Skribit Finally Launches, Aims to Cure Your Writer’s Block | Hacker News Reader

Skribit Finally Launches, Aims to Cure Your Writer’s Block

techcrunch.com

40 pointsdabent28 comments

Out of curiosity, why was it necessary to be in beta for over two years? Doesn't seem like the technology would take that long to develop.

Necessary, no. Most of the functionality has been around for a while, it's the polishing, redesigns and extra things that took the extra time.

To clarify we have not been in full-time active development for 2 years. I was still a full-time student the first year, so myself and cofounder were only able to work here and there, mostly weekends. This year I became the first full-time employee.

btw - I saw your SeatGeek launch @ TC50, grats!

Makes sense. Congrats on the launch--the widget looks great. Whenever I get around to starting a personal blog, I'll be sure to use it.

Do bloggers really have this problem? I have more drafts waiting to be finished than I have articles. I have too many ideas to execute them all. Am I alone?

Some bloggers do. I think lots of people have writer's block on occasion. The tool is also a great way to get feedback from visitors on what they want to hear.

I did an "Ask HN" thread about a year and a half ago and found a good number of people with this problem. Skribit came out of that problem I had myself for my own blog http://paulstamatiou.com

a friend was asking today on twitter what το blog about. I ll go recommend το him skribit.

'Cures Writers Block' is the one liner, but having read a lot of blogs that have it installed in the last year - it also helps you tune your writing to your audience. People request followups, or more detail on topics that you've covered, which helps you connect with your readers.

It's not so much writers block with me as that I don't necessarily have the best sense of what my writer's want to hear. I write about very technical content, and very between explanations of advanced topics, introductions, and opinion pieces. It's useful to know what my readers want to hear.

Congrats! Love the design, clean and original. Everything is well laid out and the copy is excellent.

Another plus because it doesn't look like another 37signals web app clone.

Thanks a ton! That means a lot to me as I am a jack-of-all-trades type and never really associated with having good design sense haha.

That's how I am, it limits the damage I can do by over-designing. :)

Thanks guys! You beat me to the HN posting haha.

Congrats, Paul!

I actually use this on one of my blogs. "Stammy" has done a great job of making a clean interface and widget. I wish him all the best.

My experience:

* Used "techncrunch" promo code when signing up.

* Supposed free pro account actually costs $1 per year, even using the promo.

* Impossible to switch to "free" account.

* Leave.

Yeah that was a bug i noticed right at the very last minute. Amazon would error if promo was for $0 so I have been working on hacking a fix in - we've never given away free Pro accounts before so we just caught this issue. Ideally should just bypass Amazon completely.

Hit me up with your username and I'll manually bump you up to a year account until we get that resolved.

You can't really it a "bug" so much as "you not bothering to implement what you promised". The issue was entirely predicable, and a workaround would be trivial. When you told techcrunch about the promo, you obviously knew it didn't exist. It's hard to call that anything but a lie.

While I agree that more testing was called for (ie. try your own promo before telling people about it), calling this a lie is way over the top. Being embarrassed in front of the TC crowd is punishment enough. Let's be serious, people: it's not like he was expecting to get rich off charging $1 instead of $0.

You seriously believe he "accidentally" told techcrunch there was a free promo, despite not actually taking any action to make that happen?

I'm guessing he programmed a promo code system into Skribit and didn't test it before giving the code out to TC. I've done stupid shit like that. Does that make me a liar?

Only if you've never done stupid shit like that.

Seriously though, it seems wrong to put an .m4v file behind the "What is Skribit?" on the home page. None of my systems can play that. Is that an iTunes file? I don't 'do' iTunes, though I may be alone in that respect.

In case this wasn't clear, he didn't just "fail to test the code". He consciously put $1, where it was promised to be free. That is, he chose to not deliver what was promised. Not a "bug". Not a "mistake".

I did pay the $1/year, and if that was a mischarge I surely wouldn't mind getting my subscription bumped on to 2011 ;)

Looks good so far, hope to make good use of it :)

Alrighty you're bumped up til jan 16 2011. your account might still say 2010 but it still think you're in the 30day pro trial.

Congrats Stammy!

Don't forget Calvin!

and our intern @alexcoomans!

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