9 ms·

Status Chart: Your Personal Status Dashboard

209 points by kennedysgarage 14y ago

nolok 14y ago
Reminds me of this thread that I read here earlier today: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4414567 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4414567
qpleple 14y ago
Very nice UI.
williamalvarez 14y ago
I'm in love with this idea, pretty neat and functional.
mattwdelong 14y ago
This is pretty neat, but it's not something I would enter my CC details for and pay for each month. I would however drop a one time ~$25 fee and self host it on my own server, and maybe use it. At least this way, I will see it running on my server and periodically update it. I'm just one person of many, but when I see neat little apps like this I would always much rather pay for it outright than pay for it each month. I don't know why more people don't sell cool services like this. Chances are I am going to just cancel it after a month anyway.
- kennedysgarage 14y ago
  That is some great insite. I never really thought about that angle. I will have to look more into that type of payment. Thanks for the help!
- matthewlyle 14y ago
  This was my first reaction too. Very cool, but wouldn't pay monthly for it.
- justindocanto 14y ago
  I sent you (OP) a note saying i'd join via a freemium model, but i like this too. I'd pay a flat fee upfront if basic updates were free.
- 1123581321 14y ago
  For hosted, an annual fee is appropriate here. A $25 annual fee is quite similar to a one-time fee of $25 because once it is paid, there is nothing to do but use it for an entire year. After a year, it's very obvious whether the app is worth another $25 or not. Either way the developer's compensation is nearly the same assuming many accounts share the low cost of the servers.
  - mattwdelong 14y ago
    There is a mental line between annual and "once and forever" type purchases. I think it comes down to the thought of getting more value and the fact that you own it..it's yours. Secondly, what if I purchase an annual subscription and forget about it the next year? I just paid another $25 for an app I stopped using over 10 months ago. I don't like that hassel of having to remember what my card is attached to and what random fees are going to come out each month, and that's why I don't like subscribing to anything. I would rather drive a shitty used car at a one time $5k purchase price over a brand new car at $300/month. For the same reason, I also don't get into cell phone contracts and cable subscriptions. I don't know what subset of the population is like me, but I think it would surprise you.
    - 1123581321 14y ago
      I agree people are like that, although I am not sure more people are willing to self-install than pay for hosted. You also make a good point about renewals. Because the cost of annual plans is out of mind for most of the year, it's important they allow users to disable auto-renew. I use Pandora, RescueTime and Forrst and they all have this option.
- natep 14y ago
  Especially for something like this. I might not need this to land a job for years, but when I do, I'll want to know that all the work I put into adding content to this won't have been wasted (i.e. service disappears for any number of reasons, OP is already 98% busy :/). That's not so say that a hosted, subscription service wouldn't be useful for some, but self-hosing would allow users to solve problems for themselves that would otherwise be feature requests, and hard to design well for everyone. I know OP doesn't want to be another LinkedIn, but there's no reason why he or someone else couldn't create an opt-in browsable database of these for better discoverability. How awesome would it be if you could click a link next to your hackathon entry and see the status page of other attendees?
roymabookie 14y ago
Mathematically, the only values for the other box are $5 and $25. Lol
- bhousel 14y ago
  I think it's for people who are less enthusiastic about the "/yr" part.
- eslachance 14y ago
  How about a one-time fee? Think outside the box ;)
peacemaker 14y ago
Very nice! I know you said it's for non 9-5 work but if you added a 'jobs' category on there too, for me to show past work experience, I would definitely use this.
yobfountain 14y ago
What I love about this concept is that it's a simple way to share what you have been working on without the appearance of overstating it's importance. It also allows you to update your status quickly while you find the time to write up one of those blog posts that never seem to get written.
- kennedysgarage 14y ago
  This was the main idea behind creating it for myself. I glad that it came across this way.
arturadib 14y ago
Neat but I'm not sure I'd try to push that into my resume (as suggested by the author). If anything, resumes tend to be too noisy, hard to pick out what really matters. Nice to have a place to keep all that stuff though.
incision 14y ago
What a coincidence that I would run across this post while taking a break from struggling with exactly the problem this could solve. I'm in the process of trying to summarize my real work and "value" to someone in reference to what could be a dream job. A job that my traditional resume doesn't quite fit. It would be wonderful to be able to provide a recruiter or similar with a link to a not necessarily public status chart to demonstrate myself.
- patio11 14y ago
  It would be wonderful to be able to provide a recruiter or similar with a link to a not necessarily public status chart to demonstrate myself. That is terribly against your interests, because your future employers do not burn with the need for more status charts. The contents of your existing work are not all that relevant to them. The results are much more interesting. How you are going to apply those experiences to their problems is most interesting of all. Figure out a way to credibly claim that you increased sales or decreased costs at a past employer and that, by consequence, you could do it at a new employer -- most employers perk up at that sort of thing. Show them your plan for doing it. It's so effective it is practically cheating.
  - incision 14y ago
