Also — we built this with SimpleWebRTC (http://simplewebrtc.com), which Henrik Joreteg wrote to cut through the complexity required to get up and running with WebRTC.
Hi, Adam from &yet here. We're organizing redisconf. We also organize krtconf (http://2012.krtconf.com).
We're putting together the Redis event for the same reason we organized krtconf: we wanted to go to something like it and it didn't exist yet. We're developers first, so we're curating the content we most want to hear.
We worked hard for months proactively putting together the content for krtconf and here's the schedule as it ended up for last year: http://2011.krtconf.com/schedule/
We're still early in the content planning process, but just so you have an idea of the kind of effort we intend to put into the first RedisConf, here's what some folks said about the first krtconf:
"The quality of the talks is going to influence the quality of the conversations. The talks here have been great and the conversations have been even better." - Mikeal Rogers, Nodeconf / Pouch
"krtconf has been amazing. It’s a melding of the minds." - Kyle Drake, Geoloqi
"krtconf 2011 was impressively polished. Thanks so much for putting on the conference. I had a great time and would love to attend again. the conference was excellent, and I really appreciated how much work you guys put in." - Nate Smith, Derby.js
"Just wanted to say thanks for an awesome time. Really enjoyed the conference, the speakers and giving my talk. I have no doubt this will be the first of many Krtconfs." - Owen Barnes, Socketstream
"The conference has exceeded my expectations." - Astro (github.com/astro)
We're using redis in some very high-traffic contexts, and our usage is only increasing, so I'm on the look out for resources. RedisConf sounds quite interesting so far.
We've been using this for several months at &yet and it's been a surprisingly valuable tool. At first, my thought was honestly, "So what? It's a threaded message board." until we actually started using it.
It's actually the feature restraint that makes it so remarkably useful and powerful.
Here's what we do. Every day, we start a new thread and each person on our team posts a daily checkin "rating" their day and then writes any comments on what they worked on, what they learned, what frustrated them, etc. Super simple stuff, for sure, but it's been one of the most valuable things we've done for creating a strong sense of team and togetherness.
What's been most surprising about this is that most of our team of 15+ work within feet from each other in our office, but our team's connectedness feels better than ever as a result of Ginger.
As the guy who generally plays this role on our team, I'm quite certain none of our developers would say they outwork me.
It's easy to see how someone without practical boots-on-the-ground, neck-on-the-line experience in design, development, or business could be utterly horrible to work with as a product manager.
But in that case, you're just working with someone who's unqualified and propped up by authority. Forget role or job title. That's painful under any circumstances.
This is why it's good to read books that have editors, because editors know stuff like this and will make sure the final form uses the real word. Then you, as the reader, will learn the word too.
(I was reading the Steve Jobs biography today, and noticed that they wrote the expression "the idea jelled in his mind", where I would have written "the idea gelled in his mind". Thanks to some editor somewhere, I can now look less illiterate when I use that expression.)
We didn't post this. I was a bit surprised and it made for a completely unexpected and a bit stressful day.
No doubt, it's a nice surprise for anyone to be pinned to the top of HN for most of the day, but we haven't put out a press release for &bang for a reason: we have some things we kind of wanted to do first.
As far as price goes, businesses spend money on software that they use when they get value out of it.
We've bootstrapped our way from just me to a team of 15+ and while we carefully watch our budget, we don't handcuff our team when it comes to hardware and software expense.
We subscribe to web apps that run $15, $25, even $45 per month per user. At the end of the day, all of those combined are a ridiculously small part of our budget and we don't even think about the expense. They help us get the job done and that's what we care about.
With &bang, we're going to work hard to know our customers and deliver them value by making it easier and more fun to work together efficiently.
I absolutely appreciate your sentiments and believe me: we have a lot more we are excitedly eager to do with this product. :)
I'm disappointed it pissed you off so much. But I made that call.
Why? Because we were getting people pissed off that they didn't find out until they went to sign up. We flat haven't had time to do a more complex and friendly/informative solution, but we want to. Forgive us.
"The 10,000 people on the planet that care about Web Sockets are not your customers, and while using Web Sockets might get you mentioned on TechCrunch, supporting only Web Sockets is a great way to cut your potential audience in half."
But it all depends on who you're looking to as your market. I'd go as far to say that the group of people who DON'T support web sockets is exponentially bigger than the ones who do...
As PG has said more than once, it's better to make a small group insanely happy than to make everyone "meh" about your stuff. The geek side of me is really happy to see long polling finally getting thrown out the window like the hack that it is, and if you want to make a stand against it, I'll love you more for it.
Pragmatically, though, you probably want to eventually have a fallback mode in this case, with a note telling people that they should probably use a better browser. Team apps are one of those least common denominator problems, after all.
I think you make some fair points. 100% agree we desperately need a better demo on the front page.
I think the landing page needs help, too, but we've gotten mostly positive responses to it. I personally didn't expect this, because I wanted a nice demo and we just flat haven't had time to put one together.
We launched it on the same day as our realtime web app conference (krtconf) and I wrote the bulk of the copy at about 2 a.m. the night before. Not my best work, but no excuses--sometimes you just have to ship! :D
"Our team at &yet has been building &! for a year, using and improving it for nearly 6 months."
Approximately %0.00023 of the time spent was on the landing page copy on the night before the deadline. Perhaps a project management system would help here.
Points taken and rest assured my criticism was only about your landing page, not about the product (I didn't bother to sign up for the above reasons).
Keep up the work, if your product quality can match that of the visuals then you might be onto something. :-)
Edit: Despite the criticism from others in the thread I still like the visual appearance. I just think you overshot a little and forgot that the even the nicest form still needs to follow function.
You also need a front page that doesn't flip me off for not having a browser that supports web sockets.
Even if your app (whatever it is, I can't even view _text_ about it) requires web sockets you can explain that somewhere else in a less… 'gtfo old man'-kind of way.
(I know you guys tried to soften the blow with the whole we heart websockets cuteness but it was very much a case of "… well, sweet then. Closes tab")
