stronglist.com

Seesmic is dubbed as a twitter for videos. That’s a great tagline but does it work in practice?
Im on the fence.

Fundamentally I don’t think the idea works. Conversations dont seem to flow. Unlike text you can’t quickly scan a video to get a sense for the quality of the piece. This is Seesmic’s biggest problem, and its a major one. Seesmic’s all about video conversations and that aspect of it just doesn’t seem to work efficiently.

Its difficult to say if Seesmic will achieve mainstream success.
One of the reasons for Twitters success is that its so quick and dirty to fire off a text message. Uploading a video isn’t as convenient.

Speaking of convenience, I didnt like the all flash interface. There were a few times where pressing the back button didnt have the desired effect. Also I didnt like the fact that when hovering over a link with my mouse the cursor didnt change to the hand icon. This may sound like a minor gripe but believe me usability experts would be all over this.

Seesmic naturally has to worry about YouTube. All YouTube has to do is create a “conversations” subdomain, and replace text comments with video comments and it will either help Seesmic by shining some light on this space or it will be lights out Seesmic. Im guessing it would be the latter.

There doesn’t seem to be a business model in place. Im sure at some point it will be monetized by ads but right now its not clear how Seesmic will make money.

At first I wasn’t sure what was so special about “video conversations”. That is, what does the video aspect add to a conversation. It took a bit but it soon became clear, the videos do seem more personal. You seem to be a bit more connected to the author, since you can pick up on visual and audio clues such as tone of voice and style. After watching a quick video of a particular user it was clear to me that he was the lazy, eccentric type. These types of traits can’t be realized as quickly when dealing with just text.

Since its easy to connect with users because of the personal nature of videos, it should be very easy for Seesmic to foster a community.

Another positive Seesmic has going for it is its backers. Checkout the bottom of this post (how I started Seesmic and raised 6 million) for a list. I wouldn’t bet against these guys. While there is no guarantee of success, with those backers Seesmic will have every chance to succeed…

… but its going to be an uphill battle.

You styleme is a niche fashion advice community. Users can give and ask others for fashion advice. To help put the advice into context users can create ‘closets’. Closets showcase clothes that the user has uploaded or bookmarked. Its quite useful. If this app gains traction you can save shopping/browsing time simply by checking out the clothing recommendations of others.

To learn more about You StyleMe checkout this screencast on Youtube

Nitesh M. is a cofounder and he kindly shares some more info.

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Q) What programming language did you use to create you styleme? And why did you choose this language?
You StyleMe is built on Ruby on Rails. We selected this language primarily because of it’s flexibility, development speed, and it’s incredible developer community. RoR has allowed us to utilize an agile development process. We are also in the process of building a facebook application that utilizes FBML.Q) Did you bootstrap you styleme? Did the app cost over 12K or under 12K to build?
You StyleMe is founded by entrepreneurs from Yahoo! and Gap, Inc. We are a husband and wife team that has experience in Social Media and Retail. The site costs more than $12K to build.

Q) Getting attention to a web app is difficult, how do you plan on marketing you styleme?
I agree with you, marketing You StyleMe is a challenge. We have a 3 prong strategy that I’d like to highlight.

• First, we focused heavily on building viral functionality into the product itself.
• Second, we are building a F8 application to take advantage of the massive distribution Facebook provides.
• And lastly, we are partnering with online retailers for cross promotion.

Q) Do you have a business model in mind? It looks like there are a lot of opportunities to partner with clothing retailers.
We plan to make money by

• Sponsorships by major and independent fashion retailers
• 2.) Affiliate and complimentary good sales
• 3.) Advertising at the point of purchase.

Q) What do you think is you styleme’s biggest challenge?
I think marketing is going to be challenge. The number of new startups each day surprises me and finding ways to standout from the crowd is becoming increasingly difficult.

Q) Do you have any tips to share with other people who are also creating web apps?
I have a few suggestions.

• Focus/Obsess about the user experience
• Develop a marketing the strategy the first day you write a single line of code
• Ask your friends outside of technology to provide feedback on your site at various points of development
• Consumer internet is a hit or miss industry so there’s going to be lots of up and downs so brace yourself and make sure you have enough runway to make your vision a reality.
• Have fun. Life is too short!

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You Style me has potential. Its biggest challenge is going to be getting the word out and getting initial users into the system. The foundation is there for this to be a successful application. Its focused and there seems to be alot of opportunities for You StyleMe to generate income. Lets see how it does. Ill email Nitesh and try to post a follow up Q and A in a month or 2.

what is HiTask?
Its a simple to use task management application. HiTask

Whats the work flow?
Basically you create a task in the main panel, and then you drag and drop that task into an appropriate “bucket”. You can drag tasks onto your calendar, your events list, different projects, and even drop them onto members of your team. You can click the task to edit and add meta data to it. Its not much more complicated than that. By the way drag and dropping was extremely smooth and lightweight. The whole app feels very snappy.

