

Ask HN: Please review my app - schapirama
http://www.fromabirdie.com

======
mnemonik
Quick run through and my thoughts:

* First off, the front page took an incredibly long time to load. According to firebug's net console there were 23 requests totalling over 2 mb and took 32.35 seconds to load. Maybe I'm an outlier here, but there has got to be a way to cut down on that. Just about everything I'm seeing is an image rather than styled text.

* When creating a new album, why do I have to give you my information _and_ the recipients info right off the bat? You could probably postpone at least the recipient's info until I'm done. (I haven't finished creating anything, so this may be moot, but what if I decide there should be another recipient as well?)

* It would be nice to have a 'check availability' function for the subdomain that the letters will live at

* ok I just created this album, got a subdomain, etc... and clicked 'write a letter for XXXXX' right--now you want me to enter my info all over again?! I just did! I understand now (hint: I didn't get this point from your front page. The page shown right after you create an album is much mroe informative) that this is for _multiple people to collab_ on some letters for a special time in somebody else's life, and you need to get all those people's info too. But you should probably remember me since I filled this stuff out not five minutes ago.

* What if I want to attach links, videos, files, etc... rather than just images?

* How do I get back to the root url of my newly created album after I have successfully written a letter? I see no navigation bringing me back to XXXX.fromabirdie.com/ from XXXX.fromabirdie.com/letter/thanks

* from my albums root url, I would like to see (at least a preview of) the letters already written, not have to click a link to another page. The whole reason I'm here is these letters, why make me jump through hoops?

Sorry if I sounded a little brash at all, I just did a really quick run
through and jotted my immediate thoughts down. Of all of these issues, I would
say the speed of the front page loading should be a major concern. Is anyone
else having it load this slow? Besides that, I really do like the concept and
can see myself using it not as much for my girlfriend's birthday, but possibly
for a cousin's graduation or for a coworker who is moving on or retiring.
Right now I'm working as a student developer for my Uni's Residences Dept,
along with a handful of other people, three of which are graduating in a week.
I think being able to set up one album for all three of them would be great,
rather than having to do one for each.

Once again, I really like the concept, and hope to see future iterations be
born, because I think it has a lot of potential!

~~~
schapirama
Excellent comments, mnemonik. Thanks a lot.

* Performance is no doubt an issue (as you can see from everybody else's comments ;-) Will fix that asap.

* Good point about not having to re-enter name & email when writing a letter after you've just created the album. Will fix.

* Attaching links/videos is an option for a future version.

* More important than that is to support multiple time zones, so you don't have to guess what time it is in NYC! :-)

Thanks a lot for such a detailed review.

------
there
on your tour screen, create proper thumbnails of the screenshots, don't make
the browser download the huge files and scale them itself. it's painfully slow
and the scaled versions aren't readable.

~~~
JeremyChase
I would say performance is generally poor. The rendering of pages seemed
plenty fast, but downloading of all the content/css/js was painful.

Some quick things that would help:

* use :cache => true for both your CSS and JS files, this helps more than you'd guess

* make sure passenger is serving your static content without hitting the rails stack. I don't know much about passenger, but you should check on this.

* as 'there' said, use properly resized thumbnails.

~~~
schapirama
Great comments, 'there' and Jeremy. Yes, performance _is_ poor. I mainly need
to fix the background images, which are huge. It's at the very top of my ToDo
list.

Thanks for the tips on Passenger. I'll take a look at it...

Your comments are much appreciated.

------
mellis
For a concept that depends so heavily on invoking a personal / emotional
response in your users, I don't think the graphic design is good enough. The
pages are heavily themed (e.g. strong background image, handwriting fonts); if
you're going to do this, you should do it well. Otherwise, it's probably best
to stick with a more subdued design and allow the content to dominate. Or you
should let the album's creator design / customize the theme.

Please don't take this the wrong way. I love the idea and wish you the best of
luck.

------
caffeine
Hi Schapirama,

I love the idea. But I have a visual problem with the page (other than the
massive loading times, which you've already promised to fix):

Way too many fonts on that page.

The logo on the top left, the "Album of letters" script, and the "TOUR" button
are all different fonts, and it's ... less than pretty :)

Get rid of the military-style "TOUR" font. Maybe tone down the crazy "from a
birdie" logo ... it looks too twittery.

Also, tone down the cross-hatch on the back of the page. Nobody writes letters
on corduroy pants :)

I think you should work with a graphic designer to choose a good color scheme
and typography set that work. The idea is excellent and your page _almost_
gives the "vibe" you're looking for. Seeing that page, I really wanted to
write some letters: so that's a huge plus.

I like the layout of the elemnents: the "An album of letters" is intriguing,
and simple "big middle box" layout works well, because it feels like a letter.

------
dc2k08
I know you probably are more looking for feedback as to how it works but you
do really need to compress the images you are using.

At 56.6 Kbps just the top portion of the letter graphic takes over 35 seconds
to load.

Here's the same graphic saved as a jpg using the fireworks engine - no
different in appearance but 10 times smaller:
<http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/3946/amalfitopcreate.jpg>

Here's your png for comparison:
<http://www.fromabirdie.com/images/Amalfi_Top_Create.png>

you'll have to work in the exact matching background gradient but it will be
worth it.

~~~
schapirama
Hey, thanks a lot for taking the trouble to create a JPG!

