I believe this was a concern raised the first time they were trying to sell it, but a big worry for anyone considering purchasing Softfolio is probably what would happen when 37s no longer owns it.
It's sort of like their job board (http://jobs.37signals.com/). People like the job board because of the types of developers it attracts. Both companies and prospective employees value each others' skills and styles. If 37s didn't own that job board and sold it, it suddenly becomes 'just another job board'. Is it the same deal with Sortfolio? Anyway good luck to the potential buyers of Sortfolio. Hopefully they won't have wasted $480,000.
I think it would be useful to know how much traffic / new signups come from other 37s sites vs SEO or links from other sites. That won't give you the exact answer of "how can it fall once it's no longer a 37s product", but it's a start.
Impressed by how Github handled this. It's easy to get red-faced and smack down with a hammer, and it's hard to remain level-headed and come to the best decision. This seems like it was, in fact, the best decision.
- The design could use some tweaks. (Poor icons in the home screen, not vertically aligned title bar text, ugly "comments" title bar that scrolls with you, inconsistent orange color (click a link and you see the bottom bar is a different color to the top bar), puke color in the "pull to refresh", has a very non-native feel with the custom list view, awkward arrow that is low res in pull to refresh)
- No comment indentation so everything is difficult to follow in the comments
- No ability to login and comment?
- Awkward click regions on the list view. It should only allow you to press on one or two buttons, but instead I can press on the timestamp, the comments, the title or the background. It should be clearer
It's really quick, though, and that's lovely. Keep at it!
That's a good start and i like the UI. I had some issues on the iPad 2 where transitions weren't really smooth but kind of laggy. The comments could be better arranged (some kind of tree were not only the top-level comments are different). Ashamedlion does have a point about the weird colours and the few refinements. Still the best hacker news app i have tried and will be looking forward for updates. Keep up the good work!
Thanks!.For the comments I am going to draw the table separator in a way such that it shows the depth of the comment below it.I dont want to waste space on such a small screen.
It's a pretty generic logo, so I highly doubt Apple copied this design.
I'll cross post what I wrote on their blog:
"Perhaps you can take this opportunity to make the icon more refined. Apple's icon is how good the HipChat icon could have looked (and don't get me wrong, I love HipChat). Maybe that same amount of polish could go in to the new icon?"
Alternatively, they could go for something more radically different. This actually seems like a nice opportunity.
I realize this doesn't have much to do with the talks themselves, but:
I feel like other people don't have this problem, but I'm really not a fan of the Pinterest-style content grids. I think it's really difficult to parse content on Chill as well as Pinterest.
My eyes sort of skip all over the place and I just don't feel comfortable sorting through the information. I get the same problem with the Facebook timeline.
I have to agree but due to circumstances (expensive, capped Internet in South Africa) I'm even more put out by the fact that there is no indication of how many megs each clip is or at least how many minutes so I can do the mental arithmetic necessary to decide wether to click through or not...
I think my issue with Facebook Timeline is often the content is text-based. When it's more visual like on Pinterest it poses less of a problem to me, and can do the "washing over" kind of flow that it's designed for.
I agree with shashashasha that the visual nature of the content actually works well with this type of content. There is a bit of information overload that you refer to, but for me it makes the feed of videos (at chill) more engaging than a feed on youtube (straight list).
I'm not sure why, but i'm thinking it is because many people's brains are getting bored with the repetitiveness on internet and the information overload (combining thumbnails, comments, ratings) keeps it interesting.
I was looking at the pricing, and I don't know how willing people would be to pay per month for this... Have you considered making it a one-time cost instead of that?
We are happy to experiment with pricing. This is however Software as a Service so I think a monthly fee is probably more suitable.
The problem with a fixed price for SaaS is that you only receive a one-time fee but you have ongoing costs. You are guaranteed to eventually lose money on that customer which for a small start-up like us is not viable.
We will probably develop a downloadable desktop version that people can use on their own computers. This would just be a one-off cost.
Lots of TechCrunch competitors launching recently, but I do like this one. It's sort of like a simplified Verge for startups. Hopefully they remain objective.
I don't believe the iOS sandboxing would allow for V8, though. Isn't this the same problem as "my third party app WebView is slow because it doesn't support Javascript JIT"?
You are right, it wont allow V8. The only app allowed to JIT on iOS 4.3+ is Safari (before 4.3 not even Safari was allowed to modify it's own code).
It is technically part of the Mandatory Code Signing trusted computing implementation of iOS more than of the Sandbox. They use the dirty bit normally used to do Copy on Write to re-verify signatures when dirty executable memory is paged in.
It's sort of like their job board (http://jobs.37signals.com/). People like the job board because of the types of developers it attracts. Both companies and prospective employees value each others' skills and styles. If 37s didn't own that job board and sold it, it suddenly becomes 'just another job board'. Is it the same deal with Sortfolio? Anyway good luck to the potential buyers of Sortfolio. Hopefully they won't have wasted $480,000.