11 ms·

Show HN: My new project - ask.io

206 points by ca98am79 13y ago

bgnm2000 13y ago
I like this, but I think for it to be sticky, you really need to focus on a follow up to the previous week's favor (i.e. reaction videos, photos, stories, etc.). People definitely like to do good things, but they want to see the impact more. That feedback loop will also motivate people to help the next ask.
- ca98am79 13y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I'm thinking of doing that in a blog (e.g. blog.ask.io, which isn't live yet). I plan to follow up with every favor.
- aniketpant 13y ago
  I agree with that. If all that happens, I would love to see the way the project grows. It will be like a nice /r/AskReddit thing with no BS.
- paulocal 13y ago
  Exactly! Check out this TED talk of the founder of redditgifts. It will provide lots of insight on what works and what doesn't. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phoUVH05kEg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phoUVH05kEg
aniketpant 13y ago
Interesting idea. I am pretty sure I might put up something up there someday.
- jh3 13y ago
  > I am pretty sure I might put up something up there someday This sounds like a nice way of saying you'll completely forget about this website in several hours and will never put anything on it ever. Or at least I'm pretty sure that's what it might mean :)
  - aniketpant 13y ago
    I choose to not sound cocky here. But, I have bookmarked it and I tend to bookmark stuff which I do go back to :)
    - jh3 13y ago
      Well, good! :)
krmmalik 13y ago
There's a whole sub-reddit that's dedicated to exactly the same thing at /r/favors That's not to discredit this project though. Some things might work better on Reddit and some might work better on a dedicated website.
- antjanus 13y ago
  didn't know about it, thanks! :)
  - davidrudder 13y ago
    I think any project worth doing will have some competition. "competition" can also mean "market validation". I understand you're not trying to get rich off this, but I think you'd like it if someone used it :) In my opinion, the fact that reddit already does it means you're probably onto something.
missing_cipher 13y ago
I don't know, maybe I'm too cynical, but I don't think posting personal information online is a good idea.
- bluetidepro 13y ago
  I couldn't agree more. This has something like 4chan spam written all over it. They have done much worse, from much less. It's messed up, but it's a sad truth.
  - Spittie 13y ago
    I don't see why you had to name 4chan into this. They have done nice things as well, like http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/09/05/2148248/4chan-Gives-90-Year-Old-Vet-a-Great-Birthday http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/09/05/2148248/4chan-Gives-...
    - moot 13y ago
      Because 4chan is the worst place on the internet!!!!!!!!!
      - kragniz 13y ago
        I was about to produce a counter argument before I saw who the author of that comment was.
      - jsonne 13y ago
        I love /b/ but it does kill my productivity like no other.
      - k3n 13y ago
        I didn't believe you until the 5th exclamation mark.
- tsheng 13y ago
  Agreed. Had a brief "aww" wash over me that quickly turned into "but what if... oh no..."
sejje 13y ago
This is a simple idea with big potential. You get to be a superhero to a few people, and that's good for everyone.
omeid2 13y ago
> [231 points] Show /hn/: I ripped off an existing product and added Bootstrap to it. Edit: that is from "What 4chan thinks about HN": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373
- possibilistic 13y ago
  I don't think this is constructive, and I feel others would agree with me. Regardless of your sentiment, the OP worked to create this. Please provide helpful criticism instead of decrying supposed pitfalls in HN. We already have enough snark; besides, every community has its own issues. Take no offense. I'd just like to imagine that HN will remain constructive and helpful to our community.
  - omeid2 13y ago
    I am not offended, but quite bluntly I don't see any 'work' that has gone into this project, it is basically the incidents that happened in reddit (/Askreddit, was the pizza case?) behind Bootstrap with very little content in FAQ and non-existent critical content around such projects: Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. Not even a copyright notice. I am sorry, but that is just not good enough.
    - mynameisvlad 13y ago
      ... What? Do you even know what /r/AskReddit is? Because it's definitely not this. It's for asking questions and then getting them answered by lots of people.
  - elohesra 13y ago
    I agree that it wasn't exactly posted in a tactful way, but I actually broadly agree with omeid2's assessment. What is this site other than a very simple data-entry page with an (entirely uncustomized) bootstrap theme on top of it? I appreciate the concept of getting a feel for the market on an early (very early in this case) alpha, but I don't feel this is productive for HN. I mean, how simple are we going to allow ShowHN to get? A single static page with an H3 tag and the text 'good site coming soon'? I mean, that'd require some work -- almost none, but some -- so should we just say "The OP worked to create this, so I'll give feedback instead of pointing out the obvious and saying that the OP needs to put more effort into ShowHN submissions"? Frankly, this feels like an AskHN masked under the guise of a ShowHN. I felt almost duped by the site, as if I were looking at the earliest skeletal structure of a site and being asked to rate it as if it had had significant development time applied to it. Maybe I don't understand HN well enough yet, or maybe I'm just cranky from working 27hrs straight, but that's my honest feedback.
