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Availability.is
- jameszhang 13y agoNeat idea. I would expect there to be a link to each freelancer's portfolio/personal website before ever considering clicking on "Hire Me".
- ianwootten 13y agoThere is. Immediately under the freelancers name, if they've added it. Here's mine: http://availability.is/for/niftydigits http://availability.is/for/niftydigits
- notahacker 13y agoThe ability to filter by more specific skills, rates and locations (including possible future locations...) would also be very useful
- bsimpson 13y agoQA: - The settings link is a 404 if you haven't completed your profile yet. - There isn't a link to complete the registration flow from the rest of the app. If you click Settings prematurely and get that 404, your profile is hosed unless you know to find http://availability.is/users/calendars http://availability.is/users/calendars in your history. - There's no obvious way to choose a profile photo. - The calendar listing doesn't auto-update. I just went and made a calendar (thinking it was required) in GC, but I can't link it to your site. - It isn't made clear during registration that the availability calendar is a feature, not a requirement.
- krallin 13y agoAlso, some twitter links are broken e.g. http://availability.is/for/sebinsua http://availability.is/for/sebinsua links to http://twitter.com/http://twitter.com/sebinsua http://twitter.com/http://twitter.com/sebinsua
- ianwootten 13y agoNot broken, you just don't need to include the full link to your twitter profile - just your handle.
- oneeyedpigeon 13y agoIf the app automatically adds a prefix and doesn't automatically strip that prefix if it's present in supplied data, it's broken.
- ZoF 13y agoYep, should be parsing input for twitter prefix I agree.
- ianwootten 13y agoI've updated this to now make it obvious that you need to enter your handle, rather than full url.
- joe5150 13y agoIf you enter a username that contains a period (and possibly other non-alphanum characters?), the profile 404s as well.
- ianwootten 13y agoThanks for the feedback. I'm currently dealing with a 2 m/o baby but will get right on with fixing these as soon as I can...
- dewey 13y agoJust a minor thing: You could replace the "tick" icon with Font Awesome [1] icons so they wouldn't look pixelated on retina displays. [1] http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/icons/ http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/icons/
- haydenjameslee 13y agoratings would be awesome :)
- rpedela 13y agoIt is missing an explanation of what it is, ratings, reviews, resumes. Also how is this different than other sites where you can hire programmers?
- ianwootten 13y agoYou're right, some explanation wouldn't go amiss - I'll be sure to add this soon.
- dylanhassinger 13y agoBackend / Frontend developer is kinda vague. Would be more useful if you could explain your specialty in more detail
- ianwootten 13y agoYup, sure thing - I'd like to add tagging for descriptions of skills.
- andrewhassan 13y agoThe page is not....available right now. Haha.
- ianwootten 13y agoI also operate the domain http://available.is http://available.is - we'd discussed using it for checking whether availability.is was available... A friend pointed out we'd then need a subsequent site for checking available.is's availability too
- AbraKdabra 13y agoNot so available.
- glurgann 13y agoIt works!
- ianwootten 13y agoJust beefing up the server. Two ticks ;)
- mindbreaker 13y agoavailability.is HTTP 500 (Internal Server Error)
- mbesto 13y agoAny good freelancer/contractor knows your availability is largely unimportant to the success of your own business. In other words, you don't normally lose money because you're unavailable, you lose it because you don't have work lined up.
- 1qaz2wsx3edc 13y agoIt's up to the freelancer to develop a solid pipeline for work. Downtime isn't uncommon either, it happens, but it's also one of the reasons your rate should be high enough to support your downtime.
- jcutrell 13y agoJust as a fun polish, you should build really awesome "unavailable" pages for your 404s and 500s that points out the obvious semantic irony.
- rmoriz 13y agoMost customers don't look just for available candidates but for ones that also match the required skill set. Just looking for some available "backend developer" wont work.
- ianwootten 13y agoMy experience as a freelancer tells me this is not always the case. Besides, even if it is, knowing when a particular freelancer is available still is useful - isn't it?
