Ask HN: Review my webapp: memobuild
Hope you won't mind if this is my first post, but I was told this is a good place to get advice for a new web business. So here it is: http://www.memobuild.com
It's basically an editor for large online documents (e.g. documentation, reports, e-books). It follows the What-You-See-Is-What-You-Mean paradigm: authors just need to input the contents in a structured way, the layout and design are automatically taken care of by the application. There are some e-learning features too. The app is powered by Google App Engine / python, and hopefully it can scale nicely.
Please have a look and let me know what you think.
The next step will be to get in the Google Apps Marketplace to reach out to businesses and schools. Meanwhile I'm trying to get some early adopters. I plan to contact bloggers discussing learning technologies. Any other idea on where to concentrate my marketing efforts?
27 comments
[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 2940 ms ] threadhttp://help.memobuild.com/user-guide/creating-document
all the links on the left above "Using the Drafts folder" don't work. I'm using Chrome 6.0.472.53 on Linux.
Your interface is clean and easy to understand. The simple content section on the left along with easy to understand CMS controls are exceptionally well done.
This feels like part of a larger product. Learning materials take hundreds of hours to prepare and I wouldn't trust my time with your new product. Not that it isn't well created, just that I don't have any control over the hosting or storage and I don't see an easy way for me to backup or duplicate content on more trustworthy platforms such as Google Docs or even good old Word.
Your application may be a good add-on for a small publisher. A publisher could offer your product (branded as their own) to extend their texts online and keep them up-to-date.
I could see the advantage to this for either a business (in sort of a Wiki setup) or a school, however without a real direction, it's a bit difficult for me and your potential customers to see.
Overall, I really like this. I wish that it was integrated into a full LMS and that I could quickly and easily spin my content into texts.
Actually you're the second user today to tell me the lack of export formats is a problem. I plan to offer export options, but it is not simple. There are some features like audio, associations or exercises that cannot be easily reproduced in other formats. An XML file would be a good start though.
Connecting with existing LMS: you're right I need to look more into that.
Please get in touch with me. My profile will tell you why and my contact details.
A "sample built using memobuild" bar at the top with a link to the home page would seem pretty essential too for exactly the same reason.
Which python framework did you use?
Small "bug": when you navigate to the login page [1], there's no link to go back to the home page or anywhere else but the TOS.
[1] http://www.memobuild.com/login
I built on top of Google's webapp framework. Although if I had to start something now I would probably use tipfy or kay.
I'm using App Engine too; seems to be a good choice. And oddly, the performance stats for Python vs. Java seem indistinguishable. I would have thought Java would pull ahead on repetitive server-like tasks.
http://www.memobuild.com/_ah/openid_verify?continue=http://w...
Error: Server Error The server encountered an error and could not complete your request.
If the problem persists, please report your problem and mention this error message and the query that caused it.
Although I have not played with the app, it seems to have a great potential. There is definitely a need for this product.
Good product. Best of luck for revenue generation.