richesh

Maybe they can use http://alpha.crowdmind.com to facilitate the application review process. Going to release private group collaboration functionality soon, this could help when comparing the applications.

working full-time on http://www.CrowdMind.com

IMO, you need to do 2 things to be successful with this app:

1. Integrate with major IM services, AIM, Jabber etc, and have your own "Say Hi service" in there for LBS chat.

2. Put something around the app, as in make it do more than just chat. Explore making it a dating app, so that you can chat/"quick date"/"lunch date" people around you that are signed up with your service. Companies like match.com etc have just stopped innovating in this space and you may be able to get traction.

I haven't done the research to see who else is doing this but it seems like for your app these two things look like an obvious steps.

Thanks! will do.

Clickable link: http://agilezen.com/

can't get to it

We are different from hunch because we are more of a perspective gathering tool, rather than giving you an answer at the end.

This system is meant to help with gathering advice and wisdom from your network and the crowd. It then lets you rate how important those things are to you so that you can make a decision.

Clickable Links:

http://alpha.crowdmind.com

http://alpha.crowdmind.com/decision/55_What_Is_The_Best_Fitn...

http://alpha.crowdmind.com/decision/65_What_Is_The_Best_Ipho...

http://alpha.crowdmind.com/decision/70_When_Should_You_Seek_...

http://alpha.crowdmind.com/decision/69_What_Is_The_Best_Webs...

Good job, overall I like it. I understand your audience and the need to do this in a simple format. Mint & Wesabe are US focused and don't cater to your audience. One thought is to make this available to other audiences - e.g. Chinese, African, etc. Because similar needs exist in those places and all you would have to change is language on your site.

My review is going to sound critical, but assume things I didn't mention are good

My first reaction (in order):

1. How is this better than Mint or Wesabe

2. Why would I start inputting things manually when others can crawl it for me.

3. "Oh this is for an Indian audience" - make this clear on the site

UI:

- Bouncy effects are distracting

- Use row background colors to differentiate between them

- Red cross is too prominent, grabs attention before anything else

- Graph is also grabbing attention which it is meant to but use different palette. You can look at Google Analytics, Woopra, Chartbeat, etc. to get an idea

- "Reason" label makes it seem like I can enter a long explanation but the text field makes it seem like I can enter a short description. Either change the label to something like "Expense Name" or change the text box.

- The sliding background on menu items (top and graph) feels jittery and lags when I move my mouse around too fast. This can be annoying to people with vision issues. Make it simple hover.

- Recent Entries should be horizontal width right under summary (same width as summary), because its the second most important thing I care about on the page. Inputting expense is a secondary task on a regular visit because when I have something input I'm going to seek out that form and record my expense.

- Red flags went up when I saw Sex, Phone, and DoB on the sign-up form. Never going to give that up to a new site. What are you planning on using this info for?

- Chipper on GTalk is another questionable practice. How do we know it's secure? It's fine as long as there won't be any long term personal data exchange.

Other thoughts: - SMS alerts or updates

- Create a "family" or "group" to track and compete (game like) with others

- If you get enough traction, give people tips on expense categories (e.g. Petrol at the gas station near your work is cheaper than the one you use near your home)

Good Luck. Good job, glad to see people looking to help other markets!

Unpaid intern at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and at the same time worked Drive-Thru at a McDonald's (High School)

Application Developer at Cingular Wireless (College)

Click-able link to the picture: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2488/3674881101_b946ecf39f_o....

Good job guys. This is very helpful to students and to teachers if they are willing to adopt it. Keep it up.

I work with one of the biggest "supplemental education" companies in US on a regular basis to design / develop their software solutions.

One thing I have learned is that teachers and students don't have control over what system the district/university wants them to use. The sale has do be done at the higher level. In some organizations the teacher's employment contract forbids them from introducing new tools that is not "supported" by the organization.

This is how companies like Blackboard, etc. have made it big because they sold their system to the decision-making groups and circumvented teachers and students.

You need to think about this as you market and sell your product, find a school district or university willing to give your service a shot.

Good Luck!

working on a startup is not a sprint, its a marathon and you need good health to run it. Maintaining health is vital to your thought process and your ability to make better decision.

