Please review our startup Favetop.com - Internet Desktop | Hacker News Reader

Please review our startup Favetop.com - Internet Desktop

favetop.com

29 pointsrooshdi40 comments

Well, the first thing I would ask is why do I need a web desktop? I hardly use the non-web desktop I already have.

Secondly, (and this is based on playing with the site for 5 seconds) what are you providing that my browser's bookmarks bar isn't?

On average people visit the same 8 sites over and over. We feel this kind of interface is more efficient, because it's meant to be set as a home page. This way going from site to site only involves clicking the Home button and each site. We also think it fits well with the trend toward touch screens on devices like the iPad.

What benefit does your site have over Safari's top sites or Firefox's fast-dial?

You can also directly search sites using Favetop with just one click of a site icon.

My gut reaction was: why would I bother going here rather than the Top Sites (or equivalent) pane in Safari or Chrome or FF, which shows the sites I visit most and doesn't require me to have another account elsewhere?

Don't get me wrong - I really applaud everyone who gets an idea out there to market, but I just can't see the use-case for this being common enough.

(Thinks more Unless you're going for IE users, perhaps?)

The best answer I can give that is we feel a browser based solution is best, because your favorite content can be accessed from any computer.

That is a fair point. I guess because I'm a laptop user, I almost entirely use my own machine for the web, rather than a work box and a home box, or access from an internet cafe etc, but there are still plenty of people out there who would benefit. I think adriand's point about it being great for young kids is really strong, too. Best of luck with it!

I've actually been thinking of building a simple homepage like this for a while for my son, who is two. He has trouble with the bookmarks tab right now (although I just started teaching him to use it, so he'll probably get better quickly!) But I think a homepage with icons would be helpful for him. And I think that spinning it as child-friendly could be a good route for you.

Question: is there a way to eliminate the tabs and just have all of your content, whether it's games, videos, whatever, piled up on one page?

I realize I could answer the question myself, however, I don't really like your privacy policy. If that policy is one you just lifted from somewhere else, you may want to customize it further. I would like to see somewhere in there that you will not transfer my data to third parties.

We are looking at giving users customization options under Settings. As heavy Internet users ourselves, we're on the user's side when it comes to privacy. We never monitor user activity or transfer data to third policies. We do need to update our privacy policy.

I think the idea is a great one, just not for this audience. Hackers use the desktop as little as possible, but my mother clutters her desktop with EVERYTHING.

Personally, I think you are on a good path. After using it briefly it felt pretty good. The biggest problem you will have is getting traction (as others have mentioned), and I do not really have any good ideas on how to solve that.

I agree with this sentiment. It's difficult to gauge broader market appeal on a site like HN if your app is better suited for the "average" person. We all tend to look at stuff through our developer/hacker/designer/startup lenses and lose sight of the fact that 99% of people will evaluate what you've built in a far different light than this crowd. At your next family reunion, see how many people have heard of Dropbox, Basecamp or Xobni.

My advice to the creator(s): Don't get discouraged. This is a cool idea and most importantly, you've shipped something. Keep going.

I also agree, but I still think the HN community is great for getting feedback. It's true that we're not really aimed at hackers. However, a similar site to us AllMyFaves.com just hit 100M page views (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6U_mVE_...), and I doubt HN users would use them either. Thanks for the encouragement!

Why do I have to sign up to start using this? I think people would be more likely to try it if they didn't have to cross that barrier.

You should have it so using it on one machine just works and requires no signup, then have an option to add a user/pass at a later stage.

agreed. you could use a cookie/ip or something initially to set the user account

You are doing a great job of telling me what the site is about, but you should also show how it actually looks/works.

I see that it is a website to save/share stuff and I am not sure whether to sign up or not because I don't know what the actual inner pages are going to look like. Is it as simple as the home page etc or will it get more complicated and difficult to use? There are a lot of sites that does this same thing and why should someone sign up for this site? Some screenshots or video demo would be helpful in this case.

But again, my biggest problem with the site is that I still don't understand what problem it solves.

Thanks for the helpful feedback. Communicating how our site works in a quick way remains a big challenge for us, and we will certainly keep working to improve that. As for the problem it solves, we think it solves a few, but one example would be the ability to hold on to videos that might be watched more than once.

I actually want a new homepage something a bit like this. I currently use either iGoogle (as it has lots of widgets which I can quickly use - e.g. GPS phone locator) or chrome default homepage (I like the big icons showing what the page actually looks like rather than a websites logo - helps you find the site faster).

I will usually only use the homepage when I first open the browser, as after that I can click bookmarks. I want the homepage to probably have a few rss feeds and some big buttons to click on and go to a new site.

