4 ms·

Show HN: My 10 minute non-project: Get a weekly digest of emails from any source

20 points by dools 15y ago

apgwoz 15y ago
This is a really great idea, but I find that I quite often just skip over automated email, which is why it probably won't be useful to me. This has me thinking, though, how can I trick myself into opening up a (known) weekly digest email? Might work if it didn't come at the same time always (like, every 4, 5 or 6 days randomly), and the From header was from a person. But, I'm not sure on that.
- dools 15y ago
  One of the ideas that someone sent through in the form which I think is great is doing it by number of messages, rather than regular times. I got about 30 people sign up and it'll only take me 6 hours or so to do a basic version of this so I think I'm gonna go for it later in the week (maybe Sunday night whilst watching movies :) The ideas I've had emailed so far are: 1) arbitrary grouping (ie. aggregate multiple source emails into 1 group - so you could have your weekly newsletter digest) 2) choose your interval 3) choose to have it recur based on number of messages to this end I've just registered emaildigest.me instead of weeklydigest.me and I'm going to do it like this: groupname+interval+number@emaildigest.me where interval is hourly,daily,weekly or monthly, groupname is just your own grouping for this (single word tag only) and optionally you can include a number argument which will "purge" the digest. For example, you could forward all your twitter notifications to: twitter+daily+40@emaildigest.me and you'll receive a daily digest of your twitter emails - but if you get 40 in a day you'll receive 2 digests. I'll also allow you to set your timezone and time of day to receive digests. What do you reckon?
timmorgan 15y ago
What's a "non-project"?
- _grrr 15y ago
  and beyond proposing an idea, and collecting emails, what does this submission contribute?
  - jmilloy 15y ago
    Why, it perpetuates the "My <pretend dev-time^> project" type submissions that I seem to be in extreme minority in hating, while adding just enough of a twist to seem forward thinking. ^I still don't understand why anyone cares how much typing time went into a project - large small cool slick boring complete incomplete pretentious humble whatever - and much less do I understand why that information belongs in the title.
    - esrauch 15y ago
      I think that's fair, though I think it's fair for these things to be labeled "weekend project" which carries the implication that it is being worked on during non-work hours or for a short period of time as a one-off or throw away.
    - dools 15y ago
      Yeah, I really hate them too. That's why one of the first blog posts I wrote about Decal was entitled "How we built a web application and didn't launch it in 482 days". I've made a submission each week over the past three weeks, each with decreasing dev times because, hell, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! The first was http://cueyoutube.com/ http://cueyoutube.com/ "My Sunday Night Project", then last week was "My 15 minute project: PimpMySalary.com" and now this one isn't even a project, it's just a 10 minute idea. Whilst my link bait titles are a bit tongue in cheek, there is a real reason I'm doing this: it's therapeutic! I've found that just releasing software serves several useful purposes: 1) It's a fun escape from the "real task" which is building decalcms.com which is a very hard, complex task that's taking a really long time and which I'm worried about monetising (and represents a huge investment of time and money) 2) It's a way of engaging with people and building an audience. Every time I do something like this, I pick up a couple of Twitter followers, or I get to engage with the people that sign up to discuss the product and of course I get the name Working Software in front of a bunch of people 3) It gives some little ideas validation (or not) so that when I feel like a little escape I have something that I can work on and know that there are at least a few people that will care. I'm also building an ORM for SQL lovers at https://github.com/iaindooley/PluSQL/ https://github.com/iaindooley/PluSQL/ - I just find that if I don't do something with tangible (or "releasable") results every week then I get very bogged down in the marketing, monetisation and completion of Decal - this helps me regain perspective on life. 4) It's conceivable that if I just so happen to execute one of these right, it'll turn into a real product, who knows. 5) It's good practice for releasing. Putting something out in public is really nerve wracking and I'm not that used to it (same with sending bulk emails). Doing this over and over again desensitises me to it in a way that's kind of quirky and fun, and not offensive (hopefully) to the people involved. But I'll cool it on the "my 45 second glint in the milkman's eye" titles ;) I've had my fun.
- jcromartie 15y ago
  I guess it's a page to gauge interest in the actual project by collecting info on potential users.
icebraining 15y ago
Interesting. I'm not sure I'd give out my email address to do something that could be accomplished more or less similarly by having a filter to automatically label & archive the messages (and then look at that label weekly), though. Two feedbacks which aren't exactly an "idea": * The email address font is too big, so I can't see the whole address at once. This has been shown to greatly reduce errors * When I clicked on Feedback and then closed the popup, it loaded the parent page in the popup. Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/6JxxP.png http://i.imgur.com/6JxxP.png
- dools 15y ago
  Yeah I noticed that! must be something dodgy with the UserVoice code, I might open a ticket. Thanks for the feedback on the email address! That's a good UX snippet I'd not heard before.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - icebraining 15y ago
    I heard that UX tip in some podcast with Luke Wroblewski, a web forms expert.
    - dools 15y ago
      Cool, I'll check him out, thanks
prabodh 15y ago
I would like to see what a sample digest looks like before giving out my email
- dools 15y ago
  Cool idea, I'll mockup one up and add a link to it on the page, thanks!
tomx 15y ago
Can you provide a breakdown of the 10 minutes, saying what you were doing for each of the 10 minutes?
- dools 15y ago
  Minute 1: running a few whois queries, found weeklydigest.me Minute 2: opened tabs in my browser with cheap-domainregistration.com, wufoo.com, addthis.com, uservoice.com, google analytics (I already had those last two open actually) Minute 3: while waiting for them to finish loading (my internet is down so I'm using my phone at the moment) I copied the template and virtual host config on my server for pimpmysalary.com and tested it on weeklydigest.mockups.decalcms.com Minutes 4 - 9: added a domain to my DTC config, pasted in the GA, Uservoice and AddThis code, made the Wufoo form and plugged it into my email backend at flymessage.com, and pasted the code in, then updated the text on the page Minute 10: went through the domain registration process using my saved credit card (okay this may have taken more than a minute). Were you the guy that wrote that article the other day after I posted "my 15 minute project" doubting the authenticity? These things are just pages copying something I've done before with a Wufoo form. There's nothing there, it's just an idea. I didn't even have the idea, I got it from this Tweet from Mo Koyfman: http://twitter.com/#!/mokoyfman/status/96189723537715200 http://twitter.com/#!/mokoyfman/status/96189723537715200
dools 15y ago
Hi, thanks everyone for commenting, sorry for the delayed responses - I'm GMT+10 so I put this up before bed :)

