
CoffeeStrap HN - mahesh_rm
http://boards.coffeestrap.com/#/HN
======
euphemize
"HI HN, WE ARE BUILDING TINDER, BUT FOR LANGUAGE EDUCATION, WITH INSTITUTIONAL
CERTIFICATION.

WE'RE TESTING IT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VENICE, AND WE'D LOVE NOW TO DO THIS ON
HN AS WELL.

YOU THINK THAT'S A BAD IDEA, WHICH DOESN'T SOLVE A REAL PROBLEM? LET US KNOW
WHY."

Your first paragraph is not informative at all. What if I don't know what
Tinder is? You're suggesting that maybe your idea is bad (and we should tell
you why) about 1/2 a screen before telling me what your idea actually _is_.
How about putting that sentence "CoffeeStrap is a place..." right at the top?

p.s. I think your idea is great! But I need more help understanding what's
going on :)

~~~
mahesh_rm
Thank you! Good critique, we just took for granted that the average HN user
knows what Tinder is. We're basically trying to figure out how to replicate
real world interaction between members belonging to different communities, but
online. How we're doing it, well, we're still experimenting. :-)

~~~
Stratoscope
If the average HN reader knows what Tinder is, that could mean that 51% know
and 49% don't know. Never ignore the 49%. :-)

Definitely agree about the "YOU THINK THAT'S A BAD IDEA" language. Besides
being negative, it puts words in people's mouths, which is very off-putting.

Your project sounds neat, though. Best of luck with it!

------
JunkDNA
I think the HN-specific landing page is not as informative as the actual main
page:
[http://boards.coffeestrap.com/#/welcome](http://boards.coffeestrap.com/#/welcome)

The HN-specific page reads like startup satire.

~~~
mahesh_rm
It's not, we're trying to put together people with different backgrounds, and
different approaches to langauge. We started from the two context we were most
familiar with. The line between what is satire and what is community culture
may be kind of thin, especially for online communities such as HN. Don't you
think? :-)

~~~
cabbeer
Other than hacker news, how many other targeted landing pages have you
created? (just for my own curiosity)

~~~
alemhnan
Another one for the University of Venice (Ca' Foscari) that we proposed to
students/ex-students last week.

------
phaedryx
Every time I hear the name, I have to re-remind myself that it isn't bootstrap
rewritten in coffeescript.

~~~
canistr
Same. And the Try CoffeeStrap button doesn't help.

~~~
mahesh_rm
Original concept was "Bootstrap your language with Coffee" :-).

------
busterarm
Maybe I'll get lucky and there'll be some folks willing to teach me Danish.
There are surprisingly few good options for learning it in the US.

I like Duolingo's approach, but they don't have the languages I want available
(except German).

Edit: Bummer. No Danish. :(

~~~
mahesh_rm
Hi! We're testing it out on a small subset of languages. Being it a peer2peer
marketplace tool, we don't plan to restrict the amount of languages that will
be included. Going to notify you as soon as Danish will be up! :-)

~~~
busterarm
Kickass, thanks!

------
lhnz
You really need to improve the design of that website.

~~~
michaelwww
I like the design. What do you see as problems?

~~~
lhnz
1\. Line-height needs to be increased as lines are almost touching.

2\. Colour scheme is terrible: green, orange, grey, pale yellow, orange on
dark blue, dark blue text with orange shadow, green text on black terminal
style popups, black text on asphalt texture, light blue boxes with grey text
and dark blue headers, dark red footer with coffee table.

3\. Lack of distinction between what is uppercase and what is lowercase. (And
in general, just don't do uppercase like that as it's hard to read.)

4\. Long-winded copy.

5\. "Let Us Know Why" takes me to a team page. On the bottom is what looks
like a gigantic back button. Where does the so-called back button go? Not back
to the page which I was before I can tell you that. If it's a call-to-action
it should be clear what it does.

6\. Weird branding in the copy: text that jumps in between trying to appear
professional/startupy and wanting to share a beer with you.

7\. I just found a whole new introduction page:
[http://boards.coffeestrap.com/#/welcome](http://boards.coffeestrap.com/#/welcome)
I am so confused why more than one exists?

For starters. Realistically they need to work with a designer and start
focusing on simplicity.

~~~
madfriend
+1 I couldn't agree more that design needs to be improved.

1\. Work on forms: they should be easy to distinguish from other "blocky"
things around.

2\. It took me like 2 minutes to find what your project is about. Improve your
landing page.

3\. Colour scheme is really messy. Pick 2 base colors and extend them using
[http://kuler.adobe.com](http://kuler.adobe.com)

4\. Choice of name - I believe that in hacker community CoffeeStrap really
sounds like Bootstrap in CoffeeScript

------
benburleson
The name and first sentence on your site made me think this was satire.

------
k-mcgrady
Nice idea and I could see myself using it. I currently use Duolingo but this
seems like it would complement that nicely. I would suggest changing the name
though. As a dev I immediately thought Bootstrap in CoffeeScript. As a regular
person I don't think I'd have a clue what something called CoffeeStrap would
do other than something related to coffee.

------
morganm
I'm receiving a bunch of errors when trying to sign up. Seems to be related to
the following:

    
    
      XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://api.coffeestrap.com/api/v1/users/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx. No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. Origin 'http://boards.coffeestrap.com' is therefore not allowed access.
    

The site also tends to go into 404 redirect loops which eventually crash the
tab. Not sure if that's related to the above. This is happening loading
[http://boards.coffeestrap.com/](http://boards.coffeestrap.com/) in an
incognito tab.

Also, don't see Thai as a language. :(

~~~
alemhnan
I guess this is because it's a bit overloaded the website! Thanks for the
heads up, looking into!

------
JamesCasanova
Cools stuff, it seems like you guys made quite a jump from the previous
version of the platform! Looks cooler now. How do you handle the video chat?
Local plugin or external service?

~~~
alemhnan
Hey thanks! We are pouring a lot of efforts, we are improving day after day!
The video chat is on a isolate instance of heroku. We used a nodejs app with
webrtc stuff!

------
camus2
So how are you going to succeed where Livemocha failed for instance ? To be
frank , I liked Livemocha,too bad they couldnt monetize their application
without selling out to someone that doesnt care about users.

~~~
bananacurve
I take it you mean Rosetta Stone? All emails I get now from Livemocha are
pitching them. The thing is it actually works. Hell just from the demo CD
years ago I can still say "The horse is white" in Welsh!

------
daschy
Are you planning to partner with other universities in Italy only or you want
to spread this idea across europe either?

~~~
alemhnan
The Ca' Foscari one (university of Venice) was a pilot that we launched last
week. The cool think about that is that we are able to automatically certify
people that comes from Ca' Foscari. We are planning to have a 'karma' style
reference that goes up based on languages certifications, institutions in
which you studied and so on.

So definitely yes, we want to repeat that for other Institutions as well.

~~~
timmclean
FYI, your "The Team" link in the page footer seems to be broken (links to
[http://boards.coffeestrap.com/team](http://boards.coffeestrap.com/team))

------
octagonal
Have you guys ever considered getting EU funding? There's always some grants
to be had with projects like these.

------
vampirechicken
Why must i upload a picture. Use my gravatar.

