

Show HN: Our (two) weekend project: 365.io - A photo a day for one year. - jmonegro
http://365.io

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eitally
How about charging a fee X but reducing it by Y for each consecutive month a
person uploads a daily photo, to the point where, if anyone actually uploads
365 photos they get the use the service for free?

Charge $12, but refund $1 for each completed month.

~~~
guynamedloren
Building off of that idea: incorporate ads.

The refunds keep the users coming back, and the ads support your business.

~~~
jawee
I have no tolerance for products that have ads and I pay for them. Nowadays, a
lot of times paying means simple ¨removing¨ ads. This is a product that I can
achieve in some ways for free. Why should I both pay for it and experience
ads.

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bjonathan
Great design! And I love the idea even if I'm not a big photo guy myself.

11$ seems a fair price if I'm hooked to your product but I need to try it
before. Maybe you can offer a free plan, or give a trial period (10days for
example).

Also I think that you should put your "View a sample collection" way higher in
your homepage.

Good luck! I really love what you did, your design and your logo are awesome
:)

~~~
jmonegro
We'll take those into account, thanks!

~~~
NathanKP
I would recommend offering a free trial until the first of January, then they
have to switch to a paid version.

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jkent
It's a bit unclear what I am getting for $11 (over say a flickr stream).

~~~
jmonegro
365.io was created specifically for Project 365, which is a year-long
photography project in which you upload a picture a day for 365 days so that
after a year you have some sort of photo documentary of your life over that
year.

The main difference between this and a Flickr stream is the focus. Flickr is
meant for photography in general, and while you could use it for Project 365,
it's less organized and focused. For example, your P 365 entries would be
mixed in with your regular flickr uploads.

~~~
dshankar
That's what I interpret Flickr groups to be - a way to focus on a given
subject rather than photography in general.

You need to prove the value of your product before you can start charging
users $11. Your frontpage gives no indication of the value added.

~~~
jmonegro
We feel Project 365 is more personal than flickr would allow you through
groups.

Regardless, thanks for the feedback.

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olivolive
Some co-workers of mine have been doing 365 projects for 2010. On their
server, each photo has a comments section where they give each other feedback
and suggestions. That community aspect has really encouraged them to keep
going. They talk about how hard it is to find something that makes for an
interesting photo every day, but it's made them pay attention to their
surroundings, and the feedback is making them better photographers.

One guy was pretty intimidated by the project at first. He started by trying
it for a week, and now he's done 320 days or so.

They had their own server, but it recently died. The photo are copied
elsewhere, but the comments are possibly gone forever. I'm certain that any of
them would pay $20 for someone else to take care of the servers.

~~~
blehn
That's a good anecdote, thanks. We definitely think some more social
interaction (primarily following/friending and commenting) is the next logical
step for the service.

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lachyg
Great timing. You should really ramp up the marketing and put an emphasis on
starting on the 1st of January!

~~~
jmonegro
That was the plan originally, but we felt it'd feel to restraining for those
who signed up earlier and wanted to try it out right a way.

What we did instead is put up a "Start Project" button instead of auto-
starting it on sign-up so users can choose when to start.

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LordLandon
I think what could add value to this, if the focus was on taking a picture of
yourself - from your laptop's webcam or something. Then you could do some
basic facial recognition to align the pictures, centering the face, and
slideshow that.

~~~
jmonegro
We were planning to add webcam support, good thing to see it'd add value.

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pkamb
Cool! My thoughts:

On the homepage there should be a much higher-priority link to see a sample
gallery.

When I clicked on a photo, I didn't know how to get back to the timeline/365
view. I went for the back button, but it wasn't active. It was hard to figure
out that it was actually a light box. An animation when the lightbox activates
would help, as would making the lightbox "less fullscreen."

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iuguy
I can understand the Flickr argument, but what (other than a lovely design)
makes this better than <http://365project.org/> or <http://www.fotolog.com/>
\- at least $11 better (for now, then $20 better)?

~~~
blehn
Well, I guess we think people are willing to pay for lovely design (and by
"design", I'm referring to the way it works, in addition to the way it looks).

You could also ask, "What (other than a lovely design) makes a
Macbook/BMW/Dyson/Armani better than a Dell/Lincoln/Hoover/Old Navy?"

~~~
iuguy
I get what you're saying but all of your examples are really bad examples.

Macbook vs Dell - Technology (specialised CPUs, Dual graphics chipsets in Macs
to give better battery life and hard-wired flash chips in Macbook Air)

BMW vs Lincoln - Forgive me, I'm not well versed in American cars, but BMWs
have cutting edge technology as well as some serious add-ons and tech (one of
the first to introduce GPS, in-seat heating, various energy/mileage saving
technologies such as brake-recharging). I don't know enough about Lincoln to
say what they've introduced.

Dyson vs Hoover. Massive differences in technology, better suction on a Dyson,
bagless, easier to clean.

It's interesting in the first three comparisons the premium option has a large
amount of patents and internally developed technologies don't have (exception:
Lincoln, I don't know enough about them to comment).

Armani vs Old Navy. Material quality, stitching quality, the way the garments
are (traditionally) made although the gap is closing (if you'll pardon the
unintentional pun).

Ultimately though there's a big difference in focus. Old Navy makes clothes
for day to day wear in a variety of circumstances. Armani make clothes to be
seen in at events. Apple are highly consumer and creative focused, Dell are
more business oriented (but also attacking the consumer market). Dyson targets
people who don't want to clean/change bags every now and again. BMW targets
moderately wealthy men who want something decent they can drive as though they
own the road with, I don't know who Lincoln target but it appears to be a
higher end luxury car brand of Ford.

~~~
jmonegro
Exactly. Our product has a different focus.