20 points by dools 15y ago

This is a really great idea, but I find that I quite often just skip over automated email, which is why it probably won't be useful to me. This has me thinking, though, how can I trick myself into opening up a (known) weekly digest email? Might work if it didn't come at the same time always (like, every 4, 5 or 6 days randomly), and the From header was from a person. But, I'm not sure on that.

dools 15y ago
One of the ideas that someone sent through in the form which I think is great is doing it by number of messages, rather than regular times. I got about 30 people sign up and it'll only take me 6 hours or so to do a basic version of this so I think I'm gonna go for it later in the week (maybe Sunday night whilst watching movies :) The ideas I've had emailed so far are: 1) arbitrary grouping (ie. aggregate multiple source emails into 1 group - so you could have your weekly newsletter digest) 2) choose your interval 3) choose to have it recur based on number of messages to this end I've just registered emaildigest.me instead of weeklydigest.me and I'm going to do it like this: groupname+interval+number@emaildigest.me where interval is hourly,daily,weekly or monthly, groupname is just your own grouping for this (single word tag only) and optionally you can include a number argument which will "purge" the digest. For example, you could forward all your twitter notifications to: twitter+daily+40@emaildigest.me and you'll receive a daily digest of your twitter emails - but if you get 40 in a day you'll receive 2 digests. I'll also allow you to set your timezone and time of day to receive digests. What do you reckon?

timmorgan 15y ago

What's a "non-project"?

