Ask HN: What small webapps do you know that have a large audience?

274 points by thinkpozzitive ↗ HN

169 comments

[ 223 ms ] story [ 2318 ms ] thread
http://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat is a TV calendar I have been using for like 7 years, damn thing is great.

Not sure of their exact traffic but it's pretty popular.

It's pretty neat :) I'm building one myself, about 20k users atm. (more targeted at getting to the content though)

http://schizoduckie.github.io/DuckieTV/

I'd host those images on something other than Imgur, some of the images there are missing.
Thanks for the heads up! We recently swapped out some images that are now not under my private account
The only example I can think of is HN.

It's probably the only example I can conceive of existing, too, since it's in a pretty unique position of being cheap to serve and indefinitely funded (hence not under pressure to grow, monetize, or advertise to cover costs).

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http://sleepyti.me - simple concept, simple implementation, lots of users.
Exactly. At late nights when I am unsure about whether to sleep or continue working, I simply go to the site and calculate when to sleep. It has become a habit!
I'm completely amazed that people do this to figure out when to sleep. My intent is not to sound rude; I'm a big believer of "do what works" in my personal life and at work. For me it's always so simple: if the following day is a work day, I need to make sure I get at least 7 hours of sleep so that determines how late I can stay up. If it's the weekend, I go to sleep when my body says it needs a break.
Shameless plug, http://jollynap.com

It's the same formula SleepyTime uses, in a mobile friendly format.

The sleep now option doesn't seem to take my time zone into account.
The time is based on your browser's Date function which should match your system clock. I think you might be experiencing a strange calculation with Daylight Savings.
The two appear to get different results. To get up at 7:00 AM, sleepyti.me says to go to sleep at 10:00 PM, whereas jollynap says to go to bed at 10:45 PM. Obviously the latter is taking 15 minutes into account for falling asleep, but it's still an hour difference.
SleepyTime mentions, "The average adult human takes fourteen minutes to fall asleep..." so I compensate with 15 minutes in the calculation. There shouldn't be any major variance. Perhaps an odd calculation with Daylight Savings?
I think an app like Sleep Cycle is better than this because it can feel your movement, whereas this is just based on the "average" person's sleep cycles...
Sleep Cycle only works if you sleep alone though.
I think if you keep it on the outside of your bed (away from the partner) and your bed isn't super responsive, it should work. There are others that integrate with wearables and works in that situation, but the concept of it using motion and not just random time is what makes it work more effectively.
http://strawpoll.me/ - create simple straw polls that anyone can answer at a unique link. Every game streamer I watch uses it daily. Dead simple to use and a memorable name.
I like that... and I would use it if it allowed the voter to enter their name so I could see who had chosen which response.
Use it all the time. Great tool!
This would be great if it worked on mobile (I.e not desktop optimized)
I agree about the lack of mobile web site, but I broke my resistance and the official iOS app is good (there's an Android one too)
great for coordinating workers and teams in multiple time zones!
+1 to Bustaname.com, it's a great tool for finding domain names and one I have found to be invaluable.
Bustaname is pretty nifty and useful. I'm also a fan of Namebird, a name generator that uses probability algorithms to make names that are catchy and memorable http://shobia.com/namebird (and only partly because I made it!)
I keep seeing this plugged (by yourself actually.. :P )

I think it definitely needs a tutorial or walkthrough of some sort. I only ever get dodgy looking words that aren't memorable in any sense, in fact would be extremely difficult to say over the phone. I am guessing it's the way I'm using it but I don't know any better! :)

Hehe, launching something new you made is hard/takes persistence. Hope I'm not being annoying; seemed to be appropriate here and the other time I mentioned it in a comment on HN.

Sorry to hear that. There actually is a tutorial/guide referenced a bit lower on the page but not many people seem to see it, may need to emphasize it more!

Maybe try the basic word maker to make words starting with 'arb,' 'orb' or 'mar'? I've found the words those generate are fairly nice as an idea for what it can do. Also maybe try shorter words?

Dunno. To be honest, having used the other name generation tools, this is the one I'd use to get a new domain name and a good amount of people have found names they like through Namebird (someone put in starts with 'pay' and got paydrow for instance and I used it to name itself too :P).

No no not annoying at all! If anything I'm annoyed (extremely mildly, mind) at myself because I'm not managing to get it :)

It looks like a really good tool if (and I'm assuming it does for others) it works nicely, I'm just missing that moment of 'click' right now where I grasp how it works. Going by what you've said I think I was more using it as "here's a word, do more with it please website robot" - I'll have another play! :)

I am also building an algorithmic name generator, so I have been watching namebird closely. It's excellent!
Thank you! Would very much like to see what you come up with when it's ready/hope you'll post it to HN.
Wait, did I read that second one right? A streaming gif that is created/updated in real time by the server (i.e. the later frames don't even exist as the browser starts loading the asset)? What a hack!
I'd imagine jsfiddle.
I'm not sure what counts as "small", but I can't imagine they have very few LOC...
http://naymit.com/

In many regions of the world, navigation devices only locate a fraction of buildings by their street address. Naymit lets you mark, share and find exact locations.

I love pinboard! I started out with delicious until it got bought and got weird, then I moved to Google bookmarks but it's so crude. I need something that follows me on every machine. The magick is in being able to add tags.
The irony is that Pinboard really is the rightful heir of del.icio.us, not Delicious.com.
I'm so curious.. I don't use pinboard, but everyone says it's awesome. What's so good in it?
It's no frills, just works, saves a cached version of the page when you bookmarked it, doesn't change in any way that is going to surprise you, did I say it just works?
I've wondered the same.. I actually subscribed to see what the hype was about; after using it for a few weeks I found it hard to justify the cost for such a simple and relatively featureless webapp
I actually gave up just a few weeks ago on Delicious (I have 15k+ bookmarks there, but it gets too slow too often) and moved to Pinboard.

Exporting from Delicious into Pinboard was done in a few minutes.

Pinboard is just like Delicious but faster and more responsive, I am willing to pay $10.61 for that.

And I actually paid for archive option not because I particularly need it but because I like the idea of supporting a lean one person operation.

Only thing Pinboard is missing(just like Delicious is missing) is quick filling in of suggested tags.

Also, for some reason Pinboard suggests IFTTT tag almost every time. I only use IFTTT sparingly.

I only paid one up-front fee of about $10.00. It isn't subscription-based. That is stated quite clearly on the home page. Be sure you go to http://pinboard.in/ and not one of their rivals.
http://www.boomeranggmail.com/ I feel like half the people I talk to at work use Boomerang for gmail. They seem small because I don't see a footprint online or much marketing from them.
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