

Interesting New Startup - tomrik
http://convertmyflash.com/

======
coryl
This was posted a week ago under 'Ask HN' as a review.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2009521>

It was deleted after the poster was outed for making fake accounts to comment
and upvote. It shouldn't detract from the startup and its reviews, but I guess
at least an apology is in order for trying to game the community.

~~~
artur_mak
umm..those were REAL accounts by real people..who truly liked the service. All
i wanted to do was to spark a conversation..which is Finally happening. Im not
running for president. i dont need votes. just your feedback which im very
grateful for.. thank u HN

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lhorie
The domain name is pretty clever assuming your customers are already drinking
the "flash-is-dead" koolaid, but this is a service that any web developer can
offer. Incidentally, the tracypaul demo isn't HTML5, and doesn't even animate
like in the original site.

And don't even get me started on the comment at the top triggering quirksmode.

~~~
jaysonelliot
I don't think you need to drink any "koolaid."

There are many reasons to convert from Flash to HTML, not least of which is
cross-device compatibility. Philosophy and ideological arguments might be
interesting over coffee at 3am, but right now, companies want HTML5 sites.

Sure, any web developer can offer this service. The point is that they ARE
doing it, and packaging their service very well.

I've already sent this site to friends at three different agencies, and got
enthusiastic responses all around.

~~~
lhorie
For the record, I'm not trying to start a silly argument about philosophies or
whatever, I'm just making an observation that many people who are not techies
don't really care if you're using a guy in tights or a movie about coffee.

FWIW, my company already offers these same services, (in addition to many
other). These days, you'd be foolish not to, since it requires such a trivial
skillset (as far as webdevs go anyways).

I did mention that I liked the domain name. I just wasn't all that impressed
with the quality of the demo (both in terms of pizzazz and code quality).

~~~
jaysonelliot
I have to agree now that I've looked more at what they're really doing.

It's a good concept/name, like you say, but doesn't look like they're actually
executing on it.

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pedalpete
To me, the idea of 'converting my flash' isn't just about content. I think
they need to set the bar low for customers.

I was expecting that somehow they were maintaining the animation and
interaction of flash.

Of course it is very impressive that in the demo they are able to take a flash
heavy site and make the content viewable in a similar design but in straight
html. They have lost the music, the animations, and some of the design
intricacies.

For most of these reasons, I think that a good developer/designer would push
the customer to move the site to html5 and pay a few thousand dollars and only
maintain one code base. It seems to me that at some point, something here
would become a legacy system. If the world is going to HTML5, should I be
writing in Flash and converting (and to a less engaging experience)?

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pak
What the heck is an "iTouch"?

Using correct brand names conveys trustworthiness.

~~~
nonrecursive
ipod touch. I've seen/heard it referred to as iTouch numerous times.

~~~
joshma
pak definitely knew what an iTouch was, and I similarly cringe when I hear
people refer to it like so.

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djhworld
It's not really 'convert my flash' is it, it's 'adapt my homepage to work with
non-flash compatible devices'

It's a compromise more than a direct translation!

Nice idea though, I like the succinctness of their message, it gets the idea
out to people what they do instead of just offering it as one of their
services

~~~
artur_mak
it is..actually.

we can create an exact replica of the flash site both in design and
functionality. ( but this would be a custom project with a greater price tag )

but we realized giving them 95% their flash site is good enough for them to
start out. Then as they grow, they can easily build on the framework
themselves or have us do it.

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anonymousu1234
I find their service pretty low quality. Especially for 900$.

Their example is this website: <http://www.tracypaul.com/> That they converted
to this: <http://tracypaul.convertmyflash.com/>

The pages are not the same, much less nicer. No music anymore (even tho I
don't like music, html5 has music and I think it is important for the site to
be identical). Also if you change pages on the html5 site, there is no
animation! It just changes pages in the browser, which is ugly and completely
useless! AJAX!!!

------
jaysonelliot
Without digging on the details of the service, the concept is great.

Incredibly easy to sell to a client, and a strong promise. If they can just
deliver, they'll be doing great for the immediate future.

