Ask HN: Can you try my web app beta and give me some feedback?
I am nearing launch for my web app and it is currently in Private Beta. I would like to request HN to give it a try and provide some feedback.
Here is the link: http://aiphotosearch.com Why oh why would you put it behind an email wall? Why would you need my email to show me "what I assume" is image search. My feedback. Ok, I can search for stock photos. But can't I already do that? There are lots of stock photo searches. But this one uses AI. So what? Ok, let's see how your solution is better than anybody else. Oh, I can't you want my email, and I'm not really that bothered. tldr; I solved a problem that I had. Would love to get HN community's feedback. Appreciate your feedback. I have not launched the app yet, it is in private beta. This is a hackers community. I am looking for fellow hackers willing to go through the e-mail wall to try what I have built and provide feedback. There are lots of stock photo searches. But this one uses AI. So what?
I have been buying stock photos a lot these past year. Every time, I have spent a lot of time (and the time value of money) finding the photo that I like. If you value your time at $100 per hour, the real cost of the stock photo that took you 30 minutes to find is the stock photo cost + $50. When you ask people to test it, you could take the email wall down when requests are made with a query-string var added to the link you post. Sure, some kind souls will sign up to give you the feedback, but I think you will get more feedback with lower friction to enter your site. As far as the cost being $50 in time. You haven't answered the question as to why AI is the answer. Good point! I am planning to add this description to the site as well. There are two problems in stock photo search. First, there are multiple marketplaces with different inventory and price structures. So if you are looking for stock photos that are not very common, you need to go to multiple marketplaces, search and comb through the results. We solve this by using APIs from those marketplaces to bring results for your search so you do not need to go and repeat your search at multiple marketplaces. This leads us to the second problem. You now have a lot of photos to comb through. This is where the AI comes in. You "like" few of the photos in the search result that are close to what you are looking for and the AI learns your preferences to bring the results that are similar to the ones you have liked. You are wasting your precious chance on the front page of HN, especially when you're asking for help. I'm guessing the bounce rate is like 99% right now. If I were you, I would just let people access it if they came from HN referer (clickable link: http://aiphotosearch.com) If you give us a demo page to try without signing up (at a private URL and with a clear time limit if you want), you are going to get a lot more feedback. Or at least show what we are going to get inside.
And don't ask for a twitter account during signup. Thank you for the feedback! Just removed the twitter handle field in the form. The email is just to send a private invitation - within a minute. I did a few quick searches and it seemed to narrow down what I would want pretty well. Good job. 2 things I noticed though: - If I do a new search for something I've already searched for, it doesn't work, nothing happens (console says 500 error).
- You have an about section that is empty, not sure if you meant to remove it. Glad that you liked it! Also, found and fixed the bug causing problems with repeat searches. you can just type a fake email and get to the actual site. 1. change the title, it's still "My ASP.NET Application"\ 2. It works OK (searching for 'pizza' shows some photos) and the design is pretty nice. I think you could improve it by reducing the number of different fonts you're using. 1. Fixed the title
2. Initial result is regular image search, you get results based on your keywords. From then onwards, you can like the photos you somewhat like and click Refine Results. The AI algorithm analyzes the photos you have liked vs. the others and brings results based on that. You are basically training your model on the fly.
3. Good observation on too many fonts, will work on it I went to the site with the intention of helping you and giving feedback but it's not accessible without signing up A similar app can be built using google image search api ? how does it differentiate in feature set ? Lets say you are looking for a stock photo of a dog to use in your landing page like this one: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-110687501/stock-photo-dog-ab... Google Image Search API does not let you search multiple Stock Photo providers for photos. We are using APIs from multiple vendors to fetch the stock photos. Secondly, our AI is geared towards stock photos. You can start searching for "dog" in aiphotosearch.com, then like a couple of photos that are closest to the one you are looking for and then refine results. We train a model that "understands" what you liked vs discarded and uses that to bring more results.