thinking that thought and expressing it in code."

It's not about averaging 90wpm in code. No programmer I know does that. It's about not averaging 10wpm once you've finished thinking and want to materialize your thoughts or revert a mistake.

My work is typing, primarily code and email. Every minute I spend typing my thoughts is a minute of thought wasted.

[1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/11/we-are-typists-firs...


> "What I'm trying to say is this: speed matters. When you're a fast, efficient typist, you spend less time between thinking that thought and expressing it in code."

Hence bursty sprint speed is more important than sustained speed. Mechanical keyboards are quite good at bursty sprint speeds in my experience. Sustained speed is another matter, I can see where the power return of each key press would cause soreness (like wearing shoes with springs), but its not a problem I have as a programmer who mostly just sprints.

> It's about not averaging 10wpm once you've finished thinking and want to materialize your thoughts or revert a mistake.

Yes, but you don't have that problem on a mechanical.

> My work is typing, primarily code and email. Every minute I spend typing my thoughts is a minute of thought wasted.

Right, the question is not about whether speed matters, but what kind of speed matters. Do you type for a minute without pausing?


> Sean, have you tried any of the ergonomic keyboards which you find pointless? Unless you have, your argument seems a lot like my ol' man's arguments against <Internet/Facebook/YouTube> a few years ago.

If my wrist/hand/arm/etc. comfort level while using my non-ergonomic keyboard is indistinguishable from my ambient comfort level, why would switching provide any useful data?


@baddox, my fingers' comfort level when looking up a contact and phoning them on my Nokia 3100's is indistinguishable from my ambient comfort level. Why should switching to a smartphone provide any useful data?

Sidenote: the question for any new technology should always be "Why not?" Not "Why???".

For this particular anecdotal case, I am not claiming I have the answer, but please consider trying it before raising an indefensible argument. I have tried a bunch of keyboards and layouts. Surely my derivations are fallible, but empirically, they should carry more weight than a "keyboard enthusiast" who has not even tried a different keyboard layout or any of the well-known ergonomic keyboards.


> @baddox, my fingers' comfort level when looking up a contact and phoning them on my Nokia 3100's is indistinguishable from my ambient comfort level. Why should switching to a smartphone provide any useful data?

Because the promise of a smartphone is not to remove discomfort in your fingers. As far as I know, that's the only promise of ergonomic keyboards.

> Sidenote: the question for any new technology should always be "Why not?" Not "Why???".

I agree, and in the case of ergonomic keyboards, the answer to "Why not?" is "Because I don't suffer from any stress injuries or musculoskeletal problems."


Empiricism trumps theory. You theorize people don't type fast enough for it to matter, but a large number of programmers, including me, report that ergonomic keyboards help them. Why are you arguing against the evidence?


I've tried ergonomic keyboards and was turned off by the lack of key feedback. I never really got to whether the shape was better or not, just that the mushy tactile key press experience was vastly inferior to my Model M.


+1 because of justified, though anecdotal, experience. Which ergonomic keyboard did you try?


The Microsoft ones, which were given to me at work.


You might be overestimating the actual observable effects "ergonomic" keyboards have over traditional designs. I wouldn't make a confident ergonomic claim for either type of keyboard, but I'm very skeptical that ergonomic keyboards on average provide observable health benefits. And, anecdotally, I've never had any health problems related to ergonomics (26 years old, 8+ hours a day at a computer desk for at least the last 10 years).


@baddox, which keyboard layout are on, QWERTY?


Yes, standard QWERTY with Caps Lock remapped to Ctrl (I use Emacs).


you can't just move to a mechanical and expect an immediate increase in speed. I use a mechanical keyboard. When I switch to a rubber dome, i notice a DECREASE in speed, because I'm just not used to it. It takes a long time to get the same speed when you switch to a mechanical, but when you do, you may continue to increase and surpass your speed on a rubber dome. Most fast typists (200-250+ wpm on short passages) use a mechanical non-ergonomic keyboard plus qwerty layout.


@jrs99, I explicitly state that I do not expect an increase in speed. Especially when switching to a more efficient keyboard layout, like Colemak or Dvorak, after using QWERTY for 15+ years.

I expect it to take at least a year to reach my old QWERTY speed on Colemak. Sure, speed is important, but comfort: that's the Rolls Royce of typing.


You said "Either Jeff types really slowly, or has golden wrists of the gods."

Which made me think you associate slow typing with low comfort and fast typing with high comfort.

I mean that if you switch, you'll be uncomfortable simply because you are not used to it. That will automatically make you slower.

But if you take any keyboard, you can become reasonably comfortable with it, in my opinion, if you get used to it. For example, if you've been using ergonomic dvorak keyboards for many years, then it will take a while for you to get comfortable with a standard qwerty keyboard.

But, that's my case. I'm comfortable with most keyboards that I use for a long time. I guess there are many factors like hand size, finger size, shape, previous injuries/strain etc that could change that.


This is awesome! Is it possible to have a light background, while still having strong accents?


If you're looking for a more color-friendly base Bootstrap (not 3... yet), check out Flamingo, which also uses SchemeLESS: http://rriepe.github.io/flamingo/

If you like 1pxdeep's stylings, start with a @seed-color of white, and then edit @color2, @color3 and @color4 in scheme.less to your liking. It will generate appropriate subcolors from those (which you can also overwrite, if you want).


Thank you, rriepe. It would be great if 1pxdeep let me pick color1, color2 and color3 with sensible defaults.


I dislike this UI because it adds more questions[1] than it takes away. "Why did it tab? Why is it loading, did I accidentally submit? Why did the tab ordering jump down, then up?" Just show me a web form and put a picture of a VISA card somewhere static.

[1] Don't Make Me Think, Steve Krug: http://www.sensible.com/dmmt.html


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