
Ask HN: Share your projects and the stories behind them - cjbarber
From Show HN: Highlighting Efforts of Creation from Hacker News [1]<p>[1]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6291348<p>Conditions:<p>- all posts must include a story explaining why you care about the project<p>- if you post, you should give feedback to 4-5 other posts<p>I&#x27;ll start!<p>Me and a friend from Stanford built a tool so that you don&#x27;t miss opportunities. Within gmail, it reminds you of emails you sent that weren&#x27;t replied to.<p>The url: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gmailunreplieds.meteor.com&#x2F;<p>We are also building a site for full time meteor.js, node.js and golang jobs, comment or email me if you&#x27;re looking :)
======
ronilan
I've built PlaceUnit. I'm sole developer/designer.

[http://www.placeunit.com](http://www.placeunit.com)

[http://AppStore.com/placeunit](http://AppStore.com/placeunit)

It's an app that lets anyone build a mini-responsive website entirely from
their iPhone/iPad.

I knew someone who needed a new site. So instead of giving him a fish, I got
him a fishing rod.. :)

~~~
zizee
Looks pretty neat (don't have an ios device to try it for real). Not sure if
is a problem with my browser, but the tour doesn't seem to work (can't click
the iphone area down the bottom).

I liked the promo video, although I found the start camera clicking sounds a
bit jarring (but could be because I am using earbuds). The music is great. Did
you license that? Or is it creative commons? I'm curious to know if there is a
good place to find such stuff?

~~~
ronilan
Thanks for the debug input. Will look into it.

Music is licensed via
[http://www.themusicbed.com/](http://www.themusicbed.com/)

Tip regarding music selection - it takes a lot of time to listen, so it is
more efficient to listen only to what can be licensed and skip browsing
YouTube for pop songs you'll never be able to get...

Album here:
[http://romanandalaina.com/?page_id=22](http://romanandalaina.com/?page_id=22)

~~~
zizee
Cool, will check it out. Out of curiosity, how much did it cost to licence the
tune? And what are you allowed to use it for?

~~~
ronilan
LICENSE TYPE: Business / Corporate // Streaming Use Only // Single Use |
Perpetual // 0-10 Employees => 199.00

~~~
zizee
Awesome info, thanks.

------
imperialWicket
I'll go too: I've been building a Hubot script for interfacing with Asgard
from NetflixOSS.

[https://github.com/imperialwicket/hubot-
asgard](https://github.com/imperialwicket/hubot-asgard)

I think the chatbot mentality is a good one, as it forces you to
script/automate things so that a chatbot can accomplish them. That level of
automation is a good target imo. It's also a great way to be certain that you
can solve many issues remotely - since you can generally provide a meaningful
chatbot command via mobile device.

In terms of scaling and cloud (aws) management, Asgard is awesome (seriously -
if you're on aws and haven't checked it out, go now:
[https://github.com/Netflix/asgard/wiki](https://github.com/Netflix/asgard/wiki)).
The biggest complaint I have about Asgard as a tool, is it feels like more
than most organizations need; because it is. My goal with the hubot-asgard
scripts is to wrap some of the more essential features, and hide the bulk of
the solution that many orgs just see as excess tooling.

There's also the Cloud Prize...

If anyone is interested and needs assistance or wants particular features that
aren't wrapped yet (it's still very young) I'd love to know. And of course -
all feedback is welcome and appreciated.

~~~
cjbarber
Awesome stuff, I can see this being very useful.

I believe Airbnb has built an internal solution for this, I'm sure other
people would be interested.

------
ukoki
I'm building general-purpose spaced-repetition (flashcard) software for the
browser:

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

It started with me wanting to learn Chinese characters and being annoyed at
Anki's UI/UX (Oddly I also "accidentally" learned all US state capitals and
World capitals while debugging the thing).

It's Meteor + Heroku + AWS S3 (user card review data via client-side signed
uploads)

~~~
gabemart
I think it's great! Although I haven't used a flash card app before, so I'm
not sure how qualified a judge I am.

My only comment is that on screen widths between about 780px and 1200px, the
text and fields in the two side widgets of the main flash card view overflow
from their white backgrounds.

------
victoriap
I am working on Jobrupt, a job search and recruitment tool for discreet job
interviews. It helps you to make the first step for a job interview to work
with an existing connection. [http://www.jobrupt.com](http://www.jobrupt.com)

Show HN is the suggested way, but a monthly startup roundup would be
interesting. Show HN does not bring enough attention somehow recently.

