5 ms·

My app ShoveBox is on NYTimes.com for some reason

104 points by dangrover 17y ago

DTrejo 17y ago
Congratulations!
metra 17y ago
Why the heck is it on there?!
- tudorachim 17y ago
  Presumably because the author of the article found it good enough to write about.
- dangrover 17y ago
  I dunno. It says it's from GigaOm, but I can't find any article about my app on there. The same article is posted on Salon too. WebWorkerDaily posts the article and it's in the GigaOm "network", but I saw the same article on some random obscure blog this morning and thought nothing of it. I wonder if this means I can put a NYTimes logo on my page and have it link to the article, or if that would be sleazy?
  - KWD 17y ago
    The way NYTimes lists it as just GigaOM when it's from any of the sites in the GigaOM Network is confusing. I went through the same thing awhile back when trying to find an original source post, and it was on NewTeeVee.com.
  - patio11 17y ago
    I wonder if this means I can put a NYTimes logo on my page and have it link to the article, or if that would be sleazy? I think your concern that it is sleazy is based off of the reflexive engineer disdain of marketing. You may wish to carefully examine whether you have a rational basis for that disdain. "As seen in the New York Times" is 100% factual and a valuable trust signal (which will make a measurable difference in conversion rates -- A/B test if you don't believe me), because it lets you mooch off the Gray Lady's 100+ year reputation for crusading liberal journalism. Their sole purpose in life is dictating what the reasonably well informed person should know about, and now they are saying that the reasonably well informed person should know about you. Granted, in this particular instance you've gotten past the gatekeepers not due to the vaunted internal checks at the NYT but because they're syndicating cheap content from an outside blog network to get all the bang from their brand without having to pay for the journalism. That suggests to me that they won't have a brand to speak of in a few years because they can't live on previously accumulated goodwill forever but, hey, it isn't your job to conserve their brand equity.
    - dangrover 17y ago
      Thanks. I'm usually pretty good at getting past the "reflexive engineer disdain of marketing", but I still have a lot of hangups over stuff like that. I'm gonna do a marketing push in a month or so around version 1.8. It's gonna have a redesigned page for the app, with a screencast video, and giant-ass unmissable download/buy buttons. And a huge, throbbing NYTimes logo. :-D
    - elblanco 17y ago
      Not if you put it in a "<x app> in the news!" and sound excited about it. What's wrong with being excited about a little publicity?
    - KWD 17y ago
      To be technical, I'd think you'd have to say 'seen on NYTimes.com', as I doubt the GigaOM syndication makes it to the print edition.
  - jamesjyu 17y ago
    GigaOM has a syndication deal with NYTimes.
- myoung 17y ago
  the NYT tech section shows articles from a few tech blogs like GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb, etc. this article was originally on Web Worker Daily (GigaOm) I believe: http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/11/16/shovebox-for-the-mac-and-iphone-helps-keep-your-stuff-organized/ http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/11/16/shovebox-for-the-mac-an...
- patio11 17y ago
  I love tracking things like this: ShoveBox gets released to MacHeist which got covered by the AppleBlog which gets covered by WebWorkerDaily both of which are owned by Gigaom who has a publishing deal with the New York Times.
  - dangrover 17y ago
    You know, I hear suits are making a comeback in the workplace.
grinich 17y ago
I'd be really interested in hearing how MacHeist has affected your sales, this press included.
- dangrover 17y ago
  Actually only a pretty minor boost to Mac sales. Nice windfall of iPhone app sales to the people who got the Mac app though. Ended up selling about $5500 of the iPhone app over the past week (usually only sell <= $400/month of the iPhone app itself). This will probably be the first month where iPhone revenue is more than Mac revenue. Support has been kinda rough lately, hopefully it will die down. Sometimes I look at these MacHeist sort of things as kind of a Faustian bargain. But I think it'll have been well worth it. I'm looking forward to sending a limited, tasteful email campaign to those 300K people when my next product/version 2 launches.
  - patio11 17y ago
    Support has been kinda rough lately Let me take a stab in the dark: you've found that folks who pay less for your application have higher expectations for it, are unwilling to read the documentation, are ruder, and cause many more support requests per customer than your customers who paid full price do? How'd I do? This phenomenon is very common with shareware developers. Higher prices tend to scare away many of the pathological customers.
