Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

I upvoted this because I upvote every genuine Show HN, but I think you need to give more compelling reasons to use the product over what I (and I'm sure others) are already using.

In what ways is this more useful than the Google Drawings already in Google Drive? Google drawings lets you:

* Edit drawings online in real time with anyone you choose, and invite others to view your edits in real time.

* Chat with others who are editing your drawing, from within the drawings editor.

* Publish drawings online to the world as images, or download them in standard formats.

* Insert text, shapes, arrows, scribbles, and images from your hard drive or from the Web.

* Lay out drawings precisely with alignment guides, snap to grid, and auto distribution.

* Insert drawings into other Google documents, spreadsheets, or presentations using the web clipboard, then tweak them inline.

Why would I use Jotleaf instead?

Thanks for your feedback! There are three categories of usage for an app like this. The first is document creation, where you're trying to produce some content to use somewhere else. Google Drawings is better at this one than Jotleaf. And it shows in their design, which looks and feels like an Office app. The second is social. You mentioned chat. This has been the biggest driver of Jotleaf usage so far, and I think we're better at it. People make a Jotleaf for a group of friends, and follow each other around in realtime, creating different spaces, and talking to each other freely. It's like a spatial chatroom, or a playground. Finally, there's creating destination pages, and we're better at that too. You can create a beautiful Jotleaf and send people a link to it. With the Drawings interface, I don't see that happening. We've tried hard to make your work look good.

I'm curious: you've mentioned a lot of features of Google Drawings. What do you actually use it for?

Hacker News would be a much better place if everyone would hang around on New for a couple minutes just to upvote every genuine Show HN. I may not have a use for it, but someone might, and most hackers showing their stuff on here get no eyeballs on weekdays.

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