

Show HN: Prolifi.cc, a weekend project - tamal
http://www.prolifi.cc

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SnowLprd
No text-based summary, introduction, or blurb? Not everyone is able to view
video at the moment they come across your site; if they can't immediately read
what it's about, they may not come back to find out.

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tamal
Agreed and great point. Thanks.

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sente
The video won't play in my Android by the way.

How about that blurb? ;)

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tamal
Eek. It's supposed to be WebM-friendly. I'll see what I can do.

Meanwhile, I've posted a blurb.

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sente
Thank you.

Flowplayer is really good by the way, check out <http://j.mp/NBFTze> if you're
interested.

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baby
So. You created an application to blog and to be able to post that on twitter.

I don't get why this is #3 on HN right now.

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DanI-S
HN likes people who ship.

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getsat
Any weekend project is "shipping" (in that sense) now? Good grief.

Not hating on OP or his site, just sayin'.

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phren0logy
Of course it's "shipping." Why wouldn't it be?

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WrkInProgress
A quick critique on the video.

1.) The screenshot of the prolifi.cc landing page has the large black coming
soon banner.

2.) At the point where you show the creation of a blog post, I think the left
pane with all the markdown instructions is so visually distracting. Perhaps
the video can just focus only the right pane...

I really liked the fact that you stated "you don't have a blog and you don't
need one.." I think that really reinforces the concept and value of your
product.

Just my $0.02.

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nsxwolf
You know what would be really killer? Fork a couple popular open source
desktop Twitter clients and add Prolifi.cc integration.

Whenever you start typing past the character limit, have the edit window morph
to add your blog title field and change the button to "Post via Prolifi.cc",
and have it hit your back end.

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karanbhangui
Would be cool as a browser plugin, so that when a message goes over the
character limit, a button to post via Prolificc appears, all within the
natural flow of using the Twitter website. You could even extend this concept
by creating a Prolificc API to allow third party developers to integrate into
popular twitter clients.

Awesome weekend project!

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drumdance
I think this is pretty cool, if for no other reason that it's a next step (not
"the") in the evolution of the platforms.

It used to be you wrote a blog. Then you started using Twitter as a toy. Then
you linked to blog posts on Twitter. Then you got lazy about updating your
blog (i.e. Robert Scoble). Then you used only Twitter. Then you realized
occasionally you want to say more than you can Tweet. Then.. Voila!

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vineet
TweetDeck used to let you post long messages. Have they stopped doing that, or
is Prolifi.cc trying to let you do something else?

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tamal
There are quite a few long message services. Most (if not all) are plain text.
Prolifi.cc allows styling via Markdown, images, etc. More of a proper article
post and less wall of text.

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vineet
So basically tumblr with zero sign-up?

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tamal
Less than that. Tumblr has it's own followers/following/social network. This
does nothing more than "attach" a blog post to a tweet. apitaru put it quite
well elsewhere in the comments.

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narisipalli
Would be more useful if prolifi has an extension. That way, when I exceed 160
chars on twitter, I am reminded that I can post the blurp through prolifi
instead and have the link posted to twitter automatically. Similar to how
Facebook implemented their Notes concept, which never made sense in the
Facebook context.

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nollidge
I might actually use this... Markdown, Twitter auth, nice interface. Really
low friction. Sticky domain name, too!

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hilti
Where's the target group?

Because the question is: how many people use twitter and don't have a blog or
website?

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tamal
TBH the only person I built it for is me. I had an itch and scratched it.

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will_work4tears
Great reply and great attitude!

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speg
Can it do code markup? I was looking for something the other day and I didn't
want to set up my own 'blog'. Tumblr couldn't support Github gists for some
reason, so really that' all you need.

Edit: On first glance, it doesn't seem to be able to embed Github gists. Darn.

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nicksergeant
I run <https://snipt.net/>, and I just built in a blogging platform, seems
like it might be what you're looking for: [https://blog.snipt.net/announcing-
the-sniptnet-blogging-plat...](https://blog.snipt.net/announcing-the-sniptnet-
blogging-platform/)

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duiker101
i really like this idea! i do not have a blog but i would love to start one,
and i also do not use twitter much. but like this idea. but before i would
love to see some posts examples.

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baby
So you don't have a blog, you don't use twitter. But you like the idea.

This thread is getting really suspicious.

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duiker101
This is my twitter <https://twitter.com/#!/SimoneMasieroDv> with a grand total
of 6 tweets this year. I agree with you that this thread is suspicious due to
the number of votes it receive, when i first commented it had 11 votes and no
comments. But anyway i can grant you i have nothing to do with it. I have a
personal website, but it's sadly unfinished,
<http://hackertyper.net/portfolio>

I just like the idea of not having to register to a new service to make some
posts.

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s4ndb
It's nice, but don't get why it should be able to

* Read Tweets from my timeline. * See who I follow, and follow new people. * Update my profile.

so, not registering, sry...

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tamal
Twitter has three permission levels: Read Only, Read and Write, and Read,
Write, and Direct Messages.

In order to have it Tweet on your behalf it needs Read and Write permissions.
Along with that comes all the other permissions. If I could exclude it I
would.

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s4ndb
Oh, ok, got it. Not a twitter app dev. You are forgiven ;-) - registered.

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prezjordan
Glad you shipped it :) Any plans of monetization? Open-source?

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tamal
Maybe ;) There are opportunities for both. I'm not committed to any one path
yet.

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johnmurch
Reminds me a lot like <http://checkthis.com/> except a micro-micro blog form

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Maro
It took me a while to figure out this isn't a C++ program. C++ source files
sometimes use the .cc extension.

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dr42
the <http://> wasn't a big clue?

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arrowgunz
How is it different from <http://cpypst.me/>

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tamal
It appears similar, except your posts are tied to your Twitter account instead
of just floating.

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scoot
Weekend project as in "done-in-a-weekend", or as in a side-project?

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tamal
Technically done-in-a-long-weekend (last Thanksgiving).

I'm attempting to turn it into a side-project to justify buying a Retina
MacBook Pro, so I dusted it off, recorded the video, and updated a few bits.

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fahad-sheikh
What's the tech stack for this, if you don't mind me asking?

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tamal
Rails on Passenger on nginx, omniauth for Twitter authentication, redcarpet
for Markdown support.

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fahad-sheikh
Thanks for sharing that. I was looking for something like this, keep up the
good work :)

Also, would be cool, if you decided at some point to open-source it or unless
you went the startup route, and end up monetizing the hell out of it. Then
again, making money and open-sourcing are not mutually exclusive, methinks...

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deadlysyntax
I'll this in mind, thanks, it might come in handy.

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j_col
Similar to TwitLonger?

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tamal
I posted this elsewhere in the comments: "There are quite a few long message
services. Most (if not all) are plain text. Prolifi.cc allows styling via
Markdown, images, etc. More of a proper article post and less wall of text."

~~~
j_col
Cool I see the difference now, thanks for clarifying.

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taf2
Thanks this is great!

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adventureful
Fine application, except for the wood grain background.