~~~
sideproject
[http://www.hnshowcase.com/](http://www.hnshowcase.com/) and
[http://showinghn.com](http://showinghn.com) are good ways to get a summary of
Show HN posts.

~~~
victoriap
Thanks for the idea. Interestingly reddit /r/startups brings more feedback
than HN. Maybe you may hunt there for side projects too.

~~~
sideproject
here's another subreddit (less popular) for "show hn" type -
[http://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/](http://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/)

------
damniatx
I built a flickr client app for iOS. I have two flickr client app as my
project to learn building iOS app since 2010. and This is my latest iOS app.
You can see my own improvement between this two application. nearly three
years apart.

[1] [http://pureflickr.com](http://pureflickr.com)

[2] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pure-for-
flickr/id660272928?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pure-for-
flickr/id660272928?ls=1&mt=8)

[3] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/potretr-flickr-photos-
browse...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/potretr-flickr-photos-
browser/id384290407?mt=8)

------
sideproject
I'm building a market place for side projects

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

I thought it would be great to not let many of the interesting side projects
done by developers, entrepreneurs be abandoned like so many, but let them find
home in the hands of others. It's early days and we are learning and figuring
out our ways.

~~~
imperialWicket
This feels pretty polished for an early days project. My few initial nit-
picks:

The Help/Support feels a little buried within the FAQ section - "support" is
in the menu, but Seller's Guide and Buyer's Guide seem important, and I
wouldn't have thought to look under FAQ.

Also when money is involved, even if you're clear about not handling the
monetary exchange, I tend to look for an About, or more concrete contact
details. Favorites icon would be nice, too.

~~~
ronilan
I second that. Be clear who you are and that you are a marketplace and not
asking for transaction fees.

------
zizee
I've built Authic with a friend ([http://authic.com](http://authic.com)).
Authic is a SASS User Authentication, Management, Plans and Payments. Our aim
is to make as service that is as easy to integrate with as Facebook Connect,
but will allow you to authenticate your users, reset their passwords,
configure payment plans and setup recurring billing with ease.

We really want this tool to make it much easier/quicker to let devs release
and launch their own SAAS products, concentrating on their unique
functionality and not waste their time with the boring stuff.

~~~
cjbarber
Very nice. I think your value prop/statement on the homepage should be
something along the lines of "Saving you the time and stress required to
reimplement user account tiers and auth."

The main value will be people who are doing plans and payments - because they
are the ones with money, so focusing on them in the value statement might be
good.

Also I'd say mention it's for rails and node.js on the front page, I almost
left the site because I wasn't sure if it was for anything other than rails
(also explicitly state rails, obviously most people know that gem == rails but
still worth being explicit).

~~~
zizee
Thanks for the great (concrete) feedback! We definitely need to work on our
homepage messaging and those are all great starting points.

------
ghc
I built [http://algorithmic.ly](http://algorithmic.ly), a company that helps
you add intelligence to your applications by providing algorithms as a
service.

I mentor a lot of startups in Boston. Between the Harvard Innovation Lab, CIC,
Lean Startup Machine, Youth Cities and others, I've heard a lot about what
problems early tech startups face. A big one I see with a lot of startups is
that they have some idea that requires a relatively simple or at least well
known algorithm, but they have neither the expertise nor infrastructure to
implement it themselves or even install Mahout.

In an effort to help these companies, I created a service to help startups run
algorithms without having to worry about the details. You just choose the
algorithm you need and build a data model appropriate to your project, and
then Algorithmic.ly generates an API for you to interact with your model and
continuously runs the algorithm you need on your data. Then all you need to do
is query Algorithmic.ly for the algorithm results whenever you need them.

This makes everything from spatial search to netflix-style recommendations
within the reach of small startups who only have web developers or iOS
developers and can't afford hiring data scientists to do it for them. Right
now we're in a limited beta with several startups as we figure out how to
scale, but we're looking for more companies we can help, especially in the
Boston startup ecosystem.

~~~
cjbarber
Wow. Unbelievably cool. Best of luck - I can see this doing very well. I'll
shoot you an email: team@foldr.co?

~~~
ghc
Thanks! You can send me an email either there or brendan@algorithmic.ly .