    - dangrover 17y ago
      Yeah, kinda. There are quite a few wackos like that (I've seen it all in the past week), but overall it's not too bad considering I have 300K new "customers." I had no qualms today about raising the price of the iPhone app back up, now that it's fallen off the top 10 charts. It's kind of a support intensive piece of the app (e.g. it requires wifi to sync, and a lot of people have shitty wifi). I did release an update right before MacHeist that fixed some edge cases in the syncing (see my presentation here: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=899656 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=899656). That seemed to help somewhat. I've found the difficulty of the support load can be better quantified by the number of unique requests rather than the number of requests. I hired someone to help a few months ago to do support. I felt felt very lazy/extravagent/unresourceful doing so, but it's been a huge help, especially with MacHeist. She can't troubleshoot every issue, but that's perfectly fine, because she does a great job weeding out the riff raff. And she has a way thicker skin than I do dealing with customers. I also launched a fancy new support section for my site at the same time as the MacHeist thing. Also, there's a special box for MacHeist visitors at the top of every page that kinda tries to get them to buzz off: http://files.dangrover.com/macheistbox.png http://files.dangrover.com/macheistbox.png
kevinholesh 17y ago
Great job!
novicecoder 17y ago
Congratulations - when you've got an app that's useful, effective and solves a real pain, people are gonna write about it... I wonder if this type of publicity will start to nudge ShoveBox into the 'tipping point' of success...
- dangrover 17y ago
  Thanks! It actually desperately needs a ton of work. I want to get v1.8 (free upgrade) and v2.0 (paid upgrade) out as soon as possible. The baseline level of sales has been dwindling gradually. The MacHeist spike is an anomaly. But I'm really busy now with my next app which may or may not pay the rent the way ShoveBox does. It's weird actually feeling overwhelmed with my own business for once. Maybe I should do the next one with a cofounder.
  - thehigherlife 17y ago
    What's your time-line to 2.0. I was considering buying this app, but now i'm thinking that i'd spend $25 only to have to do it again in a couple of weeks...
  - csbrooks 17y ago
    >But I'm really busy now with my next app which may or may not pay the rent the way ShoveBox does. Have you considered if this is the best use of your time right now? Was it spolsky who said you generally make a lot more money by adding new features to your old product, than by creating a whole new product? Not as glamorous or fun, I know, but...
ronnier 17y ago
The said link: http://www.wonderwarp.com/shovebox/ http://www.wonderwarp.com/shovebox/
DenisM 17y ago
For the curios: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacHeist#MacHeist_nanoBundle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacHeist#MacHeist_nanoBundle
kajecounterhack 17y ago
Congrats Dan! Oh and I'd just like to add that WriteRoom is ridiculously awesome. Got it from MacHeist and have been using it ever since.
- dangrover 17y ago
  Thanks! I like WriteRoom too. The guy who runs Hog Bay is a badass with way more class than I'll ever have.
- oliverkofoed 17y ago
  WriteRoom is cool for sure. If you ever need to "upgrade" a bit, then i've personally found Ulysses to be the next logical step. It has a fullscreen mode akin to writeroom, but also supports semantic marking for later output generation + system for keeping track of related documents in a "project" No affiliation, just like it.
wglb 17y ago
For some reason. Sounds like it is there because it is really excellent. Congrats.
tlrobinson 17y ago
It looks like NYT syndicates GigaOm, like how the Washington Post syndicates TechCrunch. When we're on TechCrunch I make sure to send my friends and family the Washington Post URLs, since it looks a little more impressive to people not familiar with TechCrunch ;)
kvs 17y ago
Nice! It sure does sound like a nice app. Congrats. BTW: Does the iPhone app syncs using mobileme (or at least automagically) or do we have to manually open both apps and sync (Things-like syncing)?
- wizard_2 17y ago
  It's a things type of syncing, apple doesn't open up sync services for iphone apps.
nick007 17y ago
what do you mean "for some reason" -- it's my favorite app!
thehigherlife 17y ago
This looks really cool and would be extremely helpful in my work-flow. Thanks, i had no idea this existed!
tangore 17y ago
what is your team size and how much time it took you to develop this app i am really desperate to build a simple app in iphone .. please help me out to make an estimate so i can plan over my expenses
- dangrover 17y ago
  Just me. The original version of the app was made in about 130 hours, the iPhone version + desktop syncing feature in about 160.

