

Ask HN: Do you find this useful? - nudge

I recently wrote this very simple web timer (it lets you put a countdown on any website you want to limit your use of). It's gotten some good reviews on sites like lifehacker.<p>I've seen a lot of really helpful critique / suggestions on HN, and I would appreciate any thoughts you might have. Does the site seem useful to you? How can I make it better? All observations welcome.<p>Thanks.<p>http://x.minutes.at
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keefe
It's certainly an interesting idea. I'd get rid of the dialog boxes and just
do a form, jquery makes that extremely easy. I'd honestly never use it. I
clicked the link because I am very interested in making myself more aware of
time, but I don't care to have my activities limited. Here's an example: I
want to take a 5min break and read HN. I read HN mostly because occasionally,
something new and useful shows up. This happens very rarely but when it does,
I'll be there for 20min instead of 5.

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nudge
Link: <http://x.minutes.at/>

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nudge
Thanks for the comments everyone. I'll take them on board.

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Zev
Love the simplicity of the idea (and the implementation too, for that matter).
The cancel button, however, doesn't cancel.

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nudge
Thanks, I'll fix it.

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mailarchis
Its unlikely that people will visit sites with a timer on but they might be
interested in knowing how much time they have spent on a site. So, instead of
reverse timer a simple timer will probably do the work. Also it will be great
to have it as a browser plugin

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nudge
Thanks. A few people have asked for a plugin so I will work on that for FF and
chrome.

As for knowing how much time you've spent on a site, there is a stopclock
mode, i.e. counting upwards from 0. Just <http://howmany.minutes.at/yoursite>

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wdewind
You need to lower/change the barrier to entry. I could see myself using it if
it limited itself everytime I went somewhere (ie: 2 minutes for hacker news,
since I check it too damn much), but there is simply no way I'm going to go to
your site first and then enter it. The bookmarklet is a good attempt at a fix,
but it really needs to be seamless and automatic. For me deciding how much
time I need on a site each time I go to it requires a fair amount of thought
and consideration, whereas I could get used to getting everything I need out
of HN in 2 minutes unless I was there for a lengthy stay.

Focus on an FF plugin maybe?

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newobj
I think it's a pretty much perfect implementation of a service of this nature.
Esp. like that I can use bookmarklets. How robust is your frame buster buster?
I do get a slightly weird interaction when loading nytimes, at least in
chrome. A killer feature would be pausing if you tab away, but I'm pretty sure
there's no way to do this. Having said that, I don't really see myself using
something to limit my time on a page.

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mrphoebs
Great design, I don't see myself using it though, maybe a firefox plugin???

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chegra84
Brillant. It is simple and intuitive. I love it :D A lil work needed on the
implementation though; when I clicked on a link in the same site, it
disappeared, the timer that is.

