

 Rate my app: HootCourse - rriepe
http://hootcourse.com

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jluxenberg
Impressive web page and neat idea. Would be nice if you included a live demo
of a course. It would give me an idea of what else you provide besides the
"Hoot!" sidebar.

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pjscott
Seconded. When I was reading the web site, the one thing I _really_ wanted was
to see what one of these courses looked like, so I could see at a glance if
this really worked or if it was just good intentions and slick anti-aliased
graphics.

There's definitely a lot of room for improving how education works, and I
applaud the HootCourse guys for taking on something so worthwhile. Good luck.

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tptacek
The website is really impressive. But is HootSuite a problem for you guys,
branding and trademark-wise?

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rriepe
Thanks.

As for HootSuite: not really. A couple of users have been confused so far, but
that's it. We're using the owl because it's a bird (and we're using Twitter)
and because of the associations with wisdom/learning.

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cscotta
You just described several conflicting areas and examples of user confusion.
If you stick with this name, tread very carefully.

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rriepe
As far as we can tell, the only users who have been confused are ones who have
followed HootSuite short URLs.

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tptacek
He's not pointing out something subjective; he's giving you a heads-up on what
the lawyers are going to say to ensure that their case against you comes with
a preliminary injunction.

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bdickason
Seems like a great idea... I really don't want to click the Fbook/Twitter
buttons for fear that they'll publish something. A small disclaimer below that
said something simple like "(Note: We won't spam your News Feed)" or something
along those lines would be great :)

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rriepe
They won't. The app does work like a Twitter client when you're inside it
though. Still some users missing that, so we're working on something to
communicate the process better.

It's actually been interesting to see how hard the new wave of privacy
concerns are hitting the apps. We didn't think we would need a privacy policy
for a while; but our /privacy got 18 hits without anything existing there, and
without it being linked to.

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TheThomas
The instructors using our tool have been very vocal, and we're absolutely
thrilled about that. However, we haven't heard too much from our fellow
hackers or our instructor's students. If you've got a minute or two to spare,
please let us know what you think.

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muerdeme
This looks interesting, but I'm thrilled to hear that you are actually talking
to customers first. Listen to them.

Nits: 1) I don't like that the 3 sellings points on the splash screen are
aligned with 3 unrelated feature images. I was expecting each image to reflect
each selling point and got a little confused.

2) The green hills footer bugs the crap out of me on the inner screens. Seeing
text peak around a curved footer when I'm scrolling just doesn't look right.

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TheThomas
Just out of curiosity, what resolution are you using? I just happen to be
using my old laptop today and I could see how the hills could be more
distracting than we had anticipated.

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bdickason
I didn't realize that I could scroll through the hills (using a macbook pro at
1440x900) and accidentally hit my scroll wheel.

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phreanix
Great site! I share some of the sentiments here about the hills being a
distraction and also would like to see some sort of demo that shows a typical
session. I'd also like to see your "About" page more prominently displayed,
instead of being embedded in a text link that I had to find like an easter egg
lol.

My question is this (and I'm not so sure if this is proper to ask), but is
there a pricing structure? What might your revenue model for this be like?

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oms2010
Excellent design/graphics.

I would suggest making the description of what the site does a little longer
(not too long though). Example:

"Supplement face-to-face classes with a HootCourse and get to know each other
faster." ... add another sentence or two here so I don't have to click around
too much to get a little more info on this sentence.

That was my first impression at least.

