juwo beta is released (at last!). Please use it and help improve it! | Hacker News Reader

juwo beta is released (at last!). Please use it and help improve it!

juwo.com

5 pointsjuwo105 comments

To be brutally honest: color scheme + horizontal scrolling + too much text + general design = I ran off before learning too much about what Juwo does.

Please redesign!

Also try to condense what Juwo is trying to do into a short paragraph. So far, all I can gather by a quick 10 sec browse is that it has something to do with recording/playing back audio, table of contents for audio etc. Leave the demos, instructions, examples for other pages. Give me the story in nice big font and tell it to me like "I'm a 4 yr old." Hope that helps :)

I'll try to look around a bit more once I'm out of work.

I agree with veritas. Try to tell us in a few sentences what juwo is all about.

Based on a comment in another YC news post, I thought juwo was a tool for automatically transcribing audio to text (is that correct?).

If so, then why not just say that; the demos can be simplified to be the raw audio/video clip with the text, as transcribed by juwo next to/underneath the clips.

no, that's not correct. It does not transcribe automatically. however the labels can have functionality attached. for example, to run the speech recognizer you have installed on your computer, on a voice note.

Thanks for being the first public to drive it!.

I read that people dont want to click, but scrolling is ok - I thought that was the lecture at startup school? (I saw a breief note on it here on this site)

the condensation is at the diagrams on the right.

I read that people dont want to click, but scrolling is ok

I wasn't at the most recent Startup School, but in general, people don't mind scrolling down; scrolling horizontally is a headache.

I wasn't at the startup school either, but in my experience people don't want to have to scroll down just to find things. People will scroll down to follow something they've already started, such as a comment thread, an essay, or a list of topics. They also will scroll down to read a list of blog entries, preferably in chronological order. (Otherwise they'll prefer to follow links to particular articles)

But if there is a variety of different types of content on the page, there should at least be a table of contents to do the scrolling for you.

I have put in a TOC now.

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=14590

my website is updated. Please visit again.

Too many words! This is my most common criticism for evaluating an interface. If you need so many words on the home page to describe how to do something or what it is, then it's not easy enough. Remember you only have about 20 seconds of somebody's attention before they decide to click away. I got lost pretty quick (and I'm actually pretty smart).

The crap about Jesus on the about page turned me off, too. You're welcome to your religious beliefs, but keep them on your blog or someplace more appropriate.

why does Jesus make you and others so angry?

I will bet $10 that if instead, it were a short para on Hinduism or Buddhism (and I dare say, even Islam), no one would have been so hostile.

As an intellectual person, I find blind faith in Christianity outright offensive. It doesn't make any sense to base your world view on the mythology of a Bronze Age people.

Honestly, I'm glad that you have the right to spread the good word on your website. But it's so rare I get to interact with a real, live Christian that I delight in the opportunity. Maybe we can both gain something.

So let's talk. Why do you believe in the god of the Christians to the exclusion of all the others?

why do you believe that 2+2=4 and not 2+2=5 ?

Because I count two things, and two more things and see that there are four objects. I can observe with my own eyes that mathematics works. You can't ever see God, you have to take on faith that a book written almost 2000 years ago is absolute fact.

So why do you believe in the god of the Christians to the exclusion of all the other gods?

You obviously pride yourself on being an intellectual, yet you havent even scratched the surface. Think deeper.

The answer lies in the answer to my question.

Fine. Mathematics is generally based on so-called "non-logical axioms" -- non proven statements that we accept based on what a person such as yourself would call faith.

Still, I believe in mathematics because it works. Why do you believe in the god of the Christians to the exclusion of all others?

You're getting the point - that we trust Mathematics even though it involves faith, because there is plenty of correlation to the 'real' world.

Similarly, Jesus is a real person, not an emotional crutch. An absolute truth, not a relative choice. Like 2+2=4 and not 2+2=5.

How do I prove it? Simple. Ask Jesus himself to show that he is real, to you. However when you ask, you cannot have an attitude - otherwise he will ignore you.

"you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart" [God] (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah%2029%20:%2013;&version=31)

He himself, will checkmate you.

But you still never answered the question of why you have faith in the Christian god as opposed to the gods other religions.

I did.

I don't understand how you answered it. Can you clarify?

Neither introspection nor emotional experiences reveal truths about external reality. Emotional experiences carried out in the meat computer mounted on top of your torso do not provide any supporting evidence for the existence of Jesus.

Far from it. I am not talking about "introspection nor emotional experiences". If Jesus is real, then he will show that he is real, to you, if you ask without an attitude.

It will not always be in the same way.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%209:1-6,%20...;

No one here is offended by your religious beliefs. They just don't have a place on a commercial website, unless you are providing a service only for a group of like minded people and then done right your comments may even be welcome.

"They just don't have a place on a commercial website"

why not?