    I agree with essentially everything you're saying here, but I don't see how something like this couldn't be useful to show work behind my results progressed. Or at least easier to consume than a traditional resume or modern blog-as-resume for that purpose. I'm thinking of it as a simple tool for providing context and references to what I've done. The first step in making those claims of results credible. I'm not talking about shipping a link in lieu of a CV or proper introduction to a job I'm pursuing, rather when someone reaches out to me and would like to know what I'm up to - I can show them. Obviously, once you get to the point of sitting face to face with someone it's a totally different type conversation, but for the first exchange I see nothing wrong with this.
    - mechanical_fish 14y ago
flak 14y ago
Nice job Chris!
IsaacL 14y ago
Suggestion: "how much would you theoretically pay for this" won't give you much accurate information. I'd suggest changing it to "pre-register for one of our plans: free, $5, $25", with an overview of each, and see what people click.
- kennedysgarage 14y ago
  I love the way you put this question. But I don't know how good it would be to change the survey right now.
- sigkill 14y ago
  This is a wonderful suggestion. OP listen to this. When you put such an option to people, they will not tell you how much it's worth to them. They will only tell you how much they are willing to pay... if at all they had to. Expect the numbers to skew heavily towards free. Actually, I'd say, once you get the data you should generously double the price.
- ralmeida 14y ago
  Also, if you keep the current format, you should consider dropping the default selection. It would be good to pre-select if you were actually in a signup process, but biasing your data in a survey like this is bad: you could end up with data saying that people are willing to pay more than they actually are.
- prawn 14y ago
  Quirky's method of generating price information for a proposed product is to say: "At what price would you consider this product a bit pricey but still worth buying?" Example here: http://www.quirky.com/products/327-The-Milkmaid-smart-milk-jug http://www.quirky.com/products/327-The-Milkmaid-smart-milk-j... (though that product might be out of price survey mode by the time you click through)
rezrovs 14y ago
I'd use this but not as a resume tool. I'd use this as a motivational tool to keep track of the todo items I have since some of them are quite long running and to motivate me into getting those personal projects finished.
- UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
  This is exactly how I read it too. That's what I want. A motivational tool with the style/feedback of most game's achievement systems. Kind of like the new Visual Studio Achievements but for everything else.
Shenglong 14y ago
Change the wording to be more affirmative. "We may, IF" -> "We will be". A/B test the price points with a pre-registration, and do not take payment information yet.
sim0n 14y ago
Just an interesting thought; you could actually build a page like this using our product (http://interstateapp.com http://interstateapp.com) and its API (just whack up a custom theme and sort the board/roadmap by date). Best of luck with this regardless.
thegooley 14y ago
Looks like it was heavily inspired by this (from ~2010): http://culturedcode.com/status/ http://culturedcode.com/status/ And I really like the concept, but I believe that the value of a "status dashboard" is that it's a concise view of what's happening right now. I really don't think that this sort of concept is a good resume replacement it's not a good format for 20+ items. I'd suggest making it a status dashboard for what you're working on right now, and once things are "completed" they drop off into a bulleted list at the bottom which becomes your "work log" rather than "dashboard" at that point. Make it less overwhelming and I could really see a recruiter or business partner getting some good info from it.
- eps 14y ago
  I'm partial to visual design and I'm fairly certain CC's dashboard wasn't an inspiration here. They share inverted palette and a grid layout, but other than that if you set out to design a "cool" looking and functional 2 column table, it'll end up looking as posted project. There are just too few convergence points for this sort of design pattern.
- justindocanto 14y ago
  OP, theres some things you should definitely consider in here. ^^
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  Software company status boards are not uncommon; here's another one from ~2010: http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/ http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/
kmfrk 14y ago
I think you're making a big mistake by only asking resumé-builders and not employers about the pros and cons of your idea. I love the design, though. It's a way to reinforce the idea that there is more to a desirable applicant than their diploma and grade average. Basically why LinkedIn is fundamentally broken. EDIT: Another way to include speaking gigs would be to provide links to your Lanyrd and Speaker Deck profiles.
UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
When I first looked at this I got excited: A way to track my OWN goals for my OWN records, and help me with my own personal development. When I found out it was another resume/CV/job board thing I just rolled my eyes and closed it. If I wanted that I would just use LinkedIn or Google+ (public) to talk about my bits and pieces.
- kennedysgarage 14y ago
  That is how I am currently using it (http://kennedysgarage.com/status http://kennedysgarage.com/status). I just wanted see if there were other uses for it. I think keeping it basic and to the original point might work the best. I do agree with you that we don't just need another Linkedin.
  - alexobenauer 14y ago
    This is very cool - you should link to this on the main page you submitted; it's a very concrete example that I really enjoyed poking through.
- incision 14y ago
  I'm confused. Is this simply a vague way of saying that you were hoping for something you could run locally, not a hosted service? If not, I'm not sure what would stop you from doing exactly as you describe.
  - Sunlis 14y ago
