Show HN: My new project - ask.io
ask.io
ask.io
Some people are weirdly upset/dismissive because similar things exist in the world. I don't care about that whatsoever. With this small gesture (and great domain as ericabiz pointed out) you'll likely end up doing more for others on a weekly basis than you were before. Why would anyone ever be annoyed by that?
Good luck with the project.
Wait, so your wife is sick and you think a lot of cards from random strangers will cheer her up? In my experience, that's rarely how wives (or for that matter: husbands) work.
I'm all for random acts of kindness... not too sure about soliciting them.
Sigh...sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't change my username to "tokenwoman", a la "tokenadult". :P
This should go without saying, but not all "wifes" (sp) work the same. I had surgery recently and I would have loved this. Plus, I think it's awesome that the OP managed to score ask.io--a great, short domain name--and is using it for charitable purposes. Cool!
Also, I think I'd have enough trust and faith in OP that either:
1) His wife is aware of this and is supportive of it and/or 2) He knows his wife well enough to know that she'll get a kick out of it.
>Sigh...sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't change my username to "tokenwoman", a la "tokenadult". :P
But are you suggesting that tokenwoman is synonymous with tokenadult, and by doing so suggesting men are children? If so, I consider this insulting rather than amusing. Sexist jokes are unwelcome regardless of the gender being targeted.
If I've misunderstood you, then so be it.
If that is correct, then tokenwoman would be the one woman in a group of men. It's a joke within a joke, though unfortunately one with echoes of truth, statistically speaking.
Cool your jets, man. It wasn't meant to be offensive.
Please do not tell me to 'cool my jets'; this isn't 4chan. Now that the parent has explained what she meant, it's clear that it had nothing to do with conflating Woman and Adult.
That said, if it had meant what I thought it meant then it would have been worth calling out, whether offense was intended or not.
Or, I'm sure an Atheist would receive a lot of "I'm praying for Jesus to make it better" cards (or any other way around really, this is just an example)
I'm an atheist. I've had believer friends ask if they could pray over me during a time when I was navigating difficulties. Do you know what I said? "I would be honored". Do you understand why? Because, while I don't share their belief system I recognize their request comes from only one place: love and caring. It would take a pedantic asshole to reject something coming from such a place. So, they did, and they felt better for it. And I did too. Good friends.
I am not necessarily critical of your comment. Just wanted to point out that not all atheists are militant fire breathing monsters. I do get upset when religion gets in the way of scientific truth and social justice (vaccines, gay rights, etc.). That said, in general terms, I am having trouble thinking of any believers in our group of family and friends whom I'd consider to be undesirable people. I would, without a doubt, be happy to receive a "I am praying for Jesus to make it better" card from any of them during trying times.
This is true for some religious people, but not for others. Some religious people use their religion to tell you that you are in the wrong, and are going to pay for it if you don't come over to their views. For such people, their good wishes are a thinly disguised religious attack. And it can be annoying being their target.
I wouldn't be offended if that happened to me.
"It would take a pedantic asshole to reject something coming from such a place"
Yes, that's the main problem, as there would be people sending offensive cards there's also "overly sensitive people" that would be beyond themselves because of something like that.
Agreed.
If there are people who would go out of their way to snail-mail an insult to an unwell and unfortunate target, then there is far less hope for the human race than I realized.
Alternatively, if you're suggesting that someone is so entrenched in their principles that when they need comfort or compassion, they won't appreciate a gesture of goodwill for what it is because they don't agree with the beliefs of the well-wisher, then, well, same thing.
Where's the assumption of good faith? Or at least hope for it?
Thanks for trying to make the world better, OP.
There's a big difference between that and knowing basically nothing about a person other than that they're in a hospital and having a birthday.
For religious/political/belief oriented cards, you can imagine filtering them, too. With that said, sometimes it's the thought that counts. Even if you don't believe in someone else's god, the fact that they wish you well is uplifting.
I also fixed the spelling.
And why wouldn't this particular favor cheer up a wife? It's not the number of cards she receives that will make her happy, but the thoughtfulness of a husband to do something for her that will put a smile on her face.
Needless to say, I came up short. I think I'm not the only one who'll want to know some of these details before bookmarking the site and returning on a weekly basis.
p.s. the current favor is for my wife
Some recruiter a 5 or 7 years ago or so went so far as to scan my paper resume, (with my address), did OCR, and posted it on the net.
My wife’s in a profession that needs registration with the state - they post the office address in the net - so no home offices.
Got a land line, and in the white pages - like everyone in my parent’s generation? Your address is on whitepages.com (and plenty of other places.)
The number of ways this info leaks to the net is astounding.
Surely city name is enough granularity. (mine doesn't even have that)
It's also why mine doesn't have my actual DOB.
Deleted comment
Get a PO Box.
They have done nice things as well, like http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/09/05/2148248/4chan-Gives-...
Definitely not trying to make this political, but please do more reading about "Mother" Teresa before quoting her as an inspiration: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor..., http://www.amazon.com/Missionary-Position-Mother-Teresa-Prac... and http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uom-mta022813... .
Here's some immediate feedback that might (or might not!) help:
* One per week seems too long and people wont ever come back. More than one at a time seems too much. How about making it like Groupon etc and have an 'ask of the day' and then 'side asks' for things you'll never front-page, but are interesting?
* I'd love to see the Groupon idea stretched. Add an "I did this" button (or an "I'm doing this" that posts a follow up email asking if you've done it 24 hours later)
* Needs a button to 'share this ask on Facebook/Twitter/...'. Same after someone has 'done this'.
