
Review my startup: Revizr.  You haven't seen this before. - koops
http://www.revizr.com
======
jbr
This is really quite cool. A few thoughts:

\- When I click "claim your identity," it should take me to the create an
account tab. At this stage, why not make that the default tab?

\- I'm no designer, but the tan / pink / fleshtone color isn't working for me.
If it's dear to you, ignore me. I just redid my site's color scheme because
people told me it looked like a developer's hobby project, not a business
tool. I used <http://kuler.adobe.com/> and was pretty happy with results. On a
similar note, anti-alias your logo and save as a png (with a background if you
don't want to alienate the ie6 crowd).

\- The killer use of this, IMHO, would be the ability to integrate your
technology into an already existing block of text hosted elsewhere just by
dropping a line of js into the page (like <http://www.apture.com/>). I know
that's not a tiny feature, but I imagine a lot of bloggers would love to offer
this sort of "live editing feedback" on their blogs (and might be a paying
audience). Either that, or provide tools to "publish version to blog" and have
integrations for popular blog software.

\- More on screen help. This is really hard, particularly for an interface
that requires users change their behavior. We're so used to looking at text
and assuming it's static that we need some tooltips or something that says
"here's how to use _this_ text." Maybe something that can be dismissed once a
user has seen it (that's what we're doing), but don't rely on your document
creator to add directions on how to use revizr in the document directions.
They're already advocating for you by using your tool; don't make their job
any harder by making them explain it to people they want to use it with.

\- "Tag the new version" -- tags are cool and useful and keep things
organized, but why do I get prompted to tag my version when I advance to a
version? I'm trying to do one thing and the software is asking me to do
another.

Overall, it's a really neat app; a mix of google docs, wiki, and document
publishing, with better change documentation and integration control tools.

\--

Hope that helps, and good luck!

~~~
sunir
"The killer use of this, IMHO, would be the ability to integrate your
technology into an already existing block of text hosted elsewhere just by
dropping a line of js into the page"

I double vote for this approach, for selfish reasons (i.e. I might be a
customer one day). The reasons are clear: Getting to end users directly is
expensive. It would be 'easier' to sell Revizr to vertical applications as a
plugin and let them spend all that money.

However, that being said and being less selfish, I wonder if the world is
ready yet to build web apps out of other web apps. I don't think so yet.

Scribd is a good comparison. They went ad-supported because that is probably
the only model right now the market will understand, even if it is not viable.
If the tables were turned and I was you, I would really want to charge
directly for my costs like a proper subscription SaaS service. Here's a
sobering take on Scribd's model:

[http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2008/02/19/scribd-cool-
feat...](http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2008/02/19/scribd-cool-feature-or-
actual-business/)

Other comparisons are web-to-print (e.g. postalmethods.com) and web-to-fax
(myfax.com) services, but people are more willing to pay for those because
there are obvious hard costs for them.

I believe that your future is all about being a 'feature' rather than a
'product'. I suppose I'm saying you ought to explore this model alongside an
alternate revenue stream that will keep you afloat.

~~~
gojomo
I triple vote for a drop-in, because the ability to get corrections from your
audience is a unique strength of online writing, but having those nitpicky
corrections inside substantive comment threads is a distraction.

So I like the idea of not just cool markup but a separate, distinct
'copyedit/corrections space' that captures this useful-to-many but annoying-
to-others feedback.

~~~
PebblesRox
I quadruple vote because whenever I see a typo, I want to fix it.

------
koops
There's a problem when your software doesn't fit into an existing category.
You have to simultaneously explain what it is and why it's good. Revizr
reminds some people of Track Changes in Word, and other people of wikis. It's
neither, but a whole new way for readers to communicate with writers.

No matter what you think of Revizr, I'd like to say thanks to the HN community
for pointing me to so many useful places on the web. I'm also grateful to YC
putting on Startup School '08 which gave me the confidence to work on this
full-time.

------
ktharavaad
Nice app. BUT:

1, It looks a lot like the ( now defunct? ) ycombinator startup
<http://www.writewith.com/>, which didn't gain any real traction.

2, For general purpose editing task, I find the realtime editor etherpad a lot
more useful.

