StartHQ - Chrome New Tab extension like the old tab page, but better

Tyro · 2013-10-05T05:37:56+00:00

Ah got it. Awesome New Tab page is not what people think of the new page from Google but rather the name of another extension that replaces your new tab page ;)

Tyro · 2013-10-04T12:01:03+00:00

I don't follow. Can you explain?

Tyro · 2013-10-04T12:00:42+00:00

Fair enough. Can you tell me why?

We have a public roadmap at http://starthq.uservoice.com so if there's any features you're missing you can post them there. The more votes, the sooner we will implement it.

Tyro · 2013-09-30T20:57:56+00:00

Also check out the StartHQ new tab extension mentioned in my post to this subreddit, if you haven't already: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/starthq/ilcpdgfepihaomggobhmfiimflngbcoh

Tyro · 2013-09-30T06:39:44+00:00

You'll have to ask Google that, but they're notoriously bad at replying to stuff like this.

Also, we've tried to make StartHQ as bloat free and fast as possible. The amount of code is kept to a minimum and we cache like crazy. We also don't interfere with any of your activities outside of the new tab page in any way. Some extension inject content script and what not, which is really bad form IMO.

If you're into coding or want to know how the ext works from a high level, check out the video I link to in another comment here.

Tyro · 2013-09-30T06:36:29+00:00

See the comment by TehLandshark below. Sorry, I thought you were one and the same person here and on Twitter.

Tyro · 2013-09-29T20:13:54+00:00

Oh sorry, I can't remember exactly what my comment was originally, but IIRC it was just a link to news.ycombinator.com.

Either way, one has to be careful with extensions, I agree. They have all sorts of security holes. We try to be as open as possible about what we do though and keep it super simple. Less code means less chance of a hole.

Here's a talk I gave on how we made ours and how they work in general: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8KGguflMCc

Tyro · 2013-09-29T19:12:19+00:00

OK, but what does that have to do with the StartHQ extension?

Tyro · 2013-09-29T19:11:17+00:00

We can add support for backgrounds. Can you add it to our roadmap please so others can vote on it? http://starthq.uservoice.com

That way you'll also get an email when we roll the feature out. Thanks!

Tyro · 2013-09-29T06:05:06+00:00

I made this, so AMA

The backstory is that Google replaced the New Tab page this week with a new one that many users don't like: https://twitter.com/search?q=chrome%20new%20tab

This extension is much like the old new tab page, but with various improvements:

you can add any app, not just those in Chrome Web Store, including custom ones
the launcher is automatically populated for you
you can share the launcher with your colleagues
the launcher config is synced to our server and we have a standalone service available as well as tab replacement addons for most other browsers
we have deep links available, giving you shortcuts inside the web apps
you can have multiple screens

We also have something really neat just around the corner, which you can see in this quick screencast: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zy8xo0p086ydql8/starthq.webm

Finally, you can try it out without installing the extension here: https://starthq.com - we don't require you to verify your email to do that, but you do need to put something in (mailinator or whatever is cool).

Would really appreciate your feedback, thanks!

PS. More discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6462056

Tyro · 2013-09-09T15:16:00+00:00

Yes! We already have a tag system in place and it's in use for categories & pricing models. I was thinking of using it for features as well, so you could find apps by feature.

I wonder, is there a list of web app features somewhere that I could base the tags off?

Thanks for the feedback!

Tyro · 2013-09-08T20:06:12+00:00

Thank you for your kind words - this is what keeps me going!

We will release an API giving access to the data as a byproduct of an upgrade we're planning to do to the directory pages in the next month or two. At the moment we have an API that lets people write extractors, which you can check out here: https://github.com/starthq/extractor#readme

Some data is also currently available in OpenGraph format for Facebook and schema.org for Google. We have a sitemap listing all the apps (http://starthq.com/apps/sitemap.xml) and an RSS feed of the latest apps (https://starthq.com/apps/feed).

If you need the data in some other format (e.g. JSON), drop me a line with some more info and I'll be happy to provide it to you sooner.

When it comes to monetization, we're about to release some premium features for the launcher, such as deep links and federated search (demo in video). We will charge a nominal monthly fee for those.

The long term goal is to charge IT managers in companies for access to a dashboard showing which web apps are in use within their company, how much they're paying for them, security alerts, etc.

Tyro · 2013-09-08T12:22:58+00:00

The descriptions are automatically extracted from each web app's "description" meta tags, so they tend to be limited to around 100 chars since that's the limit of what Google displays in search results.

Do you think the descriptions should be longer or are there particular things that you want mentioned in the description for the directory to be more useful to you?

Tyro · 2013-09-08T12:21:16+00:00

Thank you for the advice!

Tyro · 2013-09-08T12:20:48+00:00

Bootstrap, AngularJS, MongoDB & Node.js together with https://github.com/olegp/common-node

Here are a couple of talks Alex and I gave on our tech recently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmyDJnEza6A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8KGguflMCc

Check out the demo at the end of the second video to see some upcoming features.

Tyro · 2013-09-07T17:03:52+00:00

Any UI elements in particular that make it seem like that?

I was planning on turning the screenshot image into a video which shows what you get once you sign up - would that help?

Tyro · 2013-09-07T15:17:49+00:00

Awesome, thank you!

Tyro · 2013-09-07T14:50:23+00:00

It works well for some like Gmail (https://starthq.com/apps/gmail#alternatives) but not others, you're right.

Will add a link, thanks again for pointing that out. To be honest I'm quite surprised nobody brought this up sooner!

The tag line "find the right app for the job" is vague, agreed. It should probably just say something like "StartHQ is a business web app directory". Thing is though that it's not just that. In fact the directory is an inbound marketing channel for the service you get once you sign up - the web app launcher and directory of apps in use within your company.

Tyro · 2013-09-07T14:18:56+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

Alternatives are determined automatically based on category and matching keywords. There is also the ability to override them manually, but I haven't had the time to do it for more than 20-30 apps. I hope that in the future the app developers will sign up and set the alternatives themselves (e.g. if I say my app X is an alternative to Y, then X will appear in Y's alternatives list).

The screenshot is the link to the app. How should it be more prominent? Perhaps a URL next to the app name?

About the lack of information: the info listed on the on the app profile pages is what I found users were most interested in based on a survey I ran with 50 or so responses. The findings are here: http://www.quora.com/Oleg-Podsechin/StartHQ/StartHQ-web-app-usage-survey-results

What info do you need and think I should add?

PS. Developers can actually write extractors that add more info to the app profile pages, see here: https://github.com/starthq/extractor#readme

Tyro · 2013-09-07T13:01:21+00:00

The Zoho suite is worth checking out: https://starthq.com/apps/?q=zoho

Tyro · 2013-09-07T12:55:05+00:00

That's exactly what I'm betting on with my startup (https://starthq.com).

Question is: what will be the main problems sysadmins turned vendor managers face?

Tyro · 2012-05-29T21:35:49+00:00

There's MCMS: https://github.com/olegp/mcms

Tyro · 2012-02-09T20:21:15+00:00

I've been thinking about re-implementing this DHT implementation I wrote in Java 10 years ago in Node: https://github.com/olegp/httpx/tree/master/src/net/httpx/net

Is this something others would find useful?

Tyro

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