
Show HN: Review my startup project: CardPi, life in digital cards - ajeet_dhaliwal
https://www.cardpi.com
======
mattkevan
It's an interesting idea, but needs better explanation.

I don't have an iOS device to test the app, but it took me a while to work out
what it is and does from the website.

The site should explain clearly what the benefits of using it are and why I
should use it over another service. It's not easy to get right, but makes a
huge difference.

I would also spend a bit of time working on the design – you have a good start
but it needs polishing. You may not want to go full Google, especially if
you're focusing on iOS, but the Material design spec has some really good
principles for creating card-based components [0].

I think part of my confusion came from the name. At first I thought it was to
do with a Raspberry Pi as [something]Pi seems to be the standard for RPi
related projects.

[0][https://www.google.com/design/spec/components/cards.html](https://www.google.com/design/spec/components/cards.html)

------
wingerlang
It looks very unpolished and crude. From the website I couldn't really figure
out what it is for, but form what I gather now it is just some kind of
blogging platform with images and such "content". What's the value
proposition?

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
I can understand the confusion. There is a lot of capability here and being
used as a blogging platform is one of the things it can used for. The
intention here is to provide for a way to show collections or groups of small
units of conten. Blogging is an activity that has categories and hierarchies
so it can be done using this platform. The value proposition is that its a
better way to showcase collections of content. With many micro blogging
platforms and the like it's quite difficult to find older posts or particular
information sometimes, there's also some platforms where the focus is on what
is currently the latest and everything else is old and more cumbersome to
locate. Cards as the smallest unit of data are great for being a container for
a mixture of imagery and text and something everyone is familiar with.

There is a need to add more polish, are you looking at the web site or app?

~~~
halfdan
Personally I think that's not very useful - I don't often find myself looking
at older blog posts and if I do I either use Google or the site's own search
functionality. Your system seems to require content to be created in it to be
searchable.

It's an interesting idea, but I wonder how many people are actually really
trying to locate old content.

------
underyx
>the Best Way to Showcase and View Collections of Content

This just sounds ridiculous. 'Showcase and view collections of content' is so
broad that it covers almost everything I do online. Needless to say, I really
doubt that one app could be the best at all of those things.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
CardPi is primarily a mobile app, currently on iOS but if you if you don’t
have an iOS device please take a look at the website, I am keen to get
feedback on that too.

App (iOS) download:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cardpi/id941081241?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cardpi/id941081241?mt=8)
(currently on USA, UK, Canada and Australia stores). To create content you
will need to register an account but it’s quick and easy to do, viewing does
not require registering.

CardPi is an app to showcase collections of content in series of digital cards
on mobile and web.

For example a video game publisher wants to release information about an
upcoming game. They can create series for characters, locations, items and
then create cards for each character, location and item. Each card can be
updated as little or as often as they like, they get discussion forums
automatically for every update along with other features.

The idea is to have well organized nuggets of information and live blog style
documents in a standardized card form with imagery/text all grouped by series
and subseries keeping related content together and with appropriate hierarchy.

Apple does not allow apps mentioning ‘beta’ or ‘preview’ so if you view it on
the App Store, other than being version 0.0.0, it won’t say this but really it
is very early days and there is little content yet aside from sample data.
Thanks for your time, all feedback is welcomed. In particular if it doesn’t
make sense or you think it’s useless, say so, we want to talk to you.

------
jbob2000
I get the idea, and I'm willing to look past the work-in-progress nature of
your app, but I don't think it's a very strong idea.

There's no value to me, as a content consumer, in viewing content in these
cards. I have had no issues reading blogs in the current format, no issues
with reading reddit or hacker news, no issues with youtube, etc. etc. This
doesn't solve any problem I personally have.

I get that your cards are _different_ but why is this format _better_? It's a
cool UX paradigm that one might use on a personal blog, or as a feature in a
large application, but I can't see it becoming a standard. The value
proposition is not strong enough.

You could take this idea and do something like medium.com, where you become a
platform for people to publish cards on, but then the value is in the content
and hosting service, not really the format.

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
This is actually doing what you're last sentence suggests. It is intended as a
platform and for people to publish series of cards on and it is a hosted
service. The creation is limited to the app currently. The web site is
secondary, this is primarily an app. A problem with apps and a reason why the
web site even exists is that they lack discoverability when starting out. The
web site offers a 'view only' view of the cards that are fully interactive on
the app.

The value prop here is a combination of a few things. The card format stands
out in usability when viewing on mobile devices particularly on larger screens
such as iPhone 6 Plus. The way a card can be manipulated and expanded makes it
ideally suited for that type of device. Combining that with a way to organize
cards by series makes it a straightforward way to get at sometimes highly
niche information such as the example of video game characters or items.

------
thomasdd
Also the web is not responsive! Today web apps deserve support for mobile
devices and multiple screen sizes. This is someting you shoud care for before
launch.

some other thinks I noticed: -Can't se registration, just Login. -Favicon
would by nice. -Password reset function.

