Woah, typing code at speed is incredibly difficult. I don't know if it picks languages randomly but it gave me Lisp just now, and... ack!
Unrelated, TypeRacer is amazing. We had a bunch of contests at my last job and they ended up making a trophy because I was the King of Speed. It was pretty fun. So, thank you!
I'm the creator of Typeracer. When I launched it 5 years ago I had a similar UI - one line of scrolling text in a larger font, but based on user feedback ended up with the more natural UI of static text in a smaller font. Thanks for the compliment!
I'm surprised, I always thought I was a pretty slow typer (about 60 wpm after corrections). But that's actually the second-highest bracket on Typeracer.
Man so far I've been spending 10 minutes a day on typeracer, as a morning warmup. You did a great job on making it fun!
Some random ideas I have about it (since it's easier to talk about stuff than to build it):
* Your quotes are all from famous books and movies, and you have affiliate links to Amazon... brilliant!
* Do you have a mechanism that minimizes repetition?
* Do you ever need to fake competition?
* Could you visualize mistakes as crashes, to keep things exciting?
* Consider making a keyboard UI for the site (Although I use vimium)
* Build a mechanism to challenge your friends.
* Analyze history and plot it. Take into account difficulty of paragraphs (come up with difficulty rating based on your user data).
* Give typing tips; perhaps it's enough to analyze words that the user mistyped, and offer them more passages with them.
* Improve the CSS. The UI should reflect the incredibly high level of polish in the gameplay.
Maybe I'll have more random ideas when I play it tomorrow. ;)
nice idea. i'm typing this on an x60 with 2GB. this would be even easier on linux, i guess. on the other hand, i added an ssd recently and the effect is similar (since the sawp file is on the ssd).
Thanks. I also thought about installing an SSD. Many people seem to be afraid to use an SSD for memory swapping however, because they believe it will shorten the lifespan of the SSD (especially on Windows XP, due to its overly-aggressive swapping logic).
I checked that out before I bought. As far as I could tell, it's not really an issue with any half-decent SSD, since they automatically level below the file system (so even though swap is a small part of your disk, it doesn't mean you're putting all that load on a small part of the memory) and also the numbers seem to work out like you'd still get many years of use.
Anyway, for me, I suspect it means I'll keep this laptop for an extra two years. It was starting to feel sluggish if I had, say, firefox and eclipse open. Now it's like new. Would really recommend it... (but it is true I am on Linux...)
1) building a prototype (which, knowing Mark, I'd say took him at most 2 days)
and
2) sticking with it for several years and making it profitable, through the thick and thin, the emotional roller coaster, and all that.
It took me a year to complete stage (1) and I'm still on stage (2), three years later.
My web app (a casual MMO game) had the same wave of organic growth in the beginning that Mark's had, was mentioned on top blogs in the game industry, played by news anchors on live local TV news half a country away, etc., (this list goes on and on). Yet my site never got drooled over on Hacker News or Tech Crunch (possibly because I never submitted it to either), and I never had all these people telling me how great I am, how awesome my idea was, and sounding so sure that it will make me rich.
My site has 10x more users than threewords.me, been cloned by many developers in various countries around the globe, and still retains the top spot among those competitors. In fact, it seems that I actually invented a new genre of games with my idea (how many people get to say they invented Tetris, FPS, RTS, RPG, or MMO?)
All this, and yet I'm still barely making more from the site than I could be making from working at McDonald's. Yet I persist. It's been my full-time job for the past 3 years (the web app, not McDonalds :)), ever since I parted ways with my well-salaried software engineering job.
If anyone is tempted to call me stupid or lazy for not making millions from my idea, I'll be the first to admit that maybe I am. I didn't do any marketing or emailing Arrington, or any of the like. Instead I've been focused on building what my users want, developing features, fighting fires, and talking to users (many of whom constantly criticize me for not pushing out new feature fast enough).
Not a single real user ever said to me "Wow, this will make you rich," it's always more like "Wow, I LOVE your game! Please add features X, Y, and Z. They are super important! Hope to see X, Y, and Z working soon!"
Therefore, I sometimes think the startup community needs a dose of sanity. Not every tiny app is going to make millions. The web economy seems like a gold rush for many. If threewords.me makes any real money from this sale, it will be due to the exposure it's received to people participating in that gold rush.
In conclusion, I'd like to say that my comments are not intended just for criticism. If any of you think you know how you could make tons of money from threewords.me or from a casual MMO game (that doesn't have any virtual goods to sell), then I hope you can tell us how you would do it, rather than making assumptions that somehow anyone can get rich by building a free app and getting several hundred thousand people to sign up for it.
(P.S. Mark, I think you're a great guy and your app is very nice, so please don't take my comments the wrong way - I'm just trying to add some perspective to this discussion.)
I prefer to stay anonymous on here, but I can be reached by this same username on Gmail if anyone wants to know more.
I'll just say that it's a very simple skill-based, text-based multiplayer race-against-others game (something like a multiplayer speed Scrabble). It has almost no graphics and uses AJAX.
how is it not earning a livable wage with 2 million users?
It's livable if you have very low expenses, but in my limited experience, 2 million users just aren't enough for a free website to make good money. Maybe I'm hugely under-monetizing the site somehow, but I don't really see a good source of revenue other than from ads.
I disagree. First, you need both attraction and comfort. Comfort basically means showing a woman that you're interested in more than just sex. At the very least, this present does that. Furthermore, I think this particular present also creates attraction by demonstrating positive value attributes of the guy like intelligence, curiosity, playfulness, etc.
Lemma: most users are subscribed to Google Groups with their Gmail addresses.
Algorithm: GG should broadcast a new message to the Gmail accounts first and wait. If Gmail flags it as spam for p% of the receiving accounts, it should notify GG. GG should then send the message to spam (e.g. hold it for moderation), and not broadcast it to the rest of the subscribers. If Gmail gives it a green light, let it through.