ozh 13y ago
"This is nice and all but we are not Reddit" coming in 3... 2... 1...
mattholtom 13y ago
Well I bit and sent a card to the current favour. I'm not normally such a softie, so that's gotta be a good sign. Way to go on the project!
jboynyc 13y ago
I clicked on FAQ hoping to learn a bit about how featured favors are selected, what principles inform the selection process (Christian charity as the Mother Theresa quote suggests, or something else?), and what level of vetting goes into it (e.g., in the current case, did you make some calls to find out whether the person really is ill?). Needless to say, I came up short. I think I'm not the only one who'll want to know some of these details before bookmarking the site and returning on a weekly basis.
- ca98am79 13y ago
  Good feedback - thanks. I was hoping that by posting to HN I could fill out the FAQ with questions that people may have. I will update the FAQ this week. p.s. the current favor is for my wife
  - bjhoops1 13y ago
    I also think it would be nice to have a search/browse page to see more than one favor. I looked for such a feature and of course didn't see it. That way if the current favor isn't my cup of tea, I might find something else that is.
    - Hellenion 13y ago
      I think this is omitted in spirit of the slow web.
  - pmelendez 13y ago
    I hope your wife gets better soon! When is her birthday? It would be awesome if she could get her cards exactly on her birthday
- clwk 13y ago
  So you suspect favoritism?
skore 13y ago
> My wife is not well and was recently hospitalized, but her birthday is coming up. I think it would make her happy to receive a lot of birthday cards. Could you please send her a birthday card? Wait, so your wife is sick and you think a lot of cards from random strangers will cheer her up? In my experience, that's rarely how wives (or for that matter: husbands) work. I'm all for random acts of kindness... not too sure about soliciting them.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- hansy 13y ago
  You're fixating on one use case, in this instance the current favor listed. What are your thoughts about the website as a whole? And why wouldn't this particular favor cheer up a wife? It's not the number of cards she receives that will make her happy, but the thoughtfulness of a husband to do something for her that will put a smile on her face.
- ericabiz 13y ago
  > That's rarely how wifes work. Sigh...sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't change my username to "tokenwoman", a la "tokenadult". :P This should go without saying, but not all "wifes" (sp) work the same. I had surgery recently and I would have loved this. Plus, I think it's awesome that the OP managed to score ask.io--a great, short domain name--and is using it for charitable purposes. Cool! Also, I think I'd have enough trust and faith in OP that either: 1) His wife is aware of this and is supportive of it and/or 2) He knows his wife well enough to know that she'll get a kick out of it.
  - elohesra 13y ago
    Apologies, maybe I am misunderstanding this point: >Sigh...sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't change my username to "tokenwoman", a la "tokenadult". :P But are you suggesting that tokenwoman is synonymous with tokenadult, and by doing so suggesting men are children? If so, I consider this insulting rather than amusing. Sexist jokes are unwelcome regardless of the gender being targeted. If I've misunderstood you, then so be it.
vojant 13y ago
I don't like it. We have many places (Twitter, Reddit etc.) to ask about such things. I doubt someone will enter this website only to help someone. Also I can't find any information how you will select favors. The only thing I like about this project is clean design.
ozh 13y ago
Side thought: nice domain. Registered since 2007, but you were keeping it in case you had a nice idea to use with?
- possibilistic 13y ago
  I'd like to hear how you got this domain as well. I tried to bid for 'bt.io' due to my name sharing the initialism; that thing wound up going for quite a bit. You're probably sitting on a goldmine here, OP.
  - jboynyc 13y ago
    The submitter has posted about registering .IO domains on her/his blog: http://hack.ly/articles/app-io-acquired/ http://hack.ly/articles/app-io-acquired/
    - possibilistic 13y ago
      Interesting information about the drop time. This might be valuable if you happen to have a list of domains that are about to elapse the 90-day renewal grace period.
- brandoncapecci 13y ago
  Ugh I bought Ask.io for one of my own projects. Domai.nr said it was available, I paid, and after about a month they informed it it didn't go through for some reason I don't remember (thankfully refunding me). I was pretty pissed... I had already made shirts.
  - ozh 13y ago
    Domainr is fun (and really neat) to find cool domain names, but they're not a registrar, they just output affiliate links. Reminder: gandi.net has 29€/year .io registration and they provide top notch service.
  - ca98am79 13y ago
    ha, sorry man. Do you still have the shirts? I may be interested.
vinhboy 13y ago
Dude --- It's too late, but next time: https://poboxes.usps.com/poboxonline/search/landingPage.do https://poboxes.usps.com/poboxonline/search/landingPage.do They have a saying on reddit "your poor inbox"
chasing 13y ago
