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thomatas

59 karma · joined July 24, 2008

Co-Founder of txtful. A platform for developers to enable mobile access to important features of websites from messaging applications like email, IM, etc.

http://txtful.com/

submissionscomments
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my site - thefabulicious.com
I don't think I'm the target audience, but it looks nice and clean to me. Lots of big pictures all on one page is good for browsing quickly. Maybe give me an option of how many items to display on a page?
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my site - thefabulicious.com
Maybe you could use diamonds instead of stars since the audience is obviously women ;-)
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
Will do. Sorry about that.
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
http://www.instantrimshot.com/
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
Your commission check is in the mail :D
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
You should have gotten a notification either way. Drop us an email at help@txtful.com if you don't get it soon.
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
Thanks for giving us a head's up about the FAQ. I've fixed it, so we don't confuse anyone else. You've done a good deed! Let us know if you find anything else.
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
Hey Jasber, we do have SMS support and Email, IM, etc. Just go to your account page and add a Mobile Phone identity.
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
Absolutely. We're always going to start-up and tech events around the city. I'll be at http://likemind.us/ on Friday.
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
I like the way you think! Email becomes another way to use your shortcuts though in this case. And we need a way to communicate service or account issues that aren't a priority per se without bugging you on your phone.
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
Thanks
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
Definitely would love to implement searching for shortcuts from messages. It's a great idea, we'll put it in the queue. Thanks a lot.

P.S. Yup, we're encrypted.

thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
Good idea. We like text a lot because it is so unobtrusive it can be used in a lot more places than voice. But obviously the way we've structured it, it's not that difficult to integrate and is definitely on the roadmap.
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
We'll beef it up!
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
Good suggestion, we were just trying to follow others suggestions of making the sign-up form as short as possible.
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
Great point. If you send a message with just the letter h you get a list of your shortcuts. If you send h "shortcut name" you get detailed help.
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
In terms of text messaging it's US only (right now), but if you're willing to use it from IM, email, or the mobile web site then you could definitely create shortcuts for sites anywhere in the world.
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
That's true Wesley, but not all shortcuts require personal info. And I want you to know that we encrypt all the info you give us with AES-128, and you're free to use whichever shortcuts you're comfortable with. It's not all or nothing.
thomatas··on Ask HN: Review my startup txtful - get stuff done on the web by sending a text
Sorry this is just the excited wife of one of the founders. We're looking for real feedback and criticism here. Please feel free to rip it up.
thomatas··on Ask HN: Where do you find good testers?
You could setup a project on Amazon Mechanical Turk or use some service that offers a management layer on top of it like UserTesting.com.
thomatas··on Ask HN: What programming language should I teach my little brother?
Javascript. It gives him a chance to create GUIs pretty quickly by saving any page he sees on the internet and tweaking it. And he can create things that are useful to him pretty quickly if you show him Greasemonkey.
thomatas··on Ask YC: Where's the escape hatch? I'd like to leave the US, but to where?
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
thomatas··on V.C. Advice to Entrepreneurs: Its Not All About the iPhone
And being dependent on one thing just generally isn't a good idea. Also there is a huge number of users out there who don't want or need flashy apps. They just want to quickly get stuff done from their phones, and would be just fine with simple text apps.
thomatas··on Silverback — usability testing app for mac - released
Great example of taking advantage of the commoditization of technology. I once worked at a start-up that spent tens of thousands of dollars building a lab to do this. Being creative with what has become standard tech to create a solution that costs orders of magnitude less than what was previously available is the way to build a company. Nice job!
thomatas··on Beyond REST? Building Data Services with XMPP PubSub
Or more generically "beyond polling." Polling is a great and simple solution for a range of problems (and why it's often one of the first tools programmers reach for), but as they point out PubSub often scales much better.