    I think he meant that he would be more interested in using it as a general task tracker, rather than a CV add-on. Maybe a way to track any personal goals like weight-loss, excersize, personal projects, home renovation, etc. instead of just marketable things.
kyro 14y ago
I got really excited after reading the submission title because I thought someone had finally created a service I've wanted for a while. This is great, but you should take it further! Here's the idea: I've wanted a personal dashboard to track everything in my life at a quick glance, like weight/health metrics, financials, to-do, schedule, emails, twitter replies, etc; something that'll give me a quick and comprehensive view of everything going on personally, socially, financially, professionally. Basically a Mint meets Ducksboard for my life, or even better, a universal life platform that services can hook into. Email me if you're interested!
- alexpak 14y ago
  42goals.com
  - kyro 14y ago
    Not quite what I had in mind.
- mechanical_fish 14y ago
  Yes, as I die I'll be able to look back on my life and see that I had everything properly organized into neat folders.
  - kyro 14y ago
    Not sure what the snark is for. Perhaps I didn't explain its usefulness that well. I may write a post about it because there seems to be some interest.
    - icey 14y ago
      It sounds interesting to me. I'd like to hear more about what you're thinking. I love tracking data like this.
    - mechanical_fish 14y ago
      Okay, sorry, let me spend some more time and give you an example. One big problem with a unified dashboard is that not everything in your life should be monitored on the same frequency. Here's one example: You probably need to check your email several times a day (if not, god bless you!) but checking your 401k balance several times a day is almost certainly harmful to your well-being. It probably doesn't make you happier; contemplating your money rarely does. Instead it will alternately make you worry (as every dip in the stock market causes nightmarish visions of a retirement spent in a cardboard box), or make you irrationally exuberant (as every good trading day makes you dream of buying a second home). The net effect is that it will subtly encourage you to trade, because if you don't trade your 401k is the most boring thing imaginable, and you feel the subconscious urge to tinker with it to make it do something. But trading is a disaster, because churning your investments makes other people rich at your expense, and because timing the market doesn't work, and telling yourself not to time the market usually doesn't work, either. For much more on this topic see the work of e.g. William Bernstein (The Four Pillars of Investing, The Investor's Manifesto) or any of the so-called Bogleheads, or try Ramit Sethi: https://wordsofward.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/the-single-best-investment-choice-intro-to-index-funds/ https://wordsofward.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/the-single-best... Here's another example: The ideal amount of time to spend monitoring your weight is none, unless your weight is unhealthily large or is increasing significantly. (If you're prone to anorexia, a continuously updated dashboard showing your weight is potentially dangerous. You need to avoid playing that game.) And unless you're some sort of edge-case athlete, by no means should you monitor your weight daily: You should either weigh-in weekly, or weigh yourself daily but compute a running average (and have a deep understanding of what a running average is and why you're computing it). Otherwise day-to-day fluctuations are likely to destroy your confidence in your diet. (I'm told that, for this reason, Weight Watchers explicitly trains members to weigh-in weekly, not daily.)
shell0x 14y ago
I would use it if it would be open source.
- MattyRog 14y ago
  Came here to mention this. I would absolutely make a few donations to make it happen. Understandable to want to make a couple bucks off a great idea though.
  - shell0x 14y ago
    Well, he could make it open source and still earn money with it. I haven't always an internet connection, so this would be a huge advantage.(plan to travel in the next time)
deleted 14y ago
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alexobenauer 14y ago
When given three pricing options, the majority of people will go for the middle one. I would personally make that an open-ended question, where you ask people to punch in a number. That would give more conclusive results. I'm willing to bet you're going to see most people pick the middle option, and unfortunately, that won't mean much.
- huhtenberg 14y ago
  > the majority of people will go for the middle one. ... of those who didn't leave because they didn't like any of them. And even that is not true. It's more of an urban legend popular between "UX designers." In reality, people will go with the cheapest option that fits their needs.
almost 14y ago
I think it's a nice idea and I'm really interested to see how you execute on it. I mentioned it on the form but I'll say it again here. I think for prices around what you're talking about it makes sense to make them per month $25/year is about $2/month, if you ask me to spend $25 up front for something I might think about it but $2 just seems like nothing.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Would you feel the same if he had to raise the prices to cover the fixed fee per transaction that most payment processors charge?
  - almost 14y ago
    I think so, if you doubled it to $4 it just still seems like less to me, I know it's not but that's how it feels...
- runako 14y ago
  Suggestion for the OP: offer a no-questions-asked money-back refund (say 30 days), and/or allow people to have a free trial period. Optimizing a successful business around people who think $25 is a lot of money to spend at one time is a tough road (I'm happy to talk offline about personal experiences here). No offense to @almost, I'm not saying he's being cheap, only that he may not value this niche as other people (similarly, I would be a horrible customer for Pokemon anything). The bottom line is $25/year is about what paper refills cost for cheap day planners; not a lot of money in any objective sense. I'd try to capture people who perceive more than $2/month of value in what you offer, and tune the product to offer them even more.
