I spent my free time this past week working on a rather strange project: AbsenceLetters.com, a site that lets you store messages to your loved ones, which get sent in case you vanish. The service determines whether or not you're still around by looking at your twitter feed and, if you go too long without tweeting, it sends you an email asking to manually report in. If this had gotten any traction, facebook, google+ and foursquare feeds would also have been integrated into the system to make it more reliable. SMS notifications would be used in addition to email warnings too.
It's only been two days since the launch, but the analytics panel makes for some grim reading already. Only 100 unique visitors and but a single signup - who didn't actually get around to add any contacts or write any letters. Traffic may still be too low to draw meaningful conclusions, but the writing is on the wall. Like mistrQ said on Hacker News:
I can appreciate why you think this is a problem that needs to be solved. But I can't help feel a bit wrong about it.
(...)
I think it's one of these things that is a 'good idea', but should never actually be followed through.
Well the software works, the domain name is paid for and an idle domain has no impact on my server's performance, so it'll stay up for the time being. But active development has been put on hold indefinitely.
However abysmal in terms of interest and adoption, however, this project was a huge win in terms of motivation. See, I have a chronic problem with shipping. The reasons are besides the point, fact is, I rarely get a project done on time. This was different. This thing was conceived, designed and shipped in less than a week. At the same time, I was doing a freelance gig which was also done a bit earlier than expected.
Looks like this year got off to an excellent start in terms of my ability to get shit done.
Now, to ride the wave...
