

Ask HN: Your opinion on we heart places? Our startup from New Zealand. - bnolan
http://www.weheartplaces.com/

======
maxklein
It has no purpose. Once again, let me be the bad guy because nobody else will:
it's not useful!

The idea you have behind it is good, but you have done a shoddy work of
communicating it.

Think of it from the perspective of someone external to the page. I open it
and see a bunch of pictures of beaches. I could go to google images and type
beaches and I'd see the same thing. I'm never going to go to Turtle Island, I
never heard of it, and I'm not interested in it.

So, what would be useful to me then? Imagine I could go there, and then click
on my own city. Then I see a bunch of photos of obscure bars and fun places
(and not the monument in the center of the city) then it would be useful. If I
knew I was going to New Zealand in december, I could click on christchurch or
something, and I'd instantly see the cool places to go to, then that would be
useful.

I know you've had these ideas, the problem is that you presented the actual
way to get to the useful stuff as very cumbersome and unclear. Instead, you're
putting technical stuff on the front page like "tags", "tools", "KML feeds".

I have no idea what a KML feed is even though I'm a technical guy. And why in
heavens name is OpenID the most important "feature" you support? Is that not a
bit of a wrong setting of priorities?

"Cool Bookmarklet"? A bookmarklet that has a low temperature, or does this
bookmarklet wear dark glasses and doesn't dance in the club?

Yes, I know I'm being rough on you here, but it's better to hear this stuff
now before it becomes impossible to change.

You have had a great idea, but you need to communicate clearer. You're
communicating too technically and you need to do it different. How you do it
is up to you, I'm just making you aware of the fact.

~~~
dcurtis
You should mentally add "you idiot!" to the end of all your sentences. If the
resulting sentence makes sense, rewrite it until it's so polite that adding
those words doesn't make sense.

Your points here are somewhat valid, though. I'm just irritated at reading
your rants, thinking "wow, this guy is kind of mean," and then looking up and
seeing "maxklein" as the username.

~~~
maxklein
I know I'm a bit mean, but someone has to be the mean guy. Personally, I
dislike this fake politeness and niceness that people hide behind all the
time. It makes life boring.

I'm just saying things the way I see them without sugercoating them at all,
I'm not being mean for the sake of being mean. I'm just saying what's in my
mind without trying to reformulate it such that the other guy does not get
hurt.

When I demo my own project, I hope others do the same. Because that will make
me improve and change till I can hopefully finally make something that is just
frickin great. I care about this stuff here, this is not my job, it's my art.
Art has to be aesthetically pleasing, and you would not criticize someone for
saying his honest opinion about a crap piece of art, would you? And I'm not
saying that the project above is crap, it's actually quite good, but there are
some things that are not right in my opinion.

Niceness is overrated. If you're trying to make something great, then you need
to feel the flames when you're small. That's what will mould you and make you
into a hard mean money making machine. If everyone just pats you on the back
and encourages you to "follow your dreams", then you'll end up making
something that nobody wants.

When people tell you straight to your face what they don't like about your
project without trying to be all diplomatic and sparing your feelings, you
have an opportunity to look at other peoples perspectives and improve and
change things.

~~~
dcurtis
What you're talking about is being honest with people regarding feedback. I
respect that and agree with you.

But it is possible to be tactfully honest. You're not.

~~~
maxklein
Okay, I'll try to be nicer next time while still staying honest.

------
froo
(Note #1: I hope I don't come across as too critical mate, I'm just trying to
be helpful!)

I just had a little play around with the site and I was a little confused to
what it actually did for a few moments (even though I did read the tagline, it
more or less blended into the toolbar up the top) Perhaps an "About Us" type
box between the second signup section that is in a contrasting colour to draw
your attention to it? Perhaps a light turquoise or light yellow background to
ensure it is well defined in the layout of your pages. This would also give
you the opportunity for another signup call to action.

So I think you really need to change a couple of design elements to make it
clear what the site is about.

Some other design elements I would look at (and I'm just being picky now, but
trying to be honest aswell) would be caption under each picture could perhaps
not be in that little black box underneath each image? Whitespace is a
wonderful thing so I'd use it wherever possible. Ensure the flag is there in
the whitespace too - It's just right now each image gives me the impression it
looks like Google Adsense

\- Perhaps less boxes for places on the frontpage too? You don't really want
to overwhelm your new users with too much information. Maybe try some sort of
large gallery that shuffles through various locations and pops up it's
location underneath (I'm trying to remember the name of the open source thing
you can use, but have a look at <http://graphpaperpress.com/demo/monochrome/>
and you will see what I mean) ... I think with the larger cycling gallery and
an about us box, you could essentially shorten and shift the grey text under
your tool menu, ie make it a plain tagline "for remembering and discovering
places to visit." and leaving it under the sitename above the tool menu, which
would also neaten up the design.

