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Ask HN: Do you find this useful?
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.
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.
Thanks.
http://x.minutes.at
- nudge 17y agoLink: http://x.minutes.at/ http://x.minutes.at/
- nudge 17y agoThanks for the comments everyone. I'll take them on board.
- newobj 17y agoI 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.
- mrphoebs 17y agoGreat design, I don't see myself using it though, maybe a firefox plugin???
- chegra84 17y agoBrillant. 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.
- Zev 17y agoLove the simplicity of the idea (and the implementation too, for that matter). The cancel button, however, doesn't cancel.
- nudge 17y agoThanks, I'll fix it.
- keefe 17y agoIt'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.
- mailarchis 17y agoIts 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
- nudge 17y agoThanks. 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 http://howmany.minutes.at/yoursite
- wdewind 17y agoYou 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?