
Mvl - rubynerd
https://mvlapp.com
======
slurgfest
This is intended to be constructive criticism, though you may find it harsh.

A quick look at the front page (particularly the stuff focused at the very
top) does not suggest anything so much as a competitor to Gmail. Scroll down
and the feature list does little to change this impression. For $20/user/mo?
All right, you don't have the resources to compete with Google... I
understand... but how does that change my decision as a potential customer?

Maybe it would help to emphasize a little more on what the distinctive
advantage is here. Is the point just to get out from under Google et al. with
a similar product? If so, maybe find some way to invoke the problem you see
with Google et al. I don't know what you MEAN by "innovation from the inside
out" or why it matters to me enough to pay $20/user/mo (for the preview; it
looks like you plan to increase the price later...)

Phrases like "shit work" and "dick around" and "sticky fingers" on the
questions page might be phrased more professionally, and several pages could
use punctuation work (you seem to omit periods a lot)...

I am a little concerned about a "custom mail engine I'm writing from scratch".
Are there not any established tools to build on in the Ruby world? Why do I
want an email service which does not support IMAP or Android? Is this
primarily geared at Apple devices or what (if so, that could be signaled more
clearly...)

Good luck

~~~
rubynerd
>> This is intended to be constructive criticism, though you may find it
harsh.

Any criticism is good right about now

It's very much a competitor to GMail, in that it's essentially GMail with some
filtering and IMAP magic on top

To start with, my problem that I am attempting to solve is notifications for
things I'm not interested in in the middle of the day, which I have attempted
to solve with notifications + funnel

The distinctive advantage is the ability to modify when email is sent to you,
plus the ability to filter different types of email (transactional,
newsletter, human beings)

You're right on the unprofessional copy, I'm sorry, and the punctuation
mistakes are simply a flaw in my English (It is my first language, there is no
excuse)

I spent 3 months on the backend making sure it receives email perfectly, and
securely, and I could not find a mail server written in Ruby which I could
modify and add features like Funnel to

It supports IMAP, IMAP is the primary method which devices will retrieve email
with (ActiveSync is patented by Microsoft, who would like licensing fees)

It will also support Android, as in, the native mail app on Android, I am just
prioritising iOS first because it avoids competition with native GMail, which
as one person, is nigh on impossible

Yes, it's primarily geared towards iOS devices for now, because I don't think
I can compete with the GMail + Android paring yet

Thank you very much for the criticism, I'll do some changes now

EDIT: changes are live, viva la full stop.

~~~
wickedchicken
> I spent 3 months on the backend making sure it receives email perfectly, and
> securely, and I could not find a mail server written in Ruby which I could
> modify and add features like Funnel to

The Sup mail client[1] went through a phase trying to handle IMAP directly,
but the consensus was that it was simply too awful. It did yield some colorful
code[2], but the fallout was that most people relied on offlineimap[3] to get
their mail successfully.

[1] <http://sup.rubyforge.org/>

[2] <http://sup.rubyforge.org/svn/trunk/lib/sup/imap.rb>

[3] <http://offlineimap.org/>

~~~
rubynerd
Thank you for the links, I'll look into Sup

SMTP was a piece of cake (apart from a weird SSL bug, which took up the
majority of my time), but IMAP does look significantly trickier from the RFC

I would love to be in a place where IMAP isn't needed, and I plan to use my
own API's for the client applications

Thank you for the code, in any case, it looks like a good laugh to read :D

------
djehuty
I intend this as constructive criticism, so I hope you understand that and
take it as such: please hire a designer. Email is an app one stares at all
day, it has to look good. Not fancy, but restful and pleasing to the eye with
function dictating form.

~~~
rubynerd
I promise I will hire a designer as hire #1, I'm aware my design is atrocious
:D

~~~
smashing
I actually like the red and black. It is powerful and direct, but probably
won't appeal to all sensibilities. Good luck.

~~~
cmelbye
It's not just the color scheme, in my opinion. I'm not a fan of the font, a
lot of the icons don't carry semantic meaning (for me, YMMV), etc.

~~~
rubynerd
The font is Segoe UI, I did that screenshot before I bought Proxima Nova, so
the font will become Proxima Nova (I may Instapaper this and give you a
bazillion settings for it)

As for the icons, they are a very tricky subject, I intended to create symbols
for major features such as Funnel and Triage and have common icons for
everything else, but it seems I've failed there

Which icons don't you like?

~~~
cmelbye
I generally don't like toolbars with lots of icons that don't have labels.
Google's web properties have been moving in this direction and I find myself
having to click buttons to figure out what they do.

~~~
rubynerd
How do you feel about hover-over Twipsy sort of things?

So when you hover over, a tooltip appears underneath the icon?

------
samstave
I posted this [1] here a few days ago:

> _Just off the top of my head you know what I would like to see as an email
> interface: Reddit. Each headline being the suvject being an email with all
> the comments being the replies. Different users can reply in a threaded way
> to all the recipients of the message etc. Obviously it would need in-line
> attachements and in-line pictures. It would be interesting to allow a vote
> system on messages. Rather than file them, you down or up vote them. But in
> your box, you have more than one vote so you can apply more or less weight
> to info. Along with tags and groups and many other things that I can think
> of... That would be cool._

\---

I think you're on to something if you can incorporate the reddit model moreso
in your app...

Though I think you need a designer pretty badly, and the costing model is too
high.

But Email needs disruption.

\---

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4292608>

~~~
rubynerd
>> the costing model is too high

I know, there is a feature that I thought was worth quite a bit, and I didn't
include it but based the pricing model off of

I'll attempt to fix this soon, it's currently late here and I'm very tired :(

~~~
samstave
Where are you located? I'd love to beta this and provide feedback? Would you
be interested in this... I am a product manager, IT background and other
things... I alos have an amazing Designer I could hook you up with...

I'd like to help.

Let me know. My email is in profile.