Because they turn many people away. You asked for our feedback and several people made a big deal about it. Listen to us, trust us, your project needs all the help it can get. Don't make more reasons to turn people away.

Here is why I put that controversial paragraph:

"Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns [is ashamed of] me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven." [Jesus]

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010:32-...;

my website is updated. Please visit again.

I read that people dont want to click, but scrolling is ok - I thought that was the lecture at startup school? (I saw a breief note on it here on this site)

the condensation is at the diagrams on the right.

Should I move the diagrams left?

I am stubborn about Jesus; even though I have lost a lot of good opportunities because of it.

I have no problem with scrolling ... but that doesn't mean you should try and cram more words on the page to explain what's going your website is about or how to use it. The harsh reality is that the vast majority of people won't make it through the first paragraph.

I don't have all the answers ... but try making better use of headlines, images/diagrams, or a quick demo. Somebody should be able to visit your site and quickly know what it is and the basics of how it's used. Juwo sounds like a cool idea, but I don't get that as soon as I hit the homepage.

Some examples of homepages that I like that do a good job of conveying the idea/service in less than 20 seconds (I have no affiliation with any of these): http://writewith.com/ http://basecamphq.com/

I have reorganized the page.

my website is updated. Please visit again.

I haven't downloaded it because the site doesn't inspire confidence that this is anything I want to install on my machine. Some suggestions:

1. Messaging.

I am confused about what Juwo really is as well. It seems to be a way to tag audio or video by time? There is way too much text on the page. I know Juwo probably has a ton of features, but you need to nail down your core message and drill it in (and design your product around it). Can you describe what Juwo is in 5 words or less? Now what about 2 words? Anything longer than that and you've exceeded my attention span.

2. Design

Horizontal scrolling plus web design circa 1995 plus religious proselytizing doesn't inspire confidence that this is something I want to use and would enjoy using. I strongly recommend looking at other websites featuring downloadable apps such as Skype.com or Trillian, etc to see how they are approaching this. This is compounded by the lack of a clear message as to what your product is.

From what I understood of the core idea, it seems useful, but I can't see myself downloading a standalone app for this functionality. Btw, Have you checked out http://www.veotag.com? Seems like a competitor.

It goes much further than veotag IMHO. I have a comparison matrix with with competitors, including veotag.

I think the difference is that I can understand what Veotag is in about 2 seconds, and I am still trying to figure you what Juwo is after really reading about it and thinking about it, and I did that only because I was asked to check it out.

More features does not a better product make. More importantly, you can have 100x times Veotag's features, but it won't matter unless you can make people understand, instantly what your product is.

Now I imagine I'm a random stranger on the internet stumbling across your site. You really have less than 5 seconds of time before I click off back to YouTube or something. I just don't have that much attention.

so tell me, how should I explain it? should I move the diagrams to the left, or just one column?

I really don't know how you would explain it, because I don't understand what your product is. Whatever your explanation is, it needs to be clear and concise, e.g. "Juwo is the easiest way to organize and share your recordings."

The location of the diagrams on your website is the least of its problems - it is almost irrelevant. I would suggest first getting rid of about 90+% of the text on your frontpage.

I have reorganized the page.

The new design is a huge improvement, but (and I know this is harsh) only because the old one was so poor. There are still a lot of problems with the page. Right now your homepage looks like (well, it IS) a manual. It needs to look like a brochure. Put your manual somewhere else.

Paul Graham's suggestion to take a look at wufoo.com is a great one. That's one of the best homepages you can find on the net. Simplify simplify simplify and reduce reduce reduce.

my reply is here: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=14590

Thanks for continuing to engage!

my website is updated. Please visit again.

squeeze more juice from your multimedia content

That doesn't mean anything.

When I visit the site, I have these questions, in this order:

(1) What is Juwo?

(2) How do I get it? (Or get access)

(3) How do I use it?

(3) What can it do for me?

Here's what happens when I visit the site:

(1) What is Juwo? After scrolling up and down trying to make sense of the page, I gave up and just started reading from the top. After the first two sections I still am not quite sure what it actually is. I feel I have to try to piece it together from all the little clues in the text.

(2) How do I get it? As far as I can tell, there is nothing to get. I can't find a download area or login box anywhere. Halfway down the page I see some demos, but I can't tell if that's the actual software or what.

(3) How do I use it? This question is answered, although I had to scroll down to find it and I don't really understand the explanation because I don't know what Juwo is (1) and don't know how to get it (2).

(4) What can it do for me? This question isn't important for me, but it is for some people. A lot of the page is devoted to talking about how the product can help me, however because (1) and (2) haven't been answered, I feel like I'm wasting my time.

"(2) How do I get it? (Or get access) "

Thanks for your feedback! I have added a line at the top.