I'm sorry, but I feel like you've got some major problems, here. 1) There's no context on your wife. Hospitalized recently? For what? Cancer? Stubbed toe? And birthday cards... Help how? If I were in the hospital for something serious, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care one whit about receiving cards from people who knew nothing about me. 2) You say below "the current favor is for my wife." Really? You made a site to solicit birthday cards for your wife and plastered a Mother Theresa quote on it to give it the veneer of a charity? This feels weird. 3) I'm all for using the power of social media to help people. If this is really your goal, then you need to work on your execution. Having the internet send a bunch of anonymous birthday cards to someone they don't know is cute, but it's a very low-level form of helping. Think of ways to leverage social media to really put into action the Mother Theresa quote you're using. What you're asking people to do is not "love." "Love" is not sending a card to someone you don't know. Love is something deeper.
- tjbiddle 13y ago
  OP is not necessarily the one who asked that favor - Anyone can submit a favor and one is chosen each week: http://ask.io/about.html http://ask.io/about.html
DanBC 13y ago
It's like Craig Shergold all over again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Shergold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Shergold
emhart 13y ago
I dig it. I actually submitted a potential favor, too. I like that you want to focus on a single idea each week, I like that it is small and specific (and finding later on the about page that the goal was to be small and specific was great, too.) Some people are weirdly upset/dismissive because similar things exist in the world. I don't care about that whatsoever. With this small gesture (and great domain as ericabiz pointed out) you'll likely end up doing more for others on a weekly basis than you were before. Why would anyone ever be annoyed by that? Good luck with the project.
toxiczone 13y ago
There is too little in it for anyone to have any confidence in it. Meaning, no privacy policy, terms n conditions, ways to contact you (as a street address or real entity, other than an anonymous looking gmail address). Any of your forms do not validate for a real email address, which makes me nervous about the security of the data you're collecting... (read SQL injection and not knowing your programming skills). No offense please, but these are all little things that would make me nervous before submitting some data. And then there is a favor asked about sending cards to a woman that no one knows, and someone should wonder if it's an ex-boyfriend playing a prank or the real deal. It doesn't show any affiliation between ask.io itself (you) and the woman in question.... Checking out humbly doesn't help either, it is as empty of info as ask.io Good luck to you and your wife, best recovery! TZ
vikp 13y ago
This is an interesting idea. I don't know if I would be comfortable posting my address, though. Definitely not trying to make this political, but please do more reading about "Mother" Teresa before quoting her as an inspiration: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/10/mommie_dearest.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor..., http://www.amazon.com/Missionary-Position-Mother-Teresa-Practice/dp/1455523003 http://www.amazon.com/Missionary-Position-Mother-Teresa-Prac... and http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uom-mta022813.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uom-mta022813... .
- danpalmer 13y ago
  Came here to mention this. 'Mother Theresa' evokes charitable feelings and connotations for many people, for some (myself included) though it's a very negative thing.
antocv 13y ago
Whats the deal with these .io domains? How is that supposed to be talked out "ask eye ooh", "ask input output", "ask eye yo"?
- optymizer 13y ago
  ASCIIO
  - mst 13y ago
    http://p3rl.org/App::Asciio http://p3rl.org/App::Asciio ? :)
- encephalogram 13y ago
  You should pronounce it as: "ask dot British Indian Ocean Territory" (...don't forget the dot!)
GrinningFool 13y ago
Cool and fun. I'd just recommend making it more obvious what people are seeing when they view the landing page. When I first landed, I kind of thought you personally were asking for this thing. It took a moment to process the context and realize that this wasn't the case.
jcutrell 13y ago
I very much like this idea. I think the most important and persistent feedback would be to offer more (even if just a few more) asks on the front page. While it makes sense to limit focus, by having one a week, I feel entirely less compelled to keep ask.io on the forefront of my mind. If you do choose to stick with one, make a few macros or something like that to allow people to be reminded of the newest ask once a week. I have a lot of things to do on Mondays, so I could see this falling behind. Perhaps you develop a very simple iphone app that pushes a notification of the newest ask? Other options would be an email list or an easy-to-use calendar reminder. Think ICS. You could also take advantage of the new push notifications for Safari.
- franstereo 13y ago
  What if you allowed people to pool money for it? Give $1 a week to the winner based on up votes and then that money goes for whatever the ask is. Automatic charges on your card, reminder every week to vote. Eliminates some of the more frivolous uses.
AncoraImparo 13y ago
OP... I love this. Well played!
johnchristopher 13y ago