~~~
rubynerd
Thank you for the offer, I'll email you tomorrow, It's late here at the moment
and I really need sleep :(

------
madsushi
>>What's in the backend?

>>Derpyhooves, a custom mail engine I'm writing from scratch in Ruby.

I know that programmers like to come up with fun names for their projects, but
I think naming the core of your business after an MLP character is a bit over
the top.

~~~
rubynerd
How come?

------
jaynate
I would also suggest you have instrumentation set up for your app so that you
can see how users are using it. I've used mixpanel.com before, it's free to
start with. That way you can capture key user interactions that you're
interested in (eg, are people using the "foo" button?). You can also use it to
catch exceptions, especially where you think there might be issues like with
your ssl cert.

Good luck, I admire your initiative to "ship" your project and it looks like
you are getting good feedback on HN thus far.

~~~
rubynerd
The SSL errors are not errors I can catch, well, not without piecing nginx
apart, and my C is a little rusty :/

I've had great fun looking at AirTraffic from gaug.es, although thank you for
the recommendation for Mixpanel, I'll look into it

------
_lex
More constructive criticism: your benefits seem to really be features. To
convert your features to benefits, you need to talk about likely possible use
cases. For example, one "benefit" that you list is "Custom notifications", but
that doesn't really tell me anything - it doesn't connect to me at all.
Instead if you had said "Get invoice notifications when you get to work", that
would resonate with me more. You'd obviously have to tailor your benefits to
your target customers.

------
jaynate
Looks like you have a problem with your ssl cert. It's not trusted.

~~~
rubynerd
Oh dear :/ apparently you're one of the 0.7% which the provider doesn't cover.
I'm sorry, would you like me to disable it?

~~~
jaimzob
I hit this too - what does "doesn't cover" mean above? If two people have
already hit this you might be having problems with more than 0.7%...

~~~
rubynerd
Yea, 2/279 is much, much larger than what I thought

This is quite a big issue, what OS/browser are you using?

~~~
jaimzob
Chrome 19.0.1084.56 on OSX 10.7.4...

~~~
rubynerd
OK, Thank you for the report, I will disable SSL in the future, because the
amount of people seeing scaring errors is too high :/

EDIT: OK I won't disable SSL

~~~
micheljansen
No, the proper response to this is to fork out more money for a certificate
that is more widely supported! It's email, it should be secure / trustworthy?

~~~
rubynerd
Yes, when I can, I will buy a new certificate, but I can't at the moment,
sorry

------
stcredzero
Change add notifications, events, and todo, and I might find it worth $20.

------
georgespencer
Your main site is down but I'd like to send you a (nice!) email. How?

~~~
rubynerd
x@rubynerd.net if you want :D

------
neya
Please don't mistake this for flame, but instead its intended to be
constructive:

As a UI/UX guy, I would say:

1) The homepage sucks. Really. The red color is so bright that it would
attract all the user's attention and would make them ignore the important
features you have advertised below

Red is used to implement anything important (like call-to-action buttons) and
it looks like you are over-using red. Its a very bad sign, especially when the
UI is one of the selling points, and especially when you are charging a
premium ($20).

2) >A complete replacement for GMail

a) Is going to attract a lot of negative attention, b) is not ethical

Why? Because it is not a complete replacement for Gmail and never will be.

Why not? Because of various reasons - UI, Features (Some features in Gmail
labs aren't available with yours) and finally Price.

3)$20 a month for email is overkill. And there's absolutely no reason why as
an end user I should use yours over Gmail, because its free. From what I see,
some of the features you claim to provide, which you claim to make your app
superior to Gmail fail to impress me. For example, the event scheduling. I'm
sure I can do something close with Google's calendar app?

4)If you are targeting Gmail users, then, for what platform? PC? Mac??
Android?? iPhone??? Be clear, right now its hard to digest if this is just a
weekend hack or a serious app, because the pitch of your app. isn't clear
enough, atleast not on the homepage. (Being brutally honest)

5) There was another guy who tried the same thing - I believe its called
Mailapp. It would be good for you, if you could learn from his mistakes, you
can find his post here on HN and how much criticism he received despite his UI
being significantly better than yours, by many folds. Read what people expect,
from the comments here on HN on the mail app, I believe it would help you a
lot.

There is a fundamental problem with such apps. Embracing Apple-sque minimal
User-Interface design is a good idea only when you know what you're doing and
how things should look. There is a reason why important elements like the
compose button in Gmail are in red. There is a reason why links are in blue.
First try to understand these reasons behind the psychology of colors before
you get minimal. Making something/Marketing something minimal doesn't make you
smart or superior, infact you will be offending many users because of your
poor understanding of UX. Look at the home page, look at the red color for the
unread messages. In one sentence - Its highly un-professional, especially
considering the fact that you charge me $20 for this.

See, we live in a time where for $50 a year we get an account on a cool photo-
sharing site like 500px. Please consider reducing the price if you want to get
in more users. For $20 a month, one can run their own VPS (Linode) and run
their own E-Mail server..(but not sure why anyone would do that thought, but
just saying)

Please do not get offended, I sincerely want you to improve your app. All the
best, my friend, wishing you good luck!!

