4 ms·

The Brainstormer -- creativity booster with neat design

6 points by joeld42 16y ago

joeld42 16y ago
I'm a writer and an iPhone dev, and I found the original version of this to be very useful, so I worked with Andrew to build a version for iPhone. I'd love to hear feedback from HN folks about this app, and any tips to help promote it. Also, more info, screenshots, etc http://www.tapnik.com/brainstormer http://www.tapnik.com/brainstormer First update is going to be support for iPad, any other ideas for features or things that could be useful to you? Thanks! Joel
Jun8 16y ago
Nice! If you don't know about the history of such random phrase generators using dials (and if you haven't read about them in Eco's The Island of the Day Before), spend 10 minutes reading Ramon Llull'ls life (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Llull http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Llull) and his Ars generalis ultima. "At the age of 82, in 1314, Raymond traveled again to North Africa and an angry crowd of Muslims stoned him in the city of Bougie or Béjaïa in present-day northern Algeria. Genoese merchants took him back to Mallorca where he died at home in Palma the next year. It is said that before evangelizing he would openly denounce Islam in areas dominated by Islam." Interesting guy ideed!
- joeld42 16y ago
  Thats neat, thanks for the link. I knew that there was plenty of historical precedent for this kind of thing, but I hadn't heard of Llull before. That's really neat that he also used concentric dials. But I doubt his wheels had Twitter integration, hehehhh..
Scott_MacGregor 16y ago
I like the look and feel of this product. I wish I could input a word where it says "Random", then press enter and have that affect the output in some way. To me, an interactive feature would add more WOW Factor to the product.
- joeld42 16y ago
  The iphone version is a bit more interactive in that you can edit the list of words. Is that what you mean? And since the iphone has touch input, you can spin the wheels with your fingers, they have some inertia and keep going for a bit. The flash one doesn't have any inertia when you are dragging.
  - Scott_MacGregor 16y ago
    Actually I was thinking about a text input box with a spin button below it. The input text would give a clue to the innermost wheel as to what universe of random words to choose from. For instance inputing Blue might produce berries, bird, feelings, ect., vs stop sign or school bus on the inner wheel. It seems like it would be more interesting to "play with" when someone is bored too, which could translate into more sales.

6 points by joeld42 16y ago

I'm a writer and an iPhone dev, and I found the original version of this to be very useful, so I worked with Andrew to build a version for iPhone. I'd love to hear feedback from HN folks about this app, and any tips to help promote it. Also, more info, screenshots, etc http://www.tapnik.com/brainstormer http://www.tapnik.com/brainstormer First update is going to be support for iPad, any other ideas for features or things that could be useful to you? Thanks! Joel

Jun8 16y ago

Nice! If you don't know about the history of such random phrase generators using dials (and if you haven't read about them in Eco's The Island of the Day Before), spend 10 minutes reading Ramon Llull'ls life (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Llull http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Llull) and his Ars generalis ultima. "At the age of 82, in 1314, Raymond traveled again to North Africa and an angry crowd of Muslims stoned him in the city of Bougie or Béjaïa in present-day northern Algeria. Genoese merchants took him back to Mallorca where he died at home in Palma the next year. It is said that before evangelizing he would openly denounce Islam in areas dominated by Islam." Interesting guy ideed!

joeld42 16y ago
Thats neat, thanks for the link. I knew that there was plenty of historical precedent for this kind of thing, but I hadn't heard of Llull before. That's really neat that he also used concentric dials. But I doubt his wheels had Twitter integration, hehehhh..

Scott_MacGregor 16y ago

I like the look and feel of this product. I wish I could input a word where it says "Random", then press enter and have that affect the output in some way. To me, an interactive feature would add more WOW Factor to the product.

joeld42 16y ago
The iphone version is a bit more interactive in that you can edit the list of words. Is that what you mean? And since the iphone has touch input, you can spin the wheels with your fingers, they have some inertia and keep going for a bit. The flash one doesn't have any inertia when you are dragging.
- Scott_MacGregor 16y ago
  Actually I was thinking about a text input box with a spin button below it. The input text would give a clue to the innermost wheel as to what universe of random words to choose from. For instance inputing Blue might produce berries, bird, feelings, ect., vs stop sign or school bus on the inner wheel. It seems like it would be more interesting to "play with" when someone is bored too, which could translate into more sales.