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Show HN: Bubbles - An option for people who don't want to write emails.
- monsterix 14y ago@bubbles brings letter-writing to the web the good-old fashioned way. Our users can write, type, draw, sketch, collage and put hand-written signature on their letters and send it to anyone.
- adventureful 14y agoBig mistake: no video demo on the home page I can immediately dive into and see @bubbles in action. This is a visual product, that's critical miss.
- monsterix 14y agoHey thanks for feedback. I will put up a "how this works" video up there very soon.
- chaud 14y agoThe pricing page needs larger prices. It took me a few seconds to actually locate the price for each plan. The titles / list of what you get at each price point don't fit the site style and are not pleasing to read because of the font / all caps.
- monsterix 14y agoAlright, will fix this and iterate the plans page design. Thanks a tonne!
- jessepollak 14y agoI connected with Facebook, went through the entire registration process, and got the writing page...and still didn't know what I was doing. It definitely needs to be more clear what @bubbles actually does (and why I would use it).
- monsterix 14y agoHmmm, we're trying to lower the learning curve and improve on this. I just connected with your @bubble profile. You can now try typing @arvind anywhere on your letter and send it to me.
- timerickson 14y agoThe homepage is rather terrible at explaining the product. The two clearest explanations on the page are in the smallest and most illegible type. "@bubbles is a fast, cool and easy way to write authentic letters. Put hand-written signature, draw, sketch, paint, write or collage on your letters and mail it to anyone." "@bubbles lets you write authentic letters straight from your browser. Add pictures, draw, type, paint, sketch or collage just like on real paper – it's as easy as pie." I'd skip the "fast," "cool," "easy," "easy as pie" explanations and keep it as honest and succinct as possible. In fact, your enterprise page does a decent job of explaining the product, especially since you have a video explanation, but I'm still not sure if you're a social network, email 2.0, a paper distributor, or a tshirt printer.
- monsterix 14y agoNoted. We will iterate the home page again and improve upon it. Well, I think we're a social utility which is centered around letters, and sits very close to emails. We provide official letters heads to enterprise, so that employees can write with brand on the top. And ordinary sheet-of-paper style letters to users on which people can write/draw etc. We will fix the design of plans page shortly, also.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- chaud 14y agoIt looks like LinkedIn plus fancier messaging. I can't imagine a case where I would prefer to open a PDF from an email or go to another site rather than directly read an email though.
- monsterix 14y agoAtypically letters (Like appointment/proposal) are sent as attachments and people seem to be used to opening it as PDF. Opening letters on @bubbles has some incentives. For examples, you can highlight on letters received from others and comment "on it". Not under it.
- sooperman 14y agoAha! So, I can basically write "rich" emails. That's cool. Wouldn't it be nice to have some sort of a Bubbles-Gmail plugin using which I can do such a thing inside my Gmail itself, while composing emails? Overall neat.
- monsterix 14y agoThanks sooperman. We explored the idea of mail plugins, but decided that real fun would be on a ground-up idea! People tend to play hand drawn tic-tac-toe on this virtual paper to and fro. :-)
- zoop 14y agoI hate to be that guy, but the page's design looks like a bad mishmash of every contemporary trendy framework/web aesthetic. - the 3 columns at the base of the first page are misaligned - there is something wrong with the hover on the menu, enterprise, contact us, and pricing all highlight at the same time despite going to different places - contact us changes the menu on top - there are an insane amount of ways text is emphasized, from the angular graphic border, ribbons, the {} thing, the round blue button on the enterprise page, soft grey insets, soft blue insets, insets in insets, all-caps, bold, random colors (blue, black, green, red), the checkmarks, the badges, etc. - the buttons are all different. different border-radius and color on almost every page - i have no idea what the search bar on top is for - what is with the clocks? there are 2 on the front page, and the footer provides a clock with a very corny digital font for every other page. This is all on top of the fact that I have very little idea as to how you actually go from the browser to a hand-written letter.
- ChrisNorstrom 14y agoOMG OMG OMG... One big alignment problem. Please read this: http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/05/quick-fix-up-redesign-of-tap11-com/ http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/05/quick-fix-up-redesign-o... Fix up your alignment and spacing problems. It shouldn't take more than a few padding, margin, and width adjustments.
- monsterix 14y agoHey @chris, thanks for your f/b. Would love to hear more details on this. As a note @bubbles doesn't use a regular pixel perfect approach to render its views. We've not completed all parts yet, but even now we provide more pages/app with less than a third of "style-sheets" as compared to say Twitter. Try this trick. Open a published letter and press CTRL + / CTRL - on that page. See what happens to the letter.
- jasdeepnarang 14y agoI agree with all the comments that other gentleman posted here. - Need a Video Tour - Homepage Needs a better Redesign shot at explaining the product better. You have a users first 30 seconds of attention when he/she first lands on the page.. Lure them during that time. Good luck with your endeavour! +1 for the Gmail Plugin Idea.
- dylanz 14y agoI spent time going through each page "and" reading through these HN comments and I still don't know what the product does. Great graphics, but I didn't grok what the product was in the first 10 seconds (and still don't after 2 minutes).
- timaelliott 14y agoI have no idea what your product does and I'm not inclined enough to sign-up (especially with my facebook account) to find out more. Why is "@bubbles" all over the place? You don't even own the Twitter handle.
- monsterix 14y agoWe let users write letters directly from the browser and send it to anyone on email. You can put hand-draw signature on your letters using mouse/touchscreen, draw, sketch, collage etc. Sorry, we're a bit early-on into our product, couldn't meet expectations :-(
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- brandoncapecci 14y agoYou guys really should focus on getting a front end developer...
- monsterix 14y agoYes @brandon we've already upped the ante on front-end side. We just wanted to have a feel of what HNers think about this whole thing. Which seems very encouraging :-)
- brandoncapecci 14y agoHah, just trying to be constructive. I'm a bit of stickler for details. Glad to heard your filling the gaps in the team to address these issues. Seems promising :)
- timaelliott 14y agoI tried watching your video: http://vimeo.com/29003525 http://vimeo.com/29003525 and all I heard was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N05WL2NlLo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N05WL2NlLo
- impostervt 14y agoBeautiful site, but as others have said, I have no idea what it does.