

Ask HN: Review my startups interns startup - BinaryCake [free credits] - pclark

We've got a great guy working with my startup (Broadersheet) this summer. 
He's just launched his first startup - BinaryCake: Development Screencasts - an awesome achievement for a <i>15</i> year old.<p>If you register at binarycake.com and redeem the coupon "hackernews" you'll get ten credits - more than enough for a video of your choice.<p>The videos are really great quality, they cover topics like Test Driven Development, iPhone Development and PHP.<p>Check it out, give great feedback here and I'll send it to him. Thanks!!
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diiq
Rather than actual critique, here is a user story. It takes place... _inside
my brain!_

diiq's story:

\----------

Will there be 250 credits worth of content soon? 5-10 credits a video (maybe),
2-3 videos per month (maybe), that's... nearly two years, if the videos are
cheap?

Trying buying credits. Why can I only by credits in these numbers -- why not
any number? Some of the screencasts cost 8 credits. I don't want to pay 10
dollars for what you say is only worth 8.

Ohhh! I'm supposed to go somewhere else to redeem the coupon... hunting for
the right button.

Found it. Aaand the coupon doesn't work. Hmmm.

So I guess I'll download a preview. Maybe it'll be worth $10 to see more. I'm
pretty good with PHP, and I've done TDD, so I'll grab the iPhone development
masterclass --- I don't know anything about iPhone development. Maybe I'll
learn something. Downloading... wondering why this isn't embedded...

Watching a splash screen and music...

Hmm. Something about a method that gets the number of lines. Whoops! Preview
is over.

I should get back to debugging.

\---------

It's not a story with very happy ending, I'm afraid.

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davidalln
Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't figure out precisely what you guys did
within five seconds of looking at the page, and that is for me a turnoff. I
think it's part the color scheme, part the in-your-face layout, and part the
overwhelming feed on the left side. If I just took a quick glance, I would
think this is a blog, not a startup.

So you do screencasts? What type of screencasts? If that isn't inherently
obvious at the start then a potential customer may feel left in the dark. The
only place I can be for sure that these are developer screencasts is the tiny
"kickass developer screencasts" text under the logo.

Be obvious with what you do! Peepcode (<http://peepcode.com/>) is an excellent
model for a screencast site. By having "Rails" and "rSpec" in big letters to
the right of their logo, I know instantly what they sell.

I'm no designer, but that's what strikes me at first glance. What an excellent
achievement for a fellow teenager though!

(One final tip, make your <title></title> have the words "developer
screencasts" in it. It will help make sure people know what you are giving
them.)

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fixie
It would be nice to see how much 1 credit costs before having to sign up. For
example, over at PeepCode (<http://peepcode.com/>) I can immediately see how
much a screencast costs without having to click around. Good luck with your
startup.

~~~
jamierumbelow
Hello, thanks for the feedback. We've decide to go with the credit system
because it means that we can charge less for shorter, more concise screencasts
and it's less confusing for users. Consumers are aware of and understand
credits because many services implement them - the Xbox Live system is a great
example of this.

You can also head over to the about page ( <http://binarycake.com/about> ) and
see a list of credit bundles you can buy and the costs.

Thanks for the feedback! Jamie

~~~
Pahalial
In what way are credits less confusing for users? If anything I would label
them as more confusing, as they're a level of abstraction on top of money.
They can make good business sense, certainly, as you'd rather hold on to the
customer's left-over credits. And consumers can be more likely to spend
credits due to the mentioned abstraction layer.

That said, they're a firmly consumer-unfriendly model, for those very reasons.
And even then, the "more likely to spend credits" factoid only comes into play
once they've actually bought into the system - seeing that it's Yet Another
Credit System can be a slight added barrier to entry.

Expanding on this, if every place I spend money online worked with its own
"credit" system, I would have upwards of 20 idle balances of my own money
earning interest for someone else. Not a very palatable future.

------
matt1
Very well done.

The navigation is easy to use (you can tell he focused on usability), the
videos seem top notch (nice background music in the previews), and its useful
to me as a developer.

One thing, and its probably nitpicky, is the color. The green and white on
black is standard hackerish theme, but I can't do it for very long without it
starting to bother my eyes. He might have better results w/better colors.

But yeah, very cool.

------
pclark
clickable link: <http://binarycake.com> \- simply register, and redeem the
coupon "hackernews"

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Oompa
Why credits instead of just money via credit card or Pay Pal? Seems like you
want people to have some left over and then buy in more and keep going,
similar to Microsoft Points. I'd rather just pay exactly what I need to for
each screencast.

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jakewolf
Tried to review, but "This coupon is no longer valid"

~~~
pclark
try now

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sant0sk1
Not working for me either.

~~~
pclark
working now

~~~
rodyancy
Are we supposed to enter "hakernews" once we are redirected to PayPal? If so,
it didn't work for me.

~~~
pclark
try "hackernews" after clicking the redeem coupon button.

~~~
splashlin
still not working for me

~~~
Travis
Not working for me either.

