7 ms·

Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? 2017 Edition

47 points by yitchelle 10y ago

A similar question was asked just under a year ago. So I thought it is about time to ask again for 2017. 2016 edition is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11259746

Huhty 10y ago
Blog Enhancement Suite: http://blogenhancement.com http://blogenhancement.com It's a growth tools suite for bloggers (as explained on the landing page.) Right now we're in pre-launch but we're launching in late Feb / early March (a couple weeks). It's awesome because: 1. It gives bloggers social/growth tools never before accessible. 2. It provides a new/different source of revenue. 3. It can replace the redundant/impractical "timeline" widgets offered by FB, Twitter, etc. Those currently act more as a glorified social channel promoter than anything actually beneficial to the blog itself. 4. It's free (for the basic version). 5. It's powered by Snapzu, our Reddit/HN like voting community platform. Would love any feedback, and am open to answering any questions. Cheers.
gliechtenstein 10y ago
I am working on an open source project that makes building cross-platform mobile apps as easy as writing ONLY a JSON markup https://www.jasonette.com https://www.jasonette.com I did a Show HN about three months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879179) and was so grateful for all the great constructive feedback I received, it really encouraged me to keep evolving the project. And I really have come very far since then. So I thought I would share what I have achieved so far: 1. The original release was iOS only, but so many people told me I should build an Android version, so I did. Now both iOS and Android are completely open source on Github and they both use the same JSON grammar. Here's a recent post where I talk about how I designed the JSON-to-Native mappings on both iOS and Android: https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-build-cross-platform-mobile-apps-using-nothing-more-than-a-json-markup-f493abec1873#.r0m9f21t8 https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-build-cross-platform-... 2. I've implemented functional programming in JSON. Yes, a function in JSON. I had to come up with a JSON grammar that can represent all aspects of a function like invocation, arguments, callbacks, call stack, recursive calls, subroutines, etc. If you're interested, check out the post I wrote about this: http://blog.jasonette.com/2017/02/15/functional-programming-in-json/ http://blog.jasonette.com/2017/02/15/functional-programming-... 3. I've implemented a "require" for JSON, so it can be used to parallel process multiple JSON objects from different sources, which I think is great for people who want to build a mobile app for their decentralized apps. I personally think decentralized apps will take off in 2017 and going forward for many different reasons, so this means a lot to me: I wrote about this here: http://blog.jasonette.com/2017/02/17/require/ http://blog.jasonette.com/2017/02/17/require/ These are just some I have worked on personally, but the REAL cool part is that the community has really picked up and many people have been contributing to the project. And I think THAT's the main reason why it's awesome. The fact that some nobody with no track record can just release something that resonates with enough people and anyone from around the world can just jump in and help. This is my first ever experience with an open source project and everything feels so magical to me. I hope to update you guys with even better news in the future!
- joshu 10y ago
  I would love to chat if you think about raising money for this...
schoen 10y ago
I'm working on an update to the border search whitepaper that I helped write for EFF in 2011 (the 2011 version is at https://www.eff.org/files/eff-border-search_2.pdf https://www.eff.org/files/eff-border-search_2.pdf). The update will feature new legal analysis, including references to court decisions that have come out in the meantime, fewer elaborate technical suggestions, and more concern for the problem of how border agents may react to noticing that you've took precautions against searches (not only for whether the precautions are effective). There's been a lot of awareness of the risk of searches of electronics at the border lately, so hopefully we can get some up-to-date and informed guidance out there.
ccvannorman 10y ago
SuperMathWorld.com, it is awesome because we let kids actually make video games in a mathematical sandbox! There are a ton of math learning solutions but most of them are pop-up worksheets slapped on top of a game. In SMW the math is integrated so every interaction has a mathematical property. The "making games" part is possible because we expose the editor in WebGL game, because we really want to put kids in control of their experience--nothing helps move a kid's mindset from "math sucks" to "math is fun" like being able to create your own world of math toys. We're in beta, launching June 1 and always looking for collaborators! Reach out if you're a math or physics geek, we can make some pretty neat visualizations/interactions using our engine.
rayalez 10y ago
http://webacademy.io http://webacademy.io - a collection of the best learning resources for Web Developers and Startup Founders(still work in progress). http://hackertribe.io/ http://hackertribe.io/ - a community of hackers and founders. http://lumiverse.io/ http://lumiverse.io/ - discover great educational videos. http://fictionhub.io/ http://fictionhub.io/ - fiction publishing platform.
