Does the 60K need to be spent right away, or can it wait a year? If not, I suggest you work for a year first. Unfortunately the best ideas seem to come when you are not trying to think of them - such as when you're at work or at college. I think we are most creative when we are yearning for something else.
I like the idea (as someone who knows few other techies/entrepreneurs in his small town). But, the 'Update your profile' and 'Post tweets for you' requirements are huge red alerts. If you are going to require such an invasive twitter feature, you need to first explain exactly what tweets and under what conditions it would auto-post. Facebook login at least has the advantage of making permissions optional and you get a little box so you can explain. I'd say drop these requirement for new users. You can always request them later right?
I like it how they don't even mention that css properties should one per line (as though it is assumed). I really don't like having to deal with single line css.
Regardless of whether you use OSX or not, when you buy a Mac you're still paying a great deal for OSX. It suprises me that Linus is prepared to fund OSX. I mean the guy is a genius and I'm sure he has good reasons, but my tiny brain does not comprehend it.
No, you really aren't paying a great deal for OS X. If you are buying a Mac because you like the hardware quality, then you should compare it to Windows machines of similar quality. If you were to do so, you would see that the Mac laptops are competitively priced.
Even if there was a few hundred dollar premium, keep it in perspective. How smart is it to be fretting over a few hundred bucks with respect to a tool that you will likely use for a year or two, for a significant % of your waking hours, and upon which you depend for your most of your income?
OS X Lion costs $29. Windows 7 costs $119-219, depending on which edition you get.
While it's possible to buy a machine without Windows, the selection tends to be quite limited, particularly for notebooks. Assembling your own from parts is an option for desktop machines, but again not really for notebooks.
The hardware is that much better. 2x the cost but you don't have to carry a damn crap-top around that weighs 4 or more pounds and blows a fan when you move a window.
neither photoshop nor fireworks are ideal for creating websites. Some features in fireworks are great but it's missing some important stuff that give photoshop the edge. it will be interesting to see how Adobe Muse turns out in practice.
I understand that you are trying to do a MVP, but 'does not currently work in Internet Explorer' is stretching the meaning of 'viable' a bit too far.
This tool is supposed to make developers life easier when building a file upload tool? Getting it to work in IE is the most annoying part, but this plugin is not offering any help.
We completely agree. Nailing cross browser issues, more services, and looking to mobile is what can make this valuable and, as you correctly point out, we aren't quite there yet.
We just wanted to loop the community in early to help us build a product that you all want. Thanks for the feedback :D
Single window mode is definitely the step in the right direction towards what I think GIMP should be doing: ripping off Photoshop wholesale. Perhaps GIMP has some features that are arguably better than Photoshop, but the problem is that a huge number of people are very used to Photoshop's interface. Just about everyone has messed about with Photoshop at some point either professionally or just for fun (be it legally or illegally) and Photoshop's interface (for better or worse) has become second nature. I would actually argue that the lack of a familiar Photoshop alternative is holding back mainstream adoption of Linux. Open Office or Libre Office are good enough replacements for most people (and they have obviously gone for the wholesale rip off tactic) but GIMP just does not suffice - the main thing being the interface, not lack of features.
There are really simple things that could be done like making the toolbar the same as photoshop's. I mean it's great that you can resize however you like, but having it unresizable makes it easy to remember the button layout and instinctively grab for a tool. The fact that completely different symbols are used for the same actions does not help. eg: knife is crop in GIMP and slice in photoshop.
Once Linux/GIMP has achieved good market share over mac/photoshop then it's time to start thinking about improving the photo/vector publishing paradigm and boy is there much remove for improvement. Adobe has pretty much had the monopoly on 2D graphic design tools for the last couple of decades. With almost no competitors - what incentive is there to truly innovate? I mean compare the sophistication of something like 3D studio max or Maya compared to illustrator. (3D being an area where stiff competition still remains) Why is Photoshop and Illustrator even two completely separate pieces of software? because they can sell two things separately for a combined total price greater than one?
I'm a developer and I desperately want to learn how to design. I gave up on the GIMP and bought Photoshop simply because there are so many more resources (PSD's, tutorials, blogs, videos, etc). Occasionally I pull up the GIMP, but quite honestly there aren't enough hours in the day.
I get the feeling that the GIMP devs wants to be "better" than Photoshop, but the steering wheel, and gas and brake pedals are where they are in a car; it's all about muscle memory. Making it easier for Photoshop users to fire up the GIMP for quick projects will do more to promote the GIMP than being 2x better than Photoshop.
a verbatim copy of the Photoshop UI is a lawsuit waiting to happen. and Photoshop is not the paradigm of UI design, is just something a lot of people know how to use.
(I don't like these quick put downs, they imply a finality that doesn't exist)
That The Gimp has been unsuccessful with a different interface to Photoshop does not mean a different interface could not be successful.
Imagine that an amazing new interface was developed that was so much better than what any product has now. Everyone asks why this has not been thought of before. Now imagine that it belongs to version 3.0 of The Gimp.
