Show HN: Cron.io - Sharing a by-product. Should this be a full service?
cron.io
cron.io
If so, since I'm writing a bunch of code to do work, the marginal cost of dropping a call to that code into cron is awfully low. I'm not sure why I'd bother creating another username and password in an external system, much less pay for it, to provide such a small amount of incremental value.
I'd understand if the idea was to offer the power of cron to the non-techie laymen, but I'm not getting the sense that's the target.
The "you don't have to worry about [foo] because we manage it for you" value proposition only makes sense when foo is hard to manage. And, for techies who can edit a crontab in 3.2 seconds, this might even be a step backwards in terms of productivity.
Edit: Why am I not surprised to learn that you work for a hosting provider? I'm not trying to pick on you, I've just noticed a trend that makes little sense to me.
I run multiple servers, at this minute there's 8 web servers online and 1 mysql server. Each server has a different purpose, some are long term and some are short term (taken offline after purpose served). Having to manage the cron jobs running on each server is a pain, having 8 servers all running different things is fine if you have the time and want to save money, but for me I'd rather pay $20 a month and outsource it to someone else. It's the same reason I use Postmark (http://postmarkapp.com) for my email. I could manage email myself but I value my time, same deal here. Same reason I use google apps for personal email, same reason I use Linode for servers instead of buying hardware and colocating.
Time is my biggest constraint not money, so spending an hour to save $20 isn't worth it.
Agreed, that's why you would use a single, cheap Atom box sitting under your desk managing all of your cron jobs.
>spending an hour to save $20 isn't worth it
This isn't saving $20, it is saving $240 per year, so having your own hardware is break-even for year one. Year two is essentially free.
>it's the same reason I use Postmark [...] for my email
Email is an entirely different beast, dealing lots of config files, blacklists, and a kludge of MTAs/ MUAs. I completely understand outsourcing that piece of operations.
>instead of buying hardware and colocating
There is no reason such operations need to be run from a datacenter/ colo. Any office/ business connection should be adequate to run cron jobs.
p.s. Flattered you care ;)
If there was a place to learn everything there is to know about hosting a site yourself, then that would help. Even better if it was easily accessible, trustworthy, and simple to understand. And more so if it displayed proof that you only need minutes to diagnose and fix the most common problems.
I'm a big believer in choosing the right vocabulary. Half of the fogginess in communicating ideas comes from bad vocabulary, and matching that vocabulary to your user base.
For example, "signal" is a great word that describes the behavior. "Delegate" is also decent. "Dictionary" is not a good word. If you don't know that a dictionary is a key value store, it's not very obvious. Same with "hash"; unless you've been educated in data structures, a hash is either a mathematical function or a cannabis product.
Reason I bring it up: We don't manipulate "crons". We manipulate "jobs" in the crontab at /etc/crontab (short for cron table, I believe).
It's an exceptionally tiny nitpick of a really good idea. So keep up the good work and feel free to ignore my pedanticism.
Sorry, I could not resist! ;-)
curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:7931/api/callbacks/ \
-d "url=http://example.com/messages/1/send/" \
-d "eta=2012-03-25T08:00:00Z"
I think you could add that here, and it might be a good value add. Depending on pricing, I could be convinced.
Joking aside, great idea. This is useful.
This is actually why i took so long to launch the site. I've used the prototype version of this for a long time. The app is written in node so it is incredibly fast, like destroy the internet fast. That is why email confirmations are required and accounts are limited to 5 crons each. I will add a captcha on account confirmation shortly as well.
I appreciate your concern.
I appreciate your vigilance :)
Google does something like this: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6... -- their alternatives also include changing DNS to add a dummy TXT record.
what
haha I actually like that line a lot. Describes exactly how I feel whenever I'm using node.
I'd pay for that feature hands down for crons which I want to ensure run consistently and see a simple chart or data of where the process possibly broke down.
With that a notification after a rule trips, similar to pingdom for downtime.
Interesting feedback around pricing, i've always wondered what people think is a reasonable price for a reliable service which does exactly this.
Likely bug: I just signed up and clicked the activation link and it said that my account was already confirmed.
I'd say you accidentally clicked the link twice, or maybe your browser made two requests.
It might be nice to have some examples of what the service could be used for, why it is/will be better than setting up cron manually.
If I was looking to hire, this entire project would shout HIRE HIM!
Great job, keep it up.
But, yes, I'd pay for this.
I particularly hate the existing web cron services, like webbasedcron.com and others. They're poorly designed, poorly run, and poorly supported. Just looking at most of their sites you can tell they suck.
I'd pay at least $30 / month for an industrial grade web cron service (with 20 or 30 cron jobs, that can be run per minute, with variable failure thresholds), with a decent interface.
I've thought about building one, but I can't find the time to throw at another project. It'd be great if someone would do it.