I don't mind this sort of marketing most of the time. I do mind that you're abusing "Show HN." People generally use this "tag" to ask for advice which is so generously offered here. By using it as a part of your marketing ploy you're reducing the usefulness of the said tag and stealing from the trust the community has built for eachother over time.
How sad it is to see HN get big enough to be gamed liked this...
I call it a marketing ploy because "Show HN" carries a strong implication that an existing product is being showcased. This implication is being used to drive click-throughs. This is a beautiful landing page and the author is clearly a very capable designer, is it too much to ask for higher standards of honesty in our precious corner of the web? Any of these titles would have been perfectly fine:
This is in no way a marketing ploy, but a sincere effort to find someone who would be genuinely interested in working on it and to gather feedback. Someone mentioned adding in a email opt-in field for example, which was a great idea.
Again, apologies if it has felt like anything else.
Apologies for being overly harsh. Seeing content tailored to hit the front page on HN is a bit of a sensitive spot, I understand there was no malice in your choice of title. I do love your idea, hope it sees the light of day.
I wouldn't call this a marketing ploy - it's a landing page for an app he designed and is looking to have built. We use "Show HN" to get feedback from our apps, and this is one of those cases.
Is he getting it? In spades!
Is he making money off of it? I don't see how he could, with an unbuilt app.
I see no marketing ploy here, just a clever app that I would love to see come to fruition.
Personally, I don't think a web page saying that you might make something, together with an e-mail signup, is news. That said, people are free to disagree (as with, e.g., Offer HN posts). I just think we need clear labeling.
"Skip the subject field and just start typing your message. QuickSend will turn the first paragraph of your message into the subject, saving you time."
Meanwhile, the body of the text has to do with meeting for dinner and the subject has to do with the baseball game tomorrow.
So, that was my first question. How are we skipping the subject line? Oh, it builds it off of your text! Wait, it doesn't seem like it did? Maybe he is only sh
owing the 2nd paragraph? No idea.... That was my stream of consciousness.
Other than that, I don't have a mac, but don't really find writing emails on my windows box cumbersome. Is the mac email app that problematic?
The interface suggests the user has used the application more than once and is familiar with the workflow.
After the first email, it will be quite apparent to the user that the first line would become to subject, which will become an action without the user thinking too much about it.
Also, lets just assume that John knows about the Baseball Game tomorrow, but has no idea about the dinner plans.
Sparrow already does virtually all of this. The only real differences are the Subject thing (not sure how this saves you time, other than pressing TAB once), and displaying images from the address book.
Subject: Sparrow already does virtually all of this
Body: The only real differences are the Subject thing (not sure how this saves you time, other than pressing TAB once), and displaying images from the address book.
OK, but then you sort of have to be careful what you put in the first line, and then it's really no different.
Anyway, I would think that most of the time suck in email comes from replying to others' messages (which already have subjects), not creating messages from scratch when you're not even in the mail program. (If you do that a lot, maybe you should stop increasing everyone else's email burden...)
Nice landing page. I did have one question under the first paragraph it says: "...the to field will be pre-selected so all you have to do is start typing." How would it know which contact to fill the "to:" field with?
By preselected he means it will be the active field. So you can "start typing" - type "Han" and "Hannah" will pop up. You just don't have to manually click on, or tab to the contact field.
Also, please realize this is just a concept and further research will be put into the it if it goes into development. A swift workflow is the biggest goal.
I disagree with the motive of lowering the friction to send email. I want to spend less time answering email by receiving less of it. Anything that makes it easier to generate more email means I will receive more email.
I think using email to shoot off "quick questions" (such as the message depicted on the page) to people is an abuse of the medium - that's what Twitter and iChat are for.
This is a good point. One of my pet peeves is receiving mail with poorly thought-out subjects. Whether it's a phrase that doesn't mean anything to the recipient, or something that's incomplete as a summary of the contents.
Often it's a sentence fragment, such as "Can you," followed by a continuation of the sentence in the body.
Keyboard shortcuts would be an absolutely essential feature of the application. You could be in a browser, Photoshop, full screen app, and just press control + n and the interface pops up. All you have to do is type. After the first email, you'll have the workflow memorized. Shortcut > Type email > message > enter.