Just because one alternative interface didn't work, doesn't mean we should all give up and use the same interface. With that advice, nobody would ever try anything new.
that's not what the grandparent poster said, let me quote "what I think GIMP should be doing: ripping off Photoshop wholesale." - that would be a BAD thing
I think this 'problem' is already being solved pretty well by Tumblr and Pinterest. Tumblr is mainly used (by teenagers) to post images of things they think represent them (an activity that is very popular with teenages - the same reason they like to put up band posters in their bedrooms). I think Tumblr was meant to be a blogging platform, but this has become its main use. Pinterest can be seen as an extension of this but with more features (ability to group things rather than just having a single stream). I think a great deal of the success of Tumblr and Pinterest can be attributed to their extreme ease of use: to build up an online persona all you need to do is browse peoples' profiles and click 'reblog' or 'pin' - no need to even pull out your smartphone camera. My advice would be to make your app integrate well with these two services (offering an easy interface to upload photos from your phone) and try to slowly ween users from these services.
I get what you mean and where you're coming from but Persona's concept is still pretty different. People do post images of things they think will represent them, but that doesn't say much about who they are. Anyone can post photographs and upload them, but it's the meaning behind the photograph that creates a bond. For example: If I take a picture of Hot Cheetos and post it on Tumblr or Pinterest, people who view it will normally associate me being interested or liking Hot Cheetos. But the truth is, nobody cares because millions of people like Hot Cheetos as well. On Persona, we focus purely on things around you that make you who you are; when you post an image, we ask you "what does this mean to you?" If I were to post Hot cheetos on Persona, I'd say "Hot cheetos are musthaves for me when I'm programming." That might not mean everything to everyone, but for the people that can really relate to it, it becomes an intimate connection. It's all the small idiosyncrasies that describe who you are.
It's difficult to fully depict the differences because all apps of similar nature have some sort of overlapping. For example, most people still can't fully explain why Path is so different from Facebook. I use Path but I can't seem to tell people why it's different, aside from the fact that you have a private network vs a public one. If you're asked, "How is Tumblr different from Pinterest?", you'd have just as hard a time answering.
From what I see, Tumblr and Pinterest users don't answer the question of why they post something. I use Tumblr for the sake of killing time and just seeing what pops up and reblog and share things that I think are cool. When I post on Tumblr, I don't think "how does this relate to my life?" I used to ride a motorcycle so I like reblogging nice bikes on Tumblr but that doesn't mean anything to anyone. It doesn't tell the story of how I saved up money to get my first motorcycle, the first time I dropped my bike, or how upset my parents were with me buying it. For me, Tumblr is just a great, mindless way to kill time.
Pinterest for me, is a better way of organizing my bookmarks. I share links and photos from other sites because they interest me. Like with Tumblr, I don't necessarily stop to think why I'm putting a photo to my board- it's just a great way to visualize all the things that interest me and my friends on one page. I have a section for recipes, a section for funny stuff, another section for just cool arts and craft stuff. I browse Pinterest by categories just to find something cool/interesting that I want to go back to afterwards. It's a great service because I've use my browser bookmarking feature a lot less now.
Here's a question I asked myself for Tumblr and Pinterest: "Can you figure out what your friend would want as a practical gift for her birthday?" I wouldn't be able to; my friend shares everything from recipes to pictures of dogs to wedding gowns. But truth is- she's doesn't cook, is allergic to dogs, and is already married. It wouldn't make sense to buy her a dog or kitchenware right? Knowing that she doesn't cook, that she's allergic to dogs would be the prime examples of the kind of personal understanding you'll have of someone on Persona. It's not about what you're liking, reblogging or upvoting. It's about the real side of you, the one where you parents and only close friends know about.
Why did you take off your kickstarter? Are you trying different ways of getting funded? I almost thought you gave up since the kickstarter page doesn't say much about the cancelation.
Hey! Thanks for asking. We got about $4.2k in funding in 3 days. While this was a pretty good start, we realized a few factors.
1) We weren't going to make our Kickstarter goal at the rate we were going because at the rate the pledges were adding up, we would be short by a large sum of our initial asking $48,000. A good part of the pledges were actually from friends and family so it further adds to the possibility that the Kickstarter goal wouldn't be reached anyways.
2) With the feedback we've gotten on HN and other sites, we've realized that we really really need to cut down on our description and go over it again with the copywriter to rewrite it so that it's absurdly simple to understand how our product is different. Nobody is going to read 5 paragraphs of how why you're different and if people keep asking us why we're different, we're doing something wrong with our copy.
3) People are interested in the product but not willing to pledge. I got an email from a few people that it sounds like an amazing app but they don't want to pledge because they needed more information (our fault again- our video only showed a very basic view of the app because we had just finished a quick prototype without any features when we shot the video) and so they wanted to see if they could have a beta test or more screenshots of the app before they pledge. If they have to request this of me, again, we're doing something wrong.
I've learned a lot with the whole Kickstarter deal in the 3 days it lasted- we're going with an even better marketing plan. For now, we're looking at alternative funding and have actually applied to YC late. As you said, it's not just about the funding. We lack advice and guidance in many other areas. We also lack the connections that YC can offer you with the tech community. If need be, then we'll do Kickstarter again when our point is clarified and people understand what we're about.
Meanwhile, we're just improving, revising, and making our overall product ready for launch. It'll be amazing.
