Show HN: Highbrow – Bite-sized email courses delivered to your inbox daily

One of the things of being on an european time zone is that when an american assumes that he's going to write you in the morning, it actually does it just after lunch :)

Joke aside, it would be awesome for this to have two things: 1) The ability to set a delivery hour 2) The ability to not receive emails on weekends

Apart from that, it's an interesting way to apply spaced repetition / exposure to knowledge.

I had same thought :)

thanks! we'll definitely try it.

I was wondering why there was even a loading image in the first place. Not like this is a web app. It's a simple content site so I just expect the next page to load.

If anything the spinner makes it seem like the page loads even slower.

Looking at the source the site uses WordPress. Couldn't you just slap in a plugin like WP Super Cache and have everything cached up and loaded up instantly?

It's a great idea, thanks!

I also second this. A good approach may be to show 3-5 subjects (e.g. Philosophy, Startups, Architecture) and highlight one of the courses that would be the best beginners course. So if I'm interested in philosophy it's very easy to just see immediately where I could/should begin and click just one button. Going in to feature creep here but; as I just signed up I haven't completed a course yet, obviously, so I don't know what happens then, but it would be great (for retention etc.) to be recommended a natural next course to take as well. Dumb it down for the user even more. Actually what I would do is to have a button in the last email of a course that would read "Continue with GREATEST PHILOSOPHERS IN HISTORY". So just one click and I would be in the loop again.

I definitely got in to a "oh this is nice.. and this too.. and these two would be cool..". At the same having the full catalogue of courses available is good of course, but don't overwhelm the first time user.

I would test having the "popular courses" feature, or something like proposed above, just under your headline actually. So it's super easy to see what the site is really about without even having to scroll. That would show off the kind of content you have and even though your name is Highbrow, it might not be clear if you're teaching out nail painting techniques or philosophy when I just read the headline and the feature list you have.

Great idea anyway and nice execution. :)

I agree, and I think it's disappointing because it had potential.

e.g Have a course on Cathedrals, e-mail me a picture of a cathedral everyday/week, and offer the same uniform info for each one... like Country, Style, Influences, Year, and a general short description.

versus

Have a courses on "famous paintings" and e-mail me with paintings I obviously already know about (hence "famous").

I think having the articles come to your inbox on a regular basis is a more interesting, novel approach than me having to scan them myself. Feels more personal.

We want you to form a good daily habit and not tire yourself out at the same time. Thus, you can subscribe to only one course at a time and take all the courses one by one.

Using gmail I guess you could fix that with the + thing. Might work with other services also, but I only use gmail.

This. I'd love to subscribe to more than one lesson at a time.

Unfortunately, you can't. Highbrow is a one-course at a time deal. We want you to form a good daily habit and not tire yourself out at the same time. Thus, you can subscribe to only one course at a time and take all the courses one by one.