andrew-lucker 10y ago
I'm working on a port of OpenAI gym/universe to the Rust Programming language. It will be awesome because everyone is interested in AI now, and Rust is cool too. https://github.com/andrew-lucker/rust-openai https://github.com/andrew-lucker/rust-openai
joshuamorton 10y ago
For a few years now, I've been working on an autonomous vehicle (https://github.com/gtagency/buzzmobile https://github.com/gtagency/buzzmobile) that some friends and I hack on. We just recently hit what I'd call 1.0 in terms of a huge system refactor to make the entire system much more robust and testable. I started working on this recently: https://github.com/joshuamorton/tut https://github.com/joshuamorton/tut, and might go back to it. After seeing Kenneth Reitz's Pipenv I wanted to do something similar but a bit more extensive that included testing tools and some other stuff. And tut is the WIP result. Think Cargo for python.
- joshu 10y ago
  This is useful. I am currently building an autonomous gokart in ROS.
  - joshuamorton 10y ago
    Heh, we're a student organization, so there's lots of membership turnover, and that forced us to really upgrade our documentation and build tools over the last year to prevent all kinds of weird issues and allow quick onboarding. I made it my mission over the last year or so to build something better than rosunit and rostest, because having to more or less copy launch files for every test seems arduous. I ended up with the test_utils library that we'll probably spin off into its own package soon, but its a much, much nicer interface for writing tests for ros, and at this point seems to be relatively stable, with one or two minor changes I need to make. Glad its helpful!
  - iraphael 10y ago
    Hey, I'm the current team lead for buzzmobile. I'm glad our repo is useful, we've been working hard to make it as clean and maintainable as possible. Definitely feel free to reach out or send feedback if you have any :)
jacobzweig 10y ago
Just finished up my dissertation and I've been working on taking some of the deep learning and RL techniques I've used for my research to build something new. We just launched Optimail (https://optimail.io https://optimail.io) - it uses reinforcement learning to automatically optimize drip email campaigns.
- ezekg 10y ago
  This is really cool, great job. Who is your target market? I've been (slowly) delving into machine learning/AI and found parts of your marketing copy hard to understand, so couldn't imagine somebody with a marketing background being able to grok it.
  - brockf 10y ago
    Hey thanks! I'm Jacob's co-founder at Optimail. We only just launched yesterday, so I think we are still working to find that exact product-market fit. At the moment, however, we're targeting medium- to large-sized businesses that use drip email marketing campaigns, such as onboarding campaigns, lead nurturing campaigns, and retention campaigns. Thanks for the feedback on the copy! If you are feeling extra generous and have a second, shoot me a PM and let me know what parts you found confusing. We want it to be accessible to non-technical marketers who might be using older software like Mailchimp, etc. (After all, a main benefit of using AI here is that you don't need to get into confusing automation-building stuff like multi-branching decision trees.)
    - ezekg 10y ago
      Sorry for the late response. I'm a developer and a few sections I had to Google definitions for were: > Our suite of advanced analytics, including Cohort Analyses, Sequence Analyses, and Algorithm Metrics will unlock new insights in to your customers and campaigns. > We use a combination of deep reinforcement learning and hierarchical Bayesian models to quickly and accurately learn about your customers and optimize your campaigns in real-time. I think you could simplify those a bit, maybe hitting from a higher-level with a link to a more detailed explanation of how Optimail does its thing. I totally get the value in using these terms, but for the landing page I would imagine using simpler language may result in non-technical users being able to grok the benefits of your product a bit better.
joshu 10y ago
I am putting together an autonomous vehicle event at a racetrack and a spec vehicle for competition. Http://selfracingcars.com/event
ezekg 10y ago
Currently finalizing things for the launch of Keygen[0], a RESTful API for managing software product licenses—everything from individual users to the machines they’re allowed to use. Been in beta for the past few months and am excited to finally launch, having spent nearly a year developing it any chance that I get. I’m currently working on wrapping up some great business-ey features such as an admin dashboard that will allow users to visually monitor metrics for each product to get insights for popular license types, as well as other crucial metrics like license churn, overdue license check-ins, usage across different machines and more. Been a long road, but I'm excited to try and put my sales hat on soon. It's a service I've always needed for developing small niche desktop apps. [0]: https://keygen.sh https://keygen.sh
jjoe 10y ago
