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by unalone 6306 days ago
First off: You stole Tumblr's icons. That's a really, really shitty thing to do. They paid good money for those icons and you blatantly ripped them from the site.

Not just that. You copy your "translucent borders" from Facebook, your "close window" dialogue from the original lightbox and your feedback tab links to Getsatisfaction. The one original idea you had, putting notebook lines in the background, you couldn't even bother to sync up with the size of your font. (Aviary does this but they actually sync up the lines.)

Second off: How is this better than Tumblr? Do you know what Twitter is without ultrasimplicity? It's a downgraded version of a regular blog. That's why "Twitter+this" startups fail. Twitter is only good because it's so simple.

I use my blog as a diary. I write 20-30 posts a day about whatever comes to mind in the hopes that I can preserve it as a diary for half a century and then figure out a way to make use of it. Why would I pay $10 a month for something that gives me less than I've already got?

Third off: I like the header design but it's hard to navigate. I'm also a little offended that as your "famous diary person of choice" you picked Anne Frank, whose diary is most famous because the person that wrote it died. What's the implication? "You'll die so write stuff down?" For an online service, that's pretty obnoxious.

All that stuff aside, it looks nice, though I wonder just how much of this design you ripped off sources of which I'm not aware. (I could swear that font looks remarkably close to the "sparse black-on-white" that Posterous uses.)

2 comments

Continuing use, signed up despite myself:

Wow, you are ripping off Tumblr bigtime. Those are its "submit" buttons, too. What's the red-box-with-x design from? I know it's a generic icon, so is the red-border layout just generic or is that ripped off, too?

Your search is broken - you should also not require me to open a pop-up box to get it - and surprise! The search field is ripped off of Tumblr! This is the moment where I fire off an email to Marco to let him know somebody's stealing his designs.

You're using some sort of CMS for this, because I just got an error sign trying to search. So you're prepackaging somebody else's code here to make money?

Get an actual FAQ.

Your welcome email: "My name is Peter Nicholls I am the founder of LifesBook so id firstly like to give a big thanks to you for signing up!"

Fix your spelling, fix your grammar, and fix your punctuation. This is your creation: show it some respect. Also, why pound signs for header info? Isn't bold better for that? Or better yet, CSS maybe?

Tumblr's buttons give me indication that I've clicked them. Yours are totally static. (I don't know why I go on giving feedback, since it looks like you utterly stole this idea. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.)

Why does deleting a post give me a JS prompt instead of one of your Facebook pop-up prompts?

Why does a text post give me a "WWW" symbol? They have a goddamned TEXT BUTTON. Can't you even rip off their paid-for design well?

"Dam" is spelled "Damn".

This site is very slow for some reason.

One final thing, because I've hit the wall of your featureset: don't make me click to four pages to get to settings. Put it all on one page unless you have a good reason to do otherwise.
The tumblr icons are all removed, I just put this site together quickly and admit it was the wrong thing to do, I apologize.

Im not sure about the facebook stuff your talking about I also thought using lightbox and Getsatisfaction the way I have is ok.

Header was never ment to offend, its was just a bit of fun. As most people would assume I am not implying that you die if you use this service. Has also been replaced.

I put the site together in a few days and design is not my strong point. The orignal diary type design is shown here: http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/design-watercolor-e.... I have permission to use this stuff, including the 404 page.

I honestly dont expect a HN user to use this site, its more geared towards people that havnt got a clue what wordpress or tubmlr is.

"I honestly dont expect a HN user to use this site, its more geared towards people that havnt got a clue what wordpress or tubmlr is."

If the people you are targeting do not know what Wordpress or Tumblr are, how in the internet world would they stumble upon you before first landing on one of those sites?

Then you have to ask yourself whether or not people will pay $10 for a web site without first looking to see if there are major competitors who offer a service for free.