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Ask HN: Would you use a cross-platform launcher?
I've built an app called Pagehop (https://pagehopapp.com), which is a launcher app, targeting the web (and currently only for OS X).
Pagehop's core is cross-platform and I am thinking about pivoting to a new, not-so-distant idea - a cross-platform launcher. :)
I'll definitely rebrand, if I go in this direction, since the app will no longer be the "launcher app for the web".
This time the idea is to have default tools such as the ones that Spotlight and Alfred provide on OS X (calculator, clipboard management, browse the FS etc.), combined with Pagehop's web plugins (Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Stackoverflow and bunch of other searches) AND a support for Teams with auto-sync of plugins between team members.
So if you have a team of 30 people and they use PC's & Macs, you can have a team account for the app and everyone on the team can have the same set of productivity tools, specific for the team, available on a globally-assigned key shortcut. And whenever you need to implement a simple new graphic representing some data of your business - you can have a developer build a simple Node.js plugin, upload it in the team account and everyone would automatically get it. Same goes for updating tools. And when a new team member comes along, they only need to install Pagehop and login to get their productivity tool-belt installed.
What do you think? Does that seem like a good idea? Would you use it for your team?
Thanks in advance for all answers.
- r3bl 11y agoI have something very similar to this called Synapse[1] which basically does the same thing. It's open source, free and customizable with extensions. Plus, I can incorporate DuckDuckGo[2] with it which will allow me to search through specific domains (like, thousands of them, not just a couple). So, I really don't see the point. It's not really cross-platform and doesn't support teams, but I don't really need those features at all. [1] http://synapse.zeitgeist-project.com http://synapse.zeitgeist-project.com [2] https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang