
Status Board - jpadilla_
http://panic.com/statusboard/
======
jgrahamc
I'm always underwhelmed by these things because I think they are solving the
opposite problem to the one that needs to be solved. The basic premise is that
it's possible to pick a collection of important things and put them on one
screen. And it's interesting from their example how poor that selection is:
there's a huge amount of space wasted on time, there's a specious graph of
inbox depth and a useless graph of sent emails.

I believe that rather than gathering information together in one place we are
far better served by ambient information (a small example:
[http://blog.jgc.org/2012/03/ambient-bus-arrival-monitor-
from...](http://blog.jgc.org/2012/03/ambient-bus-arrival-monitor-from-
hacked.html) and my as yet unwritten up ambient weather display). Then
information that's useful becomes part of the environment.

So, then I ask myself why this has been upvoted so much. And I think the
answer is because it _looks good_. It's all shining and new-car-smell.

~~~
DaemonXI
I think my favorite example of "useful information now" is Google Now.

I love how when I search for a place on Google Maps, my phone or tablet
assumes I want to go there soon and gives me a driving time estimate and an
option to start navigation.

I also find it very useful when my web searches and linked accounts are taken
in context: searching for a flight brings up the flight details on the day of
the flight, and Google Now automatically pulls up my daily upcoming events so
I don't forget.

~~~
jgrahamc
Yes. There's a multi-billion-$ startup to be created that can deliver
'relevance' like that.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
And it's not only knowing what is relevant - I used to use some nokia phone
and it would show my meetings on the sign in screen - so I know when I was
going to get interrupted. With my iPhone, technically superior in every way, I
have at least three clicks or swipes and I never know what my day is shaped
like.

Luckily I use it as an excuse to get my head down and work.

But the point (another long one!?) is iPhones UI whilst much lauded, misses
some useful functionality - and that will become more more painful as
relevance becomes achievable

~~~
toyg
That sort of thing is available if you jailbreak.

------
ianstormtaylor
Actually pretty unimpressed, and I usually like most things Panic makes. The
UI seems like gloss for the sake of gloss, and it is very hard to parse too.
What's with the super-bright colors and super-bright whites on a super-black
background?

Not only that but Emails Sent seems like a useless vanity metric, so I'm
surprised it made the demo screenshot. Is anyone really going around thinking
that they need an emails sent dashboard?

And is it a personal status board or a team status board? Do I really need to
see a MacRumors feed on team board? And a clock? All in the screen space of an
iPad? Seems like they went with a "hey what can we put on this screen" design
process instead of things a team _really_ needs.

Edit: I wasn't sold when Dashing[1] first launched, but the demo[2] that
siong1987 posted seems pretty promising.

1: <http://shopify.github.io/dashing/> 2:
<http://dashingdemo.herokuapp.com/sample>

~~~
cabel
"Not only that but Emails Sent seems like a useless vanity metric."

We use it on our board to track the volume of support e-mails going out the
door for each support agent. It's very useful!

~~~
Joeri
If you measure something, people will adapt their behavior to what you're
measuring. If you measure productivity by volume of mails, people will try to
increase the volume of mails at the expense of what is in those mails.

From that perspective, I think dashboards are useful as a sort of warning
signal for things going wrong, but not as indicators of whether things are
going right. So, the right way to approach it in my opinion is to measure
whether mails are being sent at all, because that would indicate a major
issue.

~~~
ceejayoz
You're assuming it's a productivity measure and not a "sheesh, Bob looks like
he could use a hand today" sort of thing.

------
no_more_death
...or you could get an Android for much cheaper and install some home screen
widgets.

Apple fanboys insist that Android features, such as widgets, are unnecessary.
Then they go crazy over iPad dashboard apps that weakly simulate Android
functionality.

~~~
kaolinite
How do you know that those who insist widgets are unnecessary are the same
people who go crazy over iPad dashboard apps?

Really though: as an Android and iOS user, widgets are almost always sub-par
compared to a regular app. I highly doubt that you could get as good an
experience with widgets as you could with a dedicated app by Panic.

------
pak
Is there any app like this already out for desktop Macs? I have an old iMac
that I would love to repurpose for a status board.

I was considering throwing together a one-off webpage with a bunch of favorite
sites in frames that refresh, but that wouldn't be nearly as nice to look at
as an app like this with prebuilt widgets that are designed to be laid out in
a fullscreen grid.

I wanted to just use Dashboard, but it is really slow (widgets seem to freeze
for minutes at a time, and Web Clips randomly fail to work for no apparent
reason).

