I didn't really read your comment, and clicked on the link. It took me a few seconds to realize it was a "demo site". Initially i was amazed that we were all enamored by a table tennis paddle store, which seemed believable considering that a few years ago this guy with a bingo card making website was on the frontpage every other day.
Venmo looks like it's trying to make a dent in Paypal's market. They've got a pretty good mobile solution. Though, I hear their eating losses with almost every transaction right now (everything is free, other than debit cards)
Clever marketing. I've seen Vine videos explode as examples for things in the last few weeks, along with news and blog Vine embeds. Interactive marketing is going to get a lot more interesting with Vine clips (until of course we get saturated with those marketing messages and don't find them as unique anymore).
I'm if the 15 second timer on instagram will be more popular for product demos than Vine's 6. It's probably irrelevant (since Vine could just change the timer to compete), but may have an interesting temporary influence on adoption.
You're right, 7 seconds is brief. I didn't get a chance to play around with the Instagram video yet, but at first glance it wasn't as easy to use (of course I didn't give it enough time and they JUST launched).
I haven't used Vine at all, so this may very well be a restriction of the platform rather than an oversight by Paddle, but surely they could have placed a link on the page back to their site? or is everyone just expected to know that "@" means, find us on twitter? I can understand that works perfectly fine for the HN community, but for most audiences, surely they're missing out.
It's a testament to corporate inertia that PayPal hasn't been an innovator in payment processing for a long time. Square and Stripe have been making inroads, and Bitcoin is lurking out there somewhere. There's a fistful of money to be had in this arena, and I'm glad that it's evolved over the last few years.
I think he mostly means the clarity of a screen capture vs. a shaky shot of a physical screen. I like the indy feel of this but it did give me a headache to watch (even though it's only a few seconds). If you want to feature the actual phone, maybe have it resting on a hard surface or otherwise steadied.
It obviously makes sense in this case, given the novelty value of it - it being on the frontpage of HN - but I think there's a better alternative for the frontpage of a service's website.
The Paddle animation isn't a GIF. It's a video. That's why I asked you why you thought Sublime's GIF (which isn't actually a GIF, but a compressed PNG animated with JavaScript) was better.
> JavaScript turns the PNG and JSON into an animation, using either the canvas element, or emulating it using overlaid div elements for older browsers.
The design is inconsistent. If you only use color to signify buttons, making top and bottom banners with the same solid color as buttons is confusing, especially when several buttons are embedded in the top or bottom banner.
Based on that headline and the number of startup redesigns that show up on HN, I was expecting a redesign mockup of PayPal - not an actual product. Took me a minute to realize what I was looking at. But great job!
Maybe there's something wrong with me, but the video moves way too fast for me to process. Of course, making me feel stupid creates negative associations with the product.
I didn't catch it all the first time either; luckily it is 6 seconds long and loops continuously, so you can take as long as you like to dissect it (or go to their site if you want to read about it instead). I think it's an effective way to drive home how fast the process is.
I actually think that's sort of the brilliant part. You end up watching it all 3 or 4 times. 1st time = 70% catch, 2nd time = 90%, 3rd time = 100%, 4th time = just to be sure. Nice way to hammer it into your brain 4 times!
One thing that I learned (accidentally) that helps when watching a fast paced Vine video like this, you can click the video to pause it, and again to resume playback (useful for trying to read the buttons that are being clicked, for example). Maybe everyone else already figured that out, ha, but I think GIFs conditioned me to think things like this didn't have pause built in.
PayPal had eBay to crack the hardest part - acceptance of a new payment type. Are you a new payment type or are you effectively a wallet and passing underlying credit card information over?
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 93.1 ms ] threadAnd speaking of PayPal: Max Levchin, who co-founded PayPal, recently founded Affirm, which appears to be a competitor.
https://affirm.com/
This is pretty cool.
Best of luck to Paddle!
http://www.sublimetext.com/~jps/animated_gifs_the_hard_way.h...
> JavaScript turns the PNG and JSON into an animation, using either the canvas element, or emulating it using overlaid div elements for older browsers.
That aside, it is a good, clean interface.
Reminds me of minbox but with less loud words blasting in my face to the sound of Nicki Minaj's ass.
I also hope this is a joke: http://i.imgur.com/MnshKxO.png Mobile first does not mean to forget the interface for everything above 4.7 inches.