

Show HN: Beagle, our app for students - adeelk
http://getbeagle.com

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brd
Am I missing something or is this just a <http://www.taskrabbit.com/> copycat?

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massarog
Did you take a minute to actually read into it? It is for the college
demographic only - targeted towards users on college campuses.

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cmcewen
So you're saying it's taskrabbit, but for college students? I'm curious as to
why you picked this demographic to target. From my own personal experience,
college students seem to have less money but more time than your average
person. They could be a good fit for this ecosystem as those who complete
tasks, but it seems like it would be much more difficult to get them to post.

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cappsjulian
I'm a cofounder, my name is Julian. I definitely understand your point and it
has been a topic of debate with us for quite some time. However, we think that
college campuses are perfect for something like this because of the pre-
existing communities, and the security (albeit mild) that they provide. There
are obviously a lot of students scrounging for cash, but we think that with
professors (anyone with a .edu email) there will be a good amount of people
posting as well. Beagle is also ideal for quick and easy tasks, so they
probably won't be very expensive.

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ernestipark
This seems like a really nifty idea. I'm one of the laziest people around so
I'll try it out since it's on my campus. I really like the website too, but
it's a little ambiguous. I wish it was a bit more explicit on the service.

Also, I can imagine location services being useful when tied with Beagle. For
instance, say I'm at my room working on a project with some people and the
deadline is in a few hours. We're really craving food from a place on campus
that's far but doesn't deliver. I can attach the location where my task would
need to get done (the restaurant/store), and someone with Beagle location
services on would be notified that there's a task nearby when they go close to
that store. So if someone was already there buying something, they could grab
something else and help someone out.

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cappsjulian
Thanks! That's exactly what we're thinking and hoping.

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massarog
Cool app, I think this will do well with the college scene. I just recently
graduated and I know this would have come in use many times. Quick question,
how are the payments handled so that the user who completes the task
definitely gets paid? I could easily toss a task up there saying get me lunch
and I'll pay you $50, but when they show up with my lunch I could say sorry I
only have $5 to offer.

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makmanalp
Great idea! As a fellow Cambridge HN'er, I'll be watching closely. With local
app launches, it's a good idea to go old school around campus and hang flyers.

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cappsjulian
Thanks! We'll be in town soon and certainly get to it. Can we have your email
to get in touch with you when we're in Boston?

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karamazov
How do you guys differ from Zaarly?

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pazimzadeh
I'm Philippe, CEO of Beagle. We are more focused on tasks than items. We think
that requiring student emails improves security and quality of service, and
that college students have more obvious uses for a service like this service
than the general population, at least for now.

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Alex3917
Will this eventually run on Android, or will it always support Darwin
exclusively?

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pazimzadeh
Yep, we're working on an Android version as we speak.

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ernestipark
The activation link isn't working for me. It takes me to a beagle page with
header and footer but the body is blank and I haven't been verified yet.

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adeelk
Okay, it should be working now. Thanks again.

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ernestipark
All working, thanks. You guys should think about asking students on campuses
to post flyers for you on Beagle (or some other promotion). Verifications
could be sent by photo. This could be a cheap way to seed some tasks and get
people to use the service.

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cappsjulian
Smart, thanks!

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brooksbp
Why target students? I don't see anything about students on the site -- only
in the link above.

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cappsjulian
We think that college students are more motivated to run around doing tasks
for each other, a little more desperate for quick cash, and there's already an
existing community at every campus. Eventually we'll spread beyond colleges,
but for now it should be a good way to spread.

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danso
How are joke tasks ("Need a full body massage, pronto") filtered out? Is there
a cost-upfront to posting a task?

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cappsjulian
There's no cost to post or download, but we are currently building a system to
filter out inappropriate tasks. For now, we're monitoring manually.

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cmaxwell
Seems like a fantastic platform for finding prostitutes.

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cappsjulian
Let's hope not.