------
colinm
[http://www.fret1.com](http://www.fret1.com)

A tool for seeing the relationship between chord & scales on the guitar. I
built this a few years back to sharpen my Silverlight skills. (stop
chuckling). Just rewrote it in HTML & JS, with help from teoria.js.

~~~
Nicholas_C
I love this. Thanks!

------
covgjai
Please have a look at,

[http://www.bugscore.com/](http://www.bugscore.com/) and let me know your
feedback & suggestions.

You can use Bugscore to score a product you have used or seen, a business you
have worked at or one that has served you and finally, people you have met or
seen. It's a platform for you to express your opinion on almost anything on
Earth! Similarly, you can see what others think about products. The same goes
for businesses (including schools and colleges).

~~~
znt
Here is a bug:

1- Click on "What is Bugscore" link

2- Close the video popup while it is playing

3- Navigate to another page via bugscore search

4- Click back button

5- Video starts playing in the background

Another "bug":

[http://www.bugscore.com/profiles.php?profile_id=39606](http://www.bugscore.com/profiles.php?profile_id=39606)

So this profile belongs to the Founder of modern Turkey. Who died on 1938. But
there is a button for sending a "message" to him.

~~~
covgjai
Thanks, we will look into both the issues.

------
dpapathanasiou
I created a wikipedia-style language learning site[1] starting with Japanese
and English.

It was inspired by a trip to Japan last year[2] after having been away for a
while and seeing how badly my reading comprehension had deteriorated.

[1] [http://www.macaronics.com/](http://www.macaronics.com/)

[2] [http://denis.papathanasiou.org/2012/06/10/yokaben-read-
write...](http://denis.papathanasiou.org/2012/06/10/yokaben-read-write-learn/)

~~~
imperialWicket
This is a nice solution for motivated individuals, and serves as a good
practice tool for translators.

I'm not sure which OS's come with Japanese characters installed these days,
but I ended up here pretty quickly:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Installing_Japanese_chara...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Installing_Japanese_character_sets)
, a link or similar instructions might save a couple searches (unless it's
just me who didn't have them installed already).

------
captn3m0
I built a leaderboard application for teams that lets you track your & your
team's progress on various "scorable" services such as HN(karma), project
euler (problems solved), spoj(score), stackexchange(points) and lots other
services. It was meant to be used as a game-board for all of us, so we can
track everyone.

Its open-sourced at github.com/sdslabs/leaderboard and uses github
organizations for authentication (anyone in your org can login).

~~~
cjbarber
Sounds great, the demo appears down for me:

[http://score.sdslabs.co.in/](http://score.sdslabs.co.in/)

Any plans to show the movers and shakers/those who are improving fast? Or
maybe the top players at the end of each week? I could see this being
repurposed to company metrics like tickets closed and such to gamify certain
aspects of productivity.

------
shearnie
I'm building a business process modelling and workflow automation tool.
[https://flowplane.com](https://flowplane.com)

I tell my wife I'm obsessed with models.

------
6thSigma
A directory for APIs: [http://www.apiforthat.com/](http://www.apiforthat.com/)

It's been getting pretty good traction thanks to decently high Google search
rankings for API related queries. A decent amount of large companies have
submitted their APIs or requested to claim their page.

I haven't been able to spend a lot of time on it recently to add features but
I have a lot of cool stuff in mind.

~~~
imperialWicket
This is a good idea. I seem to remember a couple similar directories, but am
having trouble digging up links this morning.

From an API-consumer perspective, things like verified user ratings, verified
implementations/testimonials, updates, and library/wrapper details would be
awesome. That said, I see how these features wouldn't make it into an early
cut, or why they'd be avoided; just my 2 cents.

~~~
6thSigma
Thanks! Ya, I definitely want to make the site more consumer focused. I get a
lot of interest from the producer side but not as much from the consumer side.

------
jbaiter
I built a tool to help with scanning books in a more efficient manner:

[http://github.com/jbaiter/spreads](http://github.com/jbaiter/spreads)

[http://spreads.readthedocs.org](http://spreads.readthedocs.org)

With it, going from a physical book to a digitized, postprocessed and OCRed
PDF takes around 30-40 minutes for an average 300-400pg book with no
pictures/illustrations.

My (rather lofty, I ad mit) motivation was to make it as easy as possible for
people to free printed information from their pyhsical shackles and enable
them to share it (I'm currently working on a plugin that allows the user to
directly upload a scanned book to the Internet Archive).

The inspiration for it came after I purchased a kit for Daniel Reeds'
incredible DIYBookScanner[1] and built it on a free weekend. Upon toying with
it, I realized that, while there was a lot of great software available for
helping with the scanning and postprocessing, using it required a lot of often
tedious manual interactions that could easily be automated.

The tool basically handles all communication with the capture devices
(cameras, but the code is kept rather general as to allow for the usage of
mobile phones or flatbed scanners) and calls a bunch of 3rd party applications
to deal with postprocessing and output generation.

I learned a lot about multithreading/multiprocessing in Python, got to brush
up my PySide knowledge and am currently learning AngularJS by developing a
webinterface for it, to allow the headless control of Raspberry Pi-connected
scanners.

[1] [http://www.diybookscanner.org/](http://www.diybookscanner.org/)

------
PhilipA
I once lost a website, no backup or anything. There is a saying that "Real men
don't do backups, they cry", well I guess I learned my lesson.

I had to crawl the search engine to restore some of the pages, which led to
the free service www.recovermywebsite.com.

I don't have much time to develop this further, so if anyone are interested in
buying it, contact me at support@recovermywebsite.com.