Note: When you click on a demo, NP will automatically download and install. NP can be run both offline and also connected to the internet. (see Technical Requirements)

Please click on the demos. The software downloads and installs. It is desktop-web.

I have reorganized the page.

my website is updated. Please visit again.

I can't tell what it does.

Aim for this: http://wufoo.com

It is hard to explain juwo in one sentence because it can be used for at least a dozen things. I dont want to leave anything out. IMHO, juwo is a new concept. IMHO it is very powerful - but I am getting carried away...

I have reorganized the page so that the simple explanation with the diagrams comes first.

I have to also say this. Your recommendation, wufoo.com; "Online HTML forms" means nothing to the layman. Similarly, I think the layman will not understand anything by "juwo is...

A "Swiss Army knife" piece of software that gives more power to consumers to structure snippets of audio, video and text as a bullet list, to more easily index and annotate them, and to share the lists with others. Its benefits extend to multimedia as related to more enriching broadcasts, collaboration and organizing".

Yes, it may look like I have put the Help manual there. That is intentional. For a new concept, I believe that if people cannot get help easily with the details, then they will stop using it. Help manuals tend to be secreted away in software like a squirrel hides nuts.

Of course, it can be argued successfully that I have already scared even the geeks away!

I am not justifying, but explaining my rationale. I hope everyone at news.YC will continue to engage with juwo.

Anil Philip juwo.com

You can either choose to emphasize how POWERFUL--as in scale--that Juwo is OR you can emphasize how EASY it can make my life.

Right now even though you have glimpses of trying to show how it can help me, the overall tone of your site(confirmed by your posts here) is on features rather than practical use.

Any tool can be used to do dozen things. Our site can be used to post music, lectures, pranks, cries of your first child and literally hundreds of other things. But it has its few primary uses and you have to pin them down and focus on those DEFINED audiences in the BEGINNING stages. Otherwise you end up confusing EVERYONE as you seem to have done here.

I'll help you get started if you're interested. This should make for a good mini guide too for folks in your position Answer the following questions for me in LESS than 20 words each:

1. What is the problem? 2. Who is it a problem for?(note: everyone isn't an answer; think age groups, job profiles of people MOST likely facing the problem you describe in #1) 3. How do you plan to solve this problem? (theoretically, not what Juwo is) 4. How is Juwo solving this problem

Use these guidelines: - Be as specific as you can be. - Use as simple words as you can use.

Zaid,

Thanks for replying.

1. What is the problem? 2. Who is it a problem for?...

is a very basic exercise. In fact it is on the first slide of my investor presentation. I have thought through this in depth.

I will feel comfortable discussing one aspect of it on this board.

1) "I cant skip to the important parts when viewing AV" 2) Both publishers and consumers.

thanks, Anil

Too vague on #2.You're getting somewhere in #1 by defining specific user use--just make sure it is ACTUALLY a sizable problem for the mass(not just you).

Best of luck with your presentation.

I dont have any presentation scheduled - but you do! (best wishes with it at YC).

publisher: ABC, BBC, CNN, youtube etc...

consumer: you, me, joe, jane, hari, harry.

By "powerful", I am talking about how it can ease problems first, and scale second.

But you haven't convinced me I have a problem--let alone Juwo can solve it. It could be that I'm not the primary audience which is why I asked you to define it AS specific as you can. You're still swimming in vagueness friend...

can you visualize IJigg using it?

I have to be honest I don't know what is Juwo. The exercise was not to tell ME about Juwo but to in general clarify for everyone here. I do hope you'll be able to answer those questions here at some point.

Your web pages do not render correctly in firefox:

http://abstractnonsense.com/juwo.png

that's weird - it is straight html, done in dreamweaver 8.

thank you for taking the trouble to get the screenshot. I shall run it from firefox on Linux

done in dreamweaver 8 Yeah, that'd be your problem.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fjuwo.com

thanks, shall fix by hand

Works for me.

Juwo, this is the most confusing thing I've ever looked at. I have a feeling the product is not very focused itself, and thus is hard to convey. If you can't convey it in a single page with a few terse sentences (ala skype.com), you might need to redesign and make it simpler.

I'm glad you're a Christian, but a company-about page is probably not the best place for pro/con links. It's distracting.

my reply is here: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=14590 Thanks for continuing to engage!

What is a pro-con link?

One big issue is that the demo I downloaded had some audio pre installed with it. Just a thought, but using audio from a speech given by a man with cerebral palsey is not the best choice for a demo. It was very unclear and hard to see what it was that your software was accomplishing.

Thanks for being the first public to drive it!. Try the BBC demo. it is video - or pretty American Idol Katharine McPhee.

For the BBC demo page, how about isolating the clip you want to show, perhaps surrounded by whitespace, but with a juwo page header? (i.e., make it clear this page still belongs in the juwo site, and you've just sampled a small part of the BBC page)

People with ADD like me will start reading the news ticker or some of the other stories (seriously, I had to back up twice to figure out what I supposed to click on!).