As an entrepreneur, I workout 5 days a week (sometimes more), and it only takes away 1.5 hours of my time. And during which I listen to podcasts, or think about feature designs, etc. so its not total 1.5 hour lost.

Have you exhausted ALL your credit options?

- Angel investors?

- Discounted customers?

- Federal / State loan for small businesses (SBIR)?

- Loan from a Credit Union (lower rates)?

- Even 0% 12 month no interest Credit Cards (make sure you get a job to pay it off after 6 months)

- Micro-lending sites?

- Part-time job? Contracting / Consulting?

I believe the point of the question was to see if I had heard of him, not necessarily if I agree or read his blog.

The question asked said "#startups" so I assumed it was referring to hiring founders or founding employees (your first employees). Founding employees should have similar qualities as the founders. They could very well have started their own company if they didn't come join your startup.

Depending on the type of developer you are looking for, its tough to "filter" them based on their response to that question. YC asks their founders what "hacks" have they done in the past. It's a good question to ask, to see what the person's thought process is.

The most interesting ones I've been asked recently was:

1. Do you know who Joel Spolsky is? What is his most recent venture?

2. What is your favorite software engineering blog, one that we might not have heard of? (so ignore the common ones)

3. What are two technologies you play with at home but has nothing to do with at work? What problem have you solved with it?

4. Reverse a link list. Make any necessary assumptions.

I agree with you that a market for this may not exist, or hard to find.

But, as a fellow entrepreneur I can see that they found a problem (maybe personal) and tried to solve it. I know women that are trying to get pregnant (yes this is an problem) and want to know the best time for it. Would they use a service like this? I actually asked a few in the last few hours, here is what I got back: "I wouldn't want to share it on a site, maybe if it was just on my computer"

"It would need to provide more functionality then to just track my cycle - seems like a feature to some other sites"

I would suggest doing a design contest on 99designs.com, or geniusrocket.com (expensive but they do creative videos etc. too) - and see what newer designs you get.

1. The pink needs to go, its not a good association (someone else said this)

2. Need a 30 second video tutorial

3. Show a sample calendar (that no one can change)

Check out this UI dos/don't list that might help: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/23/10-ui-design-patt...

What if you put the scripts on Amazon EC2 (S3 or CloudFront), this will alleviate your server load and put it on Amazon's backbone.

My startup uses Amazon EC2 for hosting etc, and so far I've been very happy. We are not big either, actually we are a two-man team and definitely smaller than even you guys :) But Amazon seems affordable.

Just a thought, but no worries I think the service is still tremendous. Keep up the great job!

Great job and a great product! I do have one concern which is that the site is very slow and the scripts on our pages take considerable milliseconds to get. on an average twice as much as Google Analytics. Any reason for this? Also, if we make it so that the scripts load after the page has loaded, will this cause any issues?

I guess I should post this on support

The installation points out that you need Apache and MySQL server. I wouldn't want to run this on my production server, so if I was to use Mint I would prefer another server.

I created this page for you, it might help to collect and rate all your options and reasons here:

http://alpha.crowdmind.com/decision/62_What_Is_The_Best_Real...

I paid $60 for Clicky for 12 months ($5/month). This is the best service out there, I switched from Google Analytics to Clicky and I've been so happy and its 60 bucks well spent!

My first order of business is to come up with a pretty good draft of my data model. I use OmniGraffle, but you can use any data modeling tool. Once I have a solid understanding of my data model, I generate a scaffolding.

Once I can see the data, interact with it, and tweak it to my heart's content. Then I turn to tools like Balsamiq, or just a large pad and pen to generate the views.

Does anyone feel that they wouldn't sign-up to this site because of the bad design? (Anyone share antiismist) view below?

Thanks for the review. We are definitely looking to changing the consideration and looking for to be more aligned with terms being used on the site (Options and Attributes), and will try to make it more prominent.

We will look into re-working the UI for Attribute rating, I do agree that its extra clicks for something simple.

The reason for the "0" is to give something 0 stars, because in the system 0 has a negative value vs. not entering anything. Not entering a rating means you may not know about it to rate it. a "0" star means its bad. But, I see your point about how that can be confusing.