So ease of use is one of HiTask strong points?
Definitely, its one of those apps that seems to get out of your way and lets you do what you want to do.

Can HiTask be successful?
Its hard to say. There is so much competition in this space. HiTask is indirectly competing with the likes of backpack’s calendar, joyent’s calendar and google’s calendar. Its in a tough space. Having said that HiTask is definitely a worthy competitor simply because of its ease of use.

Does HiTask have a business plan?
They offer a free account but they also offer a paid plan. The paid plan is only $12 annually and it offers: unlimited projects, unlimited teammates, and no ads.

What else
This is the type of application that I like to write about. While its from a relatively unknown group of people, the app is well thought out and designed. This is an excellent first release. No doubt HiTask will continue to be evolved by its developers. HiTask also supports team use. You send tasks to each other, and even chat with each other. You could easily use this application as a light weight project management application. Signup is quick and painless. If you’re looking for a task manager I would definitely check out HiTask.

What is Campfire?
Campfire is real time chat done right. It allows a group of people to easily communicate with each other in real time.
Once you sign up you can create a room and invite others to participate. You can also enable guest access so anyone who has the URL to your room can participate in the conversation. Having a permanent link to a real time chatroom gives the admin alot of flexibility. You can use campfire for alot of uses.

So how is campfire better than an Instant Messager?
IM is too intruisive, I find it difficult to work when my IM is running. Now that I have campfire I use IM for friends/personal and I mainly use campfire for business/serious communication.
Campfire is also alot more more reliable than IM. A bunch of us did a hockey pool over IM this year, and once in a while a user would get dropped. It was a real hassle getting that person back into the conversation. We switched to campfire and the conversation was flawless.

I guess the look and feel also helps with the overall user experience?
Definitely. Its a typical 37signals application. The design is fresh and clean. Im tempted to say that the user interface is intuitive (it is), but quite honestly chatting requires very minimal interface requirements, so in this case “intuitive interface” was very easy to satisfy.

Does Campfire archive your conversations?
Yes, you can access the archives by clicking the “Files and transcripts” tab. You can then search your conversations, or filter your conversation based on the Room, Person, or Day. You can also easily access any uploaded files from this page.

Ok archiving sounds good, but how about privacy issues, what if I want to keep some conversations private?
Easy. Admin’s have the option to “lock” the room. Once you lock the room, nobody else can enter the room and the conversation is held “off the record”, the conversation will not be archived if the room is locked.

What is OriginalSignal?
Its a feed aggregator. It gathers primarily technology feeds. It has a predefined list of sites that it regularily checks for new content.

Do you use it
Yeah, everyday. Its great because it saves you time. You dont have to goto individual sites and check for content. Its much simpler to goto originalSignal.

yeah but why not use something like bloglines. It will also check feeds for new content and plus you can add your own feeds as well.
OriginalSignal is just more quick and dirty. I dont have to worry about adding new feeds or deleting old ones. Sometimes a service such as bloglines can feel like work. You feel obligated to read all of the new content. This is not the case with OriginalSignal, OriginalSignal feels like a quick news fix.

What else do you like about OriginalSignal?
When you hover over a headline you get a small preview of the beginning of the article. Thats another little time saver. I also like the design, simple and fresh.
I also like to see what articles others are reading. You can do this by clicking the popular headlines icon. This will give you a list of “the most popular links today”, “the most popular this week” and “the most popular this month”. Its a nice feature to see what others are clicking.

Nice, any closing comments
Yeah, if you want to check the pulse of the net give OriginalSignal a try. Dont be surprised if it ends up being your new homepage.

What is ConceptShare?
ConceptShare allows people to collaborate on visual documents. So if you need to discuss the look and feel of a particluar mockup with a group of people you would consider using conceptshare.

OK, so who is the target audience?
Id say its geared towards but not limited to web designers and graphic artists.

Explain the typical workflow
OK its very basic. In a nutshell you upload an image and then you and your team can leave comments on that image. Its only a tad bit deeper than that. EG standard alerts are sent via email when a new comment is left, revision history is available, you can draw attention to certain areas of an image by drawing on it.

So a commenting on images application sounds pretty basic
Yeah its basic, but thats not a bad thing. It does its job very well and doesn’t try to do much more. Its very polished. There is nothing beta about the look and feel. It feels like a well thought out, well designed application.

What about the classic question, do you think companies would trust their documents to a 3rd party startup?
In this case yes. Im guessing companies will store originals on their servers and use conceptshare to collaborate.
And heres the kicker, you can run ConceptShare on your own servers.

Thats worth repeating, ConceptShare can be run on your own servers?
Yup, that truly is great, you dont see that much with web applications. Although I dont think they are advertising that fact just yet. For more information send them an email.

Whats the “Find an Expert” feature?
Yeah thats fairly intriguing. ConceptShare presents you with a list of “experts”. You can pick and choose who you want to invite into your workspace. Once invited these users can leave comments on your design documents. Its an interesting idea, if you wanted you can have complete strangers offer their advice and give feedback on your docs.