I really dig it! And I like sending/receiving postcards from all over the world, I'll post one tomorrow.
davidrudder 13y ago
I hate to be the....umm...what's the opposite of naysayer? Yaysayer? I hate to be the yaysayer here, but... 1) The design is great! Simple, fast, easy to read. I understood the point immediately. 2) There's a use for this. I won't say "need", because you know there isn't a need. But, people will find it nice and will use it. 3) If you're doing this to get rich, then I misread you and you should quit now. But, if you're doing this to do something good, then I think you nailed it. Now, for some naysaying: 1) As others have said, putting your wife's real name and address up was simply stupid. Take it down, now. 2) Moderation? How do you choose which ask to feature?
footpixel 13y ago
I think this is a fantastic idea, great job!
franstereo 13y ago
People are getting hung up on the card favor. A couple unsolicited suggestions: - Show more than one idea on the homepage and allow people to up vote what they think is best - Idea with most votes gets sent out to folks every X Advantage is this let's the community pick what is relevant, makes your life easier (less editorial), enables you to grow to more than 1 idea per week as there might be runner ups, likely to increase the quality of what people submit as there will be competition.
- nationcrafting 13y ago
  Totally agree with this comment. The whole Slow Web thing is a nice philosophy, but you have to outweigh that principle with the principle of making this website maximise its functionality, the function that rationalises its existence in the first place. Now, I can understand that it's not great for Mike to have to filter through all these requests, which is why your solution offers the best hope: let other users do the filtering by upvoting/downvoting from the list. In fact, you could just create a pile and let the top request be somewhat bigger than the others. If you play this out properly, it could be done much better than impossible.com
johnmurch 13y ago
Doing this now using https://www.postable.com https://www.postable.com - Good Luck!
KhalidLondon 13y ago
No doubt that doing good to others brings happiness. So anything in this space that adds a smile to peoples' faces would probably work. Agree with others on publishing addresses. Starting out in a small niche is a must before allowing others to join in. Who would I do personal favours for? Family & friends, poor folks (specially in developing countries or poor hoods), sick people, homeless individuals, and misfortunate ones...
lessnonymous 13y ago
Lovely idea. There's too much snark in the world. Any project aimed at making the world a better place is awesome. Here's some immediate feedback that might (or might not!) help: * One per week seems too long and people wont ever come back. More than one at a time seems too much. How about making it like Groupon etc and have an 'ask of the day' and then 'side asks' for things you'll never front-page, but are interesting? * I'd love to see the Groupon idea stretched. Add an "I did this" button (or an "I'm doing this" that posts a follow up email asking if you've done it 24 hours later) * Needs a button to 'share this ask on Facebook/Twitter/...'. Same after someone has 'done this'. * I'd post a card if it looked like people were posting cards. * As naff as it sounds, "Needs more gamification"
- OvidNaso 13y ago
  Some of these suggestions appear not to coincide with the creator's 'slow web' philosophy, however. http://theslowweb.com/ http://theslowweb.com/
  - lessnonymous 13y ago
    They certainly don't. My suggestions were more in line with creating a successful site. While I understand the philosophy of the 'slow web', I can't see it creating successful websites that depend (at some level) on return customers. The other option for traction would be search engine traffic, and that isn't (likely) to happen with ask.io. (A third traffic option is direct referrals, but they'll be specific to a week: hey everyone, send my wife a card: ask.io! .. and thus wont create return traffic) The slow web is better for disseminating unchanging information - like a dictionary or encyclopedia - that's needed on-demand. I'd be interested in OP's thoughts on his Slow Web philosophy and creating traction with ask.io.
    - chewxy 13y ago
      Hi. Not OP, but I who wrote the initial content of The Slow Web here. The Slow Web and traction are not opposed, in my opinion. You CAN have traction without choosing to annoy the crap outta your users. It comes from understanding what your users are (or the target market you want to chase). If you want to make a Slow Web service, understand then that your users aren't/shouldn'tbe the kind that are interested in logging in everyday to check on updates. Your marketing to your users would need to be a longer term relationship thing. It would of course be easy to annoy the shit out of your customers, but it's in my opinion that all that does is longer term harm. I stopped using Facebook, LinkedIn for that reason. Once the novelty wears off, you stop using anyway.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
samweinberg 13y ago
I'm assuming new favors are checked for quality before being lined up in the queue, right?
poissonpie 13y ago
This is, quite simply, lovely.
leerodgers 13y ago
Random cards could be comforting, but the sad thing is that you would hope you would get cards from friends and family. Those seem to be a thing of the past (except from grandparents). Even thank you cards have gotten pretty rare. This is the age of the wall post... :(