~~~
SwellJoe
I came to mention that I definitely _had_ seen this before...WriteWith
performed a strikingly similar task in a very similar way, and despite pretty
good execution (certainly very good technical execution, maybe not as strong
as needed on biz dev or raising money) failed to go anywhere. I got the
impression the guys realized somewhere along the way that they were building a
cool solution looking for a problem...the market just didn't seem to be there.
Maybe that was just that the market is not yet educated enough on rapid
collaboration and shared creation (as Joe Kraus says, "being early feels a lot
like being wrong")...but maybe it's something more serious.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I was pretty sure I'd seen this before too but writewith isn't ringing any
bells ...? I do have a terrible memory. But the tag-line then puts me off
before I've started.

Why wouldn't someone just use Zoho or Google Docs?

I do like your handwritten-style annotated edits, but that doesn't seem
enough.

You definitely need to lose the mouldy pink though, with that heavy gray too,
bleurgh. Don't take your design cues from hacker sites! Gray for the edit box
parts that you're looking at all day, fine, not for whole site - it's bad
juju!

Your logo is the inverse of Zoho's - which appears to be an attempt to create
confusion (or it will to a high paid lawyer) and is also that of Novell's Zen
application distribution system IIRC, I think they have lots of lawyers too.
Why didn't you choose "R"?

fwiw

------
crux
I think it's really cool looking. One thing that I think needs tweaking is the
exact graphical representation of the edits. I think it's smart to try and
replicate what it would look like if someone were to write on your document,
rather than simply strikethrough words and the like, but I think you need to
go further in that direction.

Right now the thin, angular red lines and tiny triangles don't communicate
that association to me. They because they're so rectilinear, regular, and
small, they just look like busy interface crud that's obscuring my text. They
therefore have no semantic content to me and I find myself having to
consciously interpret them, in exactly the same way I interpret the weird
strikethrough/underline scheme of your competitors.

This looks like an area where you might have to find somebody with a real
professional eye; actually managing to implement the precise and rich
graphical look you need in order to make your new idea work won't be easy, but
I think it's hard to ignore.

------
avibryant
Functionally this is awesome - we use etherpad a lot for collaborative text
editing but having something a bit more structured like this could be very
useful. The experience of entering a rewrite and having it broken down into
several distinct edits is great, and there's lots of thoughtful touches in the
UI (like starting off as anonymous and "claiming" vs. having to create an
account up front).

Visually there's a lot of work to do - if you can get even a day or two of a
great web designer's time it will be very worthwhile. For example, although
you describe the two icons as "pen" vs. "pencil" they just look red and yellow
to me - and then they both create (different kinds of) red text. Your logo
needs to be antialiased.

On the pricing page, it's clear that there's lots missing from the free
editing, but it's not clear what the free edition actually _does_ provide. It
seems like you can still use it to create private documents, but that's not
obvious from the description. You might want to have some more rows on that
comparison table that have checkmarks all the way across.