I am aware of the problem with the images (300KB each! ;-) I used png because
I need the transparency, but my very first task now is to fix this problem.

Thanks

~~~
dc2k08
no worries. if you need any help, let me know.

------
dougp
In Opera the hover over effect on the buttons causes them to spasm in size
Large -> tiny text -> large and red. This causes the other buttons to shuffle
around usually under your cursor and then they start their dance. It was
pretty exciting.

------
qeorge
I like the idea, but the design has a couple of flaws:

\- The heading text is hard to read (perhaps choose a different font?)

\- The button's rollover states aren't preloaded, makes it a bit awkward.
Preload them, or better use CSS sprites

\- The PNG buttons aren't blending properly with the content's background
image

\- The tour's screenshot thumbnails should be small images, not large images
resized with HTML. End result is that each one is ~200K. Easy to fix and would
make the page load a lot quicker

Its a really nice idea though - I think people would love to get a collection
of letters from friends on their birthday, anniversary, etc. Keep going!

~~~
schapirama
Thanks qeorge. Yes, indeed, lots of work needed on the front-end design.

------
greengirl512
I really like the concept...how neat! In addition to the design issues, I just
wanted to second the idea of allowing the person who ordered the album to
purchase it and have it sent to the person it's for. I could see using this
for older relatives who don't really do computers if it had that option, or
even for my MIL, who uses computers but is also obsessed with physical
pictures and scrapbooks.

------
tr4nslator
You might want to create your own original "feedback" image for the tab on the
left. Yours[1] appears to have been copied from uservoice[2] (probably a
leftover from deciding to use their feedback or use your own, am I right?).

    
    
      [1] http://www.fromabirdie.com/images/feedback_tab_white.png
      [2] http://cdn.uservoice.com/images/widgets/en/feedback_tab_white.png

------
bcl
I have just given it a quick skim. I hope that you have put anti-spam measures
in place to prevent scripts from automating submissions to your system and
using it to send email. A few ideas:

* Original creator needs to register, use a confirmation email to verify them. * ReCaptcha for other writers * email confirmation before doing the final delivery to the friend.

Also make sure you have the creator write something personal for the recipient
to see when they get the delivery email. I get e-cards from my relatives all
the time and I always delete them.

I would also give them the option of downloading a PDF of the letters.

Good Luck!

~~~
schapirama
Good comments re:spam bots.

BTW, the creator _can_ write something personal, both for the recipient, and
for the friends who come to write their letters. It's a customization option
in the album admin page.

Thanks a lot.

------
robryan
Decent idea, in the same way that there is something special about a book over
an eBook there is something special about handwritten notes on a big birthday
or farewell card which may impact usage of something like this.

Looks well done though and the handwriting like fonts may combat this.

~~~
schapirama
Thanks for the comments, robryan. Yes, I agree with you, nothing beats a real
object --that's why the idea is that the recipient of the letters can buy a
real book (printed on demand) to keep all the letters. We've shipped a few,
and people seem to love it!

~~~
thorax
Wouldn't it be better to (also/instead) allow the person who starts the book
the option of sending that hard copy to them?

~~~
schapirama
It would be great, yes. Our concern has been that the price of the book
depends on the # of pages, and we don't know how many there will be in
advance. More importantly, we don't know if enough people will write, to make
a physical book worthwhile. What we're planning to do is give that option to
the person who starts the book, and let them specify that the book should be
printed only if it has 5/10/15/20 letters...

Thanks much for the suggestion.

------
colinplamondon
CSS sprites are your friend.

------
thorax
I do like this. Might even try it as a gift for a friend of mine, too.

------
csbartus
sorry for asking, may not be adequate but have you planned to get revenue
somehow?

~~~
schapirama
I originally built this as a b-day present for my wife, and she liked it so
much that I decided to turn it into a public service. And I'll be happy if
it's just that.

But we do have a model to generate (modest) revenue, which hopefully will
cover the (again, modest) costs: At the end, when the recipient has seen all
the letters, s/he can order an actual, physical book with all the text. It's
printed on-demand, and we're make a bit of $$$ over what the publisher
charges.

~~~
csbartus
Amazing! I could not realize this 'off-line' business model aspect of the
site!

But must work as all other online-to-offline modeled businesses. You can
contact Springwise.com maybe they'll put in their feed, they like these on/off
combinations.

~~~
rs
The 'off-line' model is actually quite common in the wedding world. I know a
person running a wedding website hosting (planning, photos, invitations, etc)
site where the couple can get everything on a CD once the wedding is over for
a small charge.

Useful to keep these additional models in mind when thinking of a new business
idea

------
shiranaihito
The page <http://www.fromabirdie.com/what> links to itself with the word
"our". It seems a bit strange.

~~~
schapirama
Embarrassing. Thanks --I've fixed it.

------
zackattack
reminds me of a startup I worked on a while ago -- groupcard.com

~~~
schapirama
You worked there? Interesting. They're still up, right?

Our goal when we started the project was to be, in a way, the opposite of
groupcard. Whereas they (and their format, and their examples, etc) encourage
quick, short messages ("Happy b-day dude! 21, wow! now you can legally
drink!"), we created our site for people who want to write longer, more
personal, and more detailed letters. Hence the design with the scroll, the
hand-written fonts, the lack of shinny images, etc.

You'd be surprised, but the average length of the letters that are being
submitted is a bit over 300 WORDS...

I do like groupcard... we're just targeting a different audience/need...