206 points by ca98am79 13y ago

bgnm2000 13y ago

I like this, but I think for it to be sticky, you really need to focus on a follow up to the previous week's favor (i.e. reaction videos, photos, stories, etc.). People definitely like to do good things, but they want to see the impact more. That feedback loop will also motivate people to help the next ask.

ca98am79 13y ago
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I'm thinking of doing that in a blog (e.g. blog.ask.io, which isn't live yet). I plan to follow up with every favor.
aniketpant 13y ago
I agree with that. If all that happens, I would love to see the way the project grows. It will be like a nice /r/AskReddit thing with no BS.
paulocal 13y ago
Exactly! Check out this TED talk of the founder of redditgifts. It will provide lots of insight on what works and what doesn't. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phoUVH05kEg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phoUVH05kEg

aniketpant 13y ago

Interesting idea. I am pretty sure I might put up something up there someday.

jh3 13y ago
> I am pretty sure I might put up something up there someday This sounds like a nice way of saying you'll completely forget about this website in several hours and will never put anything on it ever. Or at least I'm pretty sure that's what it might mean :)
- aniketpant 13y ago
  I choose to not sound cocky here. But, I have bookmarked it and I tend to bookmark stuff which I do go back to :)
  - jh3 13y ago
    Well, good! :)

krmmalik 13y ago

There's a whole sub-reddit that's dedicated to exactly the same thing at /r/favors That's not to discredit this project though. Some things might work better on Reddit and some might work better on a dedicated website.

antjanus 13y ago
didn't know about it, thanks! :)
- davidrudder 13y ago
  I think any project worth doing will have some competition. "competition" can also mean "market validation". I understand you're not trying to get rich off this, but I think you'd like it if someone used it :) In my opinion, the fact that reddit already does it means you're probably onto something.

missing_cipher 13y ago

I don't know, maybe I'm too cynical, but I don't think posting personal information online is a good idea.

bluetidepro 13y ago
I couldn't agree more. This has something like 4chan spam written all over it. They have done much worse, from much less. It's messed up, but it's a sad truth.
- Spittie 13y ago
  I don't see why you had to name 4chan into this. They have done nice things as well, like http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/09/05/2148248/4chan-Gives-90-Year-Old-Vet-a-Great-Birthday http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/09/05/2148248/4chan-Gives-...
  - moot 13y ago
    Because 4chan is the worst place on the internet!!!!!!!!!
    - kragniz 13y ago
      I was about to produce a counter argument before I saw who the author of that comment was.
    - jsonne 13y ago
      I love /b/ but it does kill my productivity like no other.
    - k3n 13y ago
      I didn't believe you until the 5th exclamation mark.
tsheng 13y ago
Agreed. Had a brief "aww" wash over me that quickly turned into "but what if... oh no..."

sejje 13y ago

This is a simple idea with big potential. You get to be a superhero to a few people, and that's good for everyone.

omeid2 13y ago

> [231 points] Show /hn/: I ripped off an existing product and added Bootstrap to it. Edit: that is from "What 4chan thinks about HN": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373

possibilistic 13y ago
I don't think this is constructive, and I feel others would agree with me. Regardless of your sentiment, the OP worked to create this. Please provide helpful criticism instead of decrying supposed pitfalls in HN. We already have enough snark; besides, every community has its own issues. Take no offense. I'd just like to imagine that HN will remain constructive and helpful to our community.
- omeid2 13y ago
  I am not offended, but quite bluntly I don't see any 'work' that has gone into this project, it is basically the incidents that happened in reddit (/Askreddit, was the pizza case?) behind Bootstrap with very little content in FAQ and non-existent critical content around such projects: Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. Not even a copyright notice. I am sorry, but that is just not good enough.
  - mynameisvlad 13y ago
    ... What? Do you even know what /r/AskReddit is? Because it's definitely not this. It's for asking questions and then getting them answered by lots of people.
- elohesra 13y ago
  I agree that it wasn't exactly posted in a tactful way, but I actually broadly agree with omeid2's assessment. What is this site other than a very simple data-entry page with an (entirely uncustomized) bootstrap theme on top of it? I appreciate the concept of getting a feel for the market on an early (very early in this case) alpha, but I don't feel this is productive for HN. I mean, how simple are we going to allow ShowHN to get? A single static page with an H3 tag and the text 'good site coming soon'? I mean, that'd require some work -- almost none, but some -- so should we just say "The OP worked to create this, so I'll give feedback instead of pointing out the obvious and saying that the OP needs to put more effort into ShowHN submissions"? Frankly, this feels like an AskHN masked under the guise of a ShowHN. I felt almost duped by the site, as if I were looking at the earliest skeletal structure of a site and being asked to rate it as if it had had significant development time applied to it. Maybe I don't understand HN well enough yet, or maybe I'm just cranky from working 27hrs straight, but that's my honest feedback.