* I'd post a card if it looked like people were posting cards.
* As naff as it sounds, "Needs more gamification"
While I understand the philosophy of the 'slow web', I can't see it creating successful websites that depend (at some level) on return customers.
The other option for traction would be search engine traffic, and that isn't (likely) to happen with ask.io. (A third traffic option is direct referrals, but they'll be specific to a week: hey everyone, send my wife a card: ask.io! .. and thus wont create return traffic)
The slow web is better for disseminating unchanging information - like a dictionary or encyclopedia - that's needed on-demand.
I'd be interested in OP's thoughts on his Slow Web philosophy and creating traction with ask.io.
The Slow Web and traction are not opposed, in my opinion. You CAN have traction without choosing to annoy the crap outta your users. It comes from understanding what your users are (or the target market you want to chase).
If you want to make a Slow Web service, understand then that your users aren't/shouldn'tbe the kind that are interested in logging in everyday to check on updates. Your marketing to your users would need to be a longer term relationship thing. It would of course be easy to annoy the shit out of your customers, but it's in my opinion that all that does is longer term harm.
I stopped using Facebook, LinkedIn for that reason. Once the novelty wears off, you stop using anyway.
No offense please, but these are all little things that would make me nervous before submitting some data.
And then there is a favor asked about sending cards to a woman that no one knows, and someone should wonder if it's an ex-boyfriend playing a prank or the real deal. It doesn't show any affiliation between ask.io itself (you) and the woman in question.... Checking out humbly doesn't help either, it is as empty of info as ask.io
Good luck to you and your wife, best recovery!
TZ
That's not to discredit this project though. Some things might work better on Reddit and some might work better on a dedicated website.
I think the most important and persistent feedback would be to offer more (even if just a few more) asks on the front page. While it makes sense to limit focus, by having one a week, I feel entirely less compelled to keep ask.io on the forefront of my mind.
If you do choose to stick with one, make a few macros or something like that to allow people to be reminded of the newest ask once a week. I have a lot of things to do on Mondays, so I could see this falling behind. Perhaps you develop a very simple iphone app that pushes a notification of the newest ask?
Other options would be an email list or an easy-to-use calendar reminder. Think ICS. You could also take advantage of the new push notifications for Safari.
They have a saying on reddit "your poor inbox"
1) The design is great! Simple, fast, easy to read. I understood the point immediately.
2) There's a use for this. I won't say "need", because you know there isn't a need. But, people will find it nice and will use it.
3) If you're doing this to get rich, then I misread you and you should quit now. But, if you're doing this to do something good, then I think you nailed it.
Now, for some naysaying: 1) As others have said, putting your wife's real name and address up was simply stupid. Take it down, now.
2) Moderation? How do you choose which ask to feature?
Advantage is this let's the community pick what is relevant, makes your life easier (less editorial), enables you to grow to more than 1 idea per week as there might be runner ups, likely to increase the quality of what people submit as there will be competition.
Now, I can understand that it's not great for Mike to have to filter through all these requests, which is why your solution offers the best hope: let other users do the filtering by upvoting/downvoting from the list. In fact, you could just create a pile and let the top request be somewhat bigger than the others.
If you play this out properly, it could be done much better than impossible.com
1) There's no context on your wife. Hospitalized recently? For what? Cancer? Stubbed toe? And birthday cards... Help how? If I were in the hospital for something serious, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care one whit about receiving cards from people who knew nothing about me.
2) You say below "the current favor is for my wife." Really? You made a site to solicit birthday cards for your wife and plastered a Mother Theresa quote on it to give it the veneer of a charity? This feels weird.
3) I'm all for using the power of social media to help people. If this is really your goal, then you need to work on your execution. Having the internet send a bunch of anonymous birthday cards to someone they don't know is cute, but it's a very low-level form of helping. Think of ways to leverage social media to really put into action the Mother Theresa quote you're using. What you're asking people to do is not "love." "Love" is not sending a card to someone you don't know. Love is something deeper.
Edit: that is from "What 4chan thinks about HN": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373
Take no offense. I'd just like to imagine that HN will remain constructive and helpful to our community.
I appreciate the concept of getting a feel for the market on an early (very early in this case) alpha, but I don't feel this is productive for HN. I mean, how simple are we going to allow ShowHN to get? A single static page with an H3 tag and the text 'good site coming soon'? I mean, that'd require some work -- almost none, but some -- so should we just say "The OP worked to create this, so I'll give feedback instead of pointing out the obvious and saying that the OP needs to put more effort into ShowHN submissions"?
Frankly, this feels like an AskHN masked under the guise of a ShowHN. I felt almost duped by the site, as if I were looking at the earliest skeletal structure of a site and being asked to rate it as if it had had significant development time applied to it. Maybe I don't understand HN well enough yet, or maybe I'm just cranky from working 27hrs straight, but that's my honest feedback.
I am sorry, but that is just not good enough.
I tried to bid for 'bt.io' due to my name sharing the initialism; that thing wound up going for quite a bit. You're probably sitting on a goldmine here, OP.
Reminder: gandi.net has 29€/year .io registration and they provide top notch service.
You get to be a superhero to a few people, and that's good for everyone.
When I first landed, I kind of thought you personally were asking for this thing. It took a moment to process the context and realize that this wasn't the case.
This sounds like a nice way of saying you'll completely forget about this website in several hours and will never put anything on it ever.
Or at least I'm pretty sure that's what it might mean :)
How is that supposed to be talked out "ask eye ooh", "ask input output", "ask eye yo"?
(...don't forget the dot!)
The only thing I like about this project is clean design.
Well played!