egypturnash 14y ago
The example chart is pretty much unreadable on a portrait iPad.
kyberias 14y ago
What freaking standard is it to write dates as mm.dd? Not cool. In many countries it's the exact opposite or that is how you write TIME (ie. hh.mm instead of hh:mm).
- jarek 14y ago
  > What freaking standard is it to write dates as mm.dd? American.
  - nuclear_eclipse 14y ago
    As an American, I personally hate that standard, and usually use YYYY-MM-DD wherever possible, and only revert to MM-DD-YY on documents that require it in that format. I get that MM-DD follows the conventions of speech ("the event is on May 7th"), but it's really ambiguous when written in all numbers.
    - ricardobeat 14y ago
      "The event is on the 7th of May"
      - nuclear_eclipse 14y ago
        Unfortunately, that's just not the way people talk about dates here. Maybe it's because we use a backward date order, or maybe it's a self-reinforcing loop, but that just doesn't sound natural, even to me.
  - kyberias 14y ago
    Isn't it MM/DD, not mm.dd in US? E.g. 8/23, not 8.23. My point is that it is more or less insane to start inventing new date format with zero regard to formats in other countries.
    - jarek 14y ago
      > Isn't it MM/DD, not mm.dd in US? E.g. 8/23, not 8.23. Eh, people will use anything, I've also seen 8-23. 8.23 certainly isn't a stretch. > My point is that it is more or less insane to start inventing new date format with zero regard to formats in other countries. You haven't been dealing with the U.S. much, have you? To be fair, most of the fun comes from their use of ancient standards rather than new ones, but they aren't exactly known for consulting with other countries. Then again, at 300 million people it's a little difficult to blame them.
d_mland 14y ago
Awesome idea. I think it would be awesome if it had the additional ability of exporting my data into a form I could use to update other things like LinkedIn, my paper resume(.doc or .pdf?), and a website (html or even a widget type deal). I just had retyping and tracking. He's got the tracking down and if I was able to keep everything updated with it I would be willing to pay for it.
hhimanshu 14y ago
very impressive!
hhimanshu 14y ago
very impressive
justindocanto 14y ago
I didnt realize until i went back that there was a full-scale demo of this. I thought this was just a landing page with a concept image at first. If you're like me and didn't notice, here's the full demo: http://kennedysgarage.com/status http://kennedysgarage.com/status
- paulsb 14y ago
  If the numbers in the meters (current workload, amount of stress and chance of emailing back) are percentages and the colours are representative of the percentage, then the 13% chance of being emailed back should be coloured red and not green to indicate the low chance of being emailed back.
basiszwo 14y ago
some alternatives maybe found on http://www.cloudli.st/apps?t=monitoring%2Cweb+analytics%2Cinfrastructure http://www.cloudli.st/apps?t=monitoring%2Cweb+analytics%2Cin...
notJim 14y ago
As someone who does hiring, this sort of thing is kind of neat, but mostly very annoying. I look at maybe a dozen resumes (there's someone else in front of me who looks at far more), and having to figure out the bizarre format of yours is a waste of my time. I would guess that this applies similarly for people hiring contractors. The consistency of the boring resume format is a plus. If you want to distinguish yourself, I would suggest you work within that format: better typography, a nice header, a striking layout (that still follows the format.)
- fribblerz 14y ago
  But won't it work better in case one has just a couple of candidates to deal with. Pick 10 from 100 as per their regular boring format resume, then use these kind of detailed profiles to pick 3-4 to call in for an interview.
  - notJim 14y ago
    I don't really think so, but I guess it's possible. The reason I don't think so is that this thing is much harder to read than plain text, and I have to spend time figuring out how to read it. Chances are, if I like someone's resume, it's time to talk to them on the phone, not read a secondary resume that's in a weird format.
xyzzyb 14y ago
The resume should be a simple listing of your claimed skills and work history. To really stand out write a cover letter that sells what you've done and makes the case for your benefit to the company. If you want to go further, create a personal website and reference it from your resume/cover letter. e.g. mine is http://stephenballnc.com http://stephenballnc.com
- ldng 14y ago
  Interesting Duckduckgo Karma widget. Where can I find more info about it ?
  - xyzzyb 14y ago
    Hm, odd. I can't seem to find it. It used to be at duckduckgo.com/karma.html. Additionally the widget doesn't seem to be current (my scores are all out of date). Aw, I sure hope it's still online, but I sure can't find it.
jcastro 14y ago
I'd love to see this connected to Trello!
jobu 14y ago
I love that under the Honors section he has: "Reached #1 on Hacker News for Status Chart". Very meta.
scosman 14y ago
On the more visual resume side, check out FolioSpace.me Here's my profile: http://foliospace.me/scosman http://foliospace.me/scosman
- _lex 14y ago
  I like the idea, but it's really hard to read anything. There's just too much.
engtech 14y ago
I wouldn't use it, but I think that getting the domain name and setting up a demo site like that is great idea. Good execution. Kudos.
sicxu 14y ago
Great idea! I just added backend function to your prototype. The dashboard UI is at: http://s.myezapp.com/demo5/app/ezstatus/guest/dashboard.ws http://s.myezapp.com/demo5/app/ezstatus/guest/dashboard.ws The admin UI is at: http://s.myezapp.com/demo5/app/ezstatus/pages/taskslistpage.ws http://s.myezapp.com/demo5/app/ezstatus/pages/taskslistpage.... Please login as demo5/demo5 to use the admin UI. It comes with complete source code. Please feel free to take it from there and improve it. Thanks!
combataircraft 14y ago
It has nothing I need. I need something that shows my bank balance, bills that need to be paid, some stupid very stupid things like preparing some tax documents etc.. So, it's very far away from being my dashboard.