The reason is I can leverage muscle memory with alfred. I don't need to look at my screen to determine which app is mail. I can slap ctrl+space and type mail in the time it would take to cmd+tab to it.
great product name (even if it's vaporware at this point) ... it's refreshing to see a name that's crisp, memorable, and comprised of PROPERLY SPELLED WORDS! bravo to whoever came up with that name
44 comments
[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 94.6 ms ] threadIt's not quite clear who the target market for this is.
Otherwise - looks amazing.
But yeah, looking good other than that.
My first thought when seeing this - I WANT IT. I'll buy a license as soon as it's available.
The only way this could've been executed better is with an opt-in to be notified via e-mail when it's available.
Thanks for the kind words! You also had some great advice and now there is a email opt-in form on the website.
A few people have showed interest already, so QuickSend just might see light of day!
Cheers everyone!
Unfortunately, there's not really any more room in my menu bar. http://cl.ly/4vlI
How sad it is to see HN get big enough to be gamed liked this...
Show HN: Help me build QuickSend
Show HN: QuickSend, an app concept
Or even simply, QuickSend
This is in no way a marketing ploy, but a sincere effort to find someone who would be genuinely interested in working on it and to gather feedback. Someone mentioned adding in a email opt-in field for example, which was a great idea.
Again, apologies if it has felt like anything else.
Is he getting it? In spades!
Is he making money off of it? I don't see how he could, with an unbuilt app.
I see no marketing ploy here, just a clever app that I would love to see come to fruition.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2260581
Personally, I don't think a web page saying that you might make something, together with an e-mail signup, is news. That said, people are free to disagree (as with, e.g., Offer HN posts). I just think we need clear labeling.
Meanwhile, the body of the text has to do with meeting for dinner and the subject has to do with the baseball game tomorrow.
So, that was my first question. How are we skipping the subject line? Oh, it builds it off of your text! Wait, it doesn't seem like it did? Maybe he is only sh owing the 2nd paragraph? No idea.... That was my stream of consciousness.
Other than that, I don't have a mac, but don't really find writing emails on my windows box cumbersome. Is the mac email app that problematic?
After the first email, it will be quite apparent to the user that the first line would become to subject, which will become an action without the user thinking too much about it.
Also, lets just assume that John knows about the Baseball Game tomorrow, but has no idea about the dinner plans.
Hope that clears it up!
Example 1:
>I actually want a subject
This is my message
Example 2:
This is my first paragraph (and subject).
This is my second paragraph.
Sadly, this app doesn't exist. If you think it should and write cool Mac apps, email me, or message me on Twitter. I'm Moeed, by the way.
Whenever I have a choice between keyboard shortcut vs menu bar clicking, keyboard shortcut always win.
If QuickSend window shows up ala LightBox via keyboard shortcut (with the same UI and all its promises) however...
and if the price is right, I might buy it (but it needs to be able to handle multiple email accounts).
for example:
Subject: Sparrow already does virtually all of this
Body: The only real differences are the Subject thing (not sure how this saves you time, other than pressing TAB once), and displaying images from the address book.
Anyway, I would think that most of the time suck in email comes from replying to others' messages (which already have subjects), not creating messages from scratch when you're not even in the mail program. (If you do that a lot, maybe you should stop increasing everyone else's email burden...)
Also, please realize this is just a concept and further research will be put into the it if it goes into development. A swift workflow is the biggest goal.
I think using email to shoot off "quick questions" (such as the message depicted on the page) to people is an abuse of the medium - that's what Twitter and iChat are for.
Often it's a sentence fragment, such as "Can you," followed by a continuation of the sentence in the body.
What separates this in terms of functionality from the likes of google's free compose mail chrome extension.
I don't argue that the looks are nice, but in my opinion panel notifiers or buttons such as these are rather infuriating to use.
As someone else has mentioned, Keyboard shortcuts would make this a more attractive option.
I would say cross platform it, but it seems to be a mac-centric app.
I would have no use for the original app in the link, I mean how hard is it to just do cmd+tab and cmd+n in Mail ?