Ask HN: Review my webapp. (opens in new tab)

Two main positives:

* The interface is incredibly slick

* The API looks solid

My big question is, what sets this apart?

Why do you ask my country? Why do you want to confirm my email? Just trust me... Don't make me go that extra step, it just puts up another wall for me to climb before I get to try your app.

One suggestion: bang out free iPhone app as soon as possible and get going on a gmail widget, and you will win doves of users that do not want to pay for RTM premium features (myself included)

First of all, looks good.

I would suggest a few things: Let me make a list w/o signing up. (check out how stack overflow does anonymous stuff..it's good.) Don't tell me "there's no post-signup xxx" and then make me confirm my e-mail. (for that sake, don't make me confirm my e-mail, use oid or something, what's my e-mail really worth to you anyway?) "You've been activated (hopefully)" -- Unsure your software works? Don't make me login after I activated. This is three times I have to put my password in before I can use it. What is the exclimation icon next to an item? Advertising your competitors? are you sure? How are items sorted? They're not draggable, but they don't seem to be in a instantly recognizable order either. Could I get a hover state on the bin so I can tell that I'm going to commit to an action? Could I undo the bin?

Re: twitter. Here's the way I did it. 3 step process. first, you must follow me. second, input your twitter name on my site. Third, I send you a dm, you input the code to confirm, that's it, now you're tied.

That's all I have at a quick glance. Looks good, with a good api, and a simple purpose.

There was a time when "change the world" used to mean something. Go out and feed a few homeless,poor ppl, but please dont make the 1 millionth todo list app and claim to "change the world".

Nice design though.

I'm not in your target market, so this is just a 5 second impression. Again, good design. One glaring gripe, the tagline: "... may be free..."

I don't understand why you put yourself on the defensive for your own product. It does not work in your favor at all.

Unless you're praying for a $$$ acquisition it doesn't NEED to be extremely compelling vs. the other sites out there. If you just want some good user base, and you want to make a few bucks with ads or premium features, having a great UI (which you have) and adding new features is enough.

When I wrote 10MinuteMail.com, it was just to learn Seam. If I'd bothered Googling around, I would have found a dozen existing sites that did the same thing, and I wouldn't have released it. However, the market size for the problem is apparently larger than the existing dozen sites, and I do some pretty solid traffic/ad revenue on there. It's not a million dollar sale kind of thing, but if I wanted to I could be leasing a very nice german sports car on the ad revenue. It really depends on your metrics for success.

The to-do list potential user base is enormous, and having an easy to use, pretty looking site, that has good integrations with other systems (e-mail, rss, ical events, gcal, etc...) could do very well, even amongst many existing competitors.

I agree with the comments that you should making signing up as easy as possible. Especially with a free service, the barrier to entry needs to be as low as possible.

The design is awesome, most definitely. My only comment that hasn't been covered is the tour page - I would much rather have a short video than scroll up and down to match numbers with their descriptions. Great work.

Looks incredibly slick. I'd suggest making the signup process more instant (skip account creation altogether, or do it later).

Hey I noticed you can get RSS feeds. This is a huge security risk : If anyone knows my email then can just find out the list I made :(

Not cool. Allow it to be disabled.

I don't want to have to sign up either, although I did to check out the service. What would make this more useful for me is a simple URL that I can use to access my list anytime, ie:

http://www.wipeelist.com/list/MYUSERNAME

All you need from people is that username. Just make the lists public and writable by default and ask users for a password/email if they want to make their lists private.

Also, I didn't see the "Add an Item" right away. Perhaps I am blind. I'd suggest you add an onclick javascript event in the GIANT WHITESPACE that takes up most of the screen when you login. I clicked on the blank space expecting something to happen. It would have been nice if something did happen.

Third, it would be nice to be able to rearrange items by dragging them around. There are jquery plugins for that (Sortables) and is it not hard to implement them.

I don't get this obsession with to do lists that is flooding the web lately. How many people really use them in the end?

I refer to my comment on the last todo list app that was presented here (err... all of 3 days ago?):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=379293

Seriously, the drag'n'drop thing is neat but is that the only thing you could come up with to differentiate your app from the other billions of web-based todo apps? Hell, you could have differentiated yourself just by coming up with a business model but failed on that too. If you developed the site purely to scratch your own itch, then congratulations it's really quite stunning but don't pretend that it's more than just a personal project.

Love the design. Did you do it yourself?

1. OpenID? 2. How do I try without an account?

It's good to put a tag line under the logo. The first thing I always will look at is the tag line when I stumble upon a new web application.

And, remove the small gap at the top of the page. Then, your UI will be near to be perfect.

The most beautiful useless webapp ever. seems like it does the same thing as tadalist

Add the ability to drag and drop items on the list. Also, the app runs a bit slow.

I have been looking for an application like this for a while. However, as other people have stated, getting an iPhone app out there right now is crucial. Even if you charged a dollar or two for the app, I know I would snatch it up right away. Remember the milk premium is just too much for me to get the app.

If you are looking for a partner in developing these widgets , please email me at rick AT rickharrison DOT me - I'd love to help you with these.

As has been said before: it’s fine if it’s a personal project and your only intention was to test your technical expertise or give your ego a shot it’s arm; if you want to pick a couple bucks by slapping AdSense or something, it’s still fine. However, you are in for a big disappointment if you are expecting a dime more than that. Nice app, but not just as nice business value.

Please, I don't want to have to sign up!

I just took a look at the opening page, and it took me a few seconds to figure out what it was. The block of text in the center should have some sort of description of what the service is.

There needs to be a tl;dr analog for "Takes too long to figure out what website did; didn't use." I propose

tl;du

Minor point: Consider the international audience and drop the "anyways"; it's slack.

How to delete an account?

Todo lists are becoming the web application version of Hello World.

First thanks for the comments. I'm going to implement all of these changes shortly.

I've turned off e-mail verification as many people have asked. I've also turned off Countries (seems a bit pointless and shouldn't have had it in the first place).

A "sort by" UI element is in the works. It's almost ready but I need do add remembering the preference in the app (or you'll have to change it every time you refresh the page).

Twitter is not fully completed, hence why it wasn't talked about. I'm creating a dedicated page for Twitter so no one gets confused with using it :)

A hover state for the bin should be done today as well.

FINALLY, iPhone and Gmail apps are in the works.

The design is done by me. If you're interested just email me (sahil at slavingia dot com). I do not mean to spam my services, but many people have asked. :)