

 The App Store is slow, so I built App Store Instant - jsatok
http://appoftheday.com/instant

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magic5227
I just want to point out, re: all these "instant" things, Google instant is
useful not because its instant, but because its finishing queries for you.

Partial queries are not useful.

My 2cents

~~~
jsatok
I agree with you. I didn't build App Store Instant as a replica of Google
Instant. With the APIs available, there isn't a reliable way to predict apps.

I built it because iTunes is slow. Try searching iTunes and clicking on an App
(to read the description). It takes me 5+ seconds. This takes ~1 second.

~~~
joshd
Are you logging your queries? If you have enough searches you could build your
own predictions. You're also proxying results, so you could use those to build
an index too.

~~~
jsatok
I am logging queries. Do you have any tips/suggestions as to how to do my own
predictions?

~~~
yesbabyyes
For each prefix, which app are people eventually satisified with?

E.g. if "in" often leads to instapaper, predict that, while if "ins" often
eventually leads to "instantapp", that's the prediction for that prefix.

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city41
What we really need is a better app store interface on the iPad. Apple's
implementation is terrible[1]. AppShopper shows it would be possible to do.
I'd even pay money for such an app. The app could include "spotlight apps"
too, as another source of revenue.

[1] It is terrible because it always resets itself to the beginning everytime
you launch it. Couple that with the fact that installing an app causes the app
store to close, means you just can't search around very effectively on it.
Simple example: navigate to the third page of top apps, find an app you like,
install it, go back to the app store, you've been pushed back to the first
page and have to redrill down to page three to keep perusing.

~~~
stevenwei
Agreed. Browsing is especially difficult when you click on an app to find out
more details about it, click back when you're done, and then find that you've
been kicked back to page one.

Unfortunately I think this is one of the places where you're likely to get
rejected by Apple for 'duplicating built in functionality', even if you've
improved upon it, so I doubt anyone is going to do it

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jacquesm
I have 'instant' overload.

~~~
gojomo
Time for a 'slow search' movement to go with 'slow food' and 'slow news'!

~~~
ThomPete
I have been wanting to do a slowfeed movement for years

~~~
panacea
Assuming you're not simply being facetious, what would that look like?

Some sort of meta-rss feed that delivers a 'best-of' for weekend perusal?
Perhaps it could be collated/curated and then printed in a handy offline
version for weekend digestion?

~~~
btilly
_what would that look like?_

<http://hackermonthly.com/>

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chris24
The JavaScript (and a bit of the CSS) looks awfully similar to iTunes Instant
which was released a few days ago: <http://labs.stephenou.com/itunes>

Edit: according to a few people I've heard from, Stephen (creator of iTunes
Instant) did help out / supply some of the code for App Store Instant. My
mistake. :)

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aresant
Although I've got "instant overload" too this is the first of the instant apps
with a built in, scalable business model - each of the links on this site is
iTunes / linksynergy affiliate enabled - that's truly smart :)

~~~
jsatok
Thanks. I'm excited to see how it scales!

~~~
fabiandesimone
I need to contact you, but your contact us form is not working. Any other way?

~~~
jsatok
jordan (at) appoftheday (dot) com

EDIT: Fixed the contact form, thanks for pointing that out!

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akadien
www.instantdomainsearch.com has been doing the instant lookup thing for a
while.

~~~
asnyder
Not to mention Domize (<http://www.domize.com>). I remember using them years
ago, I still love it. It's funny, since I can't stand Google Instant, but
really enjoy Domize, interesting how that works.

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martingordon
The thing that sets this one apart from the others is that it can actually
generate revenue (via affiliate links).

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ajg1977
Nice idea but worthless results I'm afraid.

"secret of monkey island" - no hit, suggestions have none of these words.

"air video" - no hit, though at least suggestions include air.

"best camera" - ditto.

~~~
jsatok
Was a bug affecting apps that have spaced in them. Fixed!

(Air Video still doesn't show on top when you type Air Video as apparently
Apple's iTunes API is ranking Air Mouse Pro higher)

~~~
ajg1977
Still appears to be broken.

"Red Laser"

"Better Christmas List"

~~~
jsatok
Both worked for me. Can you try clearing your cache?

