Show HN: Our (two) weekend project: 365.io - A photo a day for one year.

I have no tolerance for products that have ads and I pay for them. Nowadays, a lot of times paying means simple ¨removing¨ ads. This is a product that I can achieve in some ways for free. Why should I both pay for it and experience ads.

No ads please. It will ruin the aesthetics.

I would recommend offering a free trial until the first of January, then they have to switch to a paid version.

And the $11? ~100Gb of transfer on S3?

That's what I interpret Flickr groups to be - a way to focus on a given subject rather than photography in general.

You need to prove the value of your product before you can start charging users $11. Your frontpage gives no indication of the value added.

That's why you put them in a set.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thwarted/sets/72157623777255069...

This is from a 20 line shell script that takes a picture at some random time within a minute after I unlock the screensaver. They are then uploaded manually using kflickr because, honestly, some of them come out really crappy (out of focus/blurry) and I unlock my computer like a 100 times a day.

Well, it's also not clear what being "more organized and focused" gives you too. It doesn't seem worth 11 bucks. I think you need an obvious distinction to be able to get people to pay up. On the other hand, I love the design.

I get what you're saying but all of your examples are really bad examples.

Macbook vs Dell - Technology (specialised CPUs, Dual graphics chipsets in Macs to give better battery life and hard-wired flash chips in Macbook Air)

BMW vs Lincoln - Forgive me, I'm not well versed in American cars, but BMWs have cutting edge technology as well as some serious add-ons and tech (one of the first to introduce GPS, in-seat heating, various energy/mileage saving technologies such as brake-recharging). I don't know enough about Lincoln to say what they've introduced.

Dyson vs Hoover. Massive differences in technology, better suction on a Dyson, bagless, easier to clean.

It's interesting in the first three comparisons the premium option has a large amount of patents and internally developed technologies don't have (exception: Lincoln, I don't know enough about them to comment).

Armani vs Old Navy. Material quality, stitching quality, the way the garments are (traditionally) made although the gap is closing (if you'll pardon the unintentional pun).

Ultimately though there's a big difference in focus. Old Navy makes clothes for day to day wear in a variety of circumstances. Armani make clothes to be seen in at events. Apple are highly consumer and creative focused, Dell are more business oriented (but also attacking the consumer market). Dyson targets people who don't want to clean/change bags every now and again. BMW targets moderately wealthy men who want something decent they can drive as though they own the road with, I don't know who Lincoln target but it appears to be a higher end luxury car brand of Ford.

I've just completed a Flickr 365 project, so I have a bit of feedback. First, you can't do this for free as you can only show publicly the last 200 photos without a pro account. With a pro account, you simply create a set for your 365 project to separate it from the rest of your photos: works great. Plus you get awesome views like a calendar that shows the photo a day in a small thumbnail, and all kinds of sorting options (though old-> or new-> are all you really need.) Flickr's partnerships with photo printing companies can also be really convenient and probably makes Flickr some extra money too.

The only reason that I personally was able to complete my 365 was because I had options for uploading my photos direct to my set from my phone (I tried various paid apps until I found one I was mostly happy with.) If I had to sync my photos with my computer first then it never would have gotten done. Obviously on the one hand it would have been great to have 365 high quality photos from my DSLR, but the convenience of the iPhone was the only way I could keep up some days. In other words, an app or a simple way to e-mail photos to the program would be a must for me. And I probably spent $50 specifically for my 365 between Flickr Pro membership and various apps I tried, so I don't see the $11 as off-putting in itself at all.

If you're curious about my 365, I took a photo a day of my Toy Story Toys: http://www.flickr.com/dafalcon/ - the set is on the right side. And I just started 365 days of my newborn baby girl ... Give me good reason to switch from Flickr and I just might!

Not $11 superior. If it offered some funky filters Instagram style you could perhaps capitalize on the Polaroid/Lomography type of audience. Or build a Flash driven picture uploaded that would use the web cam.

The way it stands is you're offering a pretty page for photos at $11 that doesn't target any real customer niche and does what a Tumblr blog paired with a Flickr account would do for free in a more flexible way.

I like what you said here. Contrary to what people seem to think...these "be all, end all" services and sites aren't suited to very particular and niche markets.

It's funny because there are so many people on HN and Reddit, for example, who don't capitalize on creating small niche services because there's already a Flickr, or already a Youtube and whathaveyou.

So I think you've done a good job here.

I think you could probably market $10 better. Remove the struck out $20 and just prominently and proudly display the $10.

As a risky marketing move, how about refunding all users who paid $20 the difference? What a great way to get them talking about you on Twitter, Facebook, etc. when you deposit their account with $10. It's a nice surprise.

Just an idea. Good luck.

Fair point, I didn't realise that was the idea.

i think the thumbnails should link to a dedicated page for each picture, rather than a lightbox version, like flickr does. that way users can have a url per-picture but still have some context around it (like who took it, show the user's other pictures, promote the 365.io site, etc.) rather than just the raw jpeg url on s3. i'd say add the ability to leave comments and favorites and all that, but it sounds like you're just duplicating flickr at that point.

you could probably accomplish the same thing by using flickr's api. let users upload photos to flickr (with a certain tag that your site would look for) or through your site, but collect and present all of them with your own layout and sharing mechanisms. flickr can host all of the photos and let users keep copies of their own photos in their own photostream. you could pull in comments made on flickr and show them in the same stream with comments left on your own site.

there should still be incentive to use your site to view the photos, though, like having a voting mechanism and some kind of 'picture of the day' that would get displayed on the homepage.