- rmoriz 13y agoI don't think so. If you need external support to fix a problem, it's because of their skills, not because of their availability. Most businesses can shift feature development for some weeks/months until an expert is available (if they can't find one) but an instant, crappy solution wont help them. It's about skills + price. Not about availability. I don't know many freelancers with full-time exclusive projects that last more than 12 months.
- anarchitect 13y agoBrilliantly simple. I'd love to see some permanent/freelance and location filters for employers though.
- ianwootten 13y agoYup - I want to do this too..but I need a certain number of people in the same location to make it worthwhile. You can hack the urls to include the "location" parameter in the meantime though.
- codeoclock 13y agoIf I could sign in with GitHub, absolutely.
- MattBearman 13y agoI agree - The weird thing is I have a google account that I use for work, but I'm not comfortable using it to sign up to other services. Where as I have no issues signing up for things with GitHub.
- hk__2 13y agoPlease use infinite scrolling, nobodies want to click “next” every 10 profiles.
- bonjourmr 13y agoI don't think everyone appreciates infinite scrolling, perhaps showing more profiles per paginate would be better (or give the user a choice between the two, or how many per page).
- jamestomasino 13y agoAre you living abroad in Iceland? I was under the impression that was the only way to get at .is domains.
- tikhonj 13y agoNo, they opened them up to everyone a few years ago, I believe. I had no problem getting one living in the US, although it does cost significantly more than a normal domain would.
- createmyaccount 13y agoHe writes about that on his blog: http://www.ianwootten.co.uk/2013/10/27/setting-up-an-is-domain-with-isnic http://www.ianwootten.co.uk/2013/10/27/setting-up-an-is-doma...
- danielnr 13y agoI'd love to sign up, but I'm unable to do so without adding it to a Google account.
- navs 13y agoMaybe a signup via email as an alternative to those of us that don't like to use our various google, twitter, facebook, github accounts for signing up?
- Aaronn 13y agohttp://persona.org http://persona.org maybe?
- sytelus 13y agoDid I read this right: "Collin Price is available permanently". Or should it be "Collin Price has been available forever"?
- AlbertoGP 13y agoThe registration form is terrible: each time it doesn't like some input all the fields are reset and you have to start from scratch. Then the website URL validation is broken: for instance, I can't use a domain with a hyphen for it, but I can in the e-mail field. Also, the twitter field could be optional, and in any case tolerate getting the handle with the @ symbol prefixed. Anyway, the really bad part is the first point because it promotes the others from annoyances into pain. The site looks good, though. It might end up working very well with some refinements as others noted.
- Rodeoclash 13y agoWe tried to do something along these lines in Melbourne, Australia. It was called Dragonfly. A few points: - We emailed people to update their availability. If they were available this week, we'd email. Otherwise they could set their busyness to between 1 week and 3 months. - We tracked where people were working and used that to bill the companies that hired them. First we charged a flat subscription rate of $3600 per year but people didn't want to pay that. We then charged $100 per week per freelancer. They wanted to go back to paying the subscription again. Then we went broke. - People won't keep their availabilities up to date. They won't like you asking them to keep their availabilities up to date either. They really won't like you asking them where they're working this week. - People will ask you how you're curating the list. If you're not curating it, theirs no point in using it as I can get list of people to hire anywhere. I want a list of people that are good at what they do. - Recruiters function because they hide the cost of hiring freelancers. You're a design agency, your charge out rate is $250/h. Hiring this gun front end developer through a recruiter costs me $100/h. I make $150/h, simple math. The most important things to solve from POV is how you're going to curate the list and keep the bad coders off it. You want to start with A's and only have A's. As soon as B's creep onto the list then your reputation goes down. Also, because you want to keep showing growth, C's and D's begin to creep onto it. Also, your friend who you like but sucks at JavaScript will ring you up and ask to be placed on it. Good luck.