One group I can imagine loving this is lawyers, although they'll hate that
it's hosted. You'd probably need to add more features but it would be
interesting (if you haven't already) to talk to some and see if there's a
custom version you could build with workflow targeted to contracts.

~~~
Ennis
I second the "hate that it's hosted" aspect. You'll get the same issue at
large companies too. The truth is commenting and reviewing sucks. Even when I
was at Microsoft everyone complained about it when they did their specs. I
definately see this as a value added add-on. Possibly by wrapping it into a
plugin for hosted blog platforms or desktop programs.

------
amelim
I think the functionality is great, however I think you should reevaluate your
color pallet. Choosing bolder colors would be a great first step in my
opinion.

------
chriseppstein
I own the domain wordsmither.com

I was going to do something different, but similar targeted towards small bits
of text. If your interested in discussing, contact me on twitter (same
username).

------
catone
You can't say "You haven't seen this before" when you were covered on
ReadWriteWeb 2 weeks ago -- that means a lot of us have seen it before. ;)

That said, it is a cool app. Nice work. One critique: There was no easy way
that I could see to show the document with out edit marks. I.e., there should
be a way to switch between showing the document with edits implemented by each
editor.

I make my living as an editor, and when I'm editing in Word with track changes
I often like to view final with the edits hidden so I can read through what
I've changed and make sure my edits are good. The edit marks get distracting
and make heavily edited docs hard to read.

Also, add in the ability to easily push edited documents into Wordpress, and I
could use this at work. ;)

------
Garth
I think this is really nicely done. I have looked at solutions like this in
the past and found them really lacking in terms of what text can be selected
and how the selection is indicated -- and it looks like you have gone way
beyond what I remember seeing.

Last year I created a prototype to play with some ideas that are similar to
this, except that I created my application using Flex. It is here
<http://www.annospace.com> for comparison. However, my interest at the time
was only in social commentary and organizing lots of comments, not in group
revising/editing.

------
yellowbkpk
Some feature requests that would make this _VERY_ useful to document-centric
companies like the one I work for now:

\- Allow me to specify reviewers via e-mail. The reviewers should have roles
(whose names the admin should be able to specify). Some should be required,
some should be optional.

\- Let me export a CSV or similar of the review comments, their owners, and
the location in the document where the comment or change occurred.

\- Let us run it on our own servers. Provide a downloadable version.

This would easily be able to replace our Excel review log/Word doc e-mails
that I get every day...

------
alexgartrell
Sell an enterprise version for use in intranets. Hire a good salesman to sell
it. This is a great replacement for Word documents that are manually versioned
(to create a paper trial).

------
skmurphy
This is an outstanding idea and distinct from current GoogleDocs or other wiki
implementations precisely because it's asymmetric (one owner, many
commenter/editors). I think you could enable a business model based on remote
copy editing by 3rd party labor where the owner has the ability to accept or
reject the changes. I can definitely see this as being offered as an
alternative to the basic browser WYSIWYG editor for blog and wiki systems
where the user ask for help with final edits or copy editing. I see a lot of
potential for this. We did some research a while back for a wiki startup and
this supports a mode that some prospects were asking for which wikis today do
not support: an individual owns the page and can accept or reject
additions/edits. This is different from the wiki model but appropriate for
many projects (or as a finishing step where a lot of peer review/development
has already taken place in the wiki).

------
Banzai10
Very cool!

Just take good look in the design, the point that should be improved is the
presentation, works on a landing page, improve you logo, the design of the
page and it should help you to get new users.

The features are awesome, the idea is more than awesome :D, BUT if you reduce
the number of clicks to execute the most common tasks it would be amazing
also.

Congratz!!!

------
aik
Very cool. One problem I have is that the edit menu feels a bit laggy to me -
it takes a short while for it to open. Also, when you're clicking around the
document, I would want more instantaneous feedback on what's going on, if
anything. I have the sense that it is just slow.

~~~
PebblesRox
It was slow for me too. I would click and wait for something to happen. Just
when I decided that my click hadn't done anything, the blue arrow with the
pencils appeared, but I was already clicking the mouse so I had to wait again.
This made it difficult to get the hang of and it was very frustrating.
Anything you can do to speed it up will be a great improvement.

------
ekiru
When I tried out Revizr(only a very quick pass-through so far), my first
impression was that this doesn't sound that innovative, but then I read more
and realized that it's a really cool idea.

Unfortunately, then I saw how Revizr displays changes. Several of the examples
look ugly to me(especially the differ example), and the way moving blocks of
text is notated seems like it may be slightly confusing with regard to where
the block is being moved to.

That said, despite my dislike of the notation, ‍I really like the idea.

A minor complaint is that the bold text displaying one's username isn't a
link, which wasn't obvious until I tried clicking it from several different
locations. I think it would be better to fold the "Home" link into the
username text.

------
anigbrowl
I like it. Only negative for me was that it didn't seem to recognize my open
ID (@gmail). But I did find it fast and intuitive. Too bad I'll never be able
to sell my technophobic boss on it (who tends to sit at his desk and dictate
micro-edits to marketing copy but also insists on receiving _everything_ as
email attachments).

I have some textual suggestions, but I'll add them directly on your home page
when I get to the office later :) On a more general level, perhaps you could
aim the community version at the wiki-using market, which might speed your
adoption.

------
paulbaumgart
Clicking the little icons each time (especially since they don't stand out
from the text very well) is a bit tedious. I noticed selecting and typing
automatically defaults to "revise". This is a great feature. Are there
keyboards shortcut for adding a comment?

The move text functionality is probably the weakest link. Why do I keep
getting the message "Can't move content like that."? Also, it would be greatly
enhanced with drag and drop ability.

------
joubert
My business partner recently gave me the book "Confessions of an Advertising
Man" (by David Ogilvy) and one thing that struck me is that ad research data
shows that using photos of people (as opposed to nothing or to sketches) in
marketing dramatically increases interest in the product/article.

Your home page is very informative - great. But maybe sprinkle one or two
photographs alongside the text?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
who doesn't buy when they see a hero shot ...