~~~
OJFord
There is a favicon, but it 403s!

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
Thanks, favicon should be appearing now, there was a config error earlier.
Registration and password reset are currently on the app but I may move this
functionality to the web site too.

------
mosselman
I have read the comments here and I wonder how this would be different from a
wiki? Apart from the UI being very unclear, at least on the web version. What
are the different colors for?

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
Excellent point, in many ways the series and subseries in CardPi does resemble
a wiki structure. Whereas wikis are designed for collaboration however the
focus here is still on personal content and engagement with update posts and
discussions.

------
thomasdd
Just can't figure out what it is good for, or what's the purpose. Maybe some
video could help explain describing what it acctualy is. Still I don't know :)

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
Evey card in CardPi is the smallest unit of content. It is a mixture of text
and imagery. Cards belong to series. Together they form nodes of a structure
of showcasing collections of data in a organized and hierarchical way.

Suppose your are a small game studio. You have a single profile card that
describes your studio. Then you have a top level series for each of your
games, say game A and game B. Then with the series for game A you can have sub
series for Items, Characters, Locations. You then have cards that belong to
each of those subseries featuring the items, characters, locations. Suppose
there is a card for character x. That card can be updated with posts, every
update has discussion forums... Best of all someone can quickly find all the
characters in your game, all the locations and read information and discuss
them.

Your point about a video is important. It has been considered but since there
is considerable confusion about what this is for it seems wise to consider
making one.

~~~
halfdan
> "Evey card in CardPi is the smallest unit of content. It is a mixture of
> text and imagery. Cards belong to series. Together they form nodes of a
> structure of showcasing collections of data in a organized and hierarchical
> way."

How is this different from a bookmark manager - or Evernote (which would
display you some of the content in form of cards)?

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
Here the cards are the content. So with your Evernote example, that's
displaying some of your other content in the form of cards, but also this is a
public system to showcase rather than a personal or private group solution.

I think the web site is probably more confusing than the app, especially if
you're logged in the app and can view how to create cards.

------
an0nyuser
Reminds me of CardStack: [http://www.cardstack.io/](http://www.cardstack.io/)

------
pmontra
The search engine gives an error page and clicking on World never load the
page. Maybe the site is overloaded. However an example would help: I expected
to see something in those cards and because they are empty I'm left wondering
what this service is about.

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
Sorry you're having problems. Can you try the site directly?

[https://www.cardpi.com](https://www.cardpi.com)

Or the world page specifically:
[https://www.cardpi.com/world/](https://www.cardpi.com/world/)

If you're still having issues can you let me know where you are located and
what browser your are using.

~~~
thomasdd
Error

error getting search results page

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
I see, I thought he meant accessing from a search engine outside the web site,
this is resolved now.

------
thomasdd
I will suggest to use other icon for "Help Indicators", that "Blue circle"
looks confusing besides the other color circles on card. And I think the blue
color is the same. Just my idea.

------
peteralcock
I worked for a startup for a while. We were doing the same thing. They're
still kicking around - VisiKard.com

------
douglance
Do something else. This is a dud.

