Hi HN!

As a long time lurker, I'm quite happy to have something valuable to post today.

I’m reaching out to you to share an imperfect UX research app that I’ve built :)

It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles the existing solutions have. The video quality of the recordings is just okay at this stage. And being an mvp, it’s still rough around the edges.

So what’s the point you may be wondering?

Here is the kicker: it has most of the stuff that the other solutions offer but does 2 new things that could save you a big chunk of time.

1. It allows you to recruit participants automatically and continuously among your users and your mailing list.

2. It also allows you to synthesize your findings much faster with a Trello-style visual board for organizing your notes.

There is even a free plan so you don’t have to pay anything to start saving time :)

It would be great to have your opinion on it.

There is also this huge list on PixelProspector: http://www.pixelprospector.com/indie-resources/ and this article is good start for beginners (like me): http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2011/09/atomic/. The first question to answer is this: do you want to make games (go indie) or work on games (work for a big studio)?

I agree. One of the most important thing is that great PR means tons of valuable links. And in the SEO game, the formula is: "get the links, win the game".

Nice work! Do you plan to make money from this? As you said, it is a very crowded market and I would suggest you to be ready for a long PR campaign. Peldi from balsamiq has great advice: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2008/08/05/startup-marketi...

If you choose the freemium route, you could give away to bloggers and alike, free premium accounts for them and for their readers. It is a great promotion tactic.

If the opportunity exists, I would absolutely love to make money from this and other future web apps. Peldi (and Balsamiq) has been a huge inspiration recently and the freemium route is exactly what I had in mind.

While building the app, I told myself that I would be satisfied if I was the only person in the world that used it (it was just a testing ground, after all). With this overwhelmingly positive response, I guess I can have a little more confidence to pursue things further.

Thanks for checking out Pocket!

I found that the blog is very good-looking, if you are debuting at webdesign too, it's quite impressive.

While I generally agree that advances in game technology and game design will have a big impact in several fields, I found the points of the author not very convincing. Evidences and articulation of his reasoning are somewhat thin.

I launched http://typeroulette.com : a fun way to practice touch typing using tweets. Now, I need to spread the word!

I am almost in the same case. After months of procrastination disguised as reading about programming, I just launched my first completed project ever: my own blog written in Ruby on Rails. Just today ! http://hackiel.com/blog Seems like a great opportunity to level up.

I think it is all about resources you can bring on the table. Bigger resources means bigger leverage. I think you need to bring business skills AND some money, the more money you have, the better.

I heard that the historical CEO of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi, didn't know how to use Nintendo gaming machines. He almost never played any of his games. But he has the money and business acumen to hire guys like Gunpei Yokoi (engineer) and Shigeru Miyamoto(game designer).

I also heard that Intuit was started by Scott Cook, a marketing geek, who brought business skills and enough money to lure Tom Proulx. Scott Cook met Tom Proulx when he came to the Stanford campus, looking for a programmer.

So, if you have vision, business skills and are able to raise some money, it is possible.

Seems wikipedia disagrees with what you've heard:

    His grandfather had a stroke in 1949. Since he was the
    president of Nintendo and had no other immediate 
    successor, he asked Hiroshi to come immediately to 
    Nintendo to assume the position of president.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshi_Yamauchi#Start_of_his_c...

Vision, business skills & Money - Points taken! :)

If all else fails, try to be the sole heir of your grandfather's empire ;)

Otherwise, the design seems OK. Maybe you could emulating the mechanics inside FML(www.fmylife.com), and yes, you really need to pre-populate the site.