_grrr 15y ago
and beyond proposing an idea, and collecting emails, what does this submission contribute?
- jmilloy 15y ago
  Why, it perpetuates the "My <pretend dev-time^> project" type submissions that I seem to be in extreme minority in hating, while adding just enough of a twist to seem forward thinking. ^I still don't understand why anyone cares how much typing time went into a project - large small cool slick boring complete incomplete pretentious humble whatever - and much less do I understand why that information belongs in the title.
  - esrauch 15y ago
    I think that's fair, though I think it's fair for these things to be labeled "weekend project" which carries the implication that it is being worked on during non-work hours or for a short period of time as a one-off or throw away.
  - dools 15y ago
    Yeah, I really hate them too. That's why one of the first blog posts I wrote about Decal was entitled "How we built a web application and didn't launch it in 482 days". I've made a submission each week over the past three weeks, each with decreasing dev times because, hell, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! The first was http://cueyoutube.com/ http://cueyoutube.com/ "My Sunday Night Project", then last week was "My 15 minute project: PimpMySalary.com" and now this one isn't even a project, it's just a 10 minute idea. Whilst my link bait titles are a bit tongue in cheek, there is a real reason I'm doing this: it's therapeutic! I've found that just releasing software serves several useful purposes: 1) It's a fun escape from the "real task" which is building decalcms.com which is a very hard, complex task that's taking a really long time and which I'm worried about monetising (and represents a huge investment of time and money) 2) It's a way of engaging with people and building an audience. Every time I do something like this, I pick up a couple of Twitter followers, or I get to engage with the people that sign up to discuss the product and of course I get the name Working Software in front of a bunch of people 3) It gives some little ideas validation (or not) so that when I feel like a little escape I have something that I can work on and know that there are at least a few people that will care. I'm also building an ORM for SQL lovers at https://github.com/iaindooley/PluSQL/ https://github.com/iaindooley/PluSQL/ - I just find that if I don't do something with tangible (or "releasable") results every week then I get very bogged down in the marketing, monetisation and completion of Decal - this helps me regain perspective on life. 4) It's conceivable that if I just so happen to execute one of these right, it'll turn into a real product, who knows. 5) It's good practice for releasing. Putting something out in public is really nerve wracking and I'm not that used to it (same with sending bulk emails). Doing this over and over again desensitises me to it in a way that's kind of quirky and fun, and not offensive (hopefully) to the people involved. But I'll cool it on the "my 45 second glint in the milkman's eye" titles ;) I've had my fun.
jcromartie 15y ago
I guess it's a page to gauge interest in the actual project by collecting info on potential users.

icebraining 15y ago

Interesting. I'm not sure I'd give out my email address to do something that could be accomplished more or less similarly by having a filter to automatically label & archive the messages (and then look at that label weekly), though. Two feedbacks which aren't exactly an "idea": * The email address font is too big, so I can't see the whole address at once. This has been shown to greatly reduce errors * When I clicked on Feedback and then closed the popup, it loaded the parent page in the popup. Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/6JxxP.png http://i.imgur.com/6JxxP.png

dools 15y ago
Yeah I noticed that! must be something dodgy with the UserVoice code, I might open a ticket. Thanks for the feedback on the email address! That's a good UX snippet I'd not heard before.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- icebraining 15y ago
  I heard that UX tip in some podcast with Luke Wroblewski, a web forms expert.
  - dools 15y ago
    Cool, I'll check him out, thanks

prabodh 15y ago

I would like to see what a sample digest looks like before giving out my email

dools 15y ago
Cool idea, I'll mockup one up and add a link to it on the page, thanks!

tomx 15y ago

Can you provide a breakdown of the 10 minutes, saying what you were doing for each of the 10 minutes?

dools 15y ago
Minute 1: running a few whois queries, found weeklydigest.me Minute 2: opened tabs in my browser with cheap-domainregistration.com, wufoo.com, addthis.com, uservoice.com, google analytics (I already had those last two open actually) Minute 3: while waiting for them to finish loading (my internet is down so I'm using my phone at the moment) I copied the template and virtual host config on my server for pimpmysalary.com and tested it on weeklydigest.mockups.decalcms.com Minutes 4 - 9: added a domain to my DTC config, pasted in the GA, Uservoice and AddThis code, made the Wufoo form and plugged it into my email backend at flymessage.com, and pasted the code in, then updated the text on the page Minute 10: went through the domain registration process using my saved credit card (okay this may have taken more than a minute). Were you the guy that wrote that article the other day after I posted "my 15 minute project" doubting the authenticity? These things are just pages copying something I've done before with a Wufoo form. There's nothing there, it's just an idea. I didn't even have the idea, I got it from this Tweet from Mo Koyfman: http://twitter.com/#!/mokoyfman/status/96189723537715200 http://twitter.com/#!/mokoyfman/status/96189723537715200

dools 15y ago

Hi, thanks everyone for commenting, sorry for the delayed responses - I'm GMT+10 so I put this up before bed :)