I'm working on Cachoid -- a Varnish-as-a-service platform -- https://www.cachoid.com/ https://www.cachoid.com/ Site caching is so underrated I had to do something about it. In fact, I recently announced its first public beta. The one USP is this: you create a Cachoid and it automatically starts caching your site. No need to get into the nitty-gritty details of caching or get your hands dirty. It just works! The difference between Cachoid and other platforms is that we guarantee memory allocations per Cachoid (Varnish instance container on steroids), which is crucial to achieve speed. A multi-tenant content distribution network doesn't always have a memory-store SLA for its tenants. More info: https://www.cachoid.com/ https://www.cachoid.com/ Quick overview of its architecture: https://www.cachoid.com/blog/2017/01/15/high-level-architecture-of-cachoid/ https://www.cachoid.com/blog/2017/01/15/high-level-architect... Docs: https://www.cachoid.com/support https://www.cachoid.com/support
- ezekg 10y ago
  Looks like a cool project, good job. I feel like your pricing section should drop the "upgrade" verbiage and instead use something like "buy now", seeing as most of your traffic there will likely be new users. Also, those buttons lead to a login form—I would default to a sign up form, with a link like "Already have an account? Sign in." to reduce friction for new users. Good luck with Cachoid!
  - jjoe 10y ago
    > I feel like your pricing section should drop the "upgrade" verbiage and instead use something like "buy now", seeing as most of your traffic there will likely be new users. Also, those buttons lead to a login form—I would default to a sign up form, with a link like "Already have an account? Sign in." to reduce friction for new users. You're right, I didn't see it from that angle. Plus the registeration link would auto login already registered users anyway. Thanks!
slededit 10y ago
I'm currently working on an open source search engine for the internet as a whole. Google has been getting too smart for its own good and that actively deteriorates quality of technical searches where precision matters. I'm also hoping to use it as a platform to test some of my theories on how to apply traditional IDE search techniques to help find and understand code snippets. Plus its just a fun way to see if I can write code that "scales".
zump 10y ago
Does anyone else think startups are just incredibly boring?
- stevekemp 10y ago
  Some are. Some aren't. I create hobby-projects for fun, I have two (I think?) that I charge money for. They'll never be "real" companies, but they cover their costs which is all I wanted. I see broad trends on sites like this, for example you can pretty much pinpoint the moment that every other Show HN started adding "Deep Learning" to their submissions. That kind of herd-mentality is pretty depressing, but also fascinating to watch in action. Startups as a meta-topic are fascinating, although again I have that same feeling of depression and sadness when I read "Growth hacking" tips that basically boil down to fancier ways to spam and mislead, but I appreciate reading about real people and real-projects. The posts that start out "I posted on my blog, which has 50 million readers, and suddenly I was profitable" are pretty unrealistic. Simple projects that have slowly become more and more popular, like the guy who is frequently talking about his webcounters, are a breathe of fresh air from the hype. I'm sure I could code a web-counter. I'm sure that it'd never become super-popular, because long-tail counts for a lot. Then again I do have a few readers of my blog ..
jiten_bansal 10y ago
Just launched https://betapage.co https://betapage.co 2.0
- Main_ 10y ago
  I did not understand what the website is about. You could put a summary at the top of what the website does, that would be very helpful. I browsed for 10 seconds and left. Hope this helps.
cdiamand 10y ago
I'm working on http://oppsdaily.com http://oppsdaily.com, a daily email for software devs who want to solve the problems others face at work. The email consists of a brief, 5 question interview, asking about a problem someone faces at work and the software they wished they had (that they would buy) that would solve the problem. Each day I receive a handful of responses from developers who want to learn more, and I try to connect them to the interviewee
- wirddin 10y ago
  Hey there! Read your medium post yesterday about a competition. Great work there man! :D
wbrocklebank 10y ago
For the last two years we have been building out an AI-driven anomaly detection service that monitors critical equipment for failure: https://shprd.com https://shprd.com. We make it possible for small & medium sized companies to be able to get the huge cost and manpower benefits of predictive maintenance as a turn-key solution - connect cheap sensors to motors, boilers, A/C compressors and monitor them for correct behaviour, alert on abnormal performance and before failures (a full list of what we monitor is at https://www.shprd.com/deployment https://www.shprd.com/deployment). We are using various ML modelling methods to understand each sensor's normal operating behaviour - more info on the tech is at https://www.shprd.com/technology https://www.shprd.com/technology We are just coming out of our R&D phase and into full commercialisation. Any critique of the explanation site or other info welcomed!
DrNuke 10y ago
I act as a business dev and advisor for the internationalisation of DronesBench http://www.dronesbench.com http://www.dronesbench.com , an innovative tool for the diagnosis of drones from Foggia, Italy. With a novel benchmark for efficiency of drones, two academic collaborations and a pre-series completed, commercialisation is going to follow by the end of April. Educational (for high schools, universities, flight schools) and professional (manufacturers, repairers, certifiers) packages offered.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
