
Show HN: My new project - ask.io - ca98am79
http://ask.io/
======
emhart
I dig it. I actually submitted a potential favor, too. I like that you want to
focus on a single idea each week, I like that it is small and specific (and
finding later on the about page that the goal was to be small and specific was
great, too.)

Some people are weirdly upset/dismissive because similar things exist in the
world. I don't care about that whatsoever. With this small gesture (and great
domain as ericabiz pointed out) you'll likely end up doing more for others on
a weekly basis than you were before. Why would anyone ever be annoyed by that?

Good luck with the project.

------
skore
> My wife is not well and was recently hospitalized, but her birthday is
> coming up. I think it would make her happy to receive a lot of birthday
> cards. Could you please send her a birthday card?

Wait, so your wife is sick and you think a lot of cards from random strangers
will cheer her up? In my experience, that's rarely how wives (or for that
matter: husbands) work.

I'm all for random acts of kindness... not too sure about soliciting them.

~~~
ericabiz
> That's rarely how wifes work.

Sigh...sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't change my username to "tokenwoman", a
la "tokenadult". :P

This should go without saying, but not all "wifes" (sp) work the same. I had
surgery recently and I would have loved this. Plus, I think it's awesome that
the OP managed to score ask.io--a great, short domain name--and is using it
for charitable purposes. Cool!

Also, I think I'd have enough trust and faith in OP that either:

1) His wife is aware of this and is supportive of it and/or 2) He knows his
wife well enough to know that she'll get a kick out of it.

~~~
raverbashing
And are you sure all cards will be nice and fluffy?

Or, I'm sure an Atheist would receive a lot of "I'm praying for Jesus to make
it better" cards (or any other way around really, this is just an example)

~~~
robomartin
> an Atheist would receive a lot of "I'm praying for Jesus to make it better"
> cards

I'm an atheist. I've had believer friends ask if they could pray over me
during a time when I was navigating difficulties. Do you know what I said? "I
would be honored". Do you understand why? Because, while I don't share their
belief system I recognize their request comes from only one place: love and
caring. It would take a pedantic asshole to reject something coming from such
a place. So, they did, and they felt better for it. And I did too. Good
friends.

I am not necessarily critical of your comment. Just wanted to point out that
not all atheists are militant fire breathing monsters. I do get upset when
religion gets in the way of scientific truth and social justice (vaccines, gay
rights, etc.). That said, in general terms, I am having trouble thinking of
any believers in our group of family and friends whom I'd consider to be
undesirable people. I would, without a doubt, be happy to receive a "I am
praying for Jesus to make it better" card from any of them during trying
times.

~~~
raverbashing
As I said, it is only an example, and could go in a lot of different, but
similar ways.

I wouldn't be offended if that happened to me.

"It would take a pedantic asshole to reject something coming from such a
place"

Yes, that's the main problem, as there would be people sending offensive cards
there's also "overly sensitive people" that would be beyond themselves because
of something like that.

~~~
robomartin
> as there would be people sending offensive cards there's also "overly
> sensitive people" that would be beyond themselves because of something like
> that

Agreed.

------
jboynyc
I clicked on FAQ hoping to learn a bit about how featured favors are selected,
what principles inform the selection process (Christian charity as the Mother
Theresa quote suggests, or something else?), and what level of vetting goes
into it (e.g., in the current case, did you make some calls to find out
whether the person _really_ is ill?).

Needless to say, I came up short. I think I'm not the only one who'll want to
know some of these details before bookmarking the site and returning on a
weekly basis.

~~~
ca98am79
Good feedback - thanks. I was hoping that by posting to HN I could fill out
the FAQ with questions that people may have. I will update the FAQ this week.

p.s. the current favor is for my wife

~~~
bjhoops1
I also think it would be nice to have a search/browse page to see more than
one favor. I looked for such a feature and of course didn't see it. That way
if the current favor isn't my cup of tea, I might find something else that is.

~~~
Hellenion
I think this is omitted in spirit of the slow web.

------
bgnm2000
I like this, but I think for it to be sticky, you really need to focus on a
follow up to the previous week's favor (i.e. reaction videos, photos, stories,
etc.). People definitely like to do good things, but they want to see the
impact more. That feedback loop will also motivate people to help the next
ask.

~~~
ca98am79
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I'm thinking of doing that in a blog (e.g.
blog.ask.io, which isn't live yet). I plan to follow up with every favor.

------
missing_cipher
I don't know, maybe I'm too cynical, but I don't think posting personal
information online is a good idea.

