Ask HN: Review My Startup: Szpil | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review My Startup: Szpil

16 points_urga48 comments

Be well organized. Keep detailed contact histories. Review past calls and conversations. Search contacts and notes. Collaborate with your colleagues. See who spoke to whom and what was said. See what you did a year ago today. Work remotely or offline.

https://szpil.com

I would appreciate your feedback.

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I can't seem to find any screenshots of how your app does what it promises to do. And the only way I know what it's supposed to do is because you told us in the HN submission, not on the site itself.

The first interaction is for me to type in some pretty sensitive information (email, phone number, etc.), which I am simply not going to do until I feel it's worth it.

Also: your site breaks in weird ways in Opera (10.60).

Opera not supported.

For me that's an instant disqualification.

What!? You're joking I assume.. What % of the market does Opera have again?

For an Opera user, it's still damn annoying to have to start up another browser. I tend to have Chrome running as a fallback but it does always grate me when people don't bother to fix their sites. And it's not as if Opera was that fussy.

Not as a principle, but in practice: when I go to a website and it's broken, I don't exactly have great faith in the quality of their products if it's a technical offering.

That depends. Out of all browsers, about 1% or less. Among the tech saavy (presumably your target customers), much more than that.

Just focusing on the design aspect, I'm split between thinking "I love the simple, clean, minimalistic look" and "It looks like it's half built, I'll come back when it's finished". Perhaps even just the inclusion of a small logo or a bit of colour anywhere, would give the added impression that at least "something" has gone into the design and that this isn't just the default look & feel of a CSS framework.

Thanks. It'll look fine when you add data.

It doesn't look any more inviting after some data has been added.

It's hard to tell what this site offers, since as far as I could see, it only stores name, email, and phone. I can get more than that free with more trusted, well-known services (Google, Plaxo, etc.). It's missing import/export, sorting, communications logging, attachments, related tasks, related documents, notes...

As currently presented, this product isn't compelling enough to use even for free. $10 a month is way too much.

Re: "it only stores name, email, and phone" that's true only when adding your first contact (to keep the landing page simple). Leave that specific interface within the app and come back and the form will show more fields, Skype etc. Re: "communications logging", once you've added a contact, click the link to their name in the success notice that pops up, or search in the top right. From there you can log.

It is missing those features. It has just been launched.

Ok, I really like your app. It's very javascript based so I'll be viewing your source heavily, because I'm also creating similar javascript based applications and I get into a big problem with code growth/complexity, so I'm hoping to learn something from you.

Here's some helpful criticism. I hope I don't come off too harsh, since I really actually like this app.

Some questions:

- What are your unique features? It seems to be very javascript centric and it feels fast, I guess that's a good feature.

- What is "an account" in szpil?

- Is there some list of all contacts? I just found "Today" - but that feels like everything I've done today, not everything ever

What I like:

- It's fast to use.

- It's simple

What I don't like:

- The single-colored interface - some icons might help

- The full width layout (uncomfortable on a widescreen display) - you should at least use max-width

- It was confusing that I didn't have to sign up and I didn't realize I had started.

- I didn't realize that my name when I signed up was my username, so I put my long name with all the icelandic chars...

- You could do better with the feedback button. Some simple feedback form or something like that.

Bugs:

- My name got formatted in a weird way: "ArnóR HeiðAr SigurðSson" (Should be Arnór Heiðar Sigurðsson) - that also had complications when I logged in/out again

- My stored password seems to not be bound to username, it's just always filled in - probably because you're not using a regular login form, but a javascript method that takes the variables and submits... too bad :/

- When I logged in again, everything I did "today" was gone. So now I can't find the contact I created.. :P

Good luck and keep up the good work.

Thanks for the feedback and hope you get some good architecture ideas from the source. Copywriting re: "account" must be improved (an account could be a company/organization/project). Contact lists will come when I figure out how to do them right. For now, there's the search bar in top right. This is probably the easiest way to switch contacts or see all contacts in a company etc. Re: interface, the idea is to keep it "text as interface", and keep the color simple so your data can speak for itself. The goal is to keep cutting down on "app chrome". There is "max-width" on some elements. Re: feedback link, good point. The formatting of your name is a bug in a titleCase function (fix coming soon). Please check back on Monday/Tuesday for some new features.

Great!

You know colors really help out. You don't have to have colors all over the place, but humans are inherently bad at scanning for text and monotoned objects.

Maybe a word for accounts: Group ..?

Keep it up!

"Group" was the first name I used for "Account" in fact.

Hi Arnór, the method responsible for formatting your name including the Icelandic characters has been fixed.

Who is this app aimed at? If it's aimed at people who would pay to manage their contacts, then it must be able to import from any reasonable email system. That includes outlook, Notes, Eudora, Thunderbird, Mail etc.

Importing means basically scraping most of the context and content of email, contacts, notes and appointments.

To me this sounds like a CRM system, and if someone came to me and said, I want to build a CRM system, I'd ask what they could bring that would persuade me to use their system instead of something established.

Typing my details manually into a web form would not make it past that bar.

I may be missing something here, and I don't want to be gratuitously harsh, but it doesn't really seem like the basis of a viable startup.

Thanks, VCard import exists. Outlook import coming. Let me know what you need.