~~~
rdl
I want something which lives "inside the firewall" vs SAAS, too, since a lot
of the metrics I want to track are on servers which I wouldn't want to have
touch the Internet bareback.

~~~
DiabloD3
I agree with this. Have VPN, will travel.

------
fphilipe
I guess that was why they were playing with video out adapters and wrote about
the shortcomings of the lightning adapter a while ago in their blog:
[https://www.panic.com/blog/2013/03/the-lightning-digital-
av-...](https://www.panic.com/blog/2013/03/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-
surprise/) .

------
thejerz
The biggest problem with this release is how few modules are available. I see
no end to the native modules they could make as in app purchases –– and that's
not necessarily a bad thing. OmniFocus, Charles Schwab... these are just a few
of the modules I would want before buying this app. Until then, I'm holding
out.

------
salman89
It is pretty, and probably looks great on Retina screens. I would be worried
though (and would include a "light" theme) when displaying on TVs. Black
levels on most low to midrange TVs are notoriously bad, and even worse in high
light environments - like it would be if you placed this in your company's
lobby.

~~~
piggity
Agreed, I don't know if I'd be able to sleep if my status was displayed on
anything with less than a 20000:1 contrast ratio

------
leejoramo
Panic has a history of doing "Status Boards" for their internal use. I assume
that they did this project for their own needs as much as to create a new
product.

Three years ago they described creating a status board using a large Samsung
screen with an embedded copy of Windows XP running Chrome:

<https://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/>

It is amazing the polish that they put on tools for internal consumption.

------
datashaman
You must pay extra for HDTV out? What?

~~~
biot
It's a feature that adds value. They are capturing that value via an in-app
payment. If the value you would receive from this feature is less than the
asking price, don't pay for it. Pretty simple, really.

~~~
CrankyPants
Do users also have to pay extra to get audio through the headphone jack?

One could argue that all features add value. Should all features then be à la
carte via in-app purchases? That'd be absurd.

Things can be both absurd _and_ simple. Really.

~~~
evan_
You can probably use the iPad's builtin hdmi out feature for free, but it will
output an iPad-shaped display. The one you pay for will dynamically resize to
fit the screen it's attached to and display different stuff. Not a huge
difference but it isn't like they did NOTHING for the feature.

------
ROFISH
This is great, but I have to sacrifice a perfectly good iPad to run on the TV
out. This would be perfect if the Apple TV allowed apps.

~~~
gurkendoktor
If you look at it the other way around, early adopters who bought the iPad 1
finally may have a use for it (the app runs on iOS5).

------
SurfScore
It looks great, but its pretty cost-prohibitive.

After all the problems with Coda 2, I'm hesitant to fork out money up front
for something from Panic that _looks_ fancy, but I have no idea how reliably
it performs.

~~~
phil
Yeah, god forbid you're out the price of lunch and aren't 100% happy with what
you got.

~~~
SurfScore
Happens all the time when I eat at Taco Bell. Yet I keep going there...

------
restlessmedia
Customer Reviews #1 "Buggy, crashing constantly after the first launch This
may be an interesting app, but I can't tell because it cashes as soon as it
launches. Not ready for prime time."

QA must be quivering.

------
elliotanderson
If you are after something similar to run on a TV without having to buy an TV
+ Apple TV + iOS Device - the guys over at Librato [1] have a post about how
they turned a $50 Android mini PC into their office dashboard

1\. [http://blog.librato.com/posts/2013/03/how-50-can-turn-
your-t...](http://blog.librato.com/posts/2013/03/how-50-can-turn-your-tv-into-
dashboard)

2\. <http://www.rikomagic.co.uk/>

------
mikebracco
It reminds me of <http://ducksboard.com/>

------
uptown
Section 11.8 of Apple Store Review Guidelines

“Apps that use IAP to purchase access to built-in capabilities provided by
iOS, such as the camera or the gyroscope, will be rejected”

How'd they get around this rule for the AirPlay unlock?

~~~
ceejayoz
That may be the reason they brag about it dynamically reformatting the
dashboard to work on a TV.

------
nicoles
Oh, this looks wonderful. Impressive that there's already third parties
catering to it: <http://www.stathat.com/docs/statusboard>

------
EwanToo
I find it quite funny that their FAQ says about showing the temperature in
Celcius, but not "Is there an Android version coming?".

So... if you're an android developer, you know what product I want you to
clone?

~~~
CornishPasty
Why is it funny that their FAQ has an answer for Celsius? It's pretty much
only the US that uses Fahrenheit for temperatures, the rest of the modern
world uses celsius to display temperature. That coupled with the fact that
Panic are a renowned Apple-based developer, should indicate really that
there's likely no chance of getting a Panic-developed Android version.

~~~
EwanToo
Funny because it's a trivial feature that's actually implemented, just
obviously in a slightly confusing way that someone's asked about it.

They're famous amongst HN readers, but not amongst people who might land on
their site googling for "status board tablet"

~~~
itsybitsycoder
It's really not trivial to those of us outside the US (Fahrenheit is
meaningless to me), and enough US developers are US-centric enough that it
sadly doesn't go without saying that they would support Celsius.

------
driverdan
Why would I choose to use this over a web based dashboard? A web service could
be used from any device, code can be updated more rapidly, and I won't be
locked into Apple's sandbox.

------
nicholassmith
I really like the idea of this but I don't think it's _quite_ right for me.
It's incredibly handsome, and I have been looking for, essentially, a one stop
shop 'this is what's happening and happened for X hours' to give me a high
level overview. This looks close, but not quite there.

