

Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.) - mikegreenberg

Hello!<p>Every once in a while, I like to offer my time to help other passionate people be a little more successful with their goals. If there's anything I can help you with, just ask here. No strings whatsoever.<p>If you'd like my help: Be specific about what you're trying to fix/solve/accomplish...your goal. The more details you provide, the better I can help you out.<p>I've done this before a few times now, and it's worked out well for everyone. Check out some of the previous "No strings" sessions I've done to get an idea of how I can help. (http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=mikegreenberg)<p>I will try to help all requests made before the end of today and will attempt to complete by the end of Sunday. Be patient and check back. Please keep requests to tasks I can do in ~15 minutes. I'll spend more time willingly, but smaller requests lets me help more people! Thanks. :)<p>Cheers!!<p>PS: If you'd rather give than receive: Go find someone else to do something nice for...like give them a back rub. Or, you can help be an early tester of a lightweight address book I'm building inside Chrome... If you're interested, visit my quietly launched site: http://yourglimpse.com (PS: This "No Strings" offer is a week late because I was busy building this prototype at http://hackdayfoundation.org! Hope you like it!)
======
devs1010
I recently started an open source application relating to web crawling / data
analyzing, is there anything small that you could do to get my project a few
eyeballs, I know its raw at this point but I work on it at least a few days a
week and would love to have someone else interested in it to at least bounce
ideas off it so the more exposure the better:
[https://github.com/devs1010/WebGatherer---Scraper-and-
Analyz...](https://github.com/devs1010/WebGatherer---Scraper-and-
Analyzer/wiki/Intro-to-WebGatherer-Application)

Thanks

------
hacker007
I would appreciate it if you could give me some feedback on my side project:
<http://www.gotcheapbooks.com>. I am a developer and I am trying to learn more
about design and usability. Please give me suggestions regarding the
following:

\- What can I do to improve the design?

\- Any suggestions for making it more user friendly?

Thank you for your help and have a great weekend!

~~~
mikegreenberg
<http://designingfortheweb.co.uk/book/> This is a great resource I give out to
anyone interested in learning about designing on the web. They cover basic
principles, how it all works together, even a case study at the end. Highly
recommended.

There's nothing painfully wrong with your current design, especially if you're
a developer with little existing knowledge. I would add more whitespace into
your front page. The elements feel as though they are sitting on top of each
other. Adding some breathing room will also help your visitors scan the page
more easily.

I'm not much of a designer and have stronger programming sense. But I know
what looks good. So sometimes, I'll go through my bookmarks, RSS feeds of idea
sites, or check out website templates to get ideas. I might even take one and
tweak it to my own tastes.

Also, see if you can go to a hackathon nearby and find an awesome designer to
work with. Make sur eyou sit next to him and casually watch how he works. I
did this last weekend it was an awesome way to observe a designer working
within in his element.

From a usability point of you, your approach is direct and intuitive.
Everything does what it seems like it should do. I wasn't surprised by
anything. The interface is really snappy. Took a look through your javascript
and you have excellent, well organized, well documented code. Beautiful!

Regarding improving your user experience... take a cue from Google and see if
you can implement a realtime search as the user types. People are suckers for
instant gratification. Maybe you can tie into a book preview service and offer
an inside look of the books from the search page? I don't know, just a few off
the wall ideas.

Great job with this otherwise! Hope this helped.

------
nickfromseattle
I'm a sales founder at a 3 month old b2b saas startup. We make listing online
classified ads effortless. Our focus is real estate companies and auto
dealerships. We have 4 customers in Florida. Can you refer us any more
business?

~~~
mikegreenberg
Email me an informational url about your business and contact info I can pass
along to a few people in those industries. If I think you'd be a good fit,
I'll certainly share service with them.

@nobulb.com prepended by my initials.

------
alecbee
Aloha!

Would love your FB on our new email marketing software (www.redcappi.com).

And speaking of "doing nice", we contribute a minimum of $2 per paid account
to Charity:Water for clean water!

Mahalo!

~~~
mikegreenberg
It's great that you donate a portion of your revenue to Charity:Water! Here's
some feedback...though it's vague, you didn't specify any specific part of
your site for me to address:

\- The color of red in your logo at the top doesn't match the red in your
footer. (Minor, maybe, but this was screaming at me.)

\- The overall design could be balanced a bit better. The area at the top
which summarizes your business is quite spacious, whereas the content
underneath (Stroll, Explore, Create, and Story sections, etc) feel cramped.
Consider a CSS grid layout to give your elements and position some "visual
rhythm" (or a consistent visual feel that allows the eye to casually consume
content without jarring distractions and interruptions within the layout).
<http://960.gs> or <http://blueprintcss.org> is quite nice for this.

\- RedCappi seems to be two products in one (with a tab on the right allowing
the user to switch information between the two products. This is not very
intuitive and I'd be willing to bet that the majority of your web builder
traffic is a lot less than your email marketing traffic. Consider separating
the two products more clearly and giving each their own space on your domain.
This will improve SEM/SEO as well as help users to more quickly find the
information they need.

\- WAY too many pricing plans. By offering so many options, you are probably
scaring your customers away from making a decision they (may or may not) have
to live with. Everything starts out free for your customers anyway, so why not
just let them grow their plan as their needs require it. You can mention
limitations, but I wouldn't throw prices in their face unless they're looking.
And when the only thing between plans that change is the number of contacts
allowed, make the plan configurable with a slider. MUCH easier to understand
for the user and they can play around with the slider to fit their plan
(giving them the perception of more control, which they'll love). Heroku does
this if you want an example. (<http://www.heroku.com/pricing>)

\- I like the idea... I'm not doing too much email marketing so I'm not
certain what are strong features, what is done well, etc etc. I was looking
for screenshots or a tour but couldn't find anything of the sort.

Hope this gives you a good start. :)

------
CrazyLeggs1964
I have Mozilla Firefox as my browser. I had Autofill with IE, to fill out
forms, name, address, ect... but cann't find a way to fill in the blanks
automatic with Firefox What gives do you know?

~~~
mikegreenberg
Here is Mozilla's support doc for the autocomplete that's built into the
browser. <http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Form%20autocomplete>

Here's a plugin that will work just as well. [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/autofill-form...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/autofill-forms/)

These were both found with a search for "firefox autofill".
<http://google.com>

