Show HN: Cyberspace - my new web browser for iOS

This looks like an interesting app. However, the features that you have integrated are not unique or interesting enough for this app to gain a lot of attention.

If your intention is to create a niche app that solves a few problems, you've done a great job of that. The users who like your app will like it a lot.

If you are still in active development and would like to increase the number of people using your app, here are some things that might help:

1) Re-conceive both your self-hosted product page and the Apple App Store description. In short, you need to answer this question quickly and accurately: what makes your browser 100x better than any other browser out there? Currently, your "discover, read, share" sections are not compelling. Your App Store description is a little better with your quick point form feature list.

2) Your integration of Social Bookmarking is very interesting. I recently reviewed Delibar (http://robisit.com/gl). It is an app that saves bookmarks to Delicious or Pinboard. I concluded that the major flaw in this software was that it was limited to these two social bookmarking services. I think that you should integrate every single bookmarking and sharing service into your browser somehow. This is a powerful feature that is not currently being used in iOS apps properly.

3) I realize it's early - but listing real testimonials sells apps. Plain and simple, quotes such as, "I love this app, it changed my life" help people spend $2 on an App.

Without downloading your browser and testing it, it looks like you have an interesting product. The way that you have collected useful browsing add-ons and components into one iOS package might be useful. On the surface, your sales text isn't compelling and presents the biggest problem.

Btw. this reminds me of an idea me and a friend had over lunch on how to take down Google, Facebook etc. An evil hacker could theoretically write a virus, that only does one thing: Block Ads. Or install an Ad-Blocker.

This could SERIOUSLY disrupt online business as we know it. Same thing would happen if the Cyberspace browser became the market leader. The creator would probably be bought out for whatever money he wants just so that ads get re-enabled for that browser.

Just got it. I like the focus on working though a bunch of links. Currently for a site like hacker news I open a lot of tabs but I always have to switch back on opening the tab and it uses up a lot of memory loading them when I not actually going to read them yet.

iCab solves the first problem as it can auto background tab any links to a different domain. This is a actually smoother than the flow here: tap-hold-selecting is a slow operation I don't want to have to do it for every link on a page.

Instead I'd love a toggle that turns on add to queue as the default operation for the duration of that page. (This would be an improvement on the iCab option as the background loading is easy to forget about and then immediately becomes confusing.) The toggle should be a main button like the plus and would cease to apply if you navigate anywhere else or start going though your queue.

Another option would be certain pages always open in auto add to queue mode (eg set on the the bookmark). And some people might prefer add to instapaper as the default action etc.

EDIT: I actually really like this. Feels very smooth.

Ha, great. Ad-Blocking enabled by default and DuckDuckGo used for search. Good choices and good idea to differentiate your product from competition like that.

Good job on this one.

A few points. Some which have been hit already by prior posts, but I'd like to reiterate. Right now you're in marketing mode. So:

1. The website really needs the focus right now. My first point of confusion was the image. Naturally, our eyes are going to navigate to that, but it doesn't tell me anything. I'm confused looking at it. What is this? Do I really have to read the blocks below it to figure out what it is? I've skimmed the titles, but I'm not interested in reading all that right now... (That's my train of thought)

I would throw in a simple script to cycle through some images. Include some text explaining some of the core features.

2. What does this do that the other browsers don't? Some of this will be explained once point 1 is resolved. Past that, I would add more images + text below it.

Don't just tell me, show me. I might not have the time to read through a block of text. If you can describe epic in a picture, do it.

3. The Icon. There are people who will simply refuse to buy an app because of the icon. Sad, but true. This is how people discover you. They will see a list of icons in their search and find the prettiest one to tap.

You need something simple, slick and polished. Right now I feel like it belongs on a childrens e-book.

4. "You must be at least 17 years old" -- Really?

5. Consistancy. Pet-peeve of mine, but why is your skin different between the iPhone/iPad version? The iPad skin is solid. I'd subclass those iPhone components and give it the same look-and-feel.

6. I would definitely milk the social networking bit. I can't count how many times I've shared links and images from a page.

7. 'firmware 3.2' should just probably be 'iOS 3.2 or later.'

All opinions of course. Take what you will. All in all, great work. I'm not sold primarily because the core browser does a good enough job, but I can be convinced.

My new app Cyberspace has just been approved today - iTunes link: http://bit.ly/getcyberspaceapp. In one sentence, it is optimized specifically for the purpose of reading, discovering, and sharing. And it's pretty good at them.

Feature list: reading queue, access to Pinboard/Delicious bookmarks, DuckDuckGo as default search engine, ad blocking, Readability bookmarklet, text mode powered by Instapaper Mobilizer, share to different services, Pastebot & OmniFocus support, scratchpad with TextExpander support, etc.

My favorite tool for offline reading on the iPhone is actually another browser. Before I go on a flight, I load up HN, open up links to stories and comment pages I want in iCabMobile, which then saves them for offline reading. I've found it be more effective than Instapaper because I only need to load it once, and I end up reading a copy of the webpage itself, with all formatting, images, layout, etc.

If Cyberspace can support a similar feature, I would gladly purchase it, because iCabMobile's offline support isn't as well supported on the iPad.

It's a nice app but please, please hire a real icon designer, it looks like a joke.

Apple, pay attention. This thing rocks.

I love the integration with Readability and Instapaper.