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theprodigy
Will this be a new hacker news meme or something? Being bored or current
search tool on site is slow so I built (Insert Name) Instant.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
There are worse memes than actually building something.

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eclark
It seems to be missing some of the apps that I can find from the itunes store.
We Rule isn't showing up. While another of the We series is.

I like the design a lot simple, fast, and calming.

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andrys
How did you manage to scrap the Apple Store? Are you storing all the apps data
locally? I guess it would be a huge overhead to send each of these queries to
Apple...

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mortenjorck
Excellent work! Feature suggestion: iPad / iPhone filtering.

~~~
jsatok
Great suggestion. I thought about doing tabs when building it, but wanted to
keep it as simple as possible. Any ideas?

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mikecane
OK, it's not working comprehensively. I think the search term "book" should
bring up waaaaay more than the 9 results I'm getting!

~~~
jsatok
It's just a preview of the first 9 results. Apple only returns back a limited
number. I need to find a better way of displaying if there are more than the 9
results. Any ideas?

~~~
mikecane
OK, too bad Apple limits it like that. It really kills its usefulness then.
Books in the App Store (aside from the ePubs in the iBookstore) is a rat's
nest that's hell to wade through on the desktop. An Instant like this would
really help with that.

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bgray
I also have instant overload but I must admit, this is one of the better
instant apps I've seen! And no begging for a job. :)

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mkramlich
very snappy, well done! it found all but one of my published iPhone apps, and
very quickly, like Google Instant. Of course, one huge advantage you have is
less traffic. And you've got less to render. You may also be showing more of a
cached, less real-time view of what's actually in the store (guess).

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simplify
I typed in "go" and SmartGo Pro was the first result. Impressive.

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newobj
Nice, too bad I don't shop the App Store by keyword search.

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charlesju
My game GloSnake isn't showing up :(

~~~
jat850
When I searched for GloSnake, it showed up briefly and then disappeared. I
can't seem to get it to come back again.

(edit) When getting as far as "Glos", it shows up. If I type beyond that, it
seems to disappear.

~~~
jsatok
Found a bug in my code. Try searching now!

~~~
jat850
Appears to be fixed. Nice work :)

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bobwaycott
My two cents ...

I find the results often unexpected as a result of matching a search term to
several app fields. I search the word "instant" and receive AIM as the top
result (presumably because AIM is an "instant" messenger application). Same
thing occurs due to matching against developer names, causing what I'd
consider to be false (or 'less true') matches to show up because the string
matches a developer name, and yet matching app names are lower in the match
results, even though the string is in the app name--and often the beginning of
the app name.

It'd be worthwhile to consider tightening the parameters. I'd wager a typical
user performing an instant search is not searching by developer name. I'd
further wager an average user is searching by keyword and description less
frequently on an 'instant' search than by app name. So perhaps you could try a
bit of weighting, pushing X app name matches higher in the results, followed
by X description matches, followed by X developer name matches. Perhaps tweak
the UI to reflect this.

And, of course, I could be completely wrong and this is all just a matter of
my expectations not being fulfilled after searching.

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bballbackus
Haha I see your logic.

Guy creates ytinstant.com, gets hired by google.

You create App Store Instant, and (hopefully) get hired by apple.

~~~
judofyr
Ehm, the logic is right there in the headline:

 _The App Store is slow_ , so I built App Store Instant

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code_duck
I'm not supporting the above statement, and the blithe logic it displays, but
I can't go along with this, either. If that is as deep as the analysis of
motivations goes on Hacker News, none of you should ever be allowed to vote.

~~~
code_duck
I'd love to respond to the below (dead) post and the thoughtful dorks who
downvoted me, so might as well reply to myself.

I don't care why he wrote this application. My point is that you can't just
say "LOOK HE SAYS WHY RIGHT THERE, THAT'S WHY!" and have any sort of
intellectual credibility, unless the intellectual credibility of a third
grader is what you're aiming for.