209 points by kennedysgarage 14y ago

nolok 14y ago

Reminds me of this thread that I read here earlier today: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4414567 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4414567

qpleple 14y ago

Very nice UI.

williamalvarez 14y ago

I'm in love with this idea, pretty neat and functional.

mattwdelong 14y ago

This is pretty neat, but it's not something I would enter my CC details for and pay for each month. I would however drop a one time ~$25 fee and self host it on my own server, and maybe use it. At least this way, I will see it running on my server and periodically update it. I'm just one person of many, but when I see neat little apps like this I would always much rather pay for it outright than pay for it each month. I don't know why more people don't sell cool services like this. Chances are I am going to just cancel it after a month anyway.

kennedysgarage 14y ago
That is some great insite. I never really thought about that angle. I will have to look more into that type of payment. Thanks for the help!
matthewlyle 14y ago
This was my first reaction too. Very cool, but wouldn't pay monthly for it.
justindocanto 14y ago
I sent you (OP) a note saying i'd join via a freemium model, but i like this too. I'd pay a flat fee upfront if basic updates were free.
1123581321 14y ago
For hosted, an annual fee is appropriate here. A $25 annual fee is quite similar to a one-time fee of $25 because once it is paid, there is nothing to do but use it for an entire year. After a year, it's very obvious whether the app is worth another $25 or not. Either way the developer's compensation is nearly the same assuming many accounts share the low cost of the servers.
- mattwdelong 14y ago
  There is a mental line between annual and "once and forever" type purchases. I think it comes down to the thought of getting more value and the fact that you own it..it's yours. Secondly, what if I purchase an annual subscription and forget about it the next year? I just paid another $25 for an app I stopped using over 10 months ago. I don't like that hassel of having to remember what my card is attached to and what random fees are going to come out each month, and that's why I don't like subscribing to anything. I would rather drive a shitty used car at a one time $5k purchase price over a brand new car at $300/month. For the same reason, I also don't get into cell phone contracts and cable subscriptions. I don't know what subset of the population is like me, but I think it would surprise you.
  - 1123581321 14y ago
    I agree people are like that, although I am not sure more people are willing to self-install than pay for hosted. You also make a good point about renewals. Because the cost of annual plans is out of mind for most of the year, it's important they allow users to disable auto-renew. I use Pandora, RescueTime and Forrst and they all have this option.
natep 14y ago
Especially for something like this. I might not need this to land a job for years, but when I do, I'll want to know that all the work I put into adding content to this won't have been wasted (i.e. service disappears for any number of reasons, OP is already 98% busy :/). That's not so say that a hosted, subscription service wouldn't be useful for some, but self-hosing would allow users to solve problems for themselves that would otherwise be feature requests, and hard to design well for everyone. I know OP doesn't want to be another LinkedIn, but there's no reason why he or someone else couldn't create an opt-in browsable database of these for better discoverability. How awesome would it be if you could click a link next to your hackathon entry and see the status page of other attendees?

roymabookie 14y ago

Mathematically, the only values for the other box are $5 and $25. Lol

bhousel 14y ago
I think it's for people who are less enthusiastic about the "/yr" part.
eslachance 14y ago
How about a one-time fee? Think outside the box ;)

peacemaker 14y ago

Very nice! I know you said it's for non 9-5 work but if you added a 'jobs' category on there too, for me to show past work experience, I would definitely use this.

yobfountain 14y ago

What I love about this concept is that it's a simple way to share what you have been working on without the appearance of overstating it's importance. It also allows you to update your status quickly while you find the time to write up one of those blog posts that never seem to get written.

kennedysgarage 14y ago
This was the main idea behind creating it for myself. I glad that it came across this way.

arturadib 14y ago

Neat but I'm not sure I'd try to push that into my resume (as suggested by the author). If anything, resumes tend to be too noisy, hard to pick out what really matters. Nice to have a place to keep all that stuff though.

incision 14y ago

What a coincidence that I would run across this post while taking a break from struggling with exactly the problem this could solve. I'm in the process of trying to summarize my real work and "value" to someone in reference to what could be a dream job. A job that my traditional resume doesn't quite fit. It would be wonderful to be able to provide a recruiter or similar with a link to a not necessarily public status chart to demonstrate myself.

patio11 14y ago
It would be wonderful to be able to provide a recruiter or similar with a link to a not necessarily public status chart to demonstrate myself. That is terribly against your interests, because your future employers do not burn with the need for more status charts. The contents of your existing work are not all that relevant to them. The results are much more interesting. How you are going to apply those experiences to their problems is most interesting of all. Figure out a way to credibly claim that you increased sales or decreased costs at a past employer and that, by consequence, you could do it at a new employer -- most employers perk up at that sort of thing. Show them your plan for doing it. It's so effective it is practically cheating.
- incision 14y ago
  I agree with essentially everything you're saying here, but I don't see how something like this couldn't be useful to show work behind my results progressed. Or at least easier to consume than a traditional resume or modern blog-as-resume for that purpose. I'm thinking of it as a simple tool for providing context and references to what I've done. The first step in making those claims of results credible. I'm not talking about shipping a link in lieu of a CV or proper introduction to a job I'm pursuing, rather when someone reaches out to me and would like to know what I'm up to - I can show them. Obviously, once you get to the point of sitting face to face with someone it's a totally different type conversation, but for the first exchange I see nothing wrong with this.
  - mechanical_fish 14y ago

flak 14y ago

Nice job Chris!