Clicky: https://szpil.com

I want to look around more and learn about the features, see some screenshots, read about the pricing, et cetera, prior to "adding my first contact".

Ditto. What does it do??

1. If the whole app experience is as quick & snappy as the screens I've seen just poking around without entering data, you're doing something very right.

2. As a potential customer, I need a screencast that shows me what your service does, how it will help me accomplish X and Y better than my current system, and why I should spend time exploring it. See dropbox for an awesome example.

3. You should come right out and name your competition and explain what you do better. It's a giant pain in the ass to switch CRM midstream, and yet there's so much room for improvement.

4. The name is atrocious. It fails multiple tests (can your users pronounce it? spell it? remember it? understand it?). You should really consider changing it.

Good luck!

Re:

1. Thanks. It gets better when you add more data. 2. The idea is to let you jump right in and try it for real. 3. Let me know what you're using so I can build an importer for it. 4. What do you suggest?

I peeked the code a bit and you got some good stuff there, like the Model class and the Http class to wrap on top of Prototype Ajax and also support Jsonp. I'm actually building an app that has the contacts feature as well so it's interesting to see another design and coding approach .

With the foundation of your application right now, you can extend it to support CSV (or sources other) import in no time, or adding a bunch of new functionalities. The biggest question is to find out how to charge people for your service. I truly believe in startup that aims to make money on day 1 and this is the only future-proof way to keep your service running for the long run.

Also, get at least IE7 support. IE is a must for serious businesses, not like this:

    if (Prototype.Browser.IE || Prototype.Opera) {
      var safari = Html.a({ href: 'http://www.apple.com/safari' }, 'Safari');
      var chrome = Html.a({ href: 'http://www.google.com/chrome' }, 'Chrome');
      var firefox = Html.a({ href: 'http://www.mozilla.com/firefox' }, 'Firefox');
      var links = safari + ', ' + chrome + ', ' + firefox;
      Notice.error('Your browser is not supported. Please use:', links);
    }

Good luck!

Thanks you're right. I'm happy for early adopters to use a decent browser, and would prefer to innovate for them. I'm sure that's a large enough market. The idea is to enable everything to be done offline, and IE7 doesn't support that.

Make a painless iPhone (and for some folks - Android) + GMail sync and I'll probably pay you $10. Although, I can still sync iPhone contacts with GMail (using a payed app because MS Exchange integration is a pain in the ass), so I'm not sure. I like that it's simple, but there should be some killer feature that would make me want to switch.

But maybe I'm just not your target client. What's you target audience?

Are you on MacOS? You can sync your address book to gmail contact without using a paid app. Add you gmail account in address book preferences and use iSync...

Stay tuned: import and GMail sync almost done.

I got as far as adding my first contact, and couldn't really find then where it was added. No contact list given, no real info given about the product. Not going to sign up, sorry, not even for free ... no clarity to this product, $10 per month for this is a little crazy. I don't think that this solves any real world PROBLEMS since I'm quite happy with my contact management already. Looks more like a college project than a real world product... Apologies if that seems harsh, but it's an honest opinion.

I think it will help if you are more descriptive about the problems it solves and how it solves it. Before I am welcomed on your site you are already putting pricing in my face. Asking me to put a contact before I can 'have a seat'. It is all too sudden

What I would advise is this, visit 37 signals and copy the format of their apps like BaseCamp. It is pretty the industry standard for productivity software.

Best of luck.

Thanks the idea is to not be too industry standard.

I like the speed and simplicity, but without the ability to import contacts, I'm going to treat it more like a toy than a tool.

VCard import is already there (available in Firefox and Chrome and any browser supporting FileReader). Outlook import on its way.

I get a white page with a spinning icon top left, and this in my JS console:

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Security error" code: "1000" nsresult: "0x805303e8 (NS_ERROR_DOM_SECURITY_ERR)" location: "https://szpil.com/javascripts/application.js Line: 7562"]

Firefox 3.6.6, OSX 10.6.4

The homepage has very little salesmanship going on, making the whole thing rather cryptic (On the other hand, the minimalism is very refreshing so there is a balance to be struck).

You should go read "Sign up and ramp up design patterns" by Adaptive Path:

http://j.mp/dynuJs

I think you'll find it really helpful. Good luck.

Full url: http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2008/06/16/sign-up-ramp...

Thanks.

No way to browse contacts. When I use the search, Chrome's suggestions appear on top of your suggestions, which is quite confusing. Quite neat though for a first draft, though not sure that it offers much beyond standard webmail contact management.

Am I going to have to manually enter each call myself? If so, then no.

Might I suggest a fade in with a graphic of some type?

$10/month for contact synchronization is too high. Dropbox's 50gbytes is at that level and I think that's over priced.

Good idea. I actually tried something like that but couldn't get it right. What price would you suggest?

A variant of "szpil", "speel" means "play" in the South African language Afrikaans.

My first impression is "spill", like "oil spill".

I would be interested in the technology and architecture behind it.

Javascript. NodeJS. TokyoCabinet. Views and controllers are HTML and JS. 2 static files: index.html and application.js served by Nginx. Server is an API. Authorization and filtering done at the meta-data level: set union and intersection on database indexes to avoid JSON deserialization/serialization overhead.

The replication between client/server is based on: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gray/replicas....

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