~~~
colinm
Maybe you can post it on
[http://www.sideprojectors.com/](http://www.sideprojectors.com/)

~~~
PhilipA
Thanks, I will do that.

------
aleksandrm
I launched [http://bootcamper.io](http://bootcamper.io) 9 months ago.
BootCamper is a database for all the technology bootcamps/workshops/schools
out there. I myself was trying to get into a bootcamp but realized that there
was no single place where I can make my research on them, information was
scattered all over the net and Quora didn't cut it. Thus my project was born -
it was a perfect opportunity for me to build something that I knew would help
others, in addition to being able to show my work to prospective bootcamps.
Initially, it was very slow to pick up, but today I am getting some sensible
traffic and a lot of praise, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. To this
day I am keeping it up-to-date and have future plans to improve it.

------
apapli
I built [http://www.aquarium-manager.com](http://www.aquarium-manager.com) to:
a) teach myself to code and b) give a little back to society.

I don't have plans to commercialise it, and keeping in mind the costs to run
it are low (less than $30 per month) I'm happily resisting the temptation to
place advertisements all over it.

It's been live for about a year and a half, in the tens of unique visitors per
day (hundreds of page views, 5+ minute avg session times) and certainly keen
to get it more publicised.

I thoroughly enjoyed making the application (and enjoy supporting it still),
and learning about all the cool tools/tech most people on HN get to use in
their jobs full time!

Feedback welcome - and if you have an aquarium be sure to keep doing you water
changes, your fish will thank you for the effort ;)

EDIT: fixed url

------
chrisdew
I built [http://www.virtsync.com](http://www.virtsync.com) to allow me to
backup sparse virtual machine disk images to other servers across the
internet.

I've only sold around $1,000 of licenses so far, so maybe this post will
help...

------
tommy_
I built a reddit client on the iPhone for viewing image posts.
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flippit-reddit-pics-
client/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flippit-reddit-pics-
client/id635712523?mt=8) Image posts are really popular and I've found that
about 70% of the posts on the front page are image posts. Sometimes I just
want to look at some funny images for a quick laugh and read some witty
comments.

------
davidhariri
[http://www.scrabtionary.com](http://www.scrabtionary.com) \- simple sowpod
scrabble word checker and cheat tool

I built it because I was tired of getting in arguments with my family over
what words were acceptable. You can use it to check a word or insert wild card
characters and tile delimiters to find the best words. I was unimpressed with
how unfriendly existing tools were so I built my own in 14 hours. If you like
scrabble you should check it out!

~~~
apapli
Hey, that's really neat.

