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Show HN: My project helps you create kick ass mobile sites (mobilova.com)
27 points by Concours on Sept 17, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 30 comments



Lots of unnecessarily harsh comments for what could be a cool idea.

He's doing a "Show HN" to get some feedback. Maybe we could all be a bit more constructive? Calling somebody's work a "joke" or an april fools prank isn't really all that nice. There's plenty of other places than HN I can go to watch somebody's work get needlessly trashed.

I agree his stuff needs work, but I bet all of our projects (for those that have actually made something) needs some level of work.

The vitriol here is kinda toxic, take a chill pill people.


I'm 99% sure this site is some sort of parody or joke.

After all, this is what it looks like on my iPhone: http://i.imgur.com/KNqzy.png

And searching 'TechCrunch' for 'Mobilova' returns zero results, despite Mobilova's claim that they were featured on TechCrunch.


nope, it's not, I miss that bug, it's due to the sidefloating button, fixing it right away, thanks for pointing out.


You absolutely need to remove the TechCrunch and KillerStartups logos if indeed they have not reviewed you. It's highly misleading to your users and an abuse of their brand.

In addition, the testimonials each have New York Times icon logos next to them. This doesn't add credibility; it's obvious the New York Times didn't write those reviews.


It's hard to believe, but TechCrunch actually did cover them: http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/11/24/gmbhnews-turns-any-blog-...


Techcrunch UK did review the site. See http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/11/24/gmbhnews-turns-any-blog-... (old branding of the site).


maybe you are wrong about Techcrunch and Killerstartup not reviewing me, maybe you just miss the reviews...well, as for the testimonials, for me, it's indeed obvious that the New York times didn't write them as well, as it is for you, so I don't get why "it's misleading", could you please elaborate?

Check Techcrunck UK , and look for GmbhNews: Old Brand. Check Killerstartup, and look for GmbhNews: Old Brand

Check the press section, you will find some of those infos. Thanks for your great feedbck, I'll create new facvicon, I wasn't aware that those favicons are exclusively NYT favicons (it's a suggestion of the designer)


Could you link to the reviews from your site? Preferably directly from the "As Featured In" banners. That way there's absolutely no question. No doubt. Credibility can be proven without requiring a search or investigative discussions on HN.


Ah, gotcha. That makes more sense.

Other than that, my #1 piece of feedback is that after pressing the large red button on the homepage, the user is expecting to see his or her mobilized site. Instead, the user sees a message saying: "Thank you very much for trying us. Your submission will be reviewed, and should be added shortly if accepted..."

I recommend checking out dudamobile.com for a good example of this flow.

Second, asking the user to solve a captcha right after pressing the large red button is not a good experience. I recommend including the captcha as part of the form, or not including it at all.


Or you could just change the header to say "NOT Featured In"


Watched the video, some complaints.

* Your video says "GMBH", but your website says "MOBIlova".

* "Remote the dots" and "remove the domain" do not make it at all obvious that you mean the TLD.

* The worst thing, though, is that you didn't show us what happens once you hit "MOBILIZE." Does Mobilova then host a mobile version of the site? Do I get a static list of files? What's the point of the category dropdown?

I tried it out, using BoingBoing as an example. It took me to a page that says: "Thank you very much for trying us. Your submission will be reviewed, and should be added shortly if accepted, meanwhile add following code in your site header or template, to take full control of your mobile site"

If accepted? What? I literally have no idea what's going on. What happened to less than two minutes?


+++ there is no need to tell me how to fill a form (although it's not friendly for the user), and of course I first want to see what will I get (after typing my credentials in the unknown website's form).


yeah, updating the description: you will be surprise on how many people don't know what to do with a form or how to fill it.


Thanks for the great feedback pavel, The Video is a bit outdated and I'm still tweaking the new one. (GMBH is the old brand) working to fix that, when you hit mobilize now, there are two options, a mobile webapps is created in the choosen category and listed in the mobile portal http://www.nicezine.com , I'll add a description at the front page to make it clear.

The second option that we offers is based on stylesheets, that's the option with the floating tab, if you use it, we'll create a mobile stylesheet and host it on Amazon S3 /and backup on Google storage , and send you the link for media query linking. Working to get all these infos on the front page now. As for remove the dots, I'm a bit concern that, non techie folks don't know what TLD means, do you have any other alternative suggestion? Thanks


Use javascript to automatically extract this information from the URL that they enter.


You can get the info from the RSS feed, like site name, site url, category etc.


Renders poorly in Firefox 6 (Yes, Firefox 6 not IE 6). There's a weird floating half-cut off artifact that says something about 'ustom mobile site'...

Advice. If your service is centered around the generation of quality content formatting for other people's sites, better make sure your own house is in order first (both on mobile and in modern browsers). Otherwise it's like buying cabinets from a carpenter who conspired to already cut off half of his fingers and both of his thumbs.


Please, hire a designer. Also “create and monetize your mobile website in less than 2 mins for all phones.It's free to start.” – please, insert space after “all phones.”


fixing the text issue, thanks. What's wrong with the design?


It's amateur hour. Some basics:

  All the shades of yellow are subtly different
  The font sizes are all over the place
  The fonts themselves are all different, you seem to be using 4 different ones
  Whitespace proportions are wrong
  The red and the yellow don't compliment each other
  The shading effect in the red looks horrible
  What the hell is going on in the footer?
  Why are there full stops after people's names in the quotes?
  The embedded video has a higher z-index than the form for creating the mobile site
  
Also the video is downright insulting too. Your target market seriously don't know what an iPhone or an App looks like? Or how to fill out a form?


Could you accomplish this by just starting with the URL as your first step? #1 - Enter your URL, then if you like what you see, enter your email, etc.

I didn't give it a try because the signup form looked daunting.


Your site doesn't work on mobile safari Techcrunch has never heard of you Link to your blog doesn't work... I could go on like this forever...


Got the bug info , I've tested the site so far in a simulator and it looks good (my mistake was to not check it on an iPhone after adding some UI related features), working on it to fix those bugs. As for TechCrunch , you mean you couldn't find my link on TechCrunch? You shoudl try TechCrunhc Europe (TechCrunch UK)...with the old branding: GmbhNews , thanks for your feedback, fixing all the bugs, and don't hesitate to share any other bugs/issues you find.


As others have pointed out you have a lot of work to do on your own site. Re-size the browser on your desktop an see if you notice anything that strikes you as odd. Hint: your design breaks apart. Mobile phones have a small screen so you must be able to re-size it seamlessly, before you can sell a web to mobile solution .


Keeps crashing my iPhone browser ironically


Is this what I am supposed to see - http://i54.tinypic.com/ibkkt2.png ? This hardly relates well to anything "kick ass".


Fix your own site first if you are serious. It doesn't look that awesome btw.


$10/mo for that joke - come on.


April Fools' Days is a few months off yet.

Post again then?


What's up with all these people who "JUST SHIP" and are shit at everything they do?




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