IsaacL 14y ago

Suggestion: "how much would you theoretically pay for this" won't give you much accurate information. I'd suggest changing it to "pre-register for one of our plans: free, $5, $25", with an overview of each, and see what people click.

kennedysgarage 14y ago
I love the way you put this question. But I don't know how good it would be to change the survey right now.
sigkill 14y ago
This is a wonderful suggestion. OP listen to this. When you put such an option to people, they will not tell you how much it's worth to them. They will only tell you how much they are willing to pay... if at all they had to. Expect the numbers to skew heavily towards free. Actually, I'd say, once you get the data you should generously double the price.
ralmeida 14y ago
Also, if you keep the current format, you should consider dropping the default selection. It would be good to pre-select if you were actually in a signup process, but biasing your data in a survey like this is bad: you could end up with data saying that people are willing to pay more than they actually are.
prawn 14y ago
Quirky's method of generating price information for a proposed product is to say: "At what price would you consider this product a bit pricey but still worth buying?" Example here: http://www.quirky.com/products/327-The-Milkmaid-smart-milk-jug http://www.quirky.com/products/327-The-Milkmaid-smart-milk-j... (though that product might be out of price survey mode by the time you click through)

rezrovs 14y ago

I'd use this but not as a resume tool. I'd use this as a motivational tool to keep track of the todo items I have since some of them are quite long running and to motivate me into getting those personal projects finished.

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
This is exactly how I read it too. That's what I want. A motivational tool with the style/feedback of most game's achievement systems. Kind of like the new Visual Studio Achievements but for everything else.

Shenglong 14y ago

Change the wording to be more affirmative. "We may, IF" -> "We will be". A/B test the price points with a pre-registration, and do not take payment information yet.

sim0n 14y ago

Just an interesting thought; you could actually build a page like this using our product (http://interstateapp.com http://interstateapp.com) and its API (just whack up a custom theme and sort the board/roadmap by date). Best of luck with this regardless.

thegooley 14y ago

Looks like it was heavily inspired by this (from ~2010): http://culturedcode.com/status/ http://culturedcode.com/status/ And I really like the concept, but I believe that the value of a "status dashboard" is that it's a concise view of what's happening right now. I really don't think that this sort of concept is a good resume replacement it's not a good format for 20+ items. I'd suggest making it a status dashboard for what you're working on right now, and once things are "completed" they drop off into a bulleted list at the bottom which becomes your "work log" rather than "dashboard" at that point. Make it less overwhelming and I could really see a recruiter or business partner getting some good info from it.

eps 14y ago
I'm partial to visual design and I'm fairly certain CC's dashboard wasn't an inspiration here. They share inverted palette and a grid layout, but other than that if you set out to design a "cool" looking and functional 2 column table, it'll end up looking as posted project. There are just too few convergence points for this sort of design pattern.
justindocanto 14y ago
OP, theres some things you should definitely consider in here. ^^
snowwrestler 14y ago
Software company status boards are not uncommon; here's another one from ~2010: http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/ http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/

kmfrk 14y ago

I think you're making a big mistake by only asking resumé-builders and not employers about the pros and cons of your idea. I love the design, though. It's a way to reinforce the idea that there is more to a desirable applicant than their diploma and grade average. Basically why LinkedIn is fundamentally broken. EDIT: Another way to include speaking gigs would be to provide links to your Lanyrd and Speaker Deck profiles.

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago

When I first looked at this I got excited: A way to track my OWN goals for my OWN records, and help me with my own personal development. When I found out it was another resume/CV/job board thing I just rolled my eyes and closed it. If I wanted that I would just use LinkedIn or Google+ (public) to talk about my bits and pieces.

kennedysgarage 14y ago
That is how I am currently using it (http://kennedysgarage.com/status http://kennedysgarage.com/status). I just wanted see if there were other uses for it. I think keeping it basic and to the original point might work the best. I do agree with you that we don't just need another Linkedin.
- alexobenauer 14y ago
  This is very cool - you should link to this on the main page you submitted; it's a very concrete example that I really enjoyed poking through.
incision 14y ago
I'm confused. Is this simply a vague way of saying that you were hoping for something you could run locally, not a hosted service? If not, I'm not sure what would stop you from doing exactly as you describe.
- Sunlis 14y ago
  I think he meant that he would be more interested in using it as a general task tracker, rather than a CV add-on. Maybe a way to track any personal goals like weight-loss, excersize, personal projects, home renovation, etc. instead of just marketable things.

