Not to sound like an asshole, but how is this different from inputting the url into the address bar?
On your blog you try and compare Zendo to Quicksilver. The difference is, Quicksilver essentially introduced an address bar to your computer. You're reintroducing the address bar for the internet. And if it's a tool I'm already using, I'll just have it bookmarked or stored in my history so that, say in FF3, I can type in 'Hack...' and 'Hacker News: news.ycombinator.com' will come up.
As far as design, stick a tag line in there explaining what Zendo does.
Perhaps there's a greater purpose that I'm not seeing, and if so, let me know.
"... Not to sound like an 'asshole', but how is this different from inputting the url into the address bar? ..."
You do, but your summation is accurate and suggestions are good. Yubnub ~ http://yubnub.org allowing users to customise shortcuts to what ever you want. Another idea would be to seed sites that you already visit but what about other sites that you might like? Delicious sort of solves this problem but never really suggests anything.
Maybe working out what users like (keywords) extracting sites from delicious tags might do something useful?
Thanks for the input guys. I can see from your comments that I should've been much more clear on describing the purpose of the feature, but I guess I was just so happy to have created something that at least works (me not being a programmer at all).
My long-term aim for Zendo is to intergrate a lot of features and I'll take Google Docs as an example; from Zendo you should be able to:
- Open up a clear new document.
- Search your existing documents, and open them.
- Find a document, and export it to PDF or Scribd.
- Amend a document with another line
-....etc
Basically all of the things Quicksilver can do on a Mac, plus some of the things that a right-click on a file can do in Windows.
I personally see that I would have a need for these things as more and more of my stuff moves over to the cloud, but I'm really curious of what you guys think?
I started to write "what the hell" in the field because I had no idea what the site was for. The message I got was, "Sorry mate, we don't carry that kind of merchandise here." Which added another "What the hell?" to my internal figuring-this-website-out stack. That was too many for a site which consists primarily of a single text field, so I gave up.
The splash page is impenetrable. That kind of minimalism worked for Google because you can type in anything and get results. With your page, it took me minutes to figure out what it did and anytime I typed more than one letter, I got a confusing error about merchandise. I thought it was shopping search that couldn't find any product.
First impressions aside, I wouldn't use Zendo myself because my Firefox "Smart Bar" has better website launcher features:
- Doesn't need to be customized: remembers what pages I visit automatically
- When I type in something it doesn't recognize, it still takes me there
- Takes me to the subpage I want, not the top level splash page.
"The splash page is impenetrable. That kind of minimalism worked for Google because you can type in anything and get results."
That's true. I guess I neglected since I've thinking about this a lot, and all my friend that I have spoken to already know what it's supposed to do so they haven't really been able to criticise me properly.
My name is Jonas. I'm a Swedish guy and the creator of Zendo - an Application Launcher for the web. I'd be so grateful for any creative criticism the HN community would offer.
"...
My name is Jonas. I'm a Swedish guy and the creator of Zendo - an Application Launcher for the web. I'd be so grateful for any creative criticism the HN community would offer.
..."
Hi Jonas. I've tried using "Zendo" but it really doesn't solve any problem that I have. If I enter the same term ... say "zendo" into each box, hit return on each button the page redirected to "wikipedia" reflecting the fastest query not necessarily the best. I've read the manifesto, blog but nothing really describes what problem it's trying to solve.
So either kill the idea, redefine the idea or move on. Fail fast. Of the 3 maybe re-defining the idea might be better. What is the specific problem you are solving?
"... I created ZENDO to give people quick and easy access to everything they love about the web. ..."
Cheers for the comment. I'll try to see if I can define my vision for this project
The idea I had in beginning was to merge all the search boxes out there into, to avoid having to go to the main page of every site before I could search it.
But then I realised that are a lot of other things that I'd like to do when at "The Main Searchbox". What if I would like to search for a friend on Facebook, or from my email contacts in GMail. What if I could select a contact and then just send them a quick email? Perhaps I could also update my twitter from this "Main Searchbox". It would also be great if you could access all your files that you store in the cloud from this search, just like you can do with Spotlight on Macs.
And then I found Quicksilver, which indeed does some of these things. But Quicksilver has its limitations. It only works on one OS, and when you switch computer it doesn't "follow" you. Also it's quite hard to write plugins for Quicksilver if you're not a skilled programmer.
So, my vision for this site/project is that you should be able to do basically anything, without having to leave the main menu.
I stared at the site for a minute. Then I tried typing in something and it said "sorry mate, we don't do that kind of advertising here". Then I left...
What problem are you trying to solve? It seems like a bookmarking system that adds at least two annoying steps to my browsing experience....and it took me awhile to figure that out.
It's unclear what your startup / the site does. I took the bait and typed in a letter and got a couple options of sites to go to. But I get the feeling I'm missing something and need more explanation. Jonas, can you explain?
So you're basically proposing that I can use Zendo to search a few applications without actually visiting those sites' hompeages? A tagline would make the "what you do" piece clearer.
Assuming I'm in the ballpark, it may be easier for me to bookmark Google and use "keywords + service" syntax a la "Web 2.0 Expo + youtube." It's perfect in those cases I want to search Google, and convenient in those fewer instances I want to search "inside" other services.
What's more, a Google search for "site:service + keyword" (e.g. site:youtube.com + Startup School) would do the same inner-site search as the latter even more efficiently. But it's true fewer people know that syntax...
Of course this is all assuming I've got your angle right. Even then it's only my take.
Edit: I just read your comment about not being a programmer. Assuming you made it yourself, hats off. It's a tremendous first go.
Well, I shouldn't claim that to have done the coding myself. It's "borrowed" code from Newcars.com, but I since I probably will have to redo most of it, I hope they will not disagree too much if I use it for demonstration for a couple of weeks.
Though I have to say, just tweaking the javascipt was quite an experience.
if i type in a "g", i get google, google maps, and twitter. why that last one? (i haven't used twitter, so maybe the 'g' has some meaning i'm not aware of)
Well, I does seem irrational doesn't it :-) I added a few extra "tags" to some of them. IMDB has 'movies' as tag and twitter has micro-blog. Perhaps I should remove them for the sake of clarity?
Or at least make it plain somehow why the site is being matched. Perhaps have the matching keywords show up in a third line of text under the two that are already there.
Also, like others have said, you really need to do a better job of answering the "what the hell is this" question that will inevitably pop up the first time people see the site.