\- Perhaps explain to users what your features actually mean (the majority of
users of websites don't know terms like KML)

\- The sidebar has a weird amount of extra margin on the right of it, making
the whole page seem shifted to the left.

\- Perhaps you could combine the Login/Signup into one large box by joining
them together and where the whitespace is in the middle add the word "or"...
it would reduce the amount of hot pink as I think that comes across as
distracting. Maybe the addition of a closing option to close the window again?

(Note #2: I hope this came across coherently, I've been up & coding/doing math
on and off for the last 30 hours and I'm about to go to bed)

~~~
froo
Ok, I just did a very rough & quick chop job in photoshop to try and explain
what I was mumbling about, remember its a _very_ rough copy.

Having another look at the image, I'd probably even make the images below even
more thumbnail like, perhaps a series of small tiles?

[http://marklancaster.org/storage/weheartplacesquickmockup.jp...](http://marklancaster.org/storage/weheartplacesquickmockup.jpg)

Hope that helps mate.

------
bootload
_"... Your opinion on we♥places? ..."_

Good but frustrating to add places. Maybe it's me but I'd rather either:

\- entry box like twitter to enter location

and how do you enter the street address of a mountain?

\- so a pin button locator where you can fine tune the placement on the map
itself

A geeky way would be allow users to also enter Geolocation, lat/lon. But
that's not important. The entry works but adding entry to the front page
removing the requirement to add an add-on will increase usage.

One thing that does bug me and could be be a problem. It has to do with the
restrictions on flickr images but there is a technical solution. I added this
image ~ <http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/2803128286/> to my account ~
<http://www.weheartplaces.com/users/bootload> The image is mine so copyright
is clear for my use. Others can use it as well, but if you ignore the
licensing ~ <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.en> by
placing adverts you leave yourself open to a lot of flack. Eg: If you get big
ppl will be able to enforce their license agreements. The technical solution
is to use the flickr API ( flickr.photos.licenses.getInfo ) ~
[http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.licenses.ge...](http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.licenses.getInfo.html)
to check the copyright permissions and respect them. Ignoring the licensing
problem will become a problem ~
[http://www.flickr.com/groups/api/discuss/72157601196183552/?...](http://www.flickr.com/groups/api/discuss/72157601196183552/?search=fair+image+use)
and <http://www.flickr.com/groups/lawgroup/>

------
soundsop
There's not enough information on the front page to entice me to sign up. I
suggest you add a bit more description as to what users can do on the site.

Also, I suggest the usual HN advice: let users do as much as possible before
requiring them to sign up.

Good luck!

~~~
andreyf
Just so you don't ignore it, I second the idea that you should make users sign
up later rather than earlier. This was my leave-point for the site - "ooh,
that looks nice, let's add that. Bah, not nice enough to sign up for anything
_close_ "

------
wayne
I couldn't figure out what the goal of the site was. Now that I've clicked
around more, it seems a little like 43 Places (<http://www.43places.com/>),
but even now I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to build a collection of places
(cause of the "I've been there!" links), learn more about interesting places
through comments, share/tag photos ala Flickr, or what. You can possibly be
all of those things eventually, but the homepage needs a clearer call-to-
action.

Also, minor nit, if I click on Register or Login but change my mind, there's
no way to close the dialog.

Very nice-looking!

------
wvl
Go visit <http://www.lovelettertomontreal.com/> and then compare it to
something like <http://www.weheartplaces.com/places/54-copenhagen>. Now, how
can you make something as awesome as the first out of the latter? If you can
succeed at that, you might have something great.

------
astrec
I like the concept & the brightkite integration.

I was going to comment on Di fara pizza, but when I clicked _post comment_
nothing seemed to happened. Only something did happen - _post comment_ button
is below the fold, but the login/register layer appears above the fold. I
found it after clicked 5 or 6 times, giving in, and scrolling up to hit the
site id for home.

This is in webkit, btw.

------
davidw
The map here is sort of useless:

<http://www.weheartplaces.com/places/108-jumbo-pass>

It needs the zoom controls, and you should probably use the terrain mode.

------
brm
You need to not copy the look of weheartit.com (visual bookmarking service)
unless you produced that too. That'd be a good start