krapp 10y ago
>2016 edition is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11259746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11259746 Wow, mfw I'm still working on the same projects. What was going to be a Berzerk clone[0] has turned into an attempt at a more general purpose framework for games in C++ and Lua[1]. Eventually, I'll get around to actually finishing something in it. Mostly it's just a time sink for self-education. And I'm still slowly working on a HN-like forum in Hack[2]. [0]https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/berzerk https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/berzerk [1]https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/sdl_framework https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/sdl_framework [2]https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/basedforum https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/basedforum
- wirddin 10y ago
  Have you deployed the HN-like forum somewhere? Also, off-topic, but why bitbucket?
  - krapp 10y ago
    > Have you deployed the HN-like forum somewhere? I tried getting it to run on OpenShift but their HHVM cartridge wouldn't allow me to run Composer through it instead of PHP, which I had to be able to do, and their version of PHP was out of date. Given the state the project is in, I haven't bothered trying anywhere else - it wouldn't be worth spending money to host. >Also, off-topic, but why bitbucket? Free private accounts, not as much social media nonsense as there is with Github.
ganeshkrishnan 10y ago
I am working on https://www.aihello.com https://www.aihello.com which is Machine Learning platform for ecommerce sellers. Thinking of selling something but hate working just by gut feeling? AiHello will give hard starts (sales, competition, price, profit etc) and whatever you plan to sell. We help online sellers launch their product quickly on multiple channels like Amazon,Ebay, Jet.com etc as we have inventory management built in.
thenomad 10y ago
http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760 http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760 - Left-Hand Path, a Dark Souls-inspired horror RPG for the HTC Vive and Oculus Touch VR platforms where you cast spells by drawing arcane symbols in the air. It's going rather well - 87% positive reviews on Steam and people saying things like "In years to come, I think this will be seen as one of the seminal VR titles" (paraphrase from a recent review on Reddit.)
shakna 10y ago
A hobby microprocessor based computer. I'm finally moving from design to prototyping this month. A programming language that I've been designing for about two years now. I'm in the initial bootstrap phase, and about to rewrite the compiler in itself. The goal is to use it as an experimental test bed, as an example, the compiler should use a tracing inference model I wrote a thesis on, for automatic type inference, and function overloading. The overly-ambitious goal is "As easy as Python, as safe as Rust".
Belar 10y ago
https://remotejobseu.com https://remotejobseu.com - Remote jobs open for developers from European time zones. It aims to solve a job hunting problem when browsing popular remote job boards. Offers are hand-picked/filtered and companies are verified (lightly, as much as one can tell from a fast look at public info; mostly regarding remote environment). It should also be fast, with well-formatted data - so far, so good.
- Bashmaistora 10y ago
  This is really cool
wirddin 10y ago
An app which connects you anonymously with other people online, based on similar interests. Just published an MVP on Play Store ( and will soon release Apple ) and now I'm planning to go for a few user acquisitions who would help me build a better version of this. I'm calling it Matchr. You can find it on https://matchr.in https://matchr.in
- cholantesh 10y ago
  I like the idea of these kinds of apps, but I really don't want to create a Facebook account just to use them. Are you planning on adding other authentication options in the future?
  - wirddin 10y ago
    Hey! Which account do you suggest should I add? One of the biggest reasons I chose facebook was the authentic data I got : less fakes, more genuine information. Plus, can't risk email+password with an app like this, anonymity without verification is scary.
    - cholantesh 10y ago
      I was going to suggest Google, as that's what I personally use the most online, but I don't know that it truly revolves the problem of verification...
    - herbst 10y ago
      Twitter does more verification for new accounts than Facebook does these days. I have several completely non legit facebook accounts btw, i dont see that verification worthy at all.
      - wirddin 10y ago
        But doesn't twitter have a huge amount users with incomplete profiles (or eggheads)? Or is it an assumption? My main concern is that I won't be able to get the user's picture and basic info.
miguelrochefort 10y ago
An app that replaces 80% of all apps. It will destroy millions of jobs.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  That's been done, it was called The Last One: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_(software)
ruairidhwm 10y ago
https://brandfox.io https://brandfox.io - It's awesome because it lets Instagram users leverage a resource that does nothing other than gather likes. It's also awesome because it lets brands advertise using authentic images and compare/purchase influencers.