104 points by dangrover 17y ago

DTrejo 17y ago

Congratulations!

metra 17y ago

Why the heck is it on there?!

tudorachim 17y ago
Presumably because the author of the article found it good enough to write about.
dangrover 17y ago
I dunno. It says it's from GigaOm, but I can't find any article about my app on there. The same article is posted on Salon too. WebWorkerDaily posts the article and it's in the GigaOm "network", but I saw the same article on some random obscure blog this morning and thought nothing of it. I wonder if this means I can put a NYTimes logo on my page and have it link to the article, or if that would be sleazy?
- KWD 17y ago
  The way NYTimes lists it as just GigaOM when it's from any of the sites in the GigaOM Network is confusing. I went through the same thing awhile back when trying to find an original source post, and it was on NewTeeVee.com.
- patio11 17y ago
  I wonder if this means I can put a NYTimes logo on my page and have it link to the article, or if that would be sleazy? I think your concern that it is sleazy is based off of the reflexive engineer disdain of marketing. You may wish to carefully examine whether you have a rational basis for that disdain. "As seen in the New York Times" is 100% factual and a valuable trust signal (which will make a measurable difference in conversion rates -- A/B test if you don't believe me), because it lets you mooch off the Gray Lady's 100+ year reputation for crusading liberal journalism. Their sole purpose in life is dictating what the reasonably well informed person should know about, and now they are saying that the reasonably well informed person should know about you. Granted, in this particular instance you've gotten past the gatekeepers not due to the vaunted internal checks at the NYT but because they're syndicating cheap content from an outside blog network to get all the bang from their brand without having to pay for the journalism. That suggests to me that they won't have a brand to speak of in a few years because they can't live on previously accumulated goodwill forever but, hey, it isn't your job to conserve their brand equity.
  - dangrover 17y ago
    Thanks. I'm usually pretty good at getting past the "reflexive engineer disdain of marketing", but I still have a lot of hangups over stuff like that. I'm gonna do a marketing push in a month or so around version 1.8. It's gonna have a redesigned page for the app, with a screencast video, and giant-ass unmissable download/buy buttons. And a huge, throbbing NYTimes logo. :-D
  - elblanco 17y ago
    Not if you put it in a "<x app> in the news!" and sound excited about it. What's wrong with being excited about a little publicity?
  - KWD 17y ago
    To be technical, I'd think you'd have to say 'seen on NYTimes.com', as I doubt the GigaOM syndication makes it to the print edition.
- jamesjyu 17y ago
  GigaOM has a syndication deal with NYTimes.
myoung 17y ago
the NYT tech section shows articles from a few tech blogs like GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb, etc. this article was originally on Web Worker Daily (GigaOm) I believe: http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/11/16/shovebox-for-the-mac-and-iphone-helps-keep-your-stuff-organized/ http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/11/16/shovebox-for-the-mac-an...
patio11 17y ago
I love tracking things like this: ShoveBox gets released to MacHeist which got covered by the AppleBlog which gets covered by WebWorkerDaily both of which are owned by Gigaom who has a publishing deal with the New York Times.
- dangrover 17y ago
  You know, I hear suits are making a comeback in the workplace.

grinich 17y ago

I'd be really interested in hearing how MacHeist has affected your sales, this press included.

