

Show HN: Sparkmuse, story and beta of my side project - netmau5

TLDR: The beta of my my site, Sparkmuse, has begun.  Please join me at http://www.sparkmuse.com/invitation/Hacker-News .<p>The Story:<p>Well here it is, the beta of Sparkmuse. I'm pretty happy to "get there", but I'm really just relieved. Don't get me wrong, I'm F'ING STOKED to get this in front of some more valuable eyeballs, especially the Hacker News crowd. Right now though, I'm just leaning back in a rickety old chair thinking "I did it."<p>Several months ago I was pretty down on myself. I wanted to get out there and meet new people, do cool projects, explore new technologies, and just jump into a swimming pool full of what I love. Some people call it passion and maybe that is cliche, but what is passion if it sits on a couch all night? But it was just a dream, I worked the 9-5 at an enterprise job, put in an extra hour here and there, and then came home to waste time on the tube.<p>I love my job, enterprise software is challenging at a technical and a strategic level, but the inspiring stories here on HN are just too hard to resist. I wanted to be part of it, but I couldn't: all of my work is NDA'd to the end of eterity, what did I have to show others? I didn't really want to quit and I probably couldn't afford to do it anyway. The only solution was to change my life from within.<p>Cut the cable bill, change the diet, stop thinking and start doing. Ok, but what do I work on? I live in the butthole of tech, so I needed to bring the community to me. The whole "do cool projects and meet new people" bit doesn't work without one. So that is what I built, Sparkmuse, a site dedicated to bouncing ideas and meeting new people with which to do them. It's Ask HN: [My Idea] for the action-oriented.<p>For several months, I came home every night and did what I set out to do. I coded, I designed, I made magnificantly bad attempts at marketing, I networked. Some nights it was just 30 minutes and others I was up until 3am, but I was committed to doing whatever I could each day. It was fun, I mean alot of fun. I used to play poker professionally and the rush of huge wins was unsurpassed until now.<p>So maybe it will work, maybe it won't, but it doesn't really matter (hey, I didn't claim to be a salesman). When I crawed out of my shell just a little, I found a world of insanely generous, helpful, and passionate people. It's almost hard to explain or believe. What I thought was someone else's story on HN, when I thought they had to be "special" to get into the club, was open to me the whole time. All I had to do was wake up and join the party. I've spoken to people who are a million times richer and more famous than I am, and I felt like every single one of them was on my side.<p>This is my message to the guy I was 6 months ago and anyone like him: you don't have to quit your job, you don't have to take a huge risk. Everyone can do something. Be it for profit or not, there is a whole community out there that wants to know YOU and wants YOU to succeed. You will meet awesome people and learn tons of new things. Just get out there and try, you won't regret it. I only wish I had started years ago.<p>The Site:<p>Oh, and if you'd like to know what the site is about, here is the pitch:<p>Sparkmuse is a community focused on discussing, refining and acting on innovative tech ideas. We welcome any ideas which aim to solve an identifiable need through science, engineering, and technology. This includes web applications, mobile tech, robots, circuit boards, industrial design, or even the human genome. This is an environment for creativity and inspiration, a network for both you and your ideas to flourish and grow as your vision matures.<p>Developers, designers, marketers, angels, anyone involved in the startup scene is invited. Let's build something together. Even if no one else shows up, you can count on me being there~<p>Please join me at http://www.sparkmuse.com.  I've set up a special invitations page for you guys to get into the beta at http://www.sparkmuse.com/invitation/Hacker-News .
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wryan
First of all, congrats on the site!

I've been tossing around a nearly identical idea for a few weeks, and had a
good laugh (and better cry) after reading this post.

As I'm sure most will, I felt a bit of apprehension before posting, but went
ahead and submitted my first idea a few minutes ago. It might just be the
perfect outlet for those more off-the-wall ideas that I'm not too heavily
invested in. I love the design and character of the site, and think you
already have a great identity down. The illustrations really fit the idea-
bouncing, brainstorming process that it serves.

Someone said it below, but i had also first clicked a lightbulb on accident
with no idea of what it stood for. Might want to throw a little question mark
with a description near it?

Looking forward to see how it progresses, best of luck!

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bjonathan
Congratulations on your project !

I just registered on your site, I love the idea and the design. I was also
afraid that I would land on an empty site, but there is already lots of idea
to read and discuss about.

One little think that I think you can improve. You seem to love to write :)
and I guess talk . We feel that on your website there is a looooot to read
maybe to much.I find so much text overwhelming maybe you could reduce or
delete some of it. My 2 cents...

Good luck on your project and congratulations !

~~~
netmau5
Thanks! Are there any specific areas you had in mind? Is the welcome message
after you sign in too much?

~~~
bjonathan
Actually I loved the beginning of the welcome message (thank you for taking
the time on your busy life ...) but passed a few sentences I scrolled down to
find the link.

On the feed page, I think you could reduce the text on the sidebar. I dont
care about the welcome message, if I'm registered why do you explain me the
website again I should already had understand what Sparkmuse is about. I would
delete that paragraph and replace it only by the "Create Spark" button (make
it big and colorful, I didnt saw it the first time I saw this page)

You can also reduce the "We want feedback" block maybe you can install
uservoice or something.

On the spark page the solution appear 2 times at the top of the page and on
the sidebar. Why ? Maybe you should put the question and the solution at the
top of the page like Quora/Stack Overflow or other discussions board.

