
Show HN: How many days until? - uptown
https://days.to/
======
joshmanders
Kind of dropped the ball on the url. days.to is great, but
days.to/until/christmas is kind of wonky. I'd remove the /until/ part so it's
just days.to/christmas

~~~
gregmac
Agreed, though interestingly,
[http://days.to/christmas](http://days.to/christmas) does work.

There's also a /since/ for each one.

A simple fix, use days.to/next/christmas and days.to/last/christmas. Clean
URLs, and they make grammatical sense.

~~~
logiclabs
Yes, you discovered quite a few of the "hidden" urls - also /when-is/.

Originally, the site had exactly as you described with a cleaner url, but SEO
had different ideas.

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drinchev
This is one of those cool websites that when I open for the first time I
usually say : "Oh that's awesome, I should bookmark it and use more often" and
then after 1 hour It's totally forgotten until the next time I clean my
bookmarks.

Anyway TV Shows episode calendar is really useful and I think it's a nice idea
to have this information arranged in this way.

~~~
1_player
I've been using episode-alert.com for the past year to track TV shows. Really
useful. It also sends you an email when a new episode is out.

~~~
ikeboy
Shout-out for sidereel.com

They send emails for new episodes, and also allow you to mark episodes as
watched, which is great for working through archives.

I only wish they had something for movies as well.

~~~
unknown2374
maybe check out [https://trakt.tv/](https://trakt.tv/), I have been using it
for more than 3 years and it's absolutely amazing. It even has multiple mobile
apps, I personally use SeriesGuide on my android phone.

------
ryanmonroe
Wolfram Alpha has similar functionality (minus the home page)

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=days+until+doctor+stran...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=days+until+doctor+strange)

~~~
tedmiston
It would be cool if Wolfram Alpha had knowledge of TV show releases. I tried a
few but no dice.

------
sodafountan
Looks good, very clean and nice. You should add the ability to create your own
custom events, for instance I'm taking a trip to California and Las Vegas next
month that I'm looking forward to. It would be nice if I could add that event
and maybe the site could be smart enough to pull a picture down when I type in
California or Las Vegas. That would for me at least be enough to warrant a
bookmark.

~~~
tylerjwilk00
You may find the following useful for creating custom events with a countdown
timer: [http://countdownmaker.com/](http://countdownmaker.com/)

For example:
[http://countdownmaker.com/countdown/3vnlvm/](http://countdownmaker.com/countdown/3vnlvm/)

------
RangerScience
Neat! Good form factor, as it lets me explore things I'd otherwise never think
of (mostly, cultural events in other cultures), but... ...Doesn't have what I
care about (festivals), does have what I really don't care about (sports). Can
you add a filter so I can remove the latter? Not sure what you can do about
the former - data sources / input is the hard part, I'm pretty sure :P

~~~
logiclabs
Yes, filtering will definitely be added soon.

