

New Color.com - bretthellman
http://www.color.com/#downloadApp

======
pork
Wow! Video without audio, and I have to join to watch! They've just invented a
less interesting Youtube, without audio, and non-public access. Well done on
an ... interesting ... pivot.

EDIT: this one is for the files of social networks that hobble a feature of
other networks to try and stand out. In this case, however, it's audio
associated with a video. Um....really?

~~~
melvinram
I wouldn't get stuck on the lack of audio part. It can't be too far behind.

~~~
melvinram
pork, it's not allowing me to reply to your comments so I'll just reply here.

I'm not disagreeing with you that audio is necessary and if it's part of the
development plan, it should have been a major priority and I probably wouldn't
have launched without it.

With that said, it's an assumption on our part that audio is necessary, even
for for short 30-sec videos and they are putting that assumption to the test.
Without audio, I don't think it'll work... but who knows. Until you test, you
can't tell for sure.

~~~
morrow
You have to wait to post replies sometimes, depending how many levels down the
conversation is. This is a safeguard against threads full of knee-jerk back-
and-forth responses, I suppose.

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Judson
The title link takes you to the download page (which doesn't tell you anything
about the app).

Head to <http://color.com/#landing> to see more about the app.

~~~
raganwald
And if you want to come back and tell us what you think, be sure to hit “back”
_twice in rapid succession_ , because color.com spent their $41 million
dollars hiring web developers who gratuitously break the web.

~~~
jarin
Hmm, worked fine for me in Chrome.

~~~
raganwald
Safari on OS X and Mobile Safari on my iPad both redirect from
color.com/#landing to color.com, then back to color.com/#landing. So hitting
back once takes me to some kind of intermediate hell that redirects to
/#landing.

But I’m glad it’s working for you. Maybe it’s my fault!

------
crcastle
Seem like Color is trying _so_ _hard_ , it kind of turns me off from wanting
to try it.

<http://www.color.com/#howItWorks>

Specifically:

* the background music with strumming guitar and bells seems really "yesterday" Apple-esque

* doorbell sound at the end reeks of trying to get consumer to associate that noise with the Color brand

You can try to brain wash me to fall in love with your product, but don't make
it so obvious!

------
marknutter
I'll cut through the piles of snark that I knew would inevitably show up on
this thread and say I now understand why these guys got so much venture
capital. This idea, and the previous one they had, while maybe not runaway
successes, are damn clever. Yes, it's more social-such-and-such, but they are
really taking some very unique approaches here, and with 40M in the bank it's
clear they're going to keep iterating until they _do_ find success.

There have been plenty of times where I've witnessed something that I wished I
could've shared with a few friends. When I see something crazy happen, my
first instinct is to tell someone about it. It's the equivalent of tapping a
buddy on the shoulder and saying "woah, dude, over there. Look!"

If I get tapped on the shoulder by this color app you can bet I'll check it
out. I've got 30 seconds.

At any rate, I find it disheartening to constantly see so many negative
comments about everything color.com does. It smacks of so many sour grapes.

~~~
pork
But you've just had the exact opposite knee-jerk reaction to the one you were
commenting on -- by assuming that we're all "sour grapes". Instead, you could
consider that our criticism of Color is legitimate. I think a reason a lot of
us are skeptical is that if you took Color's business plan and general idea
and applied to YC/TechStars/any VC, you would probably get polite looks of
boredom and stifled yawns. We've also been hearing of a somewhat cynical
underlying purpose to an otherwise fluffy mobile app, i.e., that it was meant
to be a "data mining platform", which doesn't exactly breed goodwill from
people who are trying to create consumer-centered products.

So why again does Color deserve any slack from (what I feel is rightly
deserved) criticism?

~~~
marknutter
I should have clarified that I meant a lot of the criticism sounds like sour
grapes, not all. The point I want to make is that if it wasn't public
knowledge how much money these guys took, I think the reaction on HN to these
ideas would be very different. My guess is that the 40M scandal makes it
pretty much impossible for these guys to get a fair shake in the developer
community.

~~~
teaspoon
Nitpick: you might call that envy or schadenfreude, but it's not sour grapes.
Sour grapes would be if someone were talking down the desirability of $40
million itself.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes>

------
adrianwaj
It looks similar to <http://keek.com> which I saw today on MoMB as "the
easiest way to share microvideo with friends, family and the world."

Which itself looks like a video version of the YC backed site
<http://dailybooth.com> (and messageparty)

add: <http://www.mobypicture.com/> could be best because it does a/v/i with
sharing and apps (inc new iphone app [http://mathys.vanabbe.com/proudly-
presenting-the-new-moby-ip...](http://mathys.vanabbe.com/proudly-presenting-
the-new-moby-iphone-app/))

------
melvinram
So... mobile justin.tv without audio with Facebook integration? Did I miss
anything?

Seems like a thing I might use if it had audio, which they might be working
on.

PS: I hope they still have at least $40.5 mil still in the bank.

------
randome
They really should give the VC's their money back. You can't win them all.

------
aymeric
This is like <http://qik.com> but without the audio.

------
bretthellman
The one thing I really liked about the last version was the logo which they
killed in the latest version. Bill replied saying "Old logo was too complex to
produce. Update that came out is a partial of our FB work. More will come w/
OG."

------
joejohnson
Ah, you have to login with Facebook just to view a preview of their not-quite-
videos. What is the benefit to not including audio with the videos? (Besides
that it surely uses less bandwidth.)

------
maaku
wtf? Why would I ever want to be _interrupted_ with someone's (even my
friend's) stupid skateboarding video?

I can't think of a single use for this product.

~~~
melvinram
You could be at Startup Weekend and live broadcast your Office Hours session
to the world... if they had audio, which can't be that far behind.

EDIT: Nevermind. They limit the broadcast to 30 seconds.

~~~
wahnfrieden
I don't think audio was omitted merely because this is an MVP and they didn't
have the time or resources for it - it's pretty clearly part of the main
concept of the product.

I can think of several reasons why this might be a good idea. For example,
audio recording on mobiles can be really bad - maybe that makes regular video
recording apps less popular. Audio makes the downloads heavier. Audio makes
consuming the content require more focus from the user - it has to mute any
music, phone conversation, etc. Audio makes 30s of video seem too short to say
anything meaningful - omitting it makes 30s seem like a long time for a
"moving photo". Etc.

I can't say if any of these things really make for a good product that people
will want to use - it still seems fairly ridiculous to me - but I don't know
why everyone's so dismissive of the idea that there's any benefit to omitting
audio.

------
yalimkgerger
Yet the video that shows off the product on their web site has sound. Oh the
irony...

------
aaronharnly
Just a few years ago, "41 shots" was the rallying cry. Now it is "41 million."

------
ams6110
Who?

------
jellicle
So besides being nothing but a crappy Facebook plugin, it's also not available
outside the U.S.A. Good thing you prevented those furriners from downloading
your app, otherwise they might upload their soundless foreign videos...

Color.com, instead of not rendering at all on Firefox, now does render after
about a 1.5 second delay. So there's some improvement. At this rate, in about
1000 years they'll have something worthwhile.