47 points by yitchelle 10y ago

A similar question was asked just under a year ago. So I thought it is about time to ask again for 2017. 2016 edition is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11259746

Huhty 10y ago

Blog Enhancement Suite: http://blogenhancement.com http://blogenhancement.com It's a growth tools suite for bloggers (as explained on the landing page.) Right now we're in pre-launch but we're launching in late Feb / early March (a couple weeks). It's awesome because: 1. It gives bloggers social/growth tools never before accessible. 2. It provides a new/different source of revenue. 3. It can replace the redundant/impractical "timeline" widgets offered by FB, Twitter, etc. Those currently act more as a glorified social channel promoter than anything actually beneficial to the blog itself. 4. It's free (for the basic version). 5. It's powered by Snapzu, our Reddit/HN like voting community platform. Would love any feedback, and am open to answering any questions. Cheers.

gliechtenstein 10y ago

I am working on an open source project that makes building cross-platform mobile apps as easy as writing ONLY a JSON markup https://www.jasonette.com https://www.jasonette.com I did a Show HN about three months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879179) and was so grateful for all the great constructive feedback I received, it really encouraged me to keep evolving the project. And I really have come very far since then. So I thought I would share what I have achieved so far: 1. The original release was iOS only, but so many people told me I should build an Android version, so I did. Now both iOS and Android are completely open source on Github and they both use the same JSON grammar. Here's a recent post where I talk about how I designed the JSON-to-Native mappings on both iOS and Android: https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-build-cross-platform-mobile-apps-using-nothing-more-than-a-json-markup-f493abec1873#.r0m9f21t8 https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-build-cross-platform-... 2. I've implemented functional programming in JSON. Yes, a function in JSON. I had to come up with a JSON grammar that can represent all aspects of a function like invocation, arguments, callbacks, call stack, recursive calls, subroutines, etc. If you're interested, check out the post I wrote about this: http://blog.jasonette.com/2017/02/15/functional-programming-in-json/ http://blog.jasonette.com/2017/02/15/functional-programming-... 3. I've implemented a "require" for JSON, so it can be used to parallel process multiple JSON objects from different sources, which I think is great for people who want to build a mobile app for their decentralized apps. I personally think decentralized apps will take off in 2017 and going forward for many different reasons, so this means a lot to me: I wrote about this here: http://blog.jasonette.com/2017/02/17/require/ http://blog.jasonette.com/2017/02/17/require/ These are just some I have worked on personally, but the REAL cool part is that the community has really picked up and many people have been contributing to the project. And I think THAT's the main reason why it's awesome. The fact that some nobody with no track record can just release something that resonates with enough people and anyone from around the world can just jump in and help. This is my first ever experience with an open source project and everything feels so magical to me. I hope to update you guys with even better news in the future!

joshu 10y ago
I would love to chat if you think about raising money for this...

schoen 10y ago

I'm working on an update to the border search whitepaper that I helped write for EFF in 2011 (the 2011 version is at https://www.eff.org/files/eff-border-search_2.pdf https://www.eff.org/files/eff-border-search_2.pdf). The update will feature new legal analysis, including references to court decisions that have come out in the meantime, fewer elaborate technical suggestions, and more concern for the problem of how border agents may react to noticing that you've took precautions against searches (not only for whether the precautions are effective). There's been a lot of awareness of the risk of searches of electronics at the border lately, so hopefully we can get some up-to-date and informed guidance out there.

ccvannorman 10y ago

SuperMathWorld.com, it is awesome because we let kids actually make video games in a mathematical sandbox! There are a ton of math learning solutions but most of them are pop-up worksheets slapped on top of a game. In SMW the math is integrated so every interaction has a mathematical property. The "making games" part is possible because we expose the editor in WebGL game, because we really want to put kids in control of their experience--nothing helps move a kid's mindset from "math sucks" to "math is fun" like being able to create your own world of math toys. We're in beta, launching June 1 and always looking for collaborators! Reach out if you're a math or physics geek, we can make some pretty neat visualizations/interactions using our engine.

rayalez 10y ago

http://webacademy.io http://webacademy.io - a collection of the best learning resources for Web Developers and Startup Founders(still work in progress). http://hackertribe.io/ http://hackertribe.io/ - a community of hackers and founders. http://lumiverse.io/ http://lumiverse.io/ - discover great educational videos. http://fictionhub.io/ http://fictionhub.io/ - fiction publishing platform.

