HN Explorer

Ask HN: Who launched something in December?

18 points by amoore ↗ HN
I was impressed by the work done for "Launch an App Month" in November: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1773398

and the results: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962465

So, I thought it might be time to ask again. What products were launched by HNers in December?

39 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 92.4 ms ] thread
mbenjaminsmith
http://www.getvectorpro.com

It's an iPhone app that does raster to vector conversion similar to Adobe Live Trace. It started out with a friend saying 'I want an app that does this'. My response was 'ok, cool' and then 'wow, I have absolutely no idea how'. It was challenging and lots of fun (what more can you ask for). I used a computer vision library for some of the image filtering but ended up having to write the blob extraction algorithm from scratch. The final version (the one that shipped) came to me in a bout of insomnia.

I actually had it out a few days before Xmas and found a bug that had somehow made it through my testing (and Apple's) and made the unpleasant decision of pulling it until it was sorted. Since they lock down over Xmas I missed the best sales of the year. The fixed version went up just a few hours after iTC went back online (they were graciously fast approving the fixed version).

cloudwalking
Out of curiosity, what's the point of doing this on the phone?
mbenjaminsmith
I find it useful for two things:

I use it for digitizing sketches when I'm out of the house (I use my iPhone more than a laptop when I'm out). Tracing is an inexact (lossy) process so I appreciate the tight feedback loop of drawing/tracing.

I use it at home too (instead of Live Trace) since it handles photos better. Live Trace really expects even lighting to get usable results (scanner is the easiest way) whereas I've designed this specifically to handle photos from the iPhone's camera. I don't have (or want) a scanner so the photograph->sync->place->trace->repeat process I was going through with Illustrator got a bit tedious. That's not where the idea of the app came from but what I had in mind when I designed it.

car
Congratulations, great Job!

I once wrote such a program for Atari ST computers, and recall vividly how challenging and fun it was. It was called Convector, and could tie into a bitmap/vector drawing program that friends had written (called Arabesque).

This was with 4 MB of RAM :) It also used outlining, which you seem to use too, judging from the Vectorpro demo video.

Do you convert into Bezier curves?

mbenjaminsmith
I can't remember the lineup (where the ST fit in) but I learned how to program on an Atari 400. I'll never forget jamming my fingers into that terrible 'membrane keyboard'. I spent much more of my time playing Star Raiders though.

It does convert the polygons to Bezier curves in the last step, although you can turn that off by changing the 'Curve' parameter to zero.

Thanks, happy New Year

thinkcomp
http://www.facecash.com

We released integrated bill splitting and coupons on the FaceCash iPhone application, soon to follow on Android and BlackBerry.

railsjedi
http://www.heroscale.com

Allows easy autoscaling of heroku dynos and workers. It's in for some major updates in early jan as well (realtime autoscaling, better pricing model).

shykes
http://dotcloud.com

An application hosting platform for any language, any database. We host a whole bunch of HN and YC products.

swax
http://www.locacha.com A seamless chat room that connects you to the 30 closest people geographically. No sign up and anonymous.
sep
http://bitorama.com

a Hacker News-like site in Hebrew. Did this as a learning excercise and it's yet to pick up steam. Israeli HNers, where are you?

quizbiz
There's a good number of Israeli tech/biz guys on Twitter. Spread the word there.

Be'hatzlacha

sep
Thanks. I put the feed of the site on twitter, but I haven't found the magic formula to pull attention to it.

Ideas and paticipation are welcome! My contact details are at the website.

JamesDB
http://www.carbuzz.co.uk - Not strictly launched in Dec, but v.late November. A site to make it easier for people to choose which new car to buy.
Staydecent
I launched http://www.cookitlocal.com (serving Metro Vancouver only right now) Dec 21st.

I've got a couple users, but found it much easier to get people to sign up for a newsletter I ran to promote the site. The newsletter offered seasonal recipes and links to find the required ingredients locally.

Kilimanjaro
http://boog.me

Disposable email accounts.

Give any email@boog.me and go check your inbox for the email you need, then forget about it. We take care of all the spam they will send you. Keep your real inbox spam free!

Kilimanjaro
Btw we should do this the first day of every month to give some exposure to all projects developed by HN members.
austinbirch
http://musicmenu.heroku.com/

I created and launched MusicMenu in the last few days of December, it's just a little weekend project.

You design a three course menu of music for others to listen to.

pontifier
http://www.ToDoWiki.com

I hope it will become a place where people can find ready made to do lists for a wide variety of common events and situations.

cheald
http://1r7.net/

Not technically inspired by Launch An App Month; when the story about Delicious broke, I sat down and write a clone that evening. First line of code to launch was < 24 hours.

itay
We launched WikiPanda, what we believe to be the best Wikipedia browser for the Windows Phone:

http://wiki.pandabits.com

ttrashh
Just downloaded it. Nice work! My only constructive criticism would be to make the text a little bigger in some areas.