59 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] thread
FYI - I created this simple site for myself. I use it as my homepage to get a little motivational reminder every time I open a new tab.

I thought it might be useful for startup founders, entrepreneurs, freelancers, or anyone who works alone.

Looks like fortune for the web. Are you using fortune as a backend, or for quotes?
No, I had actually never heard of fortune, but I will look into it now :)

I am currently just hand selecting the content and storing it in a database. Nothing fancy.

> I had actually never heard of fortune

A long, long time ago in this galaxy, this was the first program to run when a user logged in/opened a new terminal. Not on every system of course.

Still the default on Slackware.
Computers compress everything, including the time it takes to feel like an old fart.
I was just thinking about that and making my own website using fortune. You spoiled the surprise.
I did put fortune on the web already, complete with an API that you can call from your .bashrc. http://www.iheartquotes.com

You should also consider making this a Twitter account. That's actually where IHQ has gotten the most traction.

Cool. Mind sharing the list of quotes you use as a single file? :)
You can see all the quotes here - http://www.minimotivation.com/quotes.php

Would you like to see it in a different format?

How about a simple voting mechanism which will display more popular quotes more frequently?
I like the idea of voting to show how much people like a certain item, but if you use it to influence the rotation, in the long run you'll keep seeing the same content over and over.
I like it. Thanks! A way to link to a specific quote/video/etc would be great for sharing with others.
I was thinking about adding a permalink. I'll do that now. Thanks.
Make it so that I can click the content instead of scrolling down to click a small link lost in a corner.
Funny, I didn't even notice that link until several F5s later. Nevertheless, yours is a good suggestion.
Make this into a chrome extension as an addition to the default "new tab" page :)
annd you've inspired me towards a new idea, hooray!
I like it. What about Star Trek quotes ? :p
The text is way too big for me to easily read it.
It would be great to be able to adjust the font size...?
Probably not the solution you are looking for, but you can always use your browser to zoom out or make the text smaller.
You're right, I forgot that firefox remembers the zoom level for each page and when I go to another page/link in the same tab, the zoom level goes normal again. Good job FF.
Ctr - - -
I was giving feedback. I know how to use my browser but that is hardly convenient. ;-)
have you thought about automatically updating the quotes every 10-15 seconds?
Yes, simple and straight to the point. Good going matey
Great, don't take any suggestions from here. The app looks perfect, but it would have been fantastic if you had an API interface :)

No seriously, the app is minimalistic and well-done.

Nice concept and i like the simple execution.

the font size does require me to "move my eyes" a lot to read longer phrases. i like how completely simple and to the point it is though.

it would be neat to let users submit their own inspirational nuggets - though you would probably have to review them to avoid misuse.

Looks great! Would be really fun to add this to a monitor or picture-frame which would auto-refresh every so often.

One suggestion: Add attribution to the XKCD images and don't steal their bandwidth. I got this one as a motivation earlier: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dreams.png

Added the attribution and link to XKCD.

I don't consider it "stealing their bandwidth" though, as XKCD explicitly allows hotlinking - http://xkcd.com/license.html

Awesome, I had no idea that XKCD encouraged people to do that - major props to them!
Reminded me of fortune , so I typed it into a terminal and got:

Q: What's the difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish wake?

A: One less drunk.

On St. Patrick's day of all days :)

Love the simple, clean design without any distractions. Great idea too. Are you manually adding the quotes/vidoes?

If it's possible to do it in a very subtle manner (footer?), maybe a small tweet icon would be nice (for quotes add the quote to tweet, for videos add the video link)

Yes, I am manually adding the content.

I like the idea of integrating with twitter, facebook, buzz, etc. I will be looking into it.

Good job!

I've set it as my startup page in FF. It's a good way to start work/browsing.

I wrote a similar thing into our project management system here at work. Whenever we receive notifications about a project or something, a little small quote like the ones you're publishing are added to the end of the e-mail...

It would have been nice to add that feature by using your site and grabbing a quote instead of having to find the quotes myself and creating the code (even though it was just roughly an hour).

So maybe make an API for it with one command: "Get". You could return a json object or xml or whatever. {"quote":"blablabla", "author": "Henry the Third"}

It seems like an overkill, though :-)

Is there any possibility of having a distinct URL for each quote, so I could pass it along? Of course, if you plan to tie into Twitter, etc, you'd want that, no?
Refresh the page? Why not use jQuery Ajax function to call the server side script.