Also, for people not running XP and using Java plugins in their browser (I'm one of them!) can you prepare a version that will still convey what the demo does?

Do you mean, show the media player in the browser?

Or should I draw the link for the demo in large font?

Actually, juwo is great for people with ADD. you can sit in a class and record lectures - and then review only the important parts.

I have some kind of ADD myself - and use juwo in important meetings.

Basically, lose everything from the BBC page except the href to the clip you want to show and put it inside a "juwo" page, consistent with everything else on your site.

For a while there, I thought I was at bbcnews.com and I started reading all these extraneous links and photos.

the point is that a visitor to the BBC page would click on the video link, and a juwo of the video would pop up.

Yes, I understand how that would work if juwo were installed and I'm browsing other sites, but copying the entire BBC page is unnecessary, esp. when the only relevant thing from the demo's perspective is that single clip.

my website is updated. Please visit again. I have added screenshots.

"people not running XP and using Java plugins in their browser"

were you able to install/run juwo? the BBC demo?

No, I didn't try again after the first attempt.

Could you produce a demo in flash instead of java?

Flash is a must-have browser plugin, whereas java has fallen off the map in that regard.

for a flash demo, do you happen to know if a video playing in a media player on the screen will be captured in screencast?

or is there another tool...

perhaps I should rearrange the demos. Is the BBC the most impressive? or American Idol?

I have no idea what's going on on that page. Is it a blog? Is it a product?

want... to... troll... about... religion...

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=14583

My humble advice...

1. Take this demo OFF now! People are going to develop a SUPER BAD bias of your product that will be hard to overcome even in the future should you improve the UI.

2. Hire or partner with a UI designer who knows usability and design!

3. I'll hypothesize that most people that visit your site will leave without any clear idea of what your product is.

are you talking about the website? or the actual software, NP.

The website. I've no idea what the software is and thus I didn't download it.

I have reorganized the page.

What you really need to do is make a screencast demo explaining from the VERY beginning a) what is the problem b) how juwo solves it. In very plain language with in screen demo.

For a sample look at Mosoto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpuU4l_4Nr0&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmosoto%2Ecom%2F

You don't have to be anywhere near as crisp as these guys. If you can answer what's the problem and how juwo solves it in 2minutes you'll have fewer confused minds.

Arent the pictures clear and simple? The problem with screencast is what juwo tries to solve.

However, as you suggest, I shall create a screencast and see which is better.

Also see: my reply is here: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=14590 Thanks for continuing to engage!

I am thinking of doing a screencast for each of the demos and putting it by the demo.

I still have no idea what the hell this is

You all gave me valuable advice here when I asked for help. http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1890

I followed it! Please help juwo improve.

Thank you! I am grateful to you guys, news.YC and PG for this forum.

In one sentence, what is Juwo?

juwo is...

is this for web or desktop?

both. please click a demo.

http://juwo.com/company.html

"Juwo LLC was founded by Anil Philip in December 2004, and is based in Olathe, Kansas.

We are"

... 'we' ?

Also, the religious stuff probably belongs elsewhere, on your own home page, for instance.

It's not important, IMHO.

It could be single founder + employees (but unlikely given the site design) or just him.

But he could always say he's using the royal we.

You think? As someone potentially in the same situation as he is, I would feel uneasy about writing something that's not the truth.

'we' is the truth because my wife does give me valuable advice and assessment on juwo, on people I interact with for juwo. Even though she has 0% equity.

I am embarrassed to admit it's just me. It seems like "No single-founders allowed".

So the 'we' is wife (advisor)...

(Actually, I had an informal advisory group which I dissolved. The 'we' comes from there. As you fellow entrepreneurs will learn, advice is of little use - you want someone to help with the work to be done).

I tried the first demo and got this:

An error occurred while launching/running the application.

Title: Nodepad Vendor: juwo LLC Category: Unexpected Error

Unexpected exception: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException

I assume you ran it on Windows? The download JDIC libraries are for Windows. If anyone is good with javascript, we can port it to run on other platforms.

Linux (ubuntu). I clicked on the first demo when I saw it, without reading the rest of the front page (which was pretty overwhelming). I didn't see anywhere that would suggest this was a Windows thing until later.

I really apologize. I am not a Windows guy myself. (Read my rant on how Java harmed Unix and helped windows win).

It is my major priority to get it working on Linux and Mac.

I agree with most people on this thread. There's an information overload. Plus I suggest you hire a web designer. The design is not doing your service justice.

I have reorganized the page.

Hey! This is cool! But Crap Box is better.

"Hey! This is cool! But Crap Box is better"

Did you actually use juwo before stating that your toilet is better?

Who funds juwo?

me - or more accurately, my depleted savings did. why?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com