6 ms·
'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'
- MicahWedemeyer 16y agoNot shown: 1000s of goofy iphone apps that generated close to $0 If the moral of the story is "Do funky apps for fun and be happily surprised if they make any money" then I agree. If the moral is "Do funky apps and expect to make $16k over a weekend" then I have to disagree. Note: I say this as the co-author of a very nice funky app: http://fakewhale.com http://fakewhale.com I am currently waiting by the phone for investors or acquirers to call.
- leon_ 16y ago> Not shown: 1000s of goofy iphone apps that generated close to $0 that's why I sometimes just hate the appstore (and humanity). when a shitty 10 minute app tops the charts and projects that people (read me) spent months on are somewhere @place 1000.
- Dylanlacey 16y agoPeople, all people, are capricious. If they're spending 4/5ths of fuckall for something to amuse them for a few minutes, even more so.
- phillco 16y agoSurvivorship bias. Pretty common. "Look I failed" posts are much rarer.
- Mikushi 16y agoAnd that's a shame, i think we could learn a lot from Post Mortem posts of projects, especially if the project fails. It's also a good habit for yourself, to look back at the project, and analyse it, the mistakes that were made, why it didn't work, what would you do differently if you were to start now. When i was a freelancer, and doing my own little flash games, i was almost always do a small report for myself on why it did/didn't work, always a good process to avoid making the same mistakes again and again.
- albemuth 16y agosomething is wrong with your css http://i.min.us/ieqoxc.png http://i.min.us/ieqoxc.png
- MicahWedemeyer 16y agoA ton of things are wrong with that app. It works about 80% of the time when I want to lampoon a friend. Fixing it for the other 20% just isn't worth it to me.
- rgbrgb 16y agoWhat does fakewhale even do? Kind of not a good sign that I couldn't figure that out.
- MicahWedemeyer 16y agoI'll let pg explain: http://fakewhale.com/tweets/69535 http://fakewhale.com/tweets/69535
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- pshirishreddy 16y agoprobably adding a favicon might do the trick :)
- octopus 16y agoGenial, simple, effective and well paid. I'm a bit jealous I didn't have your "stupid" idea :).
- rewind 16y agoDon't ignore your stupid ideas... that only waste a few hours of your time if they don't go anywhere; otherwise, your first instinct is probably the one to go with.
- seanalltogether 16y agoFor all the new designers out there, please don't add a CSS text shadow to the main body of your text content. By highlighting everything, you make everything less readable.
- damienfir 16y agoAnd don't replace the default scrolling with javascript, it's slow.
- kscaldef 16y agoAnd doesn't work right. Hitting "page down" doesn't work unless you first click on the page with your mouse.
- PStamatiou 16y agoor at least style ::selection
- thwarted 16y agodrop shadows on body text is the new rounded corners.
- maushu 16y agotext-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.01) 0px 0px 1px; Would've worked better.
- tree_of_item 16y agoWhat does this say? I mean, it's nice that he made a popular app and a ton of money, but there is nothing to learn here. It was either raw luck or a stupid populace or both that made this happen. There's no insight in to the design of a well made and genuinely entertaining or interesting application here, just a gimmick app that somehow made it big. It's discouraging to read things like this, because the implied moral is "any stupid idea you come up with has a chance of making it big". But if that's true, then why bother taking your time to design good applications? Why strive for excellence when some random gimmick app is just as likely to make money?
- gyardley 16y agoIt reminds you that when your small ideas require proportionately small efforts, you might as well do them and see what happens. Too many people inappropriately shrug off their smaller thoughts as not worth doing, because they're not going to 'change the world' or some other low-probability outcome.
- phillco 16y agoI noticed this a lot when I tried blogging a couple of summers ago. The articles I thought would be hits bombed, and the stupid ones I wrote just for fun [1] ended up being huge successes. Inevitably, I just resigned myself to the fact that I don't know what'll be successful, and the only way to find out if something will work is to do it. [1] http://phillipcohen.net/articles/simcity/ http://phillipcohen.net/articles/simcity/ (got like 30,000 hits)
- j_baker 16y agoI've noticed the same thing with comments on HN. More often than not, it's the silly one-liner that gets voted up rather than the thoughtful, introspective, and deep comment. I suppose human attention is always the biggest force you have to contend with.
- marshray 16y agoWhat does it mean? Perhaps iPhone users really are that desperate?
- scottmagdalein 16y agoStupid ideas is all I have. Looking forward to the millions I'll be making soon. Thanks for the encouragement, Billy!
- T_S_ 16y agoWhen a field like apps is so new, the effort required to innovate is low. People bring their expectations about the level of effort from areas where expertise is well developed. Think of databases and algorithms. Eventually novelty apps will have to become pretty sophisticated (if they haven't already).
- mono 16y agoNot shown: 1000s of goofy lifes have been saved from this app.
- iamgoat 16y agoSounds like he had the luck of the draw.
- GBond 16y agoIMO his big win was getting an iPhone app dev (who can actually execute) agree to make an app for him on the premise of splitting revenue. Either this was real early time of the "App goldrush" before anyone knew money could be made or the dev was a friend (post seems to imply it was a random twitter follower). Anybody with a reputation as a good iPhone app dev get the age old "idea guy" proposition at least 3 times a week: "I got a great app idea.. I'll give you some of the $ if you code it just for me."
- rgbrgb 16y agoFor what it's worth, if anyone came to me with those screens and that idea, I'd code it in a day. There's a difference between "I have this idea for a game, here's a sketch of a character" and "I have an idea for a simple app that I've already done most of the work on and it will only take a few hours to code".
- zackattack 16y agocan you send me an email? zackster@gmail.com i have an ultraquick iphone app i want to make. i have kickass wireframes already.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- GBond 16y ago^ I rest my case ;)
- sgrove 16y agoMeh, Zack's the real deal, exactly what the poster mentioned looking for. He has some pretty good ideas, executes on them as much as he can, and outsources what he can't. I understand your point, I just think there's a difference between the stereotypical dude-bro idea marketing guy preying on developers and people who can carry their own weight.
- bemmu 16y agoGood timing for the idea. Last September Apple added the following to their guidelines: "15.5 Apps that includes games of Russian roulette will be rejected"