~~~
nmcfarl
If your street address isn’t on the internet you are doing way better than I.

Some recruiter a 5 or 7 years ago or so went so far as to scan my paper
resume, (with my address), did OCR, and posted it on the net.

My wife’s in a profession that needs registration with the state - they post
the office address in the net - so no home offices.

Got a land line, and in the white pages - like everyone in my parent’s
generation? Your address is on whitepages.com (and plenty of other places.)

The number of ways this info leaks to the net is astounding.

~~~
grecy
Why would your resume have your actual street address?

Surely city name is enough granularity. (mine doesn't even have that)

It's also why mine doesn't have my actual DOB.

------
vikp
This is an interesting idea. I don't know if I would be comfortable posting my
address, though.

Definitely not trying to make this political, but please do more reading about
"Mother" Teresa before quoting her as an inspiration:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/10/mommie_dearest.html),
[http://www.amazon.com/Missionary-Position-Mother-Teresa-
Prac...](http://www.amazon.com/Missionary-Position-Mother-Teresa-
Practice/dp/1455523003) and
[http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uom-
mta022813...](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uom-
mta022813.php) .

~~~
danpalmer
Came here to mention this. 'Mother Theresa' evokes charitable feelings and
connotations for many people, for some (myself included) though it's a very
negative thing.

------
lessnonymous
Lovely idea. There's too much snark in the world. Any project aimed at making
the world a better place is awesome.

Here's some immediate feedback that might (or might not!) help:

* One per week seems too long and people wont ever come back. More than one at a time seems too much. How about making it like Groupon etc and have an 'ask of the day' and then 'side asks' for things you'll never front-page, but are interesting?

* I'd love to see the Groupon idea stretched. Add an "I did this" button (or an "I'm doing this" that posts a follow up email asking if you've done it 24 hours later)

* Needs a button to 'share this ask on Facebook/Twitter/...'. Same after someone has 'done this'.

* I'd post a card if it looked like people were posting cards.

* As naff as it sounds, "Needs more gamification"

~~~
OvidNaso
Some of these suggestions appear not to coincide with the creator's 'slow web'
philosophy, however.

[http://theslowweb.com/](http://theslowweb.com/)

~~~
lessnonymous
They certainly don't. My suggestions were more in line with creating a
successful site.

While I understand the philosophy of the 'slow web', I can't see it creating
successful websites that depend (at some level) on return customers.

The other option for traction would be search engine traffic, and that isn't
(likely) to happen with ask.io. (A third traffic option is direct referrals,
but they'll be specific to a week: hey everyone, send my wife a card: ask.io!
.. and thus wont create return traffic)

The slow web is better for disseminating unchanging information - like a
dictionary or encyclopedia - that's needed on-demand.

I'd be interested in OP's thoughts on his Slow Web philosophy and creating
traction with ask.io.

~~~
chewxy
Hi. Not OP, but I who wrote the initial content of The Slow Web here.

The Slow Web and traction are not opposed, in my opinion. You CAN have
traction without choosing to annoy the crap outta your users. It comes from
understanding what your users are (or the target market you want to chase).

If you want to make a Slow Web service, understand then that your users
aren't/shouldn'tbe the kind that are interested in logging in everyday to
check on updates. Your marketing to your users would need to be a longer term
relationship thing. It would of course be easy to annoy the shit out of your
customers, but it's in my opinion that all that does is longer term harm.

I stopped using Facebook, LinkedIn for that reason. Once the novelty wears
off, you stop using anyway.

------
toxiczone
There is too little in it for anyone to have any confidence in it. Meaning, no
privacy policy, terms n conditions, ways to contact you (as a street address
or real entity, other than an anonymous looking gmail address). Any of your
forms do not validate for a real email address, which makes me nervous about
the security of the data you're collecting... (read SQL injection and not
knowing your programming skills).

No offense please, but these are all little things that would make me nervous
before submitting some data.

And then there is a favor asked about sending cards to a woman that no one
knows, and someone should wonder if it's an ex-boyfriend playing a prank or
the real deal. It doesn't show any affiliation between ask.io itself (you) and
the woman in question.... Checking out humbly doesn't help either, it is as
empty of info as ask.io

Good luck to you and your wife, best recovery!

TZ

------
krmmalik
There's a whole sub-reddit that's dedicated to exactly the same thing at
/r/favors

That's not to discredit this project though. Some things might work better on
Reddit and some might work better on a dedicated website.

