Sorry you feel that way :( Awesome that you were willing to give us a try though, thanks!
As for the data, it really is worth it for me. I don't have an iOS dev license, or know anything about mobile development particularly. If I'm going to dedicate weeks of my life to this, there needs to be at least enough interest for us to break even, or it's not worth it.
Can your partner get the hang of your Google doc? How about your mum? Por Favor is about making things easy for everyone. Your partner types in 'pick up some eggs when you go to the shop' and chooses you as the recipient. When you get to the shop, your phone buzzes to remind you (using geofencing).
It is another communication channel, but it's one that's reserved only for the most important people, and only when they need something. If you get a message on it, you know it needs acting on, right now.
I understand what you are going for, but in this case, I think a more relevant question is "can my housemate/co-worker/sibling/mom get the hang of email or phone?," in which case the answer is certainly "yes."
If I need something done, and it's important enough that it can't wait, it's also probably important enough to just call someone, instead of relying on a potentially less reliable middle-man service that might only add to the confusion.
I'll note that the Google Docs are generally just for my own use, with the exception of expense tracking and very simple shared lists, which I've never had a problem getting others to contribute to. (My family and friends are pretty good when it comes to tech, so maybe I'm not exactly your target customer when it comes to that.)
I definitely understand where people might benefit from Por Favor over communication channels that are less optimized for this kind of problem, but again, it's not for me. (I guess, in short, it's just too specific.)
Maybe if I were back in college, where the housing situation tends to be close to a lot of other people... I could see a case where my entire suite or floor would subscribe to this service. But I digress...
Por Favor's more than a phone call or a text though, it's also a set of reminders with an alarm to remind you to act on a task at a a specific point in time.
I'm obviously rubbish at the explaining what we do thing (though in my defence we're still working out the details)
I wasn't expecting to see many people on Hacker News saying that they'd adopt the system themselves, but I was hoping that some people would see the merit in it.
You hit the nail on the head about less optimised communication methods. Por Favor is primarily about asking people to do things, then reminding them when the time is right automatically. The time might be a specific time (e.g. 6pm), or when they're next in a certain area (geofencing) (or something else that we haven't thought of yet).
Based on feedback from HN, we're thinking about selling a "Family plan" or something like that, where it's a slightly higher fee, but you can share the service with X people. It's definitely about getting lots of people invested in the system, otherwise it's just another app on your home screen (or, hopefully on your home screen)
The £1.99 pricing is a work in process. It shows a different price randomly. We're trying to use click through data to find the optimal price.
Everyone needing the app is an issue that we know about, and we're trying to work out a way to solve the issue so people can try it out and see how it's beneficial before having to cough up some cash.
Thanks for the feedback. You actually landed on the most expensive price! There's a few different prices, displayed at random. We're trying to see what people will pay for the app.
69p is a little low, as we need to at least cover our costs and everything so far is pointing to the fact that it's a niche app, not widely adopted. If we could change that, 69p might work.
It's niche but also designed for more than a single person to use at any one time, and so you shouldn't think of the pricing as "per person" but rather "per team / group / family".
As an aside, what I'd find useful is an app that pipes together mine and my friends RTM or Todo.ly or Wunderlist to-do lists so that when I add a task it also updates their accounts (I assume this is possible with the RTM api).
Per family pricing is a decent idea. We'll have to take a look at that!
Someone else mentioned integrating with apps that they use every day, so we might take a look into the various other to do products and see of we can build on top of them
We're still working on the app idea. Maybe it'll just be a website to start and you pay to send favours. We're in the ideas stage at the minute, and nothing's set in stone.
Do you think it's worth following up on the idea (ignoring implementation details)? Or does the implementation make the idea?
For me, it depends how big the favour is. If it's to pick someone up from the airport, it should definitely be a phonecall.
Por Favor aims to fill the space where it's a small favour, like turning on the oven at a certain time or taking out the bins. Things that aren't too much of an inconvenience but are also easily forgotten.
You mention tracking favours, that's definitely not what it's about. It's about remembering to do things you said you would, not about keeping score.
I explicitly said that it's not about keeping track of who's done whom a favour. I'd even say that each day, any old favours get reset and hidden from view.
Ah, my mistake. I have no idea how that managed to sneak onto the site. I'll get it changed soon.
@ollysb, @nodata: Sorry about that. I was honestly confused why people thought it was about keeping track and kept bringing it up when I'd said it wasn't. Now it all makes much more sense
The idea is that you get a notification when they ask you to do something, then again when it's time to do it. You can load the app and see everything you've agreed to do, but you don't need to open it to use the app.
Adding a layer to your current ecosystem's definitely an option. Making sure people see any incoming alerts no matter what they're doing is what we're aiming for.
> Using GitHub actions with branch names or tags is unsafe. Use commit hash instead.
Instead of updating to use a SHA everywhere, I wrote a tool to do it for you, making a note of the original version (e.g. @master).
This allows you to run the tool in the future and have the sha updated to the most recent version whilst still pinning to a specific commit.