Specific to your site: I wont ever use the video, games, photos, music tabs - and would like the choices to remove those tabs. My homepage must have no information that I do not need. I want it to be more streamlined and slick than a skinned rabbit covered in grease. I didnt want most of the default links on the web tab - and removing them individually was a pain as it took so long There is a bit too much space at the top of the page. the distance between the top bar and the search bar and the "tabs" bar should be decreased imo. "Feedback" on bottom of page is misspelt :)

So currently I would choose iGoogle. But I would try it for a while if there were choices on icon sizes, rss feeds, and a few optional widgets e.g. calculators, and there are options to hide all features which I dont want to see in settings.

That's great feedback. We may eventually have that kind of customization under Settings. In fact, we've actually discussed exactly those things (and a lot more!), but we wanted to start with a core set of features and evolve from there.

Great, Ill keep checking back. thanks!

I would certainly use favetop for aggregating videos and music. This feature is just awesome. I agree with others - bookmarks are best for launching links and webapps, specially when you are using ONE computer and only ONE browser.

Well, a question to site owners: do you track my clicks on links?? ;)

We don't track individual user activity. We're huge believers in privacy. Profiles and content are also private by default.

The site's UI is way to boring. Even if its suppose to be simple. Also being a programmer in my own right, I was looking at the source and using tables with spacers? I mean come on, its 2010.. Also another thing I am noticing is, is every bit of your application all in one directory? I am seeing files like indexg.php, gamesg.php. I may be wrong but that might make it really hard to pick up any more developers or investors who are a little tech savvy. Just my 2 cents. Good luck though.

Yes, our own designer complained about that too, but because our app is meant to be used across a wide range of users and computer configurations we opted to go with a more consistent set up, since it's the same from the user perspective. And the scripts make use of includes ;)

When you say a more consistent setup, I hope you are not referring to the fact tables are used, because changing the theme for a certain user is MUCH easier to do in css. Okay since you mentioned includes, your obviously a lower end developer. Have you ever heard of OOP or MVC? But I guess if it works, why question it.

Yes, I agree, and that may be what we use in the future, but to meet our early goals, which is getting something stable out the door that's the plan we used. My primary objective isn't programming/architecture debates (or prizes) it's simply getting satisfied users. It's like you say, we're focused on what works.

Also even large scale sites use CSS/XHTML.. So failing to make it look the same across all browsers is on you, not the technology.

I prefer bookmarks, and google is more useful as my homepage.

I like it. I use to have something like the web tab that I had made for myself, but this is obviously more complete. I think the delete function should be more obvious (maybe something like how the iphone deletes apps) and when I add sites, it would be nice to see a list of icons for at least the most popular options.

While I don't think I'm at all within the target market (as has been discussed elsewhere in the thread), but I had to give you kudos for the way you present it to the user. It very quickly shows you why they should use your service and what they may be able to get out of it. Good job.

I tried using an internet wallpaper, http://fav4.org and it does this in a prettier way. Additionally, it's engaging and simpler. I still switched back to Safari's homepage and don't think I could be moved away from it.

Interesting...

Bookmarklets can help a lot in saving videos, pics, read-later links, etc

Why not put everything on one page? I'd rather scroll then click tabs.

That had never occurred to us. However, we consider ourselves an Internet Desktop, so like a PC we want to allow users some customization (possibly including their own design themes). Under the Settings we may include that as an option if there is enough demand for it, but we also believe in fast loading pages, so that would be one drawback.

"but we also believe in fast loading pages"

Is that for your benefit, or your users? Either way is a good answer, I just think you should know the answer. The word "believe" prompted this comment.

If you have icons 1-10 on tab A, and icons 11-20 on tab B, then tab B loads really, really slow, i.e. never until you click it. So you have fast access to icons 1-10 and really slow access to icons 11-20.

An option in the Settings would (eventually) be good.

Was this site coded in 1992? Viewing the source code it sure seems like it..

Spacer images? No thanks Favetop!

If you had to view source before you were sure, then it can't be a real problem, can it?

Thats what I was saying. I wonder how serious they take security 0_0

If I refresh this page after creating an account it continuously doubles all of the icons on that page (first time one amazon icon, one Facebook icon, one of all the other icons, second time two of each, next time four, etc until it gets ridiculous):

http://www.favetop.com/index.php?actn=re

That bug is fixed. Thanks.

Trying to become the starting page. This has been done since the 90s (see http://www.startpagina.nl/ etc). I don't see the need for it, and I don't see how you'll ever compete against the likes of google, yahoo etc. Not gonna work, sorry.

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