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Ask HN: Organizing information on the web (startup idea)

10 points by syntonic 15y ago

Hi HN, I've been working on a web idea the past couple of months, and I was hoping to get some constructive feedback. I want to try to make a site where people can create, update and share collections (databases) of information. Essentially, I want to make a 'Wikipedia of databases', where content is completely driven by individuals who want to organize information on the web. One of my goals is to centralize a lot of redundant, factual information, and to create comprehensive data sources which can be consumed by other sites through an API. What do you think? http://curio.org

mcrider 15y ago
Pretty cool, and I think you're getting in on a quickly growing field -- Open data. IMO, the key to success for your site would be a great API and some interesting tools that use it (e.g. Visualization tools)
zalew 15y ago
The idea is cool, actually I had one like this about 10 years ago but didn't have the guts to launch it :) I got some criticism towards the GUI (although you took the good direction to keep it simple). I hate the endless scroll. Endless scrolls are cool for fooling around browsing pics, etc. not for browsing organized data - it just doesn't make sense in this context. Boxes desperately need padding, everything is too cluttered. Try sharpening the color scheme and use a cool sans-serif font from google webfonts, it'll make it visually more appealing. The name is great. What's the tech behind it? Some schemaless db I suppose? Data sources - Wiki lists or you entered the 'fake it till you make it' batch by hand? It needs an API, without a dead-simple API it won't bring enough additional value to f.ex. browsing wikipedia lists (the data is already there), IMO. Keep up
- syntonic 15y ago
  Thank you for the comments. I mostly agree with you on the UI, but I wouldn't say endless scroll doesn't make sense in this context. Even though I'm really not a big fan of it, in my mind, I'm going for data that is easily 'discoverable'. I don't see why browsing organized data can't be like fooling around, browsing through pics :) But, I see your point. The tech is actually butt simple. The client is JQuery (mostly ajax calls) and the server is just PHP and MySQL. I use MySQL in a 'meta' way because it's essentially a database of databases. I think it would be fun to switch to some NoSQL DBMS sometime in the future. At the moment, I'm just faking the data by hand. I have some ideas for where to pull data from. I just Googled Wikipida lists - thanks I'll definitely check it out :)
aoe 15y ago
Great idea. Hard to execute. I've been trying to find organized lists of data on some topics for the last few days, but haven't found a single reliable site. As you're looking for user contributions, getting traction would be the hardest part. Good luck!
- syntonic 15y ago
  Thanks! Care to share what kinds of lists you were looking for? I might as well try to populate it with content that I know people want.

10 points by syntonic 15y ago

mcrider 15y ago

Pretty cool, and I think you're getting in on a quickly growing field -- Open data. IMO, the key to success for your site would be a great API and some interesting tools that use it (e.g. Visualization tools)

zalew 15y ago

The idea is cool, actually I had one like this about 10 years ago but didn't have the guts to launch it :) I got some criticism towards the GUI (although you took the good direction to keep it simple). I hate the endless scroll. Endless scrolls are cool for fooling around browsing pics, etc. not for browsing organized data - it just doesn't make sense in this context. Boxes desperately need padding, everything is too cluttered. Try sharpening the color scheme and use a cool sans-serif font from google webfonts, it'll make it visually more appealing. The name is great. What's the tech behind it? Some schemaless db I suppose? Data sources - Wiki lists or you entered the 'fake it till you make it' batch by hand? It needs an API, without a dead-simple API it won't bring enough additional value to f.ex. browsing wikipedia lists (the data is already there), IMO. Keep up

syntonic 15y ago
Thank you for the comments. I mostly agree with you on the UI, but I wouldn't say endless scroll doesn't make sense in this context. Even though I'm really not a big fan of it, in my mind, I'm going for data that is easily 'discoverable'. I don't see why browsing organized data can't be like fooling around, browsing through pics :) But, I see your point. The tech is actually butt simple. The client is JQuery (mostly ajax calls) and the server is just PHP and MySQL. I use MySQL in a 'meta' way because it's essentially a database of databases. I think it would be fun to switch to some NoSQL DBMS sometime in the future. At the moment, I'm just faking the data by hand. I have some ideas for where to pull data from. I just Googled Wikipida lists - thanks I'll definitely check it out :)

aoe 15y ago

Great idea. Hard to execute. I've been trying to find organized lists of data on some topics for the last few days, but haven't found a single reliable site. As you're looking for user contributions, getting traction would be the hardest part. Good luck!

syntonic 15y ago
Thanks! Care to share what kinds of lists you were looking for? I might as well try to populate it with content that I know people want.