kyro 14y ago

I got really excited after reading the submission title because I thought someone had finally created a service I've wanted for a while. This is great, but you should take it further! Here's the idea: I've wanted a personal dashboard to track everything in my life at a quick glance, like weight/health metrics, financials, to-do, schedule, emails, twitter replies, etc; something that'll give me a quick and comprehensive view of everything going on personally, socially, financially, professionally. Basically a Mint meets Ducksboard for my life, or even better, a universal life platform that services can hook into. Email me if you're interested!

alexpak 14y ago
42goals.com
- kyro 14y ago
  Not quite what I had in mind.
mechanical_fish 14y ago
Yes, as I die I'll be able to look back on my life and see that I had everything properly organized into neat folders.
- kyro 14y ago
  Not sure what the snark is for. Perhaps I didn't explain its usefulness that well. I may write a post about it because there seems to be some interest.
  - icey 14y ago
    It sounds interesting to me. I'd like to hear more about what you're thinking. I love tracking data like this.
  - mechanical_fish 14y ago
    Okay, sorry, let me spend some more time and give you an example. One big problem with a unified dashboard is that not everything in your life should be monitored on the same frequency. Here's one example: You probably need to check your email several times a day (if not, god bless you!) but checking your 401k balance several times a day is almost certainly harmful to your well-being. It probably doesn't make you happier; contemplating your money rarely does. Instead it will alternately make you worry (as every dip in the stock market causes nightmarish visions of a retirement spent in a cardboard box), or make you irrationally exuberant (as every good trading day makes you dream of buying a second home). The net effect is that it will subtly encourage you to trade, because if you don't trade your 401k is the most boring thing imaginable, and you feel the subconscious urge to tinker with it to make it do something. But trading is a disaster, because churning your investments makes other people rich at your expense, and because timing the market doesn't work, and telling yourself not to time the market usually doesn't work, either. For much more on this topic see the work of e.g. William Bernstein (The Four Pillars of Investing, The Investor's Manifesto) or any of the so-called Bogleheads, or try Ramit Sethi: https://wordsofward.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/the-single-best-investment-choice-intro-to-index-funds/ https://wordsofward.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/the-single-best... Here's another example: The ideal amount of time to spend monitoring your weight is none, unless your weight is unhealthily large or is increasing significantly. (If you're prone to anorexia, a continuously updated dashboard showing your weight is potentially dangerous. You need to avoid playing that game.) And unless you're some sort of edge-case athlete, by no means should you monitor your weight daily: You should either weigh-in weekly, or weigh yourself daily but compute a running average (and have a deep understanding of what a running average is and why you're computing it). Otherwise day-to-day fluctuations are likely to destroy your confidence in your diet. (I'm told that, for this reason, Weight Watchers explicitly trains members to weigh-in weekly, not daily.)

shell0x 14y ago

I would use it if it would be open source.

MattyRog 14y ago
Came here to mention this. I would absolutely make a few donations to make it happen. Understandable to want to make a couple bucks off a great idea though.
- shell0x 14y ago
  Well, he could make it open source and still earn money with it. I haven't always an internet connection, so this would be a huge advantage.(plan to travel in the next time)

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

alexobenauer 14y ago

When given three pricing options, the majority of people will go for the middle one. I would personally make that an open-ended question, where you ask people to punch in a number. That would give more conclusive results. I'm willing to bet you're going to see most people pick the middle option, and unfortunately, that won't mean much.

huhtenberg 14y ago
> the majority of people will go for the middle one. ... of those who didn't leave because they didn't like any of them. And even that is not true. It's more of an urban legend popular between "UX designers." In reality, people will go with the cheapest option that fits their needs.

almost 14y ago

I think it's a nice idea and I'm really interested to see how you execute on it. I mentioned it on the form but I'll say it again here. I think for prices around what you're talking about it makes sense to make them per month $25/year is about $2/month, if you ask me to spend $25 up front for something I might think about it but $2 just seems like nothing.

icebraining 14y ago
Would you feel the same if he had to raise the prices to cover the fixed fee per transaction that most payment processors charge?
- almost 14y ago
  I think so, if you doubled it to $4 it just still seems like less to me, I know it's not but that's how it feels...
runako 14y ago
Suggestion for the OP: offer a no-questions-asked money-back refund (say 30 days), and/or allow people to have a free trial period. Optimizing a successful business around people who think $25 is a lot of money to spend at one time is a tough road (I'm happy to talk offline about personal experiences here). No offense to @almost, I'm not saying he's being cheap, only that he may not value this niche as other people (similarly, I would be a horrible customer for Pokemon anything). The bottom line is $25/year is about what paper refills cost for cheap day planners; not a lot of money in any objective sense. I'd try to capture people who perceive more than $2/month of value in what you offer, and tune the product to offer them even more.

egypturnash 14y ago

The example chart is pretty much unreadable on a portrait iPad.

kyberias 14y ago

What freaking standard is it to write dates as mm.dd? Not cool. In many countries it's the exact opposite or that is how you write TIME (ie. hh.mm instead of hh:mm).