;0)

------
3pt14159
My friend does copy writing and editing for a living. These are her thoughts:

    
    
      (8:33:14 AM) Laura: this editing software is cool but impractical
      (8:33:28 AM) Zach: why?
      (8:33:39 AM) Laura: you have to highlight to delete things
      (8:34:00 AM) Laura: where with track changes you can just write over it
      (8:34:45 AM) Laura: it looks cool once you've changed stuff

~~~
koops
There's some secret practicality in there: select and start typing, and it
will write over.

------
fno
I found the page rather hard to read and it took a "long" time until I
understood what it is all about. Putting the text in 2 columns might help. Not
sure about the serif font too.

Nice idea. I like it. The revizr name does not appeal to me though, it sounds
a bit too fresh and young. My first association was a razor and green/metallic
colour, heh.

The logo has some weird spaces ("kerning"?).

------
csomar
Quite good, I didn't try the functionalities, but it will be very helpful for
me.

I'm trying to write some articles and as I'm not native I get help from other
people who master English. We use IM for that, so there's lot of problems
especially we can't have the exact time to meet and be online.

I think your app can solve my problem so they revise my writing and then I see
the correction.

Nice work!

------
brown9-2
You realize that by stating "You haven't seen this before", you are just
challenging readers here to find and name products and projects that are
similar to yours, don't you?

Although I have to say, the editor that pops up for "Rewrite selection" looks
extremely nice, although you might get in trouble for basically aping the look
and feel of Word.

~~~
quizbiz
I think you want to distance yourself from Word as much as possible. Look at
Google docs even. The interface could use a sleeker look. But I like the idea
and the execution a lot.

~~~
zackattack
I disagree. Why?

~~~
brown9-2
Well for one, couldn't Microsoft complain that the interface to one of their
products is copyrighted?

------
RK
What does this site do??

Maybe I am having a display error (Firefox 3.0.11 on Ubuntu 8.04), but I am
not seeing anything that gives even a clue as to what this website is supposed
to do.

EDIT: enabled cookies and I can now see the instructions. That seems like a
problem. I normally never surf to unknown sites with cookies on...

~~~
prodigal_erik
Yeah, it's a pretty dire failure mode. I wouldn't be inclined to whitelist
your cookies if I don't know your code fails without them and I can't even
tell what your site is about. The front page is actually readable without
turning javascript on, so it would probably help to just skip whatever it is
you're trying to do.

------
ABrandt
I don't have time for a full review at the moment, but this reminds me of a
widget offered by <http://goosegrade.com/>

Different approaches, but seems to be very similar functionality. (The
interface barely worked for me with FF2 and Vista).

------
imownbey
Just a quick question from someone who has worked on a similar app before. How
are you importing word documents? When I was working on something like this
every solution was either extremely convoluted or very unreliable (AbiWord was
basically all I could find).

~~~
koops
OpenOffice.org. It outputs nice, standard XML and keeps tabs on the
bewildering variety of things that ".doc" can mean.

------
jpd
Great, now all you need to do is integrate it in a service like fanstory.com
or fanfiction.net. Users could then point out all the writing mistakes
perspective authors make as they read, beautifully and elegantly. Beta-readers
would love it.

------
jwr
Cool, but I would be worried about its remarkable similarity (functionally) to
Apple's iWork.com. They serve the same purpose, and although Apple's offering
has less features for now, it is integrated with their iWork suite.

------
bmickler
Pretty cool! I can see this being used in the classroom a lot.

------
moe
I think I spotted a small bug. When I triple-click somewhere on the page then
it locks up my firefox solid for a few seconds. Other than that: nice work!

------
omouse
I'm curious, how are you dealing with the embedded markup in HTML? I imagine
it makes it really difficult to keep track of overlays, no?

------
DanielStraight
I don't even have NoScript on this Firefox and it won't load... are cookies
required to even see your page?

~~~
Ennis
yes cookies are required. I use the private browsing mode formost sites unless
its email or google services. Helps instead of dealing with enabling/disabling
cookies

------
runinit
I could see this working as a gadget in google wave as well.

------
zackattack
This is very very cool.

Unfortunately, the UI sucks in Safari and basically doesn't work.

I would try to cut to the "this is an editable document" chase in the second
paragraph. Maybe even the first. Probably the first. Definitely the first.

Awesome idea!

------
jv2222
Just in case anyone's interested there's an competitor called
<http://www.redliner.com>

------
utsmokingaces
Great You should submit it to <http://AppUseful.com>