------
mcargian
I always use something like [https://days.to/since/new-years-
day](https://days.to/since/new-years-day) to check when eggs are packaged. All
eggs (in the USA at least) have a three digit code showing the date it was
packaged on the end of the carton. Helps to see how old the eggs are at the
market.

~~~
wreft
How is that better than checking the expiry/best before date? Or is that not
available in the states? (Canadian)

------
ohitsdom
First thing I checked was days until Elon's Mars talk next Tuesday, since
that's what I'm counting down to. So count one vote to add that event!

[http://www.spacex.com/mars](http://www.spacex.com/mars)

------
juanuys
Heh, I made something similar for a dashboard a while ago to show how many
business days remain until a specified event, e.g.:
[http://bizdaysuntil.herokuapp.com/?year=2016&month=12&day=25...](http://bizdaysuntil.herokuapp.com/?year=2016&month=12&day=25&what=Xmas+Launch&size=14&highlight=fefe55)
Code:
[https://github.com/opyate/daysuntil](https://github.com/opyate/daysuntil)

------
Jugurtha
Pretty nice. Just a few ideas:

* Is it necessary to go to a url when one clicks on an event? The amount of information displayed is tiny (date, event title, time until event) and it's a waste of screen space and time (now I have to go back to look at other things). It would be cool to show the information in a modal box and then continue to browse what's coming up.

* Okay, now I'm on days.to and I know that an event will take place in two months. Then what? I leave the site and in a few days, I forget about it. I think I stumbled upon an email feature but I couldn't find it again. It also has a calendar. Why? Would it be better to build on something a large number of people are _already_ using and trusting to manage their daily lives? Something like Google Calendar or Facebook Events. Maybe using their API to insert an event into the already existing calendar. Even if I leave days.to, I can still see the positive it brought to my life and I'm more likely to come back.

* Maybe topics. I push in some interests. With enough users, it might start detecting certain patterns and starts showing me upcoming events resulting from the interests of people who share some of my interests. If I like music and painting, and you like music and theatre, it might show me theatre events and show you painting events.

------
askopress
Just a design tip: the red border that separates the full date from the days
till countdown is completely unnecessary. Also, a bit bigger dark gradient
behind it would be nice. Also, when hovering over the top menu the link goes
dark enough to be hard to read, so perhaps not change the color on hover, but
add a border underneath the link instead to hint that the link is being in
fact hovered?

~~~
logiclabs
Thanks for the feedback. The latter is a bit of a CSS over-sight/"bug".. will
fix.

------
RodericDay
You should scrape a bit and populate this for TV shows. Neither "Rick and
Morty" nor "Line of Duty" were there.

~~~
sgloutnikov
On that note, myepisodes.com is absolutely great for tracking and keeping up
with your TV show episodes.

------
logiclabs
Thanks to whoever posted this, I'm the owner of the site.

Thanks for all the suggestions and feedback. Quite a lot of the feature
suggestions made here, I am in the process of developing. The site was
basically an MVP for a bigger app, which is why only a handful of events are
in the events list.

Feel free to send any feedback via the site (feedback button in bottom right
of site)

------
tmaly
Cool idea, I would love support for geolocated events. We have a set of
country fairs in Connecticut that start in August and end in October. It would
be a cool application for location

~~~
swalsh
Gotta second the geolocated events, for most the fluff festival in Somerville
MA isn't on their radar. For locals though, it's always on the back of our
minds (this weekend by the way)

~~~
tmaly
The challenge is how to get all this local knowledge into the system. This
seems to be more specialized knowledge that perhaps even Google does not have
easily organized.

How would you go about doing that?

------
Jhsto
Been using this site before and the only thing which bothers me is the moving
background color. While it is a nice addition on desktop, it makes my 2015
Macbook's fans blow after some seconds.

I would suggest looking for less computing intensive way to make the
backgrounds work like they do now.

Either way, it's not a huge deal since I seldom watch the site for longer than
those few seconds, but I have clicked the alternative links on Google a few
times just to see if they would function any better.

~~~
logiclabs
Thanks for the feedback. The blurry coloured backgrounds are just images
(placeholder images really) but they transition in using CSS. This is a bit
more obvious on the pages that have a "proper" background image.

I'll look at adding an option to allow users to disable the transitions.

------
stevewilhelm
Couple of comments:

The URL days.to is cool, but from a comprehension point of view if the event
is more than a month away, should start using weeks, then months, then years.

Filtering by locale would be helpful

There is lots of open source data on astrological events: eclipses, NASA
satellite fly by's, etc.

Gamification. Allow users to submit photos for each event and allow all users
to vote them up and down. Props for users with most or best photos.

Or allow users best place to be on that particular event. Again, allow users
to vote best up or down.

