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HN: Here's 100 invites to our closed beta

24 points by thegreatllama ↗ HN
HN: I bestow you with 100 invites to our closed beta program! =)

*UPDATE: We felt it was a little unfair that people weren't given a chance after 30 minutes of posting this, so we've increased it to 200 invites. Please keep in mind that we're not trying to focus on growth right now, but user feedback, so if you can't get in, please hang in there until we release this after it's ready.

Would love feedback; we're a newer startup in the midwest trying to open up the world of internet radio. The API and documentation is in the works.

http://www.onellama.com Invite code: ycnews

Cheers, -The Llama

39 comments

[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 89.3 ms ] thread
iamdave
I'm loving this already. Very clean and to the point interface, simple signup process, nice decision in using the genre cloud. I see LOTS of potential here.

Though I do have to wonder if you will have to deal with streaming issues, even though these other radio stations are doing the work.

I do have one question though, the sound quality is actually quite poor, how do you plan to address that? I Can easily see myself finding a station and just letting it run all day if I code, but only if there's better sound.

huhtenberg
>The password field may only contain alpha-numeric characters.

Why ?!

Also, the site is completely useless if the FlashBlock is installed. Neither does it complain about the lack of Flash support nor does it show any Flash items that could unblocked in a FlashBlock. For this reason clicking on a Play button doesn't yield any audio output and it's absolutely unclear why and how to get it working.

Also, and this is subjective of course, the orange part of the color scheme is pretty unpleasant to look at. Same goes for the greenish part at the bottom, it looks kind of "dirty".

thegreatllama
Removed the alpha-numeric requirement.
notauser
Will you fix the flashblock thing?

It might not be a problem to your target audience but (due to general abuse of Flash on the internet) I and many others keep it on all the time.

ars
It's actually hard to do that - I ran into the same issue with a site I made. There is no good way to play sound in a browser except via flash.

So I used a hidden flash applet and triggered it via html events. But the flash itself was hidden since it didn't have a UI - it was just for playing sound.

Since it was hidden there was no way to click-active it for flash block people.

Maybe I could have put a message of some kind saying flash wasn't active, but it didn't seem worth the trouble. (In my case sound was nice, but not that critical.)

spohlenz
Get rid of the ridiculous requirement of only allowing alpha-numeric characters. I almost turned away at that.

Otherwise I'm loving the clean interface and overall responsiveness.

I would suggest cleaning up the search results as the closely spaced lines of text are a bit daunting.

chipmunc56
IamDave I'm one of the founders of the company, and we appreciate your feedback. As a programmer I am keenly aware of the issue you are describing, and e are currently working to provide more options on bit-rate and quality. I would expect this to happen within the next few weeks and if you send an e-mail to me at amit@onellama.com I would be happy to let you know as soon as it happens.
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mixmax
Could we get some more invites - 39 minutes after you posted and they're all gone :-(
fascinated
More invites? :)
thegreatllama
We've opened up a few more slots, although we're not doing this in an effort to market (or use invites as a way to grow), we really want to focus in on user feedback.

If you aren't able to get in, we'll open it up to the public shortly after we feel it's ready.

Thanks again for your feedback, please keep it coming!

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raheemm
Dang, found some great radio stations!

1. The streaming on some stations is pretty bad - not your fault. But it would be useful if you could classify or somehow mark with an icon - stations that have good streaming and stations that breakup often.

2. Fyi, there is no music with Chrome, but login, search, etc works.

3. I thought the "Grab A Station, Get Some Tunes" thingy on the top right were links but nothing happened when I clicked. Make it look more like a tagline and less like links.

4. Search results look cluttered due to close spacing.

Really like the service - bookmarked it.

immad
Wow. I really like it. Very intuitive. Where do you get the radio stations from?

I think you should think about combining Artist and Genre search. It took me a few seconds to find genre. Why not just have one search box with two tick boxes underneath it?

Though the tags are kinda good, so I guess if other people find it fine, than its okay..

lyime
I think the site is very responsive. First impression the UI could use a little bit more work, in terms of displaying content on the bottom half. One thing I am really curious about is how you stream the music so fast. Bu that I mean, there is literally no latency issues from the time i click on a podcast and it starts playing the stream. Great product you have here. More feedback as I use it more :)
Timothee
That's very intriguing to me too. It feels like it's loading up faster than a simple web-page!

I like the design even though the ability to use a smaller version of the page could be interesting (think that you have a specific small page open all day, kind of like the reduced version of iTunes).

Overall, I was very impressed by the responsiveness and the quality was pretty good for the stations I tried.

Good luck! it looks very promising.

jasonoliver
how is this different from other web radio programs? i actually don't use any and this is pretty intuitive. i imagine most others are similar though. i only use imeem and bittorrent/iphone for music these days.
Afton
Under recently played, there are a set of, well, recently played songs. And a big spot where album art would go. Is there some relationship between these two? The image was always blank. Is this "going to be there" functionality? If so, I'd recommend hiding it for now.
pedalpete
Hey Llama,

I've seen you guys before as I used to work for a competitor. Nice to see you moving in this direction.

Unfortunately, the site isn't playing any music for me :(

Are you limited(or limiting) play to just within the US? I tried about 7 different stations, and got nothing.

Nice clean design though.

andrewf
Play is probably per-station. Seems to work fine for me in .au.
volida
nice! but it didn't play any sound in Chrome

a cleaner-non-fullscreen UI would be perfect

rokhayakebe
Great Design and Great Product. Hope you make it YC Winter 09.
unalone
Why not YC Summer 09?

EDIT: I'm stupid, ignore, I thought Winter 09 was a full year from now.

somabc
It's not hard to guess some other invite codes
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ajkirwin
I can't get a lot of the stations to work either.
ajkirwin
Is.. this just a big shoutcast wrapper with a little flash player or something?
jgalvez
Arrrrrgh, got here too late.

Any chance I get one? jonas at codeazur.com.br

lpellis
The llama made me think of winamp, any connection?
carpo
Love it. Just yesterday I thought about finding an internet radio site, then forgot. You reminded me.

Everythings worked great so far. Only found is a small display issue when playing. Heres a screenie of the issue (the last line of the music description is cut off, above the blue tool bar) http://www.digitalcarpenter.com.au/uploads/Screenshot-OneLla...

Only seems to happen in Firefox 2.0.0.16 on Linux. I tested Firefox 2.0.0.16 on windows and it didn't happen.

radley
Or just use "techcrunch". I don't think they've announced there yet...