It's sad that people call their little/fun projects useless. I just used your project and thought it was awesome. And even the worst project ever is useful for you. It's how you learn, build and explore. Plus, some truly great things have started out as "useless."
Sadly, it's often a good idea to preface "Show HN" submissions with this nowadays so that someone else doesn't tell you how useless your project is in the comments thread.
Perhaps "pointless" or "aimless" might be better than useless, but a useless item can be a item which exists merely to delight the mind/spirit. Of course, internet pedants and other cutting edge point-missers would likely argue that this is in fact itself a use. Such is the way of things.
Maybe "intrinsically motivated" would be a more HN compatible term.
Some useless weekend projects are worth big money!
There was a company called bubbleshare built around this feature a few years back. It was acquired by a company called Kaboose for ~$2 mil, and then Kaboose was acquired a few years later by Disney. (http://venturebeatprofiles.com/company/profile/bubbleshare)
Cool promising project! i dont see why you can't make it as big as pinterest ( or at least a fraction of it)
Remove the TOS and the checkbox during post, make the process easier. At home screen immediately bring a top list of funny pictures with speech balloons. Add facebook/twitter and pinterest integration (if possible), to share your photo with friends. Create a bookmarklet a la pinterest to allow easy sharing of images from any web site. Create a snapchat like mobile app for photo taking and phrasing with a speech bubble and sharing with friends. give me and 20 funny friends of yours accounts to get traction quicker. Make a grand plan, and speak around about it; "cartoonize the web". Add `Laughed' or lol buttons. You have 2 ways going forward 1) a mobile app like instagram or snapchat 2) a web site like pinterest.
edit: beauty is social with pinterest, curiosity with hn/reddit++ but humor is not yet web-full-scale social. phrase.it can be that.
I concur. It took me maybe 10-20 seconds, because it's very intuitive to use and I don't have to upload to give it a try. Plus, the site has no loading issues, which is rarer than it should be.
Do the suggested improvements, especially the social integration, and it might go viral. Good job!
I agree, this isn't useless. I know my mom used to buy stick-on thought bubbles to put on pictures of her kids in baby books and such. If she wanted to do that now she's have to insert a photo into PowerPoint and add a thought bubble. I would use Photoshop which arguably would take even more time.
My suggestion for improvement: have it auto-upload to imgur or another image sharing site (maybe add a checkbox for that when people are reviewing the TOS).
My only objection is with the TOS: while I can sort of understand defamatory and libelous (even these rule out most of the fun), I have issues with "inaccurate". Does not leave much wiggle room, does it?
I'd recommend changing "Take a random photo" to "Use a random photo". The take action for photo is generally understood to be different to the one you are using it for.
Your app didn't really like my vertically oriented screen, but otherwise it's really neat, the random picture button is really genius (lets us use the software quickly). I hate to be "that guy" but... maybe using rounded buttons for the "preview and save" would be better? It seems to fit the aesthetic
Really nice domain name too! So many sites have .it, .io, etc domain names where the TLD doesn't mean anything at all and it's glaringly obvious it's just cause they couldn't get the .com. In this case it works very nicely.
Thank you. I think this is useful project for me.
The other day, I also thought about making a algorithm to create a speech bubble around a piece of text. You have a pretty good implementation.
looks really cool, well done! Only thing I would recommend is to immediately popup the share icon as soon as it's done rendering. The heart icon also isn't clear how I share the image.
[+] [-] kurtvarner|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olalonde|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JonnieCache|13 years ago|reply
Maybe "intrinsically motivated" would be a more HN compatible term.
[+] [-] thisisdallas|13 years ago|reply
If the op learned anything at all from this project I would argue that it is in fact far from useless.
Great job on setting a goal and creating something, op!
[+] [-] StavrosK|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chezmo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kitcar|13 years ago|reply
There was a company called bubbleshare built around this feature a few years back. It was acquired by a company called Kaboose for ~$2 mil, and then Kaboose was acquired a few years later by Disney. (http://venturebeatprofiles.com/company/profile/bubbleshare)
[+] [-] diminish|13 years ago|reply
Remove the TOS and the checkbox during post, make the process easier. At home screen immediately bring a top list of funny pictures with speech balloons. Add facebook/twitter and pinterest integration (if possible), to share your photo with friends. Create a bookmarklet a la pinterest to allow easy sharing of images from any web site. Create a snapchat like mobile app for photo taking and phrasing with a speech bubble and sharing with friends. give me and 20 funny friends of yours accounts to get traction quicker. Make a grand plan, and speak around about it; "cartoonize the web". Add `Laughed' or lol buttons. You have 2 ways going forward 1) a mobile app like instagram or snapchat 2) a web site like pinterest.
edit: beauty is social with pinterest, curiosity with hn/reddit++ but humor is not yet web-full-scale social. phrase.it can be that.
[+] [-] Gmo|13 years ago|reply
It could also be nice to be able to directly embed the image in forums, so have a direct link to the image (might also be useful for reddit ?).
I know that then, it makes it a bit harder to exatract money, but adding a "created with phrase.it" at the bottom should help with that.
[+] [-] arscan|13 years ago|reply
I think you are underselling here... I don't think you'd be lying if you said "in seconds". I can't imagine any quicker way of doing this.
Also, I like how you can drag an image directly onto the page and it uploads. You may want to add some visual queues for that (like imgur).
Good job!
[+] [-] kaybe|13 years ago|reply
Do the suggested improvements, especially the social integration, and it might go viral. Good job!
[+] [-] sushantsharma|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mind_heist|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alfg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chezmo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevincennis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chezmo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IceyEC|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ya3r|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MasterScrat|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dfgonzalez|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] julien_c|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nvr219|13 years ago|reply
My suggestion for improvement: have it auto-upload to imgur or another image sharing site (maybe add a checkbox for that when people are reviewing the TOS).
[+] [-] bpfh|13 years ago|reply
My only objection is with the TOS: while I can sort of understand defamatory and libelous (even these rule out most of the fun), I have issues with "inaccurate". Does not leave much wiggle room, does it?
[+] [-] therandomguy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sergiotapia|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MasterScrat|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marknutter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chezmo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaliblack|13 years ago|reply
I'd recommend changing "Take a random photo" to "Use a random photo". The take action for photo is generally understood to be different to the one you are using it for.
[+] [-] kenkam|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rtpg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fastball|13 years ago|reply
A: more images B: a faster, more intuitive way to skip an image, rather than forcing the user to "cancel" and then start a new caption.
[+] [-] chezmo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Suan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stewie2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robbiea|13 years ago|reply