Tempted to buy it still, I might be able to tweak it to get it close. Panic
software is rarely a disappointment (and Prompt is fantastic, with the few
niggles I've had mostly disappearing).

------
aaron695
It worked out my location (nice) but didn't bother changing dates and
temperature to metric/local format so it immediately looked confusing.

------
jkaljundi
Another take at dashboards is what we're taking with manager's team dashboards
at Weekdone: [http://blog.weekdone.com/be-a-better-manager-new-team-
dashbo...](http://blog.weekdone.com/be-a-better-manager-new-team-dashboard/)

What we're trying to do is connect analytics dashboards to real actionable
people behind some nice graphs.

------
rdl
This looks really interesting, especially the AppleTV support (a great device
to use for digital signage/etc. applications)

~~~
signed0
Are they actually supporting AppleTV? I was not aware that AppleTV apps
existed. There seems to be some speculation that they are coming this fall.
Perhaps Panic knows something we don't?

Edit: The App Store only says "Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or
later.".

~~~
SurfScore
Apple gives developers a way to stream unique content to AirPlay, separate
from what's on the iPad screen.

------
desireco42
You guys are like native americans with shiny baubles :)

I love Panic and I am sure this is excellent app, but... wait a week or two,
there will be a sale or something for sure. BTW, I am not buying this, I would
go with open source things someone posted in comments. Because it is free to
use and flexible.

~~~
maxerickson
That's a narrow and one sided view of history.

I don't see much point in any further derailing of the discussion, but I don't
think you picked a great topic for your humor.

~~~
desireco42
I apologize if this offended you in any way, I think you get that I am mocking
apple fanboys and their love for shiny things.

Disclaimer would be that I have a lot of apple gadgets and am happy owner of
several Panic sw titles.

~~~
maxerickson
I'm not particularly offended. But basing your mockery in a crass stereotype
isn't really necessary.

Basically, I'm assuming you are a decent person and hoping that you might
think a little more about whether native Americans deserve to be stereotyped
as foolish.

------
qiller
Interesting... How did they manage to work around item 10.4 of Apple's
guidelines?

~~~
iNeal
From their twitter, "Our best guess: non-interactive. Read-only status. Not
"widgets" per se."

Source: <https://twitter.com/panic/status/321846592921534465>

~~~
Narretz
I have a hard time believing they built this before checking if it would make
the app store. That's at least the vibe I get from this tweet.

~~~
iNeal
Right, if you follow the conversation, they also replied this afterwords, "But
at WWDC they couldn't tell us either way! "Submit it and find out", was the
advice. So we did."

<https://twitter.com/panic/status/321846667030695937>

------
nwh
A few months back on HN there was a similar project that ran wholly in bash,
and displayed widgets based on push and pull HTTP. Does anybody remember the
name of the submission?

~~~
dpcx
I believe you're looking for Hubble: <https://github.com/jaymedavis/hubble>

~~~
nwh
That's it, thanks.

------
bdcravens
Interesting that it has a panel where you can provide your HTML. I'd have
thought that would be against Apple's rules (haven't looked into how
restrictive the HTML renderer is)

~~~
timdoug
It's totally acceptable and very common:
[https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UIKit...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIWebView_Class/Reference/Reference.html)

~~~
benatkin
That's where the dev provides HTML, this is where the user provides HTML.

~~~
xuki
You could load any website using UIWebView, what's the difference if user
provide the HTML?

~~~
jeffgreco
Probably earned them a 17+ rating.

------
prezjordan
Obvious has a nice write-up of a similar tool they never shipped. [1]

[1]: <https://medium.com/didnt-ship/3002a2aaac50>

------
Narkov
Less bling and more function for us. We use Librato Metrics to report on
anything that moves. It makes it very easy to pick our aberrations and monitor
trends.

------
mdellabitta
Panic's previous foray into this space: <http://panic.com/stattoo/>

Not many panels. Payware that was abandoned in 2006.

------
jdevonport
Seeing shiny effect as used in this app makes me realise how much I appreciate
the trend towards a much simpler, flat design in software.

------
gambiting
Judging by the "Nowy Sacz" location, I am guessing it's a Polish application.
Makes me pretty happy :D

~~~
gommm
They just use GeoIp to show your currently location there.. For example, they
showed Penang for me :-)

~~~
gambiting
Oh. The rest of the data didn't really seem related to my location so I
thought it was a screenshot. Especially since Nowy Sacz is more than 200km
from me, normally my geoip shows Krakow, Nowy Sacz is much much further away.

------
return0
I think these apps should be called "Status Bored", because they are most
useful when you 're bored.

------
trackofalljades
Woah! It's Dashboard for iOS! ;)

------
DiabloD3
This would be a great app if they released it for Android and Roku as well.

------
hop
Would be a great native app for AppleTV. Hope Apple does that soon.

------
jonnyscholes
"clook"

------
shuri
tough crowd.

