I really like the idea of a keyboard friendly task app. Here's some feedback. Hope it helps:
* signup didn't work for me. When I submitted the form, it just took me to the signup form again. EDIT: I think it's because the username I wanted was already taken, but there was no error message telling me this.
* login link didn't take me anywhere
* It'd be nice if '?' brought up a list of keyboard shortcuts - similar to what google apps does
* It'd be nice if shortcuts could be customized
* A call to action in the anonymous list to signup to save the list makes sense
* jumping between the list, settings, and sharing tab with keyboard - maybe control-shift-1, 2, 3
Dang, thanks for all the feedback! A lot of this I can easily incorporate, which is great.
* To delete a list, click on the trash button in the upper right.
* Right now you can hit left/right to jump between the tabs, but that's not ideal as the hotkeys don't work when a form field has focus
* I'll probably add labels or colors pretty soon. Personally, I don't use them but I know that a lot of people go crazy with that stuff. Just need to figure out how to do the UI
What type of development do you do primarily? For web dev, a mac is still the best choice in my opinion b/c you can VM to test all browsers.
I think hardware-wise, most laptops have more than enough power for local development needs. What's more important to me is screen size/quality and keyboard quality. In general, I plug in when I'm at home, so even these qualities aren't a deal breaker.
Our landing page conversion is hovering around 14%, which sounds like the higher side from what I've heard. My guess for why it's higher is because we've been targeting very specific people within our community. We chose launchrock for it's simplicity, but having done more research, I'd like to try unbounce the next time around (better integration with other services, more options).
I agree with the philosophy of "do one thing, do it well", but my problem with a lot of app ideas is that they focus on adding one feature to an existing app. I dislike this because then I have to switch accounts just for one extra feature. Instead, I think there should be a focus on providing one value in a product. It should solve one problem, and solve it really well. That means defining and scoping the problem in real life terms. The difference is you might need to write several features in order to have the perfect workflow.
I was a long time delicious user, and I like having my data up in the cloud. I think what I prioritize the most is having a good UX and my links being available everywhere.
minor thing: your signup password fields should be of type password so they don't show up in plain text.
interesting idea, but haven't formed an opinion yet. Tagging's always such a personal preference. I like hierarchical tags (e.g. code:ruby), but that's just me
Just a stream of notes as I go through the first time around.
The fixed bottom footer could use a bit more contrast. When the white text from the main body slides over it, it gets garbled and messy looking. Also, there feels like too much space between each section when I scroll down.
I like that I can see results without having to sign in with Facebook. It lets me try out the service before I commit.
The color scheme is cheerful, but a bit too harsh. The nav elements within the results also lack contrast.
The animation on the place name on hover is neat the first time, but annoying every time after. The tiles are just jumping around all over when I move my mouse.
Filtering by category could be faster, but I like that it does it via ajax and stays on the same page.
Always happy to see projects coming out of my hometown. I like the idea, but I hope that there's good moderation for submitted bounties so it doesn't become another Rent-a-Coder like cess pool. It's also be neat if the bounties could be free form, so people could barter goods and services. Personally, being offered $50 is worse than not being offered money at all for something that I'd want to work on. On the other hand, for some tasks I wouldn't mind if someone were willing to trade me design work, or treat me to a lunch or a beer.
(I'm actually a Berkeley transplant, only moved here 3 weeks ago from Boston!)
The bartering goods and services idea is interesting, but it seems to only work for local things. The one thing I think would be interesting to use that for is for tutoring. I'd teach somebody Django if they could teach me Node, etc..
This reminds me of the documentary "Wordplay" about competitive crossword puzzle players. Without a formal proof, my guess is that scrabble is faster to solve that a hard crossword puzzle for a computer. It's amazing that the human mind can stitch together patterns like these and internalize that in a meaningful way. A cool extension of this project would be to write a scrabble tool that generates arbitrary strategies that would be useful for a human player. So instead of generating the best play for a move, the program would recognize that "when the board is like X, then try and use strategy Y"
It depends what you mean by solve. Scrabble, as a two-player game, has a significant branching factor compounded by the fact that the tile drawing makes it both a stochastic game as well as one with hidden information. Maven http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maven_(Scrabble) is an AI that can play Scrabble, and it's good, but it's certainly not "solved".
On the other hand, crossword puzzles are single-player games that use natural language wordplay to create a challenge. Some AI work has been done in this field, which can use a Web search engine (like Google) to try and determine the answer to each clue based on the clue (as well as any candidate words/letters already filled in). The hard part is understanding the clue. Look to systems like IBM's Watson to see how those kinds of problems can be solved.
"Solution" in a single player game, like a crossword puzzle, is solved in exactly one way: when all the rows and columns are filled with legal words (usually -- unless the author rigged it to allow clues to have multiple solutions, like the election day crossword in the NYT in 1996). A "solution" in a two-player game is when, no matter what move you make, your opponent knows perfect play. For example, checkers is solved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_(draughts_player)
quackle [http://people.csail.mit.edu/jasonkb/quackle/] is an open-source scrabble ai that can currently play on par with all but the very best human players. which is not the same thing as scrabble being "solved" of course, but it does bode well for the state of the art.
A friend brought up a good point the other day that the popularity of the iOS app store has actually pushed back on advances in web technologies on mobile devices. Because the sanctioned way to sell applications must go through Apple, less attention overall has been spent building mobile webapps. Also, since the hardware is also out of developer's control, there hasn't been a push to make native hardware available to the javascript.
Even with that, I do think that we're on the cusp of a big webapp revolution (again). With all these emerging JS frameworks (backbone, ember, derby, knockout, etc), and the modern and capable webkit powering so many mobile devices, developers will take note.
+1 on finding a way to leverage both fields. I've only heard of R and never used it, but I'm sure there are domains where it's the perfect tool for the job. You could potentially freelance to make some side income as well.
I think it's still a good idea to learn web development in general. It's such an interoperable medium. It's dense on the first read, but I recommend skimming RFC2616 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt) the HTTP protocol. It won't teach you to program any specific language or framework, but it's a great way to get a feel for all the pieces involved for a web app.
After that, I recommend taking baby steps and tackling each piece of the puzzle individually. Learn some html/css, build a portfolio page. Then take on some javascript and add some dynamic elements. Then add a backend for dynamic elements you compute server side. For learning coding, nothing beats practice. To improve, write something that solves you own problem, but also look for how other people implemented the same thing (github's a great place to see well maintained and well factored code)
* signup didn't work for me. When I submitted the form, it just took me to the signup form again. EDIT: I think it's because the username I wanted was already taken, but there was no error message telling me this.
* login link didn't take me anywhere
* It'd be nice if '?' brought up a list of keyboard shortcuts - similar to what google apps does
* It'd be nice if shortcuts could be customized
* A call to action in the anonymous list to signup to save the list makes sense
* jumping between the list, settings, and sharing tab with keyboard - maybe control-shift-1, 2, 3
* the UI is slick and simple. I love it.
* how do I delete a list?
* can there be labels / colors?
* will there be an API to access my lists?
* make links in tasks clickable