~~~
iuguy
So what's the difference? I can't see it. I'm not saying there isn't one, I'm
saying I'm interested in hearing what it is because it's not immediately clear
(or at least sufficiently clear to make me want to hand over the cash if I
know about fotolog).

------
NathanKP
One problem that I experienced is that when I viewed the sample gallery and
then clicked on an image to view it larger, I couldn't figure out how to get
back to the gallery again. I tried pressing the back button but it returned me
to the landing page, rather than to the gallery as I expected.

~~~
blehn
The ESC key also returns you to thumbnail view, but we should probably make
the back button do the same.

------
fbr
Interesting but your page raise too much questions: \- What will my page look
like? \- Is there a quota or something? \- What are the possible interaction
with the community? \- What is the difference with flickr? etc ...

~~~
blehn
re: interaction with the community. It's currently limited to sharing via a
public URL, but we've discussed a follow model (like Twitter, except you'd
have to opt-in) where you'd be able to view a stream of all photos from the
people you're following. Since it's limited to one photo a day per user, the
stream should be pretty easy to keep up with. Beyond that, there are lots of
things we could do with favoriting, commenting, etc., but we'd like to keep it
really focused and simple for now.

------
deutronium
Nice idea, but people could do the same thing with Flickr for free.

~~~
blehn
That's certainly true. We feel like the service offers a superior experience
_for this particular usage_ than Flickr.

~~~
mitjak
Not $11 superior. If it offered some funky filters Instagram style you could
perhaps capitalize on the Polaroid/Lomography type of audience. Or build a
Flash driven picture uploaded that would use the web cam.

The way it stands is you're offering a pretty page for photos at $11 that
doesn't target any real customer niche and does what a Tumblr blog paired with
a Flickr account would do for free in a more flexible way.

~~~
jmonegro
We're working on webcam capture, actually. Regarding using flickr/tumblr, it
can be done, but it's a decentralized, unfocused, and unorganized way of doing
so.

~~~
mitjak
You keep saying "focused" everywhere. I'm not sure I know what it means in
this context.

------
wccrawford
I can't see me paying for the service, but I think it's a great idea,
especially for anyone who is trying to learn photography. I think I might make
that my New Year's resolution.

------
nrbafna
Could the pricing model be modified to provide some sort of a trial/demo?

Say like, you can use it for free for the first month, then if you like to
continue with it, pay $11.

~~~
blehn
That's a good idea. I think we're going to try to figure out something along
those lines.

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abhikshah
Really like the design but finding it hard to see what I get for $11 that I
can't do with flickr or tumblr. Maybe go with a freemium approach?

~~~
jmonegro
Flickr's upload limit and 200 photos (on the free plan) limit wouldn't allow
you to complete the 365 project, specially if you use flickr for other photos
outside the project as well.

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TamDenholm
This was originally the idea behind dailybooth.

~~~
markbao
I think this is more about taking a picture every day, as opposed to taking a
picture of _yourself_ every day.

~~~
TamDenholm
Fair point, I didn't realise that was the idea.

~~~
markbao
I thought it was what you said at first, too, so no worries :)

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findm
wow, great design love the way it looks. I'm going to have agree with what
value you get paying 11 dollars?

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kingnothing
Anyone care to recommend a good point & shoot camera?

~~~
marquis
Anything Nikon or Canon in the mid-$200 range would do wonders for you.
Depends on what you want to spend of course. Have seen great results from
Panasonic Lumix range also. I might suggest avoiding cameras with only touch
screens - you'll go crazy about missing your shot if you need to set up and
your fingers are gloved and it's cold out.

------
rokhayakebe
Great idea. I would sign up immediately if I owned a digital camera, although
I am not sure about the $11. You should show visitors some of the members'
pages.

The price should be free or lower if you upload daily, and automatically
charge your CC for the higher yearly fee if you miss uploading.

I have a feeling this site will take off.

~~~
jmonegro
Thanks! We're working in direct-from-webcam support as well.

There's a sample collection you can check out at <http://365.io/u/2fe9781736>.

~~~
there
i think the thumbnails should link to a dedicated page for each picture,
rather than a lightbox version, like flickr does. that way users can have a
url per-picture but still have some context around it (like who took it, show
the user's other pictures, promote the 365.io site, etc.) rather than just the
raw jpeg url on s3. i'd say add the ability to leave comments and favorites
and all that, but it sounds like you're just duplicating flickr at that point.

you could probably accomplish the same thing by using flickr's api. let users
upload photos to flickr (with a certain tag that your site would look for) or
through your site, but collect and present all of them with your own layout
and sharing mechanisms. flickr can host all of the photos and let users keep
copies of their own photos in their own photostream. you could pull in
comments made on flickr and show them in the same stream with comments left on
your own site.

there should still be incentive to use your site to view the photos, though,
like having a voting mechanism and some kind of 'picture of the day' that
would get displayed on the homepage.

~~~
jmonegro
They do, actually. If the public user url is <http://365.io/u/2fe9781736>, you
can access the 20th image by going to <http://365.io/u/2fe9781736/20>. The
link to individual images are shown in the private index view.

Flickr's terms won't allow that type of use of their api. Also, flickr has a
200 photo limit on free accounts that makes project 365 impossible unless you
upgrade, and even less so if you use flickr for something else.

~~~
nrbafna
"Also, flickr has a 200 photo limit on free accounts that makes project 365
impossible unless you upgrade, and even less so if you use flickr for
something else."

Incorrect.

From <http://www.flickr.com/help/limits/>

"When you have a free Flickr account, you can upload 2 videos and 300MB worth
of photos each calendar month....Your upload limits are reset to zero at
midnight in Pacific Time Zone (Flickr headquarters time) on the first of each
calendar month."