- Rodeoclash 13y agoYou also want to have a look at these guys: http://workingnotworking.com/ http://workingnotworking.com/
- pkinsky 13y ago>- People won't keep their availabilities up to date. They won't like you asking them to keep their availabilities up to date either. They really won't like you asking them where they're working this week. StackOverflow Careers handles this rather nicely. If you mark yourself as available and are contacted, you get a notification email. If after N days you don't respond (through SO) to the contact, you are automatically marked as unavailable. It's not perfect, but in most cases it should remove stale list entries after their first contact.
- ericcholis 13y agoGuessing it's built in Lithium (http://lithify.me/docs/manual http://lithify.me/docs/manual). The favicon is the default one from the sample application (https://github.com/UnionOfRAD/framework/blob/master/app/webroot/favicon.ico https://github.com/UnionOfRAD/framework/blob/master/app/webr...)
- ianwootten 13y agoYou guessed right.
- lucb1e 13y ago1. Oh that looks totally cool! 2. Sign up... 3. As a freelancer... 4. Google account?! 5. Go back. Is there no other option? 6. Seems not. Fuck you. I'd much rather create an account than give you my gmail address, have you use my fake name that I set on my google account, and have a single point of failure for authentication availability and security. That is assuming you only request read access.
- karterk 13y agoSeems not. Fuck you. Not the OP, but don't take it personally. When someone's building a side project, there are so many things to do, and making using of an existing authentication system is fairly reasonable in the interests of time and effort vs value. Of course, you have a right to your privacy, but you don't need to be so rude.
- pc86 13y ago> Seems not. Fuck you. What the hell is the matter with you?
- ianwootten 13y agoI'm going to take it as a testament to the idea that you'd really like to sign up that you've left such strongly worded comment. There had been the option to sign up with twitter too, but I dropped everything but Google because that gave everything I needed very simply (dates, avatar, email), in a single step. Part of the problem I felt was consolidating different auth mechanisms into a single account - which I decided not to deal with by leaving out.
- jaysonelliot 13y agoI see that "UX" is not an option. User Experience is a skillset that many clients need, and that many also mistake for visual design or front-end coding. They're very different things.
- ivanplenty 13y agoI'm genuinely curious, what are examples of the typical work product you produce for "UX"? I must be biased into thinking it is either visual mockups (ranging from paper to balsamiq to powerpoint to adobe) or working prototypes (ranging from a UI builder on the web, a UI builder in an IDE, or HTML/JS/CSS coded by hand). The former case I would label "design" and the latter case I would label "front-end developer" (with low technical skills and high artistry). What am I missing? What else is "UX" for freelancers? Edit and P.S. I just read through http://www.jaysonelliot.com/about/ http://www.jaysonelliot.com/about/, and I like the candor and approach. One bit of a small friendly feedback: Please add measurements for the outcomes of the projects you want to highlight. For example, it looks like Preferio (the first example) is no longer around. That's cool, we've all worked on failed projects. What are some of the decisions you made while working there and designing the app? You had to have had some influence... was there a visual style or conversion flow you updated that increased X% of some valuable activity? Of course there was, so add it :) That is the kind of behavior and thinking I want to see from UX people. The entire presentation talks about things you did and omits outcomes. The things you did are great, but please add more outcomes. They will complete an otherwise good message.
- wudf 13y agoI feel design is inclusive of UX, but "design" by itself is more commonly interpreted as visual & graphic art. Not sure how that stands with general public though.
- jaysonelliot 13y agoThat's really valuable feeback, thank you for taking the time to look at my stuff! UX, for me, is a very upfront strategy role, which culminates in static or prototype wireframes, but doesn't involve visual design or coding. User research and testing are also big parts of it. Of course, roles are fluid and I might answer differently in a year. I think UX is a role that's often misunderstood in startups, as it's often most prevalent in larger corporate teams. I've been trying to find ways to make it more accessible for everyone, though. Thanks again for the feedback, it's been a while since I updated my own portfolio, and I will take your advice.
- brianmcdonough 13y agoAs someone who hires developers, it would be great to see a link to a resume. It often takes a lot of digging to find out what kind of experience a developer has from their website.
- morenoh149 13y agomy website/blog morenoh149.github.io isn't being accepted as a valid website address :(