~~~
antjanus
didn't know about it, thanks! :)

~~~
davidrudder
I think any project worth doing will have some competition. "competition" can
also mean "market validation". I understand you're not trying to get rich off
this, but I think you'd like it if someone used it :) In my opinion, the fact
that reddit already does it means you're probably onto something.

------
jcutrell
I very much like this idea.

I think the most important and persistent feedback would be to offer more
(even if just a few more) asks on the front page. While it makes sense to
limit focus, by having one a week, I feel entirely less compelled to keep
ask.io on the forefront of my mind.

If you do choose to stick with one, make a few macros or something like that
to allow people to be reminded of the newest ask once a week. I have a lot of
things to do on Mondays, so I could see this falling behind. Perhaps you
develop a very simple iphone app that pushes a notification of the newest ask?

Other options would be an email list or an easy-to-use calendar reminder.
Think ICS. You could also take advantage of the new push notifications for
Safari.

~~~
franstereo
What if you allowed people to pool money for it? Give $1 a week to the winner
based on up votes and then that money goes for whatever the ask is. Automatic
charges on your card, reminder every week to vote. Eliminates some of the more
frivolous uses.

------
vinhboy
Dude --- It's too late, but next time:
[https://poboxes.usps.com/poboxonline/search/landingPage.do](https://poboxes.usps.com/poboxonline/search/landingPage.do)

They have a saying on reddit "your poor inbox"

------
davidrudder
I hate to be the....umm...what's the opposite of naysayer? Yaysayer? I hate to
be the yaysayer here, but...

1) The design is great! Simple, fast, easy to read. I understood the point
immediately.

2) There's a use for this. I won't say "need", because you know there isn't a
need. But, people will find it nice and will use it.

3) If you're doing this to get rich, then I misread you and you should quit
now. But, if you're doing this to do something good, then I think you nailed
it.

Now, for some naysaying: 1) As others have said, putting your wife's real name
and address up was simply stupid. Take it down, now.

2) Moderation? How do you choose which ask to feature?

------
franstereo
People are getting hung up on the card favor. A couple unsolicited
suggestions: \- Show more than one idea on the homepage and allow people to up
vote what they think is best \- Idea with most votes gets sent out to folks
every X

Advantage is this let's the community pick what is relevant, makes your life
easier (less editorial), enables you to grow to more than 1 idea per week as
there might be runner ups, likely to increase the quality of what people
submit as there will be competition.

~~~
nationcrafting
Totally agree with this comment. The whole Slow Web thing is a nice
philosophy, but you have to outweigh that principle with the principle of
making this website maximise its functionality, the function that rationalises
its existence in the first place.

Now, I can understand that it's not great for Mike to have to filter through
all these requests, which is why your solution offers the best hope: let other
users do the filtering by upvoting/downvoting from the list. In fact, you
could just create a pile and let the top request be somewhat bigger than the
others.

If you play this out properly, it could be done much better than
impossible.com

------
chasing
I'm sorry, but I feel like you've got some major problems, here.

1) There's no context on your wife. Hospitalized recently? For what? Cancer?
Stubbed toe? And birthday cards... Help how? If I were in the hospital for
something serious, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care one whit about receiving
cards from people who knew nothing about me.

2) You say below "the current favor is for my wife." Really? You made a site
to solicit birthday cards for your wife and plastered a Mother Theresa quote
on it to give it the veneer of a charity? This feels weird.

3) I'm all for using the power of social media to help people. If this is
really your goal, then you need to work on your execution. Having the internet
send a bunch of anonymous birthday cards to someone they don't know is cute,
but it's a very low-level form of helping. Think of ways to leverage social
media to really put into action the Mother Theresa quote you're using. What
you're asking people to do is not "love." "Love" is not sending a card to
someone you don't know. Love is something deeper.

~~~
tjbiddle
OP is not necessarily the one who asked that favor - Anyone can submit a favor
and one is chosen each week:
[http://ask.io/about.html](http://ask.io/about.html)

------
mattholtom
Well I bit and sent a card to the current favour. I'm not normally such a
softie, so that's gotta be a good sign. Way to go on the project!