dangrover 17y ago
Actually only a pretty minor boost to Mac sales. Nice windfall of iPhone app sales to the people who got the Mac app though. Ended up selling about $5500 of the iPhone app over the past week (usually only sell <= $400/month of the iPhone app itself). This will probably be the first month where iPhone revenue is more than Mac revenue. Support has been kinda rough lately, hopefully it will die down. Sometimes I look at these MacHeist sort of things as kind of a Faustian bargain. But I think it'll have been well worth it. I'm looking forward to sending a limited, tasteful email campaign to those 300K people when my next product/version 2 launches.
- patio11 17y ago
  Support has been kinda rough lately Let me take a stab in the dark: you've found that folks who pay less for your application have higher expectations for it, are unwilling to read the documentation, are ruder, and cause many more support requests per customer than your customers who paid full price do? How'd I do? This phenomenon is very common with shareware developers. Higher prices tend to scare away many of the pathological customers.
  - dangrover 17y ago
    Yeah, kinda. There are quite a few wackos like that (I've seen it all in the past week), but overall it's not too bad considering I have 300K new "customers." I had no qualms today about raising the price of the iPhone app back up, now that it's fallen off the top 10 charts. It's kind of a support intensive piece of the app (e.g. it requires wifi to sync, and a lot of people have shitty wifi). I did release an update right before MacHeist that fixed some edge cases in the syncing (see my presentation here: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=899656 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=899656). That seemed to help somewhat. I've found the difficulty of the support load can be better quantified by the number of unique requests rather than the number of requests. I hired someone to help a few months ago to do support. I felt felt very lazy/extravagent/unresourceful doing so, but it's been a huge help, especially with MacHeist. She can't troubleshoot every issue, but that's perfectly fine, because she does a great job weeding out the riff raff. And she has a way thicker skin than I do dealing with customers. I also launched a fancy new support section for my site at the same time as the MacHeist thing. Also, there's a special box for MacHeist visitors at the top of every page that kinda tries to get them to buzz off: http://files.dangrover.com/macheistbox.png http://files.dangrover.com/macheistbox.png

kevinholesh 17y ago

Great job!

novicecoder 17y ago

Congratulations - when you've got an app that's useful, effective and solves a real pain, people are gonna write about it... I wonder if this type of publicity will start to nudge ShoveBox into the 'tipping point' of success...

dangrover 17y ago
Thanks! It actually desperately needs a ton of work. I want to get v1.8 (free upgrade) and v2.0 (paid upgrade) out as soon as possible. The baseline level of sales has been dwindling gradually. The MacHeist spike is an anomaly. But I'm really busy now with my next app which may or may not pay the rent the way ShoveBox does. It's weird actually feeling overwhelmed with my own business for once. Maybe I should do the next one with a cofounder.
- thehigherlife 17y ago
  What's your time-line to 2.0. I was considering buying this app, but now i'm thinking that i'd spend $25 only to have to do it again in a couple of weeks...
- csbrooks 17y ago
  >But I'm really busy now with my next app which may or may not pay the rent the way ShoveBox does. Have you considered if this is the best use of your time right now? Was it spolsky who said you generally make a lot more money by adding new features to your old product, than by creating a whole new product? Not as glamorous or fun, I know, but...

ronnier 17y ago

The said link: http://www.wonderwarp.com/shovebox/ http://www.wonderwarp.com/shovebox/

DenisM 17y ago

For the curios: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacHeist#MacHeist_nanoBundle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacHeist#MacHeist_nanoBundle

kajecounterhack 17y ago

Congrats Dan! Oh and I'd just like to add that WriteRoom is ridiculously awesome. Got it from MacHeist and have been using it ever since.

dangrover 17y ago
Thanks! I like WriteRoom too. The guy who runs Hog Bay is a badass with way more class than I'll ever have.
oliverkofoed 17y ago
WriteRoom is cool for sure. If you ever need to "upgrade" a bit, then i've personally found Ulysses to be the next logical step. It has a fullscreen mode akin to writeroom, but also supports semantic marking for later output generation + system for keeping track of related documents in a "project" No affiliation, just like it.

wglb 17y ago

For some reason. Sounds like it is there because it is really excellent. Congrats.

tlrobinson 17y ago

It looks like NYT syndicates GigaOm, like how the Washington Post syndicates TechCrunch. When we're on TechCrunch I make sure to send my friends and family the Washington Post URLs, since it looks a little more impressive to people not familiar with TechCrunch ;)

kvs 17y ago

Nice! It sure does sound like a nice app. Congrats. BTW: Does the iPhone app syncs using mobileme (or at least automagically) or do we have to manually open both apps and sync (Things-like syncing)?

wizard_2 17y ago
It's a things type of syncing, apple doesn't open up sync services for iphone apps.

nick007 17y ago

what do you mean "for some reason" -- it's my favorite app!

thehigherlife 17y ago

This looks really cool and would be extremely helpful in my work-flow. Thanks, i had no idea this existed!

tangore 17y ago

what is your team size and how much time it took you to develop this app i am really desperate to build a simple app in iphone .. please help me out to make an estimate so i can plan over my expenses

dangrover 17y ago
Just me. The original version of the app was made in about 130 hours, the iPhone version + desktop syncing feature in about 160.