Ask HN: Would you be interested in this tool? Would you pay for it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would you be interested in this tool? Would you pay for it?

1 pointjmonegro6 comments

I use a tiny little internal mac app to send myself custom desktop notifications in real time.

The app is hooked to a server which listens to HTTP (post) requests and notifies me in real time according to the parameters (custom title, message, icon, click-through link - all optional except for the title)

For example, I use it in one of my webapps to get notified every time a user signs up with a line of code.

What do you think about it?

View on HN

It's clear it solves a problem for you and granted as one person already said they would just create their own. The thing is people don't. Keep iterating over it and decide what is the one thing it does well. Keep that one thing and make it better. Good luck.

I agree --- people don't. And there's a wide world of people who couldn't, even if they wanted to.

Thanks!

Nope, sorry. I wouldn't be interested in this. And if I needed something like it, I'd just write it myself (probably with aggregate stats in periodic emails rather than icons that pop up on my desktop, but if I wanted that as well for some reason it'd be easy enough to write as well.. probably using dzen, inotify, or kdialog).

I might not be the typical user you're looking for, though. Your app might be more appropriate for people with less coding skills and/or less time or interest to brew their own tools when needed.

Not really. For the use case you're talking about (getting notified every time a user signs up), we post updates to a protected twitter stream. Then there are plenty of twitter clients that will do desktop notifications.

I think if you ask people if they'd pay, they'll say no every time (unless you're offering to sell trips to the moon). Maybe rephrase to ask if they'd pay 0.99, 1.99, 3.99 --- or where their threshold is? And give examples of what it solves? People pay to get rid of headaches. Good luck!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com