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Comment by markessien | Hacker News Reader

Good idea, nice implementation, wrong medium. There is no reason this should be a web application - in a perfect world, I want something like this directly integrated into my database tool, and not have me open my browser and all that.

At the same time, considering that the data work may be large, having this on a server is not too bad of an idea.

What I suggest to you is this - spend a day to make a version of this wrapped in a web browser in a .exe file. Put a price on the .exe, and sell it directly to businesses. It's an easy sell, and it's way more convenient to have a "local" application for a tool like this, than a website.

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Yes please. I work for a Canadian health care provider and I legally cannot upload the data for which I would find your tool useful.

I think this hits on a big stumbling block for the product. There are a huge number of companies that don't allow the data to be removed from their workstations or servers.

If the product could be implemented as an extension for Excel, similar to Xobni in Outlook, then there is much more potential. There is really no reason for this to be an online app.

If you can put this in an air application wrapper that would be amazing.

I think markessien has a great point. A lot of enterprises don't want their office worker in browsers (however lame that sounds) and may not be comfortable sending you their data.

Having a web app style wrapped in a local framework would allow you to sell to these companies what looks to be a really great product.

That said please don't loose the web version for those of us that realize it's the 21st century already.

I disagree. Somewhat.

Sure this should be part of whatever spreadsheet you are using. I totally agree with that. But it's not. That's the reason someone came up with an external solution.

But why shouldn't it be a web based app? If it works just as well? If you have privacy/legality issues then OK, you need a local app. A local app may also be just as good for many other things. But why is this less suitable to the web then word processing or spreadsheets?

From there on it's just a marketing/distribution issue.

Any tips on how to make such an exe file?

Yes, it takes about 10 minutes using C#. Drag a web browser control to the .exe, call browserControl.navigate(url), and there, you have a native application. Use NSIS for the installer, add some license key routine, and sell your B2B copies for $299 a seat.

Plus you need to do all the stuff to set up a local server, no?

Adobe Air does the same thing x-plaform. The is also a mozilla project, I forget the name of, which is like Air but uglier.

Prism

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