Ask HN: Review my side project - Reel Roulette (opens in new tab)

If I press Like this Reel, will it actually like the vimeo video? I ask this, because then it would be syndicated on my action stream both at vimeo and elsewhere (fb, friendfeed etc)

If that's not currently possible, I suggest looking into it. As user, I would like the action of Liking this reel be reflected on the source file.

If you do that, it's easy to see vimeo being interested in your product/feature/mashup or at least you can attract active vimeo users, whom discovering and liking is a large part of their activity.

You should track at what times the people click next.

Your like button is too far away from the next button, and neither has keyboard shortcuts.

Sorry for being disconnected, but is there a 2 line explanation of what I'm watching? They're visually entertaining, but I don't get much beyond that.

I've just released a small side project website that came from an idea I had with a buddy during our plan ride to SXSW Interactive.

It's supposed to be a gimmicky and easy way to find motion designers. Basically, you can upload "reels" and people can view random ones and vote on ones they like. It's kind of like Chat Roulette, except with no penises (so far).

You can read more about the making of the site here:

http://almosteffortless.com/2010/03/26/reel-roulette/

The thing that makes me happy about this site is that it was built in about 30 hours of work between 3 people. I know it's nothing too special and has plenty of room for improvement, but people seem to be enjoying it so far.

I'd love to hear any ideas you may have about improving the site, and I'm pondering potential ways to make money from the thing without spoiling it. It's been fun as-is, but it would be nice if we could justify spending more time on it than we already have by way of making some cash.

Any feedback is more than welcome. Thanks!

I love the website. The design looks great (don't change it!) and I like the simple, intuitive interface.

I spent about 10 minutes flipping through reels, and linked a friend. Now he's going through reels. We probably won't get much work done for the rest of the afternoon :D

This is a really good idea. It just so happens that I'm in the market for a motion designer or animator for a TV commercial I want to run.

I didn't know exactly where to search for any talented designers, and eLance, along with some of the job boards, really don't give you much material to review. But I like this setup at first glance, and the quality so far seems to be pretty good.

I might actually find who I'm looking for through this service.

I noticed you're asking your users to enter a vimeo URL by hand. I know that during signup it's impractical to bounce the user over to vimeo to authenticate, but once the user is signed up do you give them the option of picking the video from their albums instead of entering a URL?

Wow, how did you get those designers on board? There's some real good stuff on there. I hope this takes off. Good luck.

Pretty good idea. Do you offer stats for people with reels coming through your app?

it seems the new tagline dejour for side projects is: chat roulette for "x" with no pensises.

These were a lot of fun to watch. I have no stake in this scene but enjoyed clicking through and seeing what folks came up with. I get a similar feeling watching http://www.demoscene.tv/

Suggestion: temporarily disable the "next reel" button for a duration of time proportional to the frequency of my clicks thereupon. Make me watch the reels instead of trying to satisfy my urge to see "what's next?"

I don't know about the whole "Roulette" theme to it, but the content is gold, that's what makes this site... Good stuff!

i love the colors and clean minimalism. are you planning on feeding the likes to something like directededge to make it smarter?

along that vein, why are you using likes instead of ratings?