Again it's only my PoV. You made a great job .

~~~
netmau5
Excellent feedback, I agree it is too verbose. I definitely need to improve on
the copy skills. I'm going to review it tonight.

~~~
sagacity
> I definitely need to improve on the copy skills.

I'd not say 'improve' - call it _expand_ :-)

Being verbose has its own advantages too. One that I can immediately point out
is from SEO perspective.

As most know, one thing the SE crawlers _love_ the most (besides links) is
_content_. Content rich (i.e. verbose) pages are usually good organic traffic
magnets. (On the flip side, they can deter many human visitors! The Catch 22
is, common webmaster guidelines say 'optimize for human visitors'.)

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apsurd
The lightbulbs are not readily apparent "like" indicators to me. I accidently
clicked on one.

Nicely done, as I'm using the site I'm finding a lot of nice touches. I like
the tagging UI. As stated the site is a bit text heavy. Overall very nice job
though. Look forward to seeing how it goes. I posted a spark =)

Best of luck.

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chr15
Congrats on launching! Just signed up. Couple of questions:

1\. Love the design. Did you do it yourself?

2\. Did your employer have any problems with you working on the side (do they
own the IP)? If so, how did you get around this?

~~~
netmau5
Thanks, I did do the design myself but had the help of an illustrator for the
drawing aspect. One of my main goals with this project was to improve my
design skills so I appreciate the compliment.

My employer doesn't have a problem with me participating in open-source
projects, having a personal blog, or generally playing around with tech on the
side. However, I've not tried to build a profitable project on the side yet.
If I were to, I would consult with them first and make sure it was cool. Most
of the time, I've found people don't mind if you are 1) working at a smaller
company, 2) not competing with them, and 3) still doing awesome work for them.

------
netmau5
Clickable: <http://www.sparkmuse.com/invitation/Hacker-News>

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sagacity
BTW, the Credits link goes 404 at bottom-right corner of

<http://www.sparkmuse.com/about>

(It points to <http://www.sparkmuse.com/footer.html#>)

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DTrejo
My thoughts:

    
    
        - work on making your copy less verbose - let me get to the good stuff right away
        - what will make people want to actually take action?

~~~
netmau5
I agree that the copy is too verbose. The funny thing is, it didn't even occur
to me until someone pointed it out.

As for action, I personally get really energized just having conversations
about an idea, but that isn't enough alone. There is a function within each
Spark that lets people offer help if they like the concept and want to be a
part of it. Outside of that, I still want to do more to encourage action.

We've talked about running a startup version of a hackathon. An event where
people would share their ideas over a couple days, a committee would pick the
best group, and people could join up to do them. Instead of a normal hackathon
though, you'd build a landing page and spend a week marketing to sell your
idea and get people to sign up or even commit to buying your product. The
winner of the event would be the one who gained the most traction, not the one
with the coolest hack.

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bconway
Congrats on the site and your launch. I'm getting a fair number of 500 errors
or "application errors" while navigating, but looking forward to using it.

~~~
netmau5
Ok, I think your profile page is fixed now!

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Vivtek
Whoa, weird - the "popular" list isn't selecting distinct, looks like. Very
strange effect.

~~~
netmau5
Oops, good thing I worked in a giant red reset button to my admin! Gonna have
to add another case to the unit-test on that one.

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znt
Are you hosting it on App Engine? I tried to visit the website but couldn't
(Google Apps server IPs are banned in my country, long story)

I tried to create an account using vtunnel, don't know if it worked or not.
Twitter name was ocanbascil.

~~~
netmau5
Yes, we're on Google AppEngine, and wow, that isn't something I expected to
hear. I don't see an account created under ocanbascil.

~~~
znt
It's possible to access your service at sparkmuse.appspot.com but Twitter
OAuth redirects to sparkmuse.com. If you can configure the authorization so
that Twitter redirects to appspot URL it will be possible to register. Then
you can do a 301 redirect to sparkmuse.com to prettify URL again.

~~~
netmau5
That seems odd, you can access appspot but not the www domain itself? And you
can not access the www domain via a Twitter redirect, but you can access it to
get to the login page?

~~~
znt
I cannot access www domain in any way. I just intercepted twitter redirect and
changed redirect address by hand to appspot domain. It worked but now you're
out of invites. Maybe next time...

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JonLim
I love the site and the idea behind it. Sucks that I didn't get a chance to
grab an invite.

Would love to discuss with you about some of the more backend details of the
site, is it alright if I reach out to you via email?

------
Vivtek
It'd be nice to be able to see a list of the Sparks I've liked.

~~~
netmau5
Definitely, adding that to the list.

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acabal
Twitter only? Not every good hacker wants a Twitter account...

~~~
netmau5
I debated this for so long. My final rational was that I was going to lose
some people but Twitter helps people connect. Since the site is partially
about connecting you with others, I decided to give it a go. If it blows up, I
figured I could offer email-based registration on top of it.

~~~
vantran
I'd suggest doing at least email-based registration. Email is still the most
common form of communication online. Although a lot of people have Twitter
accounts, there aren't as many power users as email.

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rokhayakebe
Anything for those without a twitter account?

~~~
netmau5
Just Twitter right now, but email may find its way in if that turns off too
many.

~~~
sagacity
Okay, as it used to be written in good ol' BASIC

10 start

20 allow email registrations

30 goto 20

;-)

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geuis
Quick suggestion, cursor:pointer in your css. I notice that all of the
clickable stuff doesn't look clickable.

~~~
netmau5
Thanks, I will review all the clickies and make sure they've got it.