ozh 13y ago

"This is nice and all but we are not Reddit" coming in 3... 2... 1...

mattholtom 13y ago

Well I bit and sent a card to the current favour. I'm not normally such a softie, so that's gotta be a good sign. Way to go on the project!

jboynyc 13y ago

I clicked on FAQ hoping to learn a bit about how featured favors are selected, what principles inform the selection process (Christian charity as the Mother Theresa quote suggests, or something else?), and what level of vetting goes into it (e.g., in the current case, did you make some calls to find out whether the person really is ill?). Needless to say, I came up short. I think I'm not the only one who'll want to know some of these details before bookmarking the site and returning on a weekly basis.

ca98am79 13y ago
Good feedback - thanks. I was hoping that by posting to HN I could fill out the FAQ with questions that people may have. I will update the FAQ this week. p.s. the current favor is for my wife
- bjhoops1 13y ago
  I also think it would be nice to have a search/browse page to see more than one favor. I looked for such a feature and of course didn't see it. That way if the current favor isn't my cup of tea, I might find something else that is.
  - Hellenion 13y ago
    I think this is omitted in spirit of the slow web.
- pmelendez 13y ago
  I hope your wife gets better soon! When is her birthday? It would be awesome if she could get her cards exactly on her birthday
clwk 13y ago
So you suspect favoritism?

skore 13y ago

> My wife is not well and was recently hospitalized, but her birthday is coming up. I think it would make her happy to receive a lot of birthday cards. Could you please send her a birthday card? Wait, so your wife is sick and you think a lot of cards from random strangers will cheer her up? In my experience, that's rarely how wives (or for that matter: husbands) work. I'm all for random acts of kindness... not too sure about soliciting them.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
hansy 13y ago
You're fixating on one use case, in this instance the current favor listed. What are your thoughts about the website as a whole? And why wouldn't this particular favor cheer up a wife? It's not the number of cards she receives that will make her happy, but the thoughtfulness of a husband to do something for her that will put a smile on her face.
ericabiz 13y ago
> That's rarely how wifes work. Sigh...sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't change my username to "tokenwoman", a la "tokenadult". :P This should go without saying, but not all "wifes" (sp) work the same. I had surgery recently and I would have loved this. Plus, I think it's awesome that the OP managed to score ask.io--a great, short domain name--and is using it for charitable purposes. Cool! Also, I think I'd have enough trust and faith in OP that either: 1) His wife is aware of this and is supportive of it and/or 2) He knows his wife well enough to know that she'll get a kick out of it.
- elohesra 13y ago
  Apologies, maybe I am misunderstanding this point: >Sigh...sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't change my username to "tokenwoman", a la "tokenadult". :P But are you suggesting that tokenwoman is synonymous with tokenadult, and by doing so suggesting men are children? If so, I consider this insulting rather than amusing. Sexist jokes are unwelcome regardless of the gender being targeted. If I've misunderstood you, then so be it.

vojant 13y ago

I don't like it. We have many places (Twitter, Reddit etc.) to ask about such things. I doubt someone will enter this website only to help someone. Also I can't find any information how you will select favors. The only thing I like about this project is clean design.

ozh 13y ago

Side thought: nice domain. Registered since 2007, but you were keeping it in case you had a nice idea to use with?

possibilistic 13y ago
I'd like to hear how you got this domain as well. I tried to bid for 'bt.io' due to my name sharing the initialism; that thing wound up going for quite a bit. You're probably sitting on a goldmine here, OP.
- jboynyc 13y ago
  The submitter has posted about registering .IO domains on her/his blog: http://hack.ly/articles/app-io-acquired/ http://hack.ly/articles/app-io-acquired/
  - possibilistic 13y ago
    Interesting information about the drop time. This might be valuable if you happen to have a list of domains that are about to elapse the 90-day renewal grace period.
brandoncapecci 13y ago
Ugh I bought Ask.io for one of my own projects. Domai.nr said it was available, I paid, and after about a month they informed it it didn't go through for some reason I don't remember (thankfully refunding me). I was pretty pissed... I had already made shirts.
- ozh 13y ago
  Domainr is fun (and really neat) to find cool domain names, but they're not a registrar, they just output affiliate links. Reminder: gandi.net has 29€/year .io registration and they provide top notch service.
- ca98am79 13y ago
  ha, sorry man. Do you still have the shirts? I may be interested.

