Well, I'm obviously pretty biased here because I made it, but I really enjoy using http://cueyoutube.com/
It was a "sunday night" project, and the first thing I've ever done where I thought I did just the right amount of work and no more. It hasn't, like, gone viral or anything but has a few likes and a few people using it - who knows maybe some more will use it.
But it was a great feeling - to really get something useful made, throw it out there and see what happens without investing a whole lot in it.
Another I made earlier this year was http://pickdropapp.com/ which was even less successful than cueyoutube :)
I find that whipping up things like this and just releasing them is a great way of "staying in shape". Releasing software is like a habit and the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
To deviate from my shameless self promotion, I would also like to add that I love the story of TKs http://toutapp.com/ - he's actually turned that into a real product now with thousands of users, but he got a lot of validation from his initial MVP release so that's a real success story. He's written about it quite a bit on his blog.
For cueyoutube - there's no backend! It's just a static page with some JavaScript on it (mostly jQuery but totally hacked together because I can't stand JavaScript :)
I actually copied and pasted most of it from other sources (which I've listed on the page).
The playlists are "saved" by sharing them - each playlist exists only as a URL containing a comma separated list of video IDs.
I've been sharing on Twitter using the #cueyoutube hashtag.
Unfortunately, however, my primary webserver is down due to a drive failure - I'm waiting for the VPS image to copy to a new host now. Bummer :( Should be back up in about an hour with any luck.
I really want to only work on the site in response to user demand, you know? Like I want to keep it as an MVP always. If people like it, then they will use it and make suggestions and I'll react to that.
I'm really enjoying the "throwaway" nature of the playlists themselves (ie. you don't login, you don't give them a name, you don't "save" them, you just create, share and move on with your life), but also the "throwaway" nature of the project - it's good to have something that's useful but that I'm not so heavily invested in (unlike Decal, which I'm like, totally invested in to the point of insanity).
Why code a back-end if you don't need one? You can get away with a lot more than you think you can just with a static page and the browser. With hn-books the book list exists as a static JSON file. I can put my entire site on any kind of web server -- even run it easily offline.
It was a "sunday night" project, and the first thing I've ever done where I thought I did just the right amount of work and no more. It hasn't, like, gone viral or anything but has a few likes and a few people using it - who knows maybe some more will use it.
But it was a great feeling - to really get something useful made, throw it out there and see what happens without investing a whole lot in it.
Another I made earlier this year was http://pickdropapp.com/ which was even less successful than cueyoutube :)
I find that whipping up things like this and just releasing them is a great way of "staying in shape". Releasing software is like a habit and the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
To deviate from my shameless self promotion, I would also like to add that I love the story of TKs http://toutapp.com/ - he's actually turned that into a real product now with thousands of users, but he got a lot of validation from his initial MVP release so that's a real success story. He's written about it quite a bit on his blog.