swatermasysk

Hi,

I am one of the founders of KickoffLabs.

Liking on Facebook is just one of the ways to enter. However, after re-reading the content I can see how that is not very clear.

You can also enter with just an email and you are free to share the link in more traditional methods.

I get where you are coming from on liking. I rarely do this myself, but it is an important option for many of our customers and one of the goals of the contest was to help showcase our product.

Thanks for the feedback. -Scott

KickoffLabs (http://www.kickofflabs.com) is all about generating leads, so we use it for quite a few tasks related to our business.

One thing as a business we are trying to do more of this year is put ourselves in our customers position. This was a big reason I started BootStrapped Weekly (http://bootstrappedweekly.com). I wanted to take a step back and start fresh with no existing leads, no inbound links, and no existing market.

It has certainly opened my eyes to new ways we can help our customers be more successful.

Thanks! I heard "your best email address" on a podcast (FatBurningMan). I thought it was a great suggestion. However, the term didn't sit well with my proof reader (wife). I think you are correct that it is probably a phrase that should only be used in the proper context/market.

Background music of some kind is on the short list. We wanted to get it out there and see what it does for conversions as is (we are testing it against an image on our home page. we will probably blog those results as well).

Another big fan of DNSimple here. Been with them for over a month and the services and support have been great.

Even more impressive is we have directed a couple very non-technical customers to them and they all have been able to get up and running in no time.

Much less relevant today with Ruby 1.9.x, but still very interesting.

I recommend avoiding packages like Janus when you are just getting started.

The key to vim success is really understanding the basics. Packages like Janus obscure some of this and hurt truly learning the fundamentals.

Similarly, I would limit plugins entirely. Maybe limit yourself to 1 or 2 new plugins per week until you really get understand whats going on.

I would love the option to add N index (at cost).

My guess is they will add options for additional indexes in the future...everyone needs start somewhere. Even at Amazon's size and scale.

I am dumber for having watched this....still it was funny/corny.

Agree big time. Not a single link to the original authors is a travesty, shame, and a mockery...it's a traveshamockery.

To start with, it is not just a wordpress theme.

If all you want is a theme for Wordpress, this is a great one: http://maxfoundry.com/themes/liftoff/

KickoffLabs is a complete platform for launching a viral landing page and requires no hosting/setup for end users.

The API we release today is an attempt to add more flexibility and options for our customers.

Thanks, Scott

Warning...shameless self promotion...

Would love to hear your thoughts on my own start-up, Kickofflabs: http://www.kickofflabs.com

No gimmicks, tricks, etc. Just a solid product with fanatical support.

Vimconf is currently running on www.kickofflabs.com (I am a co-founder). The link sharing is a recent feature addition.

I love the simplicity of Rbenv. I also love the "it's never good enough" mentality. I have not had any issues with RVM, but that doesn't mean people like Sam shouldn't try to build something better.

Agreed there is a huge opportunity in solving the "eye ball" problem. Unfortunately the days of 1 to 5 cent clicks on Adwords is a thing of the past.

I still think there is more we can do to help the organic stuff, but getting started today still requires rolling up your sleeves and doing real work.

Thanks. If you have suggestions, please drop us a note at support@kickofflabs.com.

> Integrate with Mailchimp?

We are certainly going to make it easy to export and import your data.

One of the things we have tried to do is minimize the need to use third party services. You are certainly welcome to use something like Mailchimp (we do today), but hopefully we can provide simple alternatives to get you going at the beginning.

If you know someone looking to get up to speed on Git, I highly recommend Git Immersion: http://gitimmersion.com/

Verifying scripts work properly under SSL, verifying the experience between other 3rd party services (such as payments), etc.

Again, this could all be done on a dedicated test/staging server, but the cost of doing it locally is virtually free, so why not?

If this was only about code, I would agree with you.

However, there is more more to this then verifying it renders. For that, I still need to be able to see it in a browser right in front of me.

For me, the two minute setup time for this is well worth.

Thanks for the suggestion/comment.

1 million users and zero revenue. Why is this good?

Time. Eventually, someone will bring something to market which will reset all of the rules. Like those who came before Facebook, they will ignore it because they are "Facebook".

Probably just personal preference, but for me, I like to have the .rvmrc file in source control so that I don't have to think about setting it up.

The first time I navigate to the directory the gemset is created.

Still a good tip. Thanks.

You can use gemsets and bundler together.

Gemsets simply allow you to have an isolated environment. If you want to install the gems from multiple projects in the same gemset the choice is yours.

Bundler just makes installing each project's dependencies easier.

The pattern I started to use recently was to check in include an .rvm file with the same gemset name as the project.

This way, I simply clone the project, install bundler, and then issue bundle install and my project is ready to go.

Overall it does look nice and kind of feels like a mix of Tumblr and Posterous.

Not sure if you asking for advice, so feel free to ignore.

IMO, it feels like you are trying to hard to compete on features. For me, a better approach (ie, one that would pull me away from the other services) would be to focus on usability and simplicity.

Examples:

Uploads - Why not just one screen? (note: Upload Text definitely tripped me up since my first though was "I have to upload a file")

Tags/Future post dates - not features folks really need (IMO of course :)

After Posting - I would expect to see my content right away. Instead I have to click around to find it

Viewing my Sprred - Not sure why there is a home and blog tab. Feels like there should be a single tab

Name - I will never be able to say check me out on Sprred out loud without spelling it.

Apologies if this this overly negative. It is generally easier to pick out things you don't like.

I have been coding in .NET since it was introduced. While these are nice improvements for the .NET platform overall, I cringe at how much more code you have to write to do simple things compared to langues like Ruby and Python.

Very true. I keep thinking I need to stay off it for a couple of days, but it is a very easy way to learn tons of new things with very little effort.

My guess is that in the coming months we will see more third party tools (proxlet) which help filter out the crap.

Then twitter will probably release their own. :)

If they can keep the site up with the extra traffic, it will be a great day to sit back and learn something new.

It would be nearly impossible for IE9 to not be simpler than IE8, so I am not giving them too much credit until I actually see something shipped that the masses adopt.

Interesting write on the simplicity of IE8 vs. Safari: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1638772

I have been using http://www.bing.com/travel/ (was Farecast before MS acquired it) for a while now and it has easily saved me a couple thousand dollars on airline tickets. Highly recommend it although yapta does look interesting.