------
michaelbuckbee
This looks like kind of a fun project, but Google already returns at least
some of this information in their enhanced search results (ex: "When is
Fathers Day").

~~~
markmontymark
But, you'd have to go do that search for Father's Day where this interface
reminds you, like a Calendar, that something is coming up that maybe wasn't on
your mind atm.

------
cJ0th
for linux there is gcal which to some extend offers this service for the
commandline.

For instance:

gcal -N -q US_CA

tells you the days days left until each holiday in California, Usa.

------
andrewpe
I always search on Google "days til {event or date}" and the first link is
always this site. This site is a big time saver

------
leojg
For this to be somewhat useful should have much more data about every country
in the world. I don't really care about any of those dates... maybe us
elections because it has an international relevance.

Or find a niche like mountain bike, and list all the mountainbiking events

------
stockkid
I am in the Southern hemisphere and found the seasonal countdowns irrelevant
([https://days.to/until/spring](https://days.to/until/spring)).

~~~
contravariant
In their defence they do list the march equinox as well, for the
internationally minded ([https://days.to/until/march-
equinox](https://days.to/until/march-equinox)).

------
peterbsmith
I used this website _all_ summer. Summer is awful. I know thats a
controversial stance, but I take it.

days.to/until/summer showed the days until summer ended. It was great!

Simple, to the point, beautiful.

~~~
mod
I'm not trying to nitpick, exactly, but why wasn't it days.to/until/fall?

~~~
peterbsmith
Well...

days.to/until/summer(is Over)

------
Kiro
So obviously this site is built 100% with SEO in mind. The domain name and the
fact that each event is its own page with the most obvious searchable title.

Good job anyway! Looks really good.

~~~
cschneid
Why is SEO'd site bad?

The things you listed (domain & titles) sum up to: "Created something and it's
easy to find, with clear descriptions".

~~~
SamBam
And how are people supposed to find it if it's not SEO-optimized? Only Hacker
News folks in-the-know?

It seems like a really odd point to bring up.

~~~
Spivak
I think most of the time it's because everyone has experienced getting low
quality results from SEO optimized sites. It's getting to the point where one
cannot shop or search for product recommendations on popular search engines
because you'll get nothing but toptenreallyspecificproduct.com or
absolutebestproduct.com.

Optimizing for search rankings doesn't say anything directly about any given
site, but it's generally a signal for low quality content that would not rank
highly without such optimizations.

~~~
jdavis703
The only time I use Google to find a product is when I know need something but
don't know what it's called exactly. Otherwise I just go to the relevant
e-commerce site to skip past all the BS.

------
Taylor_OD
Functions well but its a bit difficult to absorb the information in the
current layout. A tiny bit of space between events might be nice.

------
wybiral
The aesthetic would be awesome if it weren't for those giant ads on the side.
It throws off my days-till-Halloween vibe.

------
ChrisNorstrom
Love it. Althought I would prefer it be in a timeline fashion. It would make
it more easy to skim with your eyes.

------
pmarreck
Was disappointed to not see a days.to "Game of Thrones Season 7 premiere", so
I requested adding it.

------
bpoyner
Neat stuff. The USA total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017 should be added
too, imho.

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cylinder
Really cool. You may want to add southern hemisphere seasons to it too

------
nabaraz
Searched for my football club 'Chelsea'. No Results found.

~~~
justinlardinois
What were you expecting to come up?

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Phritzy
Why does it have Inauguration Day on both January 19 and 20?

~~~
justinlardinois
Must be a bug or other error. US presidential terms end on January 20, so it
definitely wouldn't be before then. According to Wikipedia inauguration is
held on the 20, unless it's a Sunday in which case it's held the next day.

~~~
logiclabs
Yes, it was a timezone bug. The page was tracking January 20 (but at midnight
in UTC timezone), so some people would see Jan 19, some Jan 20. It's now
fixed.

------
asciimo
Nice work. What kind of ad revenue are you getting?

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gweinberg
Needs "Kiss a Ginger Day".

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molly0
Built With Django?

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meggar
oh good, only another 365 days until autumn.

