

Show HN: Timeup.io – Find a suitable time slot for a meeting with your peers - timeup
http://start.timeup.io

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lordlarm
This does not solve the two issues I have with doodle:

\- The creator is the only person with permission to add alternatives (both
for their "Make a choice" and "Find a date" features)

\- There's no way to limit the number of responses from each participant -
e.g. each user need to select their 3 most preferred time slots.

Also this app, contrary to Doodle, requires you to select time slots, whilst
with Doodle one can just decide on dates (and the time is optional). I also
quite like the "Yes/No/If-needbe" feature that Doodle provides and I'm
disappointed about the binary view of event planning this application takes.

~~~
timeup
Hey lordlarm, thank you with your valuable feedback and suggestions! We'll
definitely will talk through them in our next meeting!

~~~
martin-adams
We'll assume you will be able to find a suitable time to meet with your team.

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DanSmooth
Kleinigkeiten:

\- your url-structure is confusing (www.timeup.io vs start and landing)

\- write "use timeup.io now" instead of "try"; add try once money is involved

\- add small titles to the 4 bullets-list on event entry; right now they are
very confusing; there is also too much white-space on desktop browsers;
perhaps left-align the event-entry form on larger screens

\- Slot Length should have an effect on Timeframe so one can start at 8:30 for
example

\- Text liest sich oftmals zu Deutsch (zBsp: "timeup.io focuses on the finding
of the best fitting...") oder ist Englisch inkorrekt (zBsp: "Shoot a message!"
müsste "Shoot us a message!" sein)

Grüße nach München!

~~~
timeup
Hello Dan, thank you for your answer! You're right there is still a need in
optimizing the landing page. In fact the whole page was developed for a
customer development course at university. So I really appreciate feedback on
the psychological parts of increasing the "customer" base! Beste Grüße aus
München :)

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andretti1977
Please, explain the real and important differences with doodle.com

~~~
timeup
timeup.io focuses on the finding of the best fitting time spots for all event
participants. On other platforms the event creator usually determines at which
time slots an event should take place. Mostly, these time slots are the ones
only the event creator can attend. So there is always a shift to inaccuracy.
In addition, the design of timeup.io is very clean and intuitive. This allows
an event creator or participant to be extremely quick on the creation or join
process.

~~~
andretti1977
I read the FAQ but honestly couldn't understand the difference. As with
doodle, event creator decides the only available dates and time range. And
even if design is cleaner (subjective opinion) people presence group switching
(gray/colored) is not so intuitive.

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christudor
A few thoughts on the UX from my two minutes on the site.

When I created my event, the first thing I did was select a date in the
calendar, before going down the page to fill in the other details. When I got
to the bottom, the submit button was greyed out, which confused me. What had I
missed? It was only when I scrolled back up that I saw that events require a
title, which is confusing and frustrating.

The timeframe bit is confusing, too. First I'm asked to pick my slot length
(let's say I choose a four-hour slot between 19:00 and 23:00, because I'm
going to the theatre), but then I get some radio buttons asking for the same
thing... and I've only got three options (15 mins, 30 mins, 1 hour). I've just
told you I want a four-hour slot. Do these radio buttons override that?
Confusing.

I found some of the UX elements a bit fiddly to use on my laptop, which slowed
down the process. If the idea here is to have a really quick way to schedule
meetings, I think things could be a lot clearer and more straightforward. The
only thing you /really/ need to know is the date and time, right? Maybe I can
add more information later if I really want to?

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Animats
Now the problem is that there are multiple time managers that don't talk to
each other. This needs a standard.

 _" I'll have my time manager call your time manager."_

~~~
timeup
Since timeup is for free I think that a good way to go into that direction is
to completely expose our API and make it publicly available.

Than everybody who wants can create addons for several kind of devices and
other software. Right now the API is still very tiny and in my opinion it
should stay like that. Only a very small selection of additional features will
come.

So far our capacity (only 2 devs) is very very limited to support all kind of
other software / devices in short time. (We're still students and doing timeup
as a small side project - We saw the need of that tool when trying to organize
meetings for learning groups)

Any other idea how to further support your idea?

~~~
e12e
Something related is going on with json and email with fastmail[1] -- a
standard needs to bee free/open, _and_ have a usable free/open implementation.

That way people can pay you for the convenience of a service, and not be
afraid to be left in the cold once you move on to other things/get hit by a
bus/get bought by doodle and they decide to fold your service etc.

Another example is Mozilla sync, which has a nice and viable self-hosting
solution (both for the new and old sync)[2]. Not that Mozilla is charging for
the sync service, but IMNHO they probably could - perhaps giving paying users
a larger quota. Not that the free quota is a limit; more as a sensible way for
users to support the project.

[1] [http://jmap.io/](http://jmap.io/) (Note that jmap is a reaction to a) the
cruft that's been assimilated in IMAP, b) the need for webmail anyway (so
rather than have what is essentially a http-to-imap proxy (squirrel,
horde/imp) -- just have the mail server speak http).

[2] [https://docs.services.mozilla.com/howtos/run-
sync-1.5.html](https://docs.services.mozilla.com/howtos/run-sync-1.5.html)

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jonahx
I tried this out with a skeptical attitude, but the the process and UI
impressed me -- it solves the specific problem minimally and works exactly as
I'd want it to.

~~~
timeup
Thank you for your words! Please shoot a mail or comment if you have any
unexpected experiences or are in need of any new features!

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kseistrup
This was also pimped a couple of weeks ago — by the very same person ⌘
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9710357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9710357)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=timeup](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=timeup)

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vortico
When did the trend of actually demonstrating your product with images and
feature lists die?

~~~
timeup
I agree, next time we'll post a link directly to the page! As soon our short
explanatory video is done there is no need for a landing page in between. It
will be available on the top right corner.

~~~
lazerwalker
Please, include text + photos of the software in addition to a short
explanatory video. Many of us prefer reading to needing to watch a video.

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acrophiliac
The horizontal bar at the top should have people's names, not numbers.

~~~
timeup
Would you like them to be always visible or when you are doing a mouse hover
over the color? In addition, how would you solve the problem that there are
multiple time slots where the number X of your peers can attend but at each of
the different time slots it's a different subgroup of all attendees.

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rekoros
Is this similar to Calendly?

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drwl
What about Meet by Sunrise

~~~
timeup
Meet by Sunrise is definitely also cool tool. I think the difference too them
is still the hotspot way of seeing things. In the near future there will be
also a keyboard for our "service".