What is Strongspace?
Its an online storage service.

Why do you use Strongspace over all the other storage services out there?
Its the trust factor. I know Strongspace is backed by Joyent, the company that merged with textdrive. I trust Joyent, and have confidence that my files will be around.

Can you use it to share your files
Yes but Strongspace should be viewed more as a secure storage service than a sharing service. Stongspace is closed to the outside world. Files are not publicly available. Users need to login to access files.
I have used Strongspace to share files. I dont like emailing large files. So when Im working closely with someone where I know Ill have to send alot of files, I’ll upload my files to Strongspace and send the login to the recipient. I dont have to worry about that user accessing my personal files as you can limit users to a directory.

How easy is it to upload files to Strongspace.
Very easy. Using the web form you can upload individual files or upload a zip and then unzip it on the server. For multiple files you’ll want to transfer via a SFTP application, such as Filezilla (windows) or Cyberduck (Mac).
Windows user should look into SftpDrive. It will allow you to map a SSH server on a Windows network drive. SftpDrive will save you time. To date Sftp cost $39 but its well worth the cost. SftpDrive also comes with a 3GB lifetime Strongspace account. Thats a great deal.

Any other comments
Strongspace is one of the apps that doesnt do much but does an awesome job with what it does. The interface is nice and clean, with no BS. After using Strongspace for a bit you’ll gain confidence in it, you’ll know your files/backups have found their online home.

Whoa hold on a bit, thats alot of praise
Yeah, I suppose so, but this app does its job. Its worthy of the praise.

What is Gliffy?
Think of it as a light online version of Visio.

So you can create things like flowcharts, diagrams, wire frames?
Yup you can do all those, dont forget my favorite: floor plans.

The site design looks a bit rough
Yeah the homepage definitely leaves a bad first impression. But if you look past that design and launch the app you will be impressed.

Whats it like actually using the app?
Its a smoother experience than I expected. Interacting with the items is very easy. You can quickly move, rotate and scale objects. Its a very good use of Flash. It felt like a desktop application. I particularly like the image search. You can use this built in tool to search Yahoo for images, then you can drag and drop these images right into your workspace.

Would you use Gliffy over Visio?
Yes, in some cases I definitely would. In academic settings Gliffy really shines. You can use it to collaborate and its FREE to use.
I dont see it being adopted in a work setting. Its the usual problem, companies don’t trust their confidential documents to 3rd party servers especially those of a startup.

Did you say its free to use?
Yup totally free, no ads either.

So whats the business plan?
It looks like they charge for plugins. More info here

Any closing comments?
Gliffy is to Visio what Writely is to Word. If you’re into diagramming, give Gliffy a free try, dont let the hompage put you off.
[To Gliffy team- why dont you guys give your pages a makeover, it will make a world of difference, your app is great but the homepage is dragging it down]

What is Joyent?
Its an online application suite that offers email, calendars, contacts, and bookmarking.

What do you use it for?
I use it to check my various email accounts. Its a real time saver. I have many email accounts, some for business and some for personal. Instead of logging in and checking all these accounts, I forward them all to my joyent account. Joyent allows you to setup smartboxes, so you can filter all of your incoming emails.

Checking all you email in one spot seems like a wicked time saver, Are there any negatives with this step?
Yeah, currently almost all of the email that I send vis Joyent ends up in the users Junk mail folder. So its not that efficient. I use Joyent to view my email but to respond back I have to login to my original email account. eg. Gmail.
Update: This no longer seems to be an issue.

Ok, how else do you use Joyent?
Joyent recently released a book marking tool. Its very sharp. The tool has standard features such as a bookmarklet and tags, but it also stores a screenshot of the page you bookmarked. Once you use a bookmarking tool that takes auto screenshots you cant go back to one that doesnt, for that reason alone I prefer Joyents bookmarking to that of delicious.

Joyent also has file storage, a calendar and an address book.

Is Joyent a team based office suite or is it more for personal use?
I use it for personal use, but it also really shines in a team environment. You can add tags to files and emails, share calendars and set notifications to keep your team connected.

Tell me more about staying connected via Joyent
Sure, you can stay connected via smart groups. Smart groups “bring in” your data. So you can create a group that displays all of your items (files, bookmarks, emails) that are tagged “work” or “design”, you can even display the files of your teammates. Joyent really helps your team stay in sync.
I found the documentation about smart groups and workspaces a bit lacking, it’ll take you a bit of fiddling to get into the groove, but once you have it figured out the smart groups will become a great time saver.

Whats the pricing
To date the pricing starts at $15 a month. This price also includes textdive hosting and a strongspace account. Pricing here.

Any other comments
Yeah Joyent is a beautifully designed application, the UI feels like a desktop application. I look forward to using it daily. Joyent comes highly recommended for team or personal use.