vinhboy 13y ago

Dude --- It's too late, but next time: https://poboxes.usps.com/poboxonline/search/landingPage.do https://poboxes.usps.com/poboxonline/search/landingPage.do They have a saying on reddit "your poor inbox"

chasing 13y ago

I'm sorry, but I feel like you've got some major problems, here. 1) There's no context on your wife. Hospitalized recently? For what? Cancer? Stubbed toe? And birthday cards... Help how? If I were in the hospital for something serious, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care one whit about receiving cards from people who knew nothing about me. 2) You say below "the current favor is for my wife." Really? You made a site to solicit birthday cards for your wife and plastered a Mother Theresa quote on it to give it the veneer of a charity? This feels weird. 3) I'm all for using the power of social media to help people. If this is really your goal, then you need to work on your execution. Having the internet send a bunch of anonymous birthday cards to someone they don't know is cute, but it's a very low-level form of helping. Think of ways to leverage social media to really put into action the Mother Theresa quote you're using. What you're asking people to do is not "love." "Love" is not sending a card to someone you don't know. Love is something deeper.

tjbiddle 13y ago
OP is not necessarily the one who asked that favor - Anyone can submit a favor and one is chosen each week: http://ask.io/about.html http://ask.io/about.html

DanBC 13y ago

It's like Craig Shergold all over again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Shergold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Shergold

emhart 13y ago

I dig it. I actually submitted a potential favor, too. I like that you want to focus on a single idea each week, I like that it is small and specific (and finding later on the about page that the goal was to be small and specific was great, too.) Some people are weirdly upset/dismissive because similar things exist in the world. I don't care about that whatsoever. With this small gesture (and great domain as ericabiz pointed out) you'll likely end up doing more for others on a weekly basis than you were before. Why would anyone ever be annoyed by that? Good luck with the project.

toxiczone 13y ago

There is too little in it for anyone to have any confidence in it. Meaning, no privacy policy, terms n conditions, ways to contact you (as a street address or real entity, other than an anonymous looking gmail address). Any of your forms do not validate for a real email address, which makes me nervous about the security of the data you're collecting... (read SQL injection and not knowing your programming skills). No offense please, but these are all little things that would make me nervous before submitting some data. And then there is a favor asked about sending cards to a woman that no one knows, and someone should wonder if it's an ex-boyfriend playing a prank or the real deal. It doesn't show any affiliation between ask.io itself (you) and the woman in question.... Checking out humbly doesn't help either, it is as empty of info as ask.io Good luck to you and your wife, best recovery! TZ

vikp 13y ago

This is an interesting idea. I don't know if I would be comfortable posting my address, though. Definitely not trying to make this political, but please do more reading about "Mother" Teresa before quoting her as an inspiration: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/10/mommie_dearest.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor..., http://www.amazon.com/Missionary-Position-Mother-Teresa-Practice/dp/1455523003 http://www.amazon.com/Missionary-Position-Mother-Teresa-Prac... and http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uom-mta022813.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uom-mta022813... .

danpalmer 13y ago
Came here to mention this. 'Mother Theresa' evokes charitable feelings and connotations for many people, for some (myself included) though it's a very negative thing.

antocv 13y ago

Whats the deal with these .io domains? How is that supposed to be talked out "ask eye ooh", "ask input output", "ask eye yo"?

optymizer 13y ago
ASCIIO
- mst 13y ago
  http://p3rl.org/App::Asciio http://p3rl.org/App::Asciio ? :)
encephalogram 13y ago
You should pronounce it as: "ask dot British Indian Ocean Territory" (...don't forget the dot!)

GrinningFool 13y ago

Cool and fun. I'd just recommend making it more obvious what people are seeing when they view the landing page. When I first landed, I kind of thought you personally were asking for this thing. It took a moment to process the context and realize that this wasn't the case.

jcutrell 13y ago

I very much like this idea. I think the most important and persistent feedback would be to offer more (even if just a few more) asks on the front page. While it makes sense to limit focus, by having one a week, I feel entirely less compelled to keep ask.io on the forefront of my mind. If you do choose to stick with one, make a few macros or something like that to allow people to be reminded of the newest ask once a week. I have a lot of things to do on Mondays, so I could see this falling behind. Perhaps you develop a very simple iphone app that pushes a notification of the newest ask? Other options would be an email list or an easy-to-use calendar reminder. Think ICS. You could also take advantage of the new push notifications for Safari.

franstereo 13y ago
What if you allowed people to pool money for it? Give $1 a week to the winner based on up votes and then that money goes for whatever the ask is. Automatic charges on your card, reminder every week to vote. Eliminates some of the more frivolous uses.