andrew-lucker 10y ago

I'm working on a port of OpenAI gym/universe to the Rust Programming language. It will be awesome because everyone is interested in AI now, and Rust is cool too. https://github.com/andrew-lucker/rust-openai https://github.com/andrew-lucker/rust-openai

joshuamorton 10y ago

For a few years now, I've been working on an autonomous vehicle (https://github.com/gtagency/buzzmobile https://github.com/gtagency/buzzmobile) that some friends and I hack on. We just recently hit what I'd call 1.0 in terms of a huge system refactor to make the entire system much more robust and testable. I started working on this recently: https://github.com/joshuamorton/tut https://github.com/joshuamorton/tut, and might go back to it. After seeing Kenneth Reitz's Pipenv I wanted to do something similar but a bit more extensive that included testing tools and some other stuff. And tut is the WIP result. Think Cargo for python.

joshu 10y ago
This is useful. I am currently building an autonomous gokart in ROS.
- joshuamorton 10y ago
  Heh, we're a student organization, so there's lots of membership turnover, and that forced us to really upgrade our documentation and build tools over the last year to prevent all kinds of weird issues and allow quick onboarding. I made it my mission over the last year or so to build something better than rosunit and rostest, because having to more or less copy launch files for every test seems arduous. I ended up with the test_utils library that we'll probably spin off into its own package soon, but its a much, much nicer interface for writing tests for ros, and at this point seems to be relatively stable, with one or two minor changes I need to make. Glad its helpful!
- iraphael 10y ago
  Hey, I'm the current team lead for buzzmobile. I'm glad our repo is useful, we've been working hard to make it as clean and maintainable as possible. Definitely feel free to reach out or send feedback if you have any :)

jacobzweig 10y ago

Just finished up my dissertation and I've been working on taking some of the deep learning and RL techniques I've used for my research to build something new. We just launched Optimail (https://optimail.io https://optimail.io) - it uses reinforcement learning to automatically optimize drip email campaigns.

ezekg 10y ago
This is really cool, great job. Who is your target market? I've been (slowly) delving into machine learning/AI and found parts of your marketing copy hard to understand, so couldn't imagine somebody with a marketing background being able to grok it.
- brockf 10y ago
  Hey thanks! I'm Jacob's co-founder at Optimail. We only just launched yesterday, so I think we are still working to find that exact product-market fit. At the moment, however, we're targeting medium- to large-sized businesses that use drip email marketing campaigns, such as onboarding campaigns, lead nurturing campaigns, and retention campaigns. Thanks for the feedback on the copy! If you are feeling extra generous and have a second, shoot me a PM and let me know what parts you found confusing. We want it to be accessible to non-technical marketers who might be using older software like Mailchimp, etc. (After all, a main benefit of using AI here is that you don't need to get into confusing automation-building stuff like multi-branching decision trees.)
  - ezekg 10y ago
    Sorry for the late response. I'm a developer and a few sections I had to Google definitions for were: > Our suite of advanced analytics, including Cohort Analyses, Sequence Analyses, and Algorithm Metrics will unlock new insights in to your customers and campaigns. > We use a combination of deep reinforcement learning and hierarchical Bayesian models to quickly and accurately learn about your customers and optimize your campaigns in real-time. I think you could simplify those a bit, maybe hitting from a higher-level with a link to a more detailed explanation of how Optimail does its thing. I totally get the value in using these terms, but for the landing page I would imagine using simpler language may result in non-technical users being able to grok the benefits of your product a bit better.

joshu 10y ago

I am putting together an autonomous vehicle event at a racetrack and a spec vehicle for competition. Http://selfracingcars.com/event

ezekg 10y ago

Currently finalizing things for the launch of Keygen[0], a RESTful API for managing software product licenses—everything from individual users to the machines they’re allowed to use. Been in beta for the past few months and am excited to finally launch, having spent nearly a year developing it any chance that I get. I’m currently working on wrapping up some great business-ey features such as an admin dashboard that will allow users to visually monitor metrics for each product to get insights for popular license types, as well as other crucial metrics like license churn, overdue license check-ins, usage across different machines and more. Been a long road, but I'm excited to try and put my sales hat on soon. It's a service I've always needed for developing small niche desktop apps. [0]: https://keygen.sh https://keygen.sh