jarek 14y ago
> What freaking standard is it to write dates as mm.dd? American.
- nuclear_eclipse 14y ago
  As an American, I personally hate that standard, and usually use YYYY-MM-DD wherever possible, and only revert to MM-DD-YY on documents that require it in that format. I get that MM-DD follows the conventions of speech ("the event is on May 7th"), but it's really ambiguous when written in all numbers.
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    "The event is on the 7th of May"
    - nuclear_eclipse 14y ago
      Unfortunately, that's just not the way people talk about dates here. Maybe it's because we use a backward date order, or maybe it's a self-reinforcing loop, but that just doesn't sound natural, even to me.
- kyberias 14y ago
  Isn't it MM/DD, not mm.dd in US? E.g. 8/23, not 8.23. My point is that it is more or less insane to start inventing new date format with zero regard to formats in other countries.
  - jarek 14y ago
    > Isn't it MM/DD, not mm.dd in US? E.g. 8/23, not 8.23. Eh, people will use anything, I've also seen 8-23. 8.23 certainly isn't a stretch. > My point is that it is more or less insane to start inventing new date format with zero regard to formats in other countries. You haven't been dealing with the U.S. much, have you? To be fair, most of the fun comes from their use of ancient standards rather than new ones, but they aren't exactly known for consulting with other countries. Then again, at 300 million people it's a little difficult to blame them.

d_mland 14y ago

Awesome idea. I think it would be awesome if it had the additional ability of exporting my data into a form I could use to update other things like LinkedIn, my paper resume(.doc or .pdf?), and a website (html or even a widget type deal). I just had retyping and tracking. He's got the tracking down and if I was able to keep everything updated with it I would be willing to pay for it.

hhimanshu 14y ago

very impressive!

hhimanshu 14y ago

very impressive

justindocanto 14y ago

I didnt realize until i went back that there was a full-scale demo of this. I thought this was just a landing page with a concept image at first. If you're like me and didn't notice, here's the full demo: http://kennedysgarage.com/status http://kennedysgarage.com/status

paulsb 14y ago
If the numbers in the meters (current workload, amount of stress and chance of emailing back) are percentages and the colours are representative of the percentage, then the 13% chance of being emailed back should be coloured red and not green to indicate the low chance of being emailed back.

basiszwo 14y ago

some alternatives maybe found on http://www.cloudli.st/apps?t=monitoring%2Cweb+analytics%2Cinfrastructure http://www.cloudli.st/apps?t=monitoring%2Cweb+analytics%2Cin...

notJim 14y ago

As someone who does hiring, this sort of thing is kind of neat, but mostly very annoying. I look at maybe a dozen resumes (there's someone else in front of me who looks at far more), and having to figure out the bizarre format of yours is a waste of my time. I would guess that this applies similarly for people hiring contractors. The consistency of the boring resume format is a plus. If you want to distinguish yourself, I would suggest you work within that format: better typography, a nice header, a striking layout (that still follows the format.)

fribblerz 14y ago
But won't it work better in case one has just a couple of candidates to deal with. Pick 10 from 100 as per their regular boring format resume, then use these kind of detailed profiles to pick 3-4 to call in for an interview.
- notJim 14y ago
  I don't really think so, but I guess it's possible. The reason I don't think so is that this thing is much harder to read than plain text, and I have to spend time figuring out how to read it. Chances are, if I like someone's resume, it's time to talk to them on the phone, not read a secondary resume that's in a weird format.

xyzzyb 14y ago

The resume should be a simple listing of your claimed skills and work history. To really stand out write a cover letter that sells what you've done and makes the case for your benefit to the company. If you want to go further, create a personal website and reference it from your resume/cover letter. e.g. mine is http://stephenballnc.com http://stephenballnc.com

ldng 14y ago
Interesting Duckduckgo Karma widget. Where can I find more info about it ?
- xyzzyb 14y ago
  Hm, odd. I can't seem to find it. It used to be at duckduckgo.com/karma.html. Additionally the widget doesn't seem to be current (my scores are all out of date). Aw, I sure hope it's still online, but I sure can't find it.

jcastro 14y ago

I'd love to see this connected to Trello!

jobu 14y ago

I love that under the Honors section he has: "Reached #1 on Hacker News for Status Chart". Very meta.

scosman 14y ago

On the more visual resume side, check out FolioSpace.me Here's my profile: http://foliospace.me/scosman http://foliospace.me/scosman

_lex 14y ago
I like the idea, but it's really hard to read anything. There's just too much.

engtech 14y ago

I wouldn't use it, but I think that getting the domain name and setting up a demo site like that is great idea. Good execution. Kudos.

sicxu 14y ago

Great idea! I just added backend function to your prototype. The dashboard UI is at: http://s.myezapp.com/demo5/app/ezstatus/guest/dashboard.ws http://s.myezapp.com/demo5/app/ezstatus/guest/dashboard.ws The admin UI is at: http://s.myezapp.com/demo5/app/ezstatus/pages/taskslistpage.ws http://s.myezapp.com/demo5/app/ezstatus/pages/taskslistpage.... Please login as demo5/demo5 to use the admin UI. It comes with complete source code. Please feel free to take it from there and improve it. Thanks!

combataircraft 14y ago

It has nothing I need. I need something that shows my bank balance, bills that need to be paid, some stupid very stupid things like preparing some tax documents etc.. So, it's very far away from being my dashboard.