AncoraImparo 13y ago

OP... I love this. Well played!

johnchristopher 13y ago

I really dig it! And I like sending/receiving postcards from all over the world, I'll post one tomorrow.

davidrudder 13y ago

I hate to be the....umm...what's the opposite of naysayer? Yaysayer? I hate to be the yaysayer here, but... 1) The design is great! Simple, fast, easy to read. I understood the point immediately. 2) There's a use for this. I won't say "need", because you know there isn't a need. But, people will find it nice and will use it. 3) If you're doing this to get rich, then I misread you and you should quit now. But, if you're doing this to do something good, then I think you nailed it. Now, for some naysaying: 1) As others have said, putting your wife's real name and address up was simply stupid. Take it down, now. 2) Moderation? How do you choose which ask to feature?

footpixel 13y ago

I think this is a fantastic idea, great job!

franstereo 13y ago

People are getting hung up on the card favor. A couple unsolicited suggestions: - Show more than one idea on the homepage and allow people to up vote what they think is best - Idea with most votes gets sent out to folks every X Advantage is this let's the community pick what is relevant, makes your life easier (less editorial), enables you to grow to more than 1 idea per week as there might be runner ups, likely to increase the quality of what people submit as there will be competition.

nationcrafting 13y ago
Totally agree with this comment. The whole Slow Web thing is a nice philosophy, but you have to outweigh that principle with the principle of making this website maximise its functionality, the function that rationalises its existence in the first place. Now, I can understand that it's not great for Mike to have to filter through all these requests, which is why your solution offers the best hope: let other users do the filtering by upvoting/downvoting from the list. In fact, you could just create a pile and let the top request be somewhat bigger than the others. If you play this out properly, it could be done much better than impossible.com

johnmurch 13y ago

Doing this now using https://www.postable.com https://www.postable.com - Good Luck!

KhalidLondon 13y ago

No doubt that doing good to others brings happiness. So anything in this space that adds a smile to peoples' faces would probably work. Agree with others on publishing addresses. Starting out in a small niche is a must before allowing others to join in. Who would I do personal favours for? Family & friends, poor folks (specially in developing countries or poor hoods), sick people, homeless individuals, and misfortunate ones...

lessnonymous 13y ago

Lovely idea. There's too much snark in the world. Any project aimed at making the world a better place is awesome. Here's some immediate feedback that might (or might not!) help: * One per week seems too long and people wont ever come back. More than one at a time seems too much. How about making it like Groupon etc and have an 'ask of the day' and then 'side asks' for things you'll never front-page, but are interesting? * I'd love to see the Groupon idea stretched. Add an "I did this" button (or an "I'm doing this" that posts a follow up email asking if you've done it 24 hours later) * Needs a button to 'share this ask on Facebook/Twitter/...'. Same after someone has 'done this'. * I'd post a card if it looked like people were posting cards. * As naff as it sounds, "Needs more gamification"

OvidNaso 13y ago
Some of these suggestions appear not to coincide with the creator's 'slow web' philosophy, however. http://theslowweb.com/ http://theslowweb.com/
- lessnonymous 13y ago
  They certainly don't. My suggestions were more in line with creating a successful site. While I understand the philosophy of the 'slow web', I can't see it creating successful websites that depend (at some level) on return customers. The other option for traction would be search engine traffic, and that isn't (likely) to happen with ask.io. (A third traffic option is direct referrals, but they'll be specific to a week: hey everyone, send my wife a card: ask.io! .. and thus wont create return traffic) The slow web is better for disseminating unchanging information - like a dictionary or encyclopedia - that's needed on-demand. I'd be interested in OP's thoughts on his Slow Web philosophy and creating traction with ask.io.
  - chewxy 13y ago
    Hi. Not OP, but I who wrote the initial content of The Slow Web here. The Slow Web and traction are not opposed, in my opinion. You CAN have traction without choosing to annoy the crap outta your users. It comes from understanding what your users are (or the target market you want to chase). If you want to make a Slow Web service, understand then that your users aren't/shouldn'tbe the kind that are interested in logging in everyday to check on updates. Your marketing to your users would need to be a longer term relationship thing. It would of course be easy to annoy the shit out of your customers, but it's in my opinion that all that does is longer term harm. I stopped using Facebook, LinkedIn for that reason. Once the novelty wears off, you stop using anyway.

deleted 13y ago

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samweinberg 13y ago

I'm assuming new favors are checked for quality before being lined up in the queue, right?

poissonpie 13y ago

This is, quite simply, lovely.

leerodgers 13y ago

Random cards could be comforting, but the sad thing is that you would hope you would get cards from friends and family. Those seem to be a thing of the past (except from grandparents). Even thank you cards have gotten pretty rare. This is the age of the wall post... :(