jjoe 10y ago

I'm working on Cachoid -- a Varnish-as-a-service platform -- https://www.cachoid.com/ https://www.cachoid.com/ Site caching is so underrated I had to do something about it. In fact, I recently announced its first public beta. The one USP is this: you create a Cachoid and it automatically starts caching your site. No need to get into the nitty-gritty details of caching or get your hands dirty. It just works! The difference between Cachoid and other platforms is that we guarantee memory allocations per Cachoid (Varnish instance container on steroids), which is crucial to achieve speed. A multi-tenant content distribution network doesn't always have a memory-store SLA for its tenants. More info: https://www.cachoid.com/ https://www.cachoid.com/ Quick overview of its architecture: https://www.cachoid.com/blog/2017/01/15/high-level-architecture-of-cachoid/ https://www.cachoid.com/blog/2017/01/15/high-level-architect... Docs: https://www.cachoid.com/support https://www.cachoid.com/support

ezekg 10y ago
Looks like a cool project, good job. I feel like your pricing section should drop the "upgrade" verbiage and instead use something like "buy now", seeing as most of your traffic there will likely be new users. Also, those buttons lead to a login form—I would default to a sign up form, with a link like "Already have an account? Sign in." to reduce friction for new users. Good luck with Cachoid!
- jjoe 10y ago
  > I feel like your pricing section should drop the "upgrade" verbiage and instead use something like "buy now", seeing as most of your traffic there will likely be new users. Also, those buttons lead to a login form—I would default to a sign up form, with a link like "Already have an account? Sign in." to reduce friction for new users. You're right, I didn't see it from that angle. Plus the registeration link would auto login already registered users anyway. Thanks!

slededit 10y ago

I'm currently working on an open source search engine for the internet as a whole. Google has been getting too smart for its own good and that actively deteriorates quality of technical searches where precision matters. I'm also hoping to use it as a platform to test some of my theories on how to apply traditional IDE search techniques to help find and understand code snippets. Plus its just a fun way to see if I can write code that "scales".

zump 10y ago

Does anyone else think startups are just incredibly boring?

stevekemp 10y ago
Some are. Some aren't. I create hobby-projects for fun, I have two (I think?) that I charge money for. They'll never be "real" companies, but they cover their costs which is all I wanted. I see broad trends on sites like this, for example you can pretty much pinpoint the moment that every other Show HN started adding "Deep Learning" to their submissions. That kind of herd-mentality is pretty depressing, but also fascinating to watch in action. Startups as a meta-topic are fascinating, although again I have that same feeling of depression and sadness when I read "Growth hacking" tips that basically boil down to fancier ways to spam and mislead, but I appreciate reading about real people and real-projects. The posts that start out "I posted on my blog, which has 50 million readers, and suddenly I was profitable" are pretty unrealistic. Simple projects that have slowly become more and more popular, like the guy who is frequently talking about his webcounters, are a breathe of fresh air from the hype. I'm sure I could code a web-counter. I'm sure that it'd never become super-popular, because long-tail counts for a lot. Then again I do have a few readers of my blog ..

jiten_bansal 10y ago

Just launched https://betapage.co https://betapage.co 2.0

Main_ 10y ago
I did not understand what the website is about. You could put a summary at the top of what the website does, that would be very helpful. I browsed for 10 seconds and left. Hope this helps.

cdiamand 10y ago

I'm working on http://oppsdaily.com http://oppsdaily.com, a daily email for software devs who want to solve the problems others face at work. The email consists of a brief, 5 question interview, asking about a problem someone faces at work and the software they wished they had (that they would buy) that would solve the problem. Each day I receive a handful of responses from developers who want to learn more, and I try to connect them to the interviewee

wirddin 10y ago
Hey there! Read your medium post yesterday about a competition. Great work there man! :D

wbrocklebank 10y ago

For the last two years we have been building out an AI-driven anomaly detection service that monitors critical equipment for failure: https://shprd.com https://shprd.com. We make it possible for small & medium sized companies to be able to get the huge cost and manpower benefits of predictive maintenance as a turn-key solution - connect cheap sensors to motors, boilers, A/C compressors and monitor them for correct behaviour, alert on abnormal performance and before failures (a full list of what we monitor is at https://www.shprd.com/deployment https://www.shprd.com/deployment). We are using various ML modelling methods to understand each sensor's normal operating behaviour - more info on the tech is at https://www.shprd.com/technology https://www.shprd.com/technology We are just coming out of our R&D phase and into full commercialisation. Any critique of the explanation site or other info welcomed!