Also I checked out your
[http://www.goodfilmsproject.org](http://www.goodfilmsproject.org) site, I
love the design. I'll try to use it next time I'm looking for a movie to
watch. The first world challenges we have nowadays - unlimited movies on
amazon instant video and netflix, yet finding something to watch seems so
incredibly difficult.

~~~
davidhariri
Haha, serious first world problems (my portfolio is all first world problem
solving). Thanks for the kind words- Goodfilms is still very much a work in
progress. I'm optimizing it in spurts. I'm thinking i'm going to turn it into
a proposal for a better discovery engine for films...

I'm really impressed by aquarium manager! I used to have a salt water reef
tank when I was younger- what a pain to keep those water conditions right! You
should look at arduino kit integration (if you haven't already) so you could
add dosing, feeding, lighting management etc... would be helpful for people
going on vacations.

------
znt
[http://www.sayafter.me](http://www.sayafter.me) \- Interactive pronunciation
helper

Why I built it?

My wife was struggling with pronouncing certain words while learning English.
So I built a webapp for her to practise pronunciation by herself.

Later on her classmates also started using it, now it has quite a few users.

Let me know if you are trying to learn English as well, I will bump your
account so you can use it indefinitely.

------
hackhowtofaq
I 've built

[http://www.giftcertificates4u.com](http://www.giftcertificates4u.com)

to create your own gift certificates as a business.

You can also use it to create a thank you card, a happy birthday card...or
whatever comes in your mind!!

I am the developer and a friend of mine the designer.

Please check it and report any wrongdoing! ;)

Thanx

------
imperialWicket
You should make a comment with your starting proj, so that others can reply to
that with feedback. This will keep top-level comments reserved for 'Show
HN'-type data (except of course this comment), if I'm reading your
instructions accurately.

------
gabemart
I built a customizable ambient sounds radio:
[http://asoftmurmur.com](http://asoftmurmur.com)

I built it because I was tired of manually mixing together ambient sound to
block out background noise when I work in public spaces.

I'll quote from my comment in my unsuccessful Show HN:

\---

This is the first thing I've ever 'coded' (if you can call it that), so it's
pretty rough around the edges. It's pretty similar to RainyMood [1] and
Coffitivity [2] but with the added feature that you can play more than one
type of sound at the same time and adjust the volume of each to find a mix
that suits you. I was inspired to make this because that's something I ended
up doing manually quite a bit.

It's HTML5 with jquery and jquery-mobile, mainly for the slider elements
(which I didn't know how to make myself). I wish I could have avoided using
jquery-mobile because it was quite a headache trying to deactivate a bunch of
the default features and just use the slider.

It uses the standary HTML5 audio player. When the play button is pressed, all
the audio streams play. When the value of each slider is changed, the volume
for that player is updated with JS.

iOS devices don't support changing the volume via javascript in any fashion,
so this won't work on any iOS device. I don't see a way of getting around
that. It should work in most other modern browsers. Seems to work in IE10, FF,
Chrome and the stock Android browser.

The only slightly tricky thing was getting seamless looping for the audio
samples. The HTML5 audio player has a "loop" setting, but in every browser I
tried it in there was an audible gap between the end and start of playback.
Very annoying in this kind of application. To get around that, each audio
track fades in and out at the beginning and end. When the player reaches the
beginning of the "fade out" section of the main track, about 10 seconds before
the end, it triggers a 25s "glue" track to start playing, which fades in as
the main track fades out. When the glue track begins to fade out, it triggers
the main track to fade in again at the beginning. The end result is something
approaching a seamless loop with constant volume. I think it works quite well
for ambeint noise, but it obviously wouldn't work for anything with a beat.

The sounds are all CC licensed samples from freesound.org [3][4] that I did my
best to mix and clean up. In the unlikely event this ever became popular, I'd
love to make some field recordings myself to get a bigger range of sounds in
higher quality, but that's a bit of a pipe dream.

    
    
        [1] http://www.rainymood.com/
        [2] http://coffitivity.com/
        [3] http://www.freesound.org/
        [4] http://asoftmurmur.com/info.html
    

\---

If I have time and I find anyone who wants to use it, I hope in the future to
add more sounds, better initial presets, saving presets, stop-playing-after-x-
minutes, fade-out-over-x-minutes and support for (10+2)*5 [5]

    
    
        [5] http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/11/procrastination-hack-1025

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Its great. I actually paid 5$ for a babbling brook mp3 from somewhere
recently, so if you are thinking of monetising, try recording my settings over
an hour and then bundle it as a mp3.

Then again it is just cool. I'm impressed. HTML5 keeps surprising me.

ohh - suggestion - set a low volume, rain/waves mix as the default and get it
playing onload(). (maybe AB test the bounce rate). I assumed it would play and
had a moment of waiting to see if it was just hanging

Also, I am getting some stuttering. That's not good. How would i debug that ?
Let me know, its probably a decrepit machine / browser combo.

~~~
gabemart
Thanks!

I agree, the current defaults are poor and need to be changed.

As for the stuttering, I'm not sure - does it sound like a buffering issue or
a decoding issue? It's on a low priority shared hosting package and I had to
turn off cloudflare because it wasn't working properly, so it's possible the
server isn't keeping up.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I have a guess - its the overlapping 30 second fade in / fade out. But that's
a guess.