------
omeid2
> [231 points] Show /hn/: I ripped off an existing product and added Bootstrap
> to it.

Edit: that is from "What 4chan thinks about HN":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373)

~~~
possibilistic
I don't think this is constructive, and I feel others would agree with me.
Regardless of your sentiment, the OP worked to create this. Please provide
helpful criticism instead of decrying supposed pitfalls in HN. We already have
enough snark; besides, every community has its own issues.

Take no offense. I'd just like to imagine that HN will remain constructive and
helpful to our community.

~~~
omeid2
I am not offended, but quite bluntly I don't see any 'work' that has gone into
this project, it is basically the incidents that happened in reddit
(/Askreddit, was the pizza case?) behind Bootstrap with very little content in
FAQ and non-existent critical content around such projects: Terms and
Conditions and Privacy Policy. Not even a copyright notice.

I am sorry, but that is just not good enough.

~~~
mynameisvlad
... What? Do you even know what /r/AskReddit is? Because it's definitely not
this. It's for asking questions and then getting them answered by lots of
people.

------
ozh
Side thought: nice domain. Registered since 2007, but you were keeping it in
case you had a nice idea to use with?

~~~
brandoncapecci
Ugh I bought Ask.io for one of my own projects. Domai.nr said it was
available, I paid, and after about a month they informed it it didn't go
through for some reason I don't remember (thankfully refunding me). I was
pretty pissed... I had already made shirts.

~~~
ozh
Domainr is fun (and really neat) to find cool domain names, but they're not a
registrar, they just output affiliate links.

Reminder: gandi.net has 29€/year .io registration and they provide top notch
service.

------
sejje
This is a simple idea with big potential.

You get to be a superhero to a few people, and that's good for everyone.

------
GrinningFool
Cool and fun. I'd just recommend making it more obvious what people are seeing
when they view the landing page.

When I first landed, I kind of thought you personally were asking for this
thing. It took a moment to process the context and realize that this wasn't
the case.

------
aniketpant
Interesting idea. I am pretty sure I might put up something up there someday.

~~~
jh3
> I am pretty sure I might put up something up there someday

This sounds like a nice way of saying you'll completely forget about this
website in several hours and will never put anything on it ever.

Or at least I'm pretty sure that's what it might mean :)

~~~
aniketpant
I choose to not sound cocky here. But, I have bookmarked it and I tend to
bookmark stuff which I do go back to :)

~~~
jh3
Well, good! :)

------
KhalidLondon
No doubt that doing good to others brings happiness. So anything in this space
that adds a smile to peoples' faces would probably work. Agree with others on
publishing addresses. Starting out in a small niche is a must before allowing
others to join in. Who would I do personal favours for? Family & friends, poor
folks (specially in developing countries or poor hoods), sick people, homeless
individuals, and misfortunate ones...

------
antocv
Whats the deal with these .io domains?

How is that supposed to be talked out "ask eye ooh", "ask input output", "ask
eye yo"?

~~~
optymizer
ASCIIO

~~~
mst
[http://p3rl.org/App::Asciio](http://p3rl.org/App::Asciio) ? :)

------
johnmurch
Doing this now using [https://www.postable.com](https://www.postable.com) \-
Good Luck!

------
johnchristopher
I really dig it! And I like sending/receiving postcards from all over the
world, I'll post one tomorrow.

------
leerodgers
Random cards could be comforting, but the sad thing is that you would hope you
would get cards from friends and family. Those seem to be a thing of the past
(except from grandparents). Even thank you cards have gotten pretty rare. This
is the age of the wall post... :(

------
vojant
I don't like it. We have many places (Twitter, Reddit etc.) to ask about such
things. I doubt someone will enter this website only to help someone. Also I
can't find any information how you will select favors.

The only thing I like about this project is clean design.

------
DanBC
It's like Craig Shergold all over again.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Shergold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Shergold)

------
footpixel
I think this is a fantastic idea, great job!

------
samweinberg
I'm assuming new favors are checked for quality before being lined up in the
queue, right?

------
poissonpie
This is, quite simply, lovely.

------
AncoraImparo
OP... I love this.

Well played!

------
ozh
"This is nice and all but we are not Reddit" coming in 3... 2... 1...

