After a brief discussion, an idea was fully born into our hearts. We’d let users upload their design docs and quickly turn them into clickable prototypes! It would be just like paper prototyping… Without the paper, the scissors, or the glue sticks. Ok, so it wouldn’t be all that much like paper prototyping. We liked the idea anyways. Also, we thought it would be easy.

It wasn’t quite as easy as we thought it would be, turns out we’ve got high standards for this kind of thing. So, our talented team has been putting in extra hours ever since to breathe life into the idea, polish it up, and test it out. We just couldn’t wait any longer to share our baby with the world. Behold: Connect-A-Sketch.

Here at Pointless Corp (which, we remind you, is neither Pointless nor a Corporation), we have a soft spot for fun and games (a round of Tweets of Fury, anyone?), but nothing compares to our love of usefulness. We hope you’ll find the utility of this little gem as endless and satisfying as we do.

Here is the gist:

1. Load up some sketches (drawings, wireframes, comps, whatever you’ve got).
2. Create links to connect them together.
3. BOOM. Click around, test your design, share it, edit it, go nuts.

It could not be more simple, but if you are confused, then you should watch the intro.

Like its namesake, Etch-A-Sketch, we wanted Connect-A-Sketch to be highly satisfying to use. It does a very simple thing, but it does it well and using it to make something come together is pleasurable and — dare we say — fun.

Connect-A-Sketch is brought to you by people who build complex web stuff every day, all day long, and know the value of a simple sketch. We also know that being able to connect that sketch to another one is freaking awesome.

Use it. Love it. Tell us how to make it better.

We’re still working out the kinks, but if you want to give Connect-A-Sketch a spin, you can request an invitation. You can also follow us on Twitter if you want to see what we’re up to.

“Simple but useful — just how we like ‘em.”

Good thing, since that’s how we like to build them.

We owe a great deal of our early success to FeedStitch’s fantastic visual design. What you see today was no small feat for Owen, our designer, who subsisted on nothing but Tab and Run DMC records while we pelted him in the head with box after box of Adidas. When he finally emerged from the haze, we were treated to this:

While it has been a boost to our collective egos to see the design featured on numerous CSS and design galleries across the web, we were really flattered when we saw this gem:

I’m happy that the folks behind Clinical Reader (clinicalreader.com) thought so highly of our design that they decided to pay tribute to our original (thanks to Chris Martin for the head’s up).

We exchanged emails, identified the problem, and pushed out a fix:

We live to serve our customers, even if it’s during the weekend.

Well, not anymore!

We’re pleased to announce that people living in the following countries will now be able to enjoy HeyCraig: Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Germany, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Russia, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United States, Venezuela, and Vietnam!

If your country is not listed, and you know you have craiglist cities, send us an email and let us know.  Also, feel free to leave any comments and/or suggestions.

Have fun!

The latest Pointless Corp project is by far our most destructive and menacing endeavor. Tweets of Fury lets you battle your Twitter nemesis in a Rock-Scissors-Paper duel. You and your opponent will face off in a best-2-out-of-3 match and we predict your hands will be sweating by Round 2.  Your initial challenge to your enemy is tweeted publicly. The battle happens privately on the TOF site.  And the next thing the twitter-sphere will see is a tweet from the loser … a tweet that was written by the WINNER (cue ominous music). To the world it looks like any other tweet.

Do you use twitter to promote your personal brand? Is it a big part of your professional networking strategy? THEN DON’T PLAY TWEETS OF FURY. We can attest that the thrill of the battle will tempt you. But this application is best suited to daredevil fun-lovers who have little to lose.

We had a great time building TOF, but we did it pretty quickly and so, it’s still a little rough around the edges. We are going go to be cleaning up the design/codes over the next couple of weeks and hopefully adding a couple new features.  Meanwhile, we’d love to hear from anyone playing the game about their experience. Send your comments, suggestions, and/or hate mail to support@tweetsoffury.com. We’ll take all ideas under advisement. Then we will CRUSH YOU in a TOF battle. Look out!

With HeyCraig, you enter an item you are interested in purchasing, followed by your email, and your location. HeyCraig will keep an eye on Craigslist, and email you when items you want are available. It’s that easy.

We wanted to keep the interface as simple as possible, and we’re busy adding new features to the application as we speak. We’re always looking for feedback so feel free to post your ideas in the comments.

Here are some testimonials for you to enjoy from people already using HeyCraig:

“Before heycraig, I had no idea how much crap there was up on craigslist.
Now, I’m notified within an hour whenever the crap I’m looking for becomes
available. As a result, my acquisition of more crap has increased
dramatically. Thanks, heycraig!” – Brian Williams from Falls Church, VA

“heycraig helps me find what i need without getting distracted”
… “by ridiculous things like missed connections and free dirt and adult employment” – Kendra, from Chicago, IL

“I can’t get onto Heycraig tonight. You haven’t taken it down, have you? I NEED it!!!” – Michael, from the Woods of NC (editors note: We were having some server problems, sorry folks!)

Happy Craigslisting!
http://heycraigapp.com

All of the source code for this example is available from gist.github.com. Go ahead and open up that gist link to follow along.

In our HTML page, we include two JavaScript files. The first is a FeedStitch group, in JSON format, as evidenced by the .json extension. Notice that we’re adding a variable, feedstitch, as a parameter. When you use do this, FeedStitch modifies its output to assign the JSON object to the variable we name. You can also specify the name of a JavaScript function using the callback parameter; if you do this, FeedStitch modifies its output to call that callback function with the JSON text as an argument. This technique, sometimes called JSONP, allows you to simply include the FeedStitch script and have a JavaScript object automatically prepared with the contents of the group.

(This would be a good place to mention that this technique allows the remote site (in this case, FeedStitch) to theoretically inject any content into your web page. At FeedStitch, we are only interested in good, not evil, so we will never intentionally use this functionality to do evil things. But you should still proceed thus informed.)

The second JavaScript file does all the work of inserting the group content into the page. Using the standard DOM methods, we create a list and populate it with entries from our group. This is only one way to do it, and it’s frankly the hard way; the easy way would be to use jQuery and its JSON parser. Keith Muth covers using jQuery on the Viget Inspire blog, if you’re interested in seeing a different approach.

Since we didn’t write any CSS, this looks plain, but our group is there on the page:

This demonstration is pretty basic, but given that parsing the JSON produces a full-fledged JavaScript object, there are all kinds of possibilities, like widgets, desktop clients, or anything else. If JavaScript’s not your language of choice, JSON parsers are available for nearly every modern programming language. Give it a try and see what you can do with FeedStitch and JSON!

If you’re a speaker, you know that standing in front of a crowd isn’t half as hard as getting critical feedback on your talks. People who disliked it will generally remain silent or opt for a snarky tweet or two. Those close to you will tell you “You did great!” no matter how poorly you performed. Getting the feedback you need to improve can be the most difficult part of the whole process. 

Exactly.

While he liked the concept and UI, Rick found the LinkedIn validation step to feel a bit spammy, which is consistent with feedback we’ve been getting from other folks.  I commented on his post to try to clarify (updates to your LinkedIn profile can be temporary — we aren’t begging for links / mentions on LinkedIn!) but suffice it to say we’re working on changes to that part of the process to make it less scary.  

Keep the great feedback coming!