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When I see new projects and ideas that take off, my response is usually a curmudgeonly observation about how stupid and pointless it is or how it's so obvious a
by pstack 15y ago
When I see new projects and ideas that take off, my response is usually a curmudgeonly observation about how stupid and pointless it is or how it's so obvious and trivial that I can't believe anyone would waste their time making it.
This is not one of those. This is one of those cases where I'm not a bit jealous because something so obvious or inane or dumb took off and became Twitter, but because it's just so damn fantastic. This is one of those things that is so elegant and smart that it makes me feel like a complete idiot.
This is going to do very well.
- leon_ 15y agowell, it's trivial after reading ssh's man page. though the execution is nice and everything is packaged that relatively tech un-savvy users can make use of it.
- dholowiski 15y agoAbsolutley. This is a non-obvious but simple idea executed well and the creator deserves to make buckets of money.
- progrium 15y agoI feel that localtunnel was also executed quite well, is free and open source, and has been around for a while now: https://github.com/progrium/localtunnel https://github.com/progrium/localtunnel Where are my buckets of money? Oh yeah, I don't care.
- sovande 15y agoOh but I detect that you care. Well, the difference between this and an obscure open source project buried on git hub is for a starter to at least have a web-site at localtunnel.com!
- progrium 15y agoI care about my work and it being used and contributed to if people are interested in it. I don't care about money, which is why it's open source and run as a free service. My code is MIT and I would love it if people took my code and made a pay-for service like this with it... but instead, they (to be fair, probably unknowingly) duplicate effort and obscure my work. If a fancy website is all I need, I guess that's what I'll be doing this weekend. And I guess SSL and CNAME support...
- bad_user 15y agoDon't be some negative about it. On a positive note, this is the first time I thought about doing something like this, and it's also the first time I heard about your project. I'll try it out, thanks!
- bobwaycott 15y agoI don't think there was ever an intention to obscure work, maliciously or otherwise. This project started because developers started developing, not googling or searching github. To be fair, the "fancy website" is a byproduct of designers who like to make stuff look good, and the rest of Showoff's team caring very much about not just making stuff that works (of which they make a lot, much of which is hidden away in obscurity), but about making it easy for people to use who wouldn't perhaps take on the task themselves—and I don't think there is anything at all wrong with that. However, I don't think it is fair to imply creating this tool (and its website) was a product of caring about money, or duplicating and obscuring your (or anyone else's) efforts. It is like many other ideas out there that came from a real need, hacking it together, and then asking if people might find it useful enough to pay for it. That's not a reason to disparage or diminish a job well done. In the end, it looks like Showoff's also brought attention to your project, pagekite, and plenty of other ways people have shared to do the same thing. Today was the first time I'd heard of localtunnel, but I've done this same bit of showing off localhost before for clients and coworkers on my own--and it's a bit like splitting hairs to call it duplication. Hackers hack. It's what we do. I definitely like open sourcing when it makes sense. But I also like to eat and have a roof over my head. Open source does not hold a monopoly on good intentions.
- klochner 15y agolet's not get carried away - a great idea, but not exactly defensible technology, so "a small pile of money" may be more appropriate.
- arturadib 15y agoSorry, I don't quite get this. Why can't I just grab my public IP address from Whatismyip.com, and check the Web Sharing option under System Preferences on my Mac? (For Linux, simply fire up Apache; my guess is that most Linux users know how to do that).
- davidbalbert 15y agoOften times you are behind a firewall and this isn't a viable option. It's also easier to remember a domain name rather than an IP address.
- colinplamondon 15y ago"Simply fire up Apache" is a bit of an oxymoron.
- nfm 15y agoYou'll often have NAT to deal with as well, and have to set up explicit port forwards to your local device (and give it a static IP address) in your routers.
- jethroalias97 15y agoI'm inclined to agree, currently I have ssh setup on my home machine and use dyndns which is free and pretty simple. Setting up a server would be equally simple for the technically inclined.
- maratd 15y agoErr... what? If you're even a half-serious developer, you're going to have a static IP or something like dyndns. You're also going to have your own domain, VPN, and port forwarding. Setting this up on your own network is trivial. You can use it no matter where you are, so long as you have internet. Just buy a cheapo router that supports DD-WRT, set up dyndns, and you're good to go. Seriously. I get it that some people aren't great at networking, but all this stuff is really basic. Not that hard to learn.
- SeoxyS 15y agoDynDNS is a bitch, but I usually just setup an SSH tunnel between my box and one of my cloud servers to show off my localhost over any kind of shitty connection. Even works at Starbucks, which I don't think DynDNS does. This app is really neat, though. Creating an SSH tunnel is trivial once you learn how it works, but before, it seems insurmountably complicated. This service makes it super easy. Oh, and using the same trick in reverse, I get to use Netflix, Hulu, Pandora etc. when I'm out of the country. Or just protect my privacy from Coffee shops.
- phlux 15y ago>If you're even a half-serious developer, you're going to have a static IP or something like dyndns. You're also going to have your own domain, VPN, and port forwarding. Setting this up on your own network is trivial. You can use it no matter where you are, so long as you have internet. Just buy a cheapo router that supports DD-WRT, set up dyndns, and you're good to go. Um, Assume none of the above - and instead assume that I am a designer with a local copy of the new t-shirt site im making for my hipster clients - and I am working from the local Java Jungle, not behind my 'cheapo dd-wrt + dyndns +blah blah blah' I want to show them a latest rev and get feed back. Use this, and its no problem. Yours is doable, non-trivial and zero elegance.