Notifo (YC W10) gets a Co-Founder... Me
paulstamatiou.com
paulstamatiou.com
USERS -------------- SERVICE
And honestly, the "push notification" isn't really easy to understand because it really can means lot of thing for a developer like me, and absolutely nothing for someone like my girlfriend.
I think a good example is needed for the new user to truly get what notifo is. And also, a good example of why a developer would want to link to a service like notifo. I mean, I understand now what Notifo is about and I think it's great; however, as I said, I needed to read a lot.
From http://paulstamatiou.com/exploring-san-francisco-silicon-val... :
>Skribit is a niche product that serves a small market well and it is with that in mind that development will continue, but in a part-time manner. Some changes will be taking place around the site to focus more heavily on converting users to paid Pro accounts (and pay off our convertible note) rather than building out certain community features that require much upkeep; making Skribit more of a tool than a destination. Ultimately, I need to land a paying job and focus on paying off my out-of-state tuition, which is still a six figure number.
Basically it boiled down to sheer ignorance. I didn't know that being a single-founder was such a big deal (in a negative sense), so I didn't know I should have been worried/nervous about it when applying/interviewing.
As for working alone... I had done so many personal projects at nights/weekends after work at my day job that working alone was just natural (again, ignorance was bliss). I was also able to draw from each of the previous projects to piece together what I needed to build Notifo very quickly.
This is the advantage of working on a bunch of different small projects all the time. The criteria I used for starting a new project was that I had to do at least one thing I had never done before which required me to learn a new language/technology/framework/API/etc.... after a dozen projects or so, this built up to a huge arsenal of skills to throw at new projects. Never stop learning.
That said, having had a co-founder for about a week, there has been an obvious increase in productivity, so for that I am truly thankful.
Only downside is whenever i try to open the app on my ipod touch - it always crashes - even when installing the new update. But it's not a huge issue because i still get notifications coming in.
I was thinking the other day, what I want is geolocation push notifications to my iPhone. For a trivial example, I have been meaning to ask my coffee shop if I could have some of their empty ice cream tubs. Every day I pull up at their drive through caffeine-deprived, pick up my coffee... and forget to ask.
Sure would be great if, while I was sitting there waiting for my drink, my phone blipped "Ask them about the damn tubs already" :-)
The hard part is setting up the notification in the first place. You might be able to wire up something to Google Maps that lets you put pins down that can be queried by your server.
Or something like that, anyway. Sounds like a neat idea :)
If you want to collaborate on it or hack around drop me a line and I can add you to the plugin page as a commiter :)
(by the way - the code you used in the thread, it is in WP-Notifo but I am pretty sure it originally came from another example, can't find the source though)
ps: congrats :D