looks really cool, well done! Only thing I would recommend is to immediately popup the share icon as soon as it's done rendering. The heart icon also isn't clear how I share the image.
My only objection is with the TOS: while I can sort of understand defamatory and libelous (even these rule out most of the fun), I have issues with "inaccurate". Does not leave much wiggle room, does it?
On the client mostly jQueryUI, qq-upload and some little jQuery plugins. On the server my usual PHP setup (Smarty, phpThumb) and the awesome instagraph library for the filters (https://github.com/webarto/instagraph)
I concur. It took me maybe 10-20 seconds, because it's very intuitive to use and I don't have to upload to give it a try. Plus, the site has no loading issues, which is rarer than it should be.
Do the suggested improvements, especially the social integration, and it might go viral. Good job!
It's sad that people call their little/fun projects useless. I just used your project and thought it was awesome. And even the worst project ever is useful for you. It's how you learn, build and explore. Plus, some truly great things have started out as "useless."
Perhaps "pointless" or "aimless" might be better than useless, but a useless item can be a item which exists merely to delight the mind/spirit. Of course, internet pedants and other cutting edge point-missers would likely argue that this is in fact itself a use. Such is the way of things.
Maybe "intrinsically motivated" would be a more HN compatible term.
Sadly, it's often a good idea to preface "Show HN" submissions with this nowadays so that someone else doesn't tell you how useless your project is in the comments thread.
Sort of, except that this is usually considered as down vote baiting on HN and is frowned upon. From HN's guidelines: "Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you."[0]. In this case though, I don't feel it was OP's intention to invite down votes.
Cool promising project! i dont see why you can't make it as big as pinterest ( or at least a fraction of it)
Remove the TOS and the checkbox during post, make the process easier. At home screen immediately bring a top list of funny pictures with speech balloons. Add facebook/twitter and pinterest integration (if possible), to share your photo with friends. Create a bookmarklet a la pinterest to allow easy sharing of images from any web site. Create a snapchat like mobile app for photo taking and phrasing with a speech bubble and sharing with friends. give me and 20 funny friends of yours accounts to get traction quicker. Make a grand plan, and speak around about it; "cartoonize the web". Add `Laughed' or lol buttons. You have 2 ways going forward 1) a mobile app like instagram or snapchat 2) a web site like pinterest.
edit: beauty is social with pinterest, curiosity with hn/reddit++ but humor is not yet web-full-scale social. phrase.it can be that.
There are safe places to get random images for testing, like placekitten, perhaps others have more recommendations. Personally, I didn't get an unsafe image and found your site easy to use and effective.
I agree, this isn't useless. I know my mom used to buy stick-on thought bubbles to put on pictures of her kids in baby books and such. If she wanted to do that now she's have to insert a photo into PowerPoint and add a thought bubble. I would use Photoshop which arguably would take even more time.
My suggestion for improvement: have it auto-upload to imgur or another image sharing site (maybe add a checkbox for that when people are reviewing the TOS).
I think this could actually have utility in a business setting: many folks doing presentations, newsletters, etc... don't have image software (or the know-how) to create this kind of effect.
Thank you. I think this is useful project for me.
The other day, I also thought about making a algorithm to create a speech bubble around a piece of text. You have a pretty good implementation.
I hope "weekend project" is just a thing people say these days and this really took longer than a weekend, or I wish I could create something this awesome in a few days :/
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] threadMy only objection is with the TOS: while I can sort of understand defamatory and libelous (even these rule out most of the fun), I have issues with "inaccurate". Does not leave much wiggle room, does it?
I think you are underselling here... I don't think you'd be lying if you said "in seconds". I can't imagine any quicker way of doing this.
Also, I like how you can drag an image directly onto the page and it uploads. You may want to add some visual queues for that (like imgur).
Good job!
Do the suggested improvements, especially the social integration, and it might go viral. Good job!
If the op learned anything at all from this project I would argue that it is in fact far from useless.
Great job on setting a goal and creating something, op!
Maybe "intrinsically motivated" would be a more HN compatible term.
[0] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Remove the TOS and the checkbox during post, make the process easier. At home screen immediately bring a top list of funny pictures with speech balloons. Add facebook/twitter and pinterest integration (if possible), to share your photo with friends. Create a bookmarklet a la pinterest to allow easy sharing of images from any web site. Create a snapchat like mobile app for photo taking and phrasing with a speech bubble and sharing with friends. give me and 20 funny friends of yours accounts to get traction quicker. Make a grand plan, and speak around about it; "cartoonize the web". Add `Laughed' or lol buttons. You have 2 ways going forward 1) a mobile app like instagram or snapchat 2) a web site like pinterest.
edit: beauty is social with pinterest, curiosity with hn/reddit++ but humor is not yet web-full-scale social. phrase.it can be that.
It could also be nice to be able to directly embed the image in forums, so have a direct link to the image (might also be useful for reddit ?).
I know that then, it makes it a bit harder to exatract money, but adding a "created with phrase.it" at the bottom should help with that.
A: more images B: a faster, more intuitive way to skip an image, rather than forcing the user to "cancel" and then start a new caption.
Note: Not useless
My suggestion for improvement: have it auto-upload to imgur or another image sharing site (maybe add a checkbox for that when people are reviewing the TOS).