DrNuke 10y ago

I act as a business dev and advisor for the internationalisation of DronesBench http://www.dronesbench.com http://www.dronesbench.com , an innovative tool for the diagnosis of drones from Foggia, Italy. With a novel benchmark for efficiency of drones, two academic collaborations and a pre-series completed, commercialisation is going to follow by the end of April. Educational (for high schools, universities, flight schools) and professional (manufacturers, repairers, certifiers) packages offered.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

krapp 10y ago

>2016 edition is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11259746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11259746 Wow, mfw I'm still working on the same projects. What was going to be a Berzerk clone[0] has turned into an attempt at a more general purpose framework for games in C++ and Lua[1]. Eventually, I'll get around to actually finishing something in it. Mostly it's just a time sink for self-education. And I'm still slowly working on a HN-like forum in Hack[2]. [0]https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/berzerk https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/berzerk [1]https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/sdl_framework https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/sdl_framework [2]https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/basedforum https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/basedforum

wirddin 10y ago
Have you deployed the HN-like forum somewhere? Also, off-topic, but why bitbucket?
- krapp 10y ago
  > Have you deployed the HN-like forum somewhere? I tried getting it to run on OpenShift but their HHVM cartridge wouldn't allow me to run Composer through it instead of PHP, which I had to be able to do, and their version of PHP was out of date. Given the state the project is in, I haven't bothered trying anywhere else - it wouldn't be worth spending money to host. >Also, off-topic, but why bitbucket? Free private accounts, not as much social media nonsense as there is with Github.

ganeshkrishnan 10y ago

I am working on https://www.aihello.com https://www.aihello.com which is Machine Learning platform for ecommerce sellers. Thinking of selling something but hate working just by gut feeling? AiHello will give hard starts (sales, competition, price, profit etc) and whatever you plan to sell. We help online sellers launch their product quickly on multiple channels like Amazon,Ebay, Jet.com etc as we have inventory management built in.

thenomad 10y ago

http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760 http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760 - Left-Hand Path, a Dark Souls-inspired horror RPG for the HTC Vive and Oculus Touch VR platforms where you cast spells by drawing arcane symbols in the air. It's going rather well - 87% positive reviews on Steam and people saying things like "In years to come, I think this will be seen as one of the seminal VR titles" (paraphrase from a recent review on Reddit.)

shakna 10y ago

A hobby microprocessor based computer. I'm finally moving from design to prototyping this month. A programming language that I've been designing for about two years now. I'm in the initial bootstrap phase, and about to rewrite the compiler in itself. The goal is to use it as an experimental test bed, as an example, the compiler should use a tracing inference model I wrote a thesis on, for automatic type inference, and function overloading. The overly-ambitious goal is "As easy as Python, as safe as Rust".

Belar 10y ago

https://remotejobseu.com https://remotejobseu.com - Remote jobs open for developers from European time zones. It aims to solve a job hunting problem when browsing popular remote job boards. Offers are hand-picked/filtered and companies are verified (lightly, as much as one can tell from a fast look at public info; mostly regarding remote environment). It should also be fast, with well-formatted data - so far, so good.

Bashmaistora 10y ago
This is really cool

wirddin 10y ago

An app which connects you anonymously with other people online, based on similar interests. Just published an MVP on Play Store ( and will soon release Apple ) and now I'm planning to go for a few user acquisitions who would help me build a better version of this. I'm calling it Matchr. You can find it on https://matchr.in https://matchr.in

cholantesh 10y ago
I like the idea of these kinds of apps, but I really don't want to create a Facebook account just to use them. Are you planning on adding other authentication options in the future?
- wirddin 10y ago
  Hey! Which account do you suggest should I add? One of the biggest reasons I chose facebook was the authentic data I got : less fakes, more genuine information. Plus, can't risk email+password with an app like this, anonymity without verification is scary.
  - cholantesh 10y ago
    I was going to suggest Google, as that's what I personally use the most online, but I don't know that it truly revolves the problem of verification...
  - herbst 10y ago
    Twitter does more verification for new accounts than Facebook does these days. I have several completely non legit facebook accounts btw, i dont see that verification worthy at all.
    - wirddin 10y ago
      But doesn't twitter have a huge amount users with incomplete profiles (or eggheads)? Or is it an assumption? My main concern is that I won't be able to get the user's picture and basic info.

miguelrochefort 10y ago

An app that replaces 80% of all apps. It will destroy millions of jobs.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago
That's been done, it was called The Last One: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_(software)

ruairidhwm 10y ago

https://brandfox.io https://brandfox.io - It's awesome because it lets Instagram users leverage a resource that does nothing other than gather likes. It's also awesome because it lets brands advertise using authentic images and compare/purchase influencers.