I fell head over heals for a girl. I thought about her way too often, missed her way more than a normal person ought to, and was pretty much in a constant state of love-induced sugar shock. I didn't want to seem overzealous or desperate, so I tried to play it cool -- and yet, the impulse to post embarrassing, saccharine love quotes to Facebook was overwhelming (I am but only a dork, after all).<p>So I did what any self-respecting geek would do in my position: I computed a SHA-2 hash of her name and put it in that weird little box thingy on the left hand side of my Facebook profile. It provided just the right balance of self expression and social tact. I was happy.<p>I liked the idea so much that I decided I would wrap it in a small application and dedicate it to the object of my dorkitude. As I knew it would take a few weeks to flesh out and things were (shockingly) starting to work out between this lovely individual and myself, I thought that the final product might make for a cute little way of sharing my feelings. The idea of tiny "cupidcode" links spreading across facebook and the twitters -- each rooted in my nerdy affection for this particular young lady -- seemed like a terribly powerful way to say "I really think you're great". And because I suck at music and writing, it was pretty much my only option.<p>Fast forward a few weeks, and cupidco.de is done. It's probably not well suited for the sorts of folks that read YC so I hope you don't mind me sharing my link with you. My hope is that this post will kick-start the spread of a few cupidcodes 'cross the nets so that my crush (who I've been seeing now for about two weeks!) may casually stumble upon one while checking her facebook or reading a blog and discover just how special she is to me.<p>tl;dr -- fell in love with a chick, wanted to do something special for her, suck at everything else, so I built her a webapp.
Just philosophizing here... Falling head over heels for a girl without knowing if it will be reciprocated is not much unlike building a beautiful webapp without a concrete business model planned yet.<p>All the best on both.
About a year ago, I wrote an iPhone app to propose to my girlfriend. She told me that she didn't want a ring so I had to come up with something unique. It worked -- we got married 3 months ago! :)
I did something similar once...just with a less happy ending. This girl had a dream to be a guest on Oprah, and had an idea for a mobile app that just might get her there. I was in love with her and thought that it would be a very thoughtful Christmas present to make the app for her. She was a designer, so she just had to style it and launch.<p>I built the app over a few weeks by sleeping an hour less each night, ultimately giving it to her for Christmas. She loved it. Unfortunately, things went way off course between the two of us. I don't think the grand gesture helped. It's a lot of pressure to put on a person.<p>If I had to do it over again, I probably would, but I sure as hell wouldn't have let her go at the end.<p>We don't talk anymore and she has let the project go. C'est la vie.
I'm sure you're not like this, but there's a worry to keep in mind as users of such an app:<p>There was a meme app like this that went around on LiveJournal a few years ago. It seemed all cool and sweet, but they announced a few months later that they'd let you come back and pay them $5 to see what the crushes actually were.<p>Lots of people paid to see who had crushes on them. I'm sure they made a killing.<p>In this case, imagine rampant capitalism, and that people who visit the link (who aren't the submitting IP) get to see a "Shhhh: Pay $10 to see who this person has a crush on."<p>In theory, from a technical perspective, it may not be stored on the back-end, but you have to trust t3mp3st isn't storing the actual names.
Your story is cool and all, but I'm a bit confused about your app. Normally the selling point of crush-management webapps (over the alternative, i.e. 'just effing tell the person already') is that your crush won't be revealed unless they indicate, on their own, that the feeling is mutual. With cupidcodes there's essentially no secrecy, because anyone who visits a cupidcode page can just type in their own name and see if it's them. Or, honestly, someone could just try all of the code-maker's Facebook friends and at 10 guesses a day it would take a few weeks at most to crack the code. Is there some other social problem this solves that I'm not thinking of?
I love the design. (Lovebirds on the computer - awesome). The process was confusing to me. I didn't know what the goal was. I used descriptions from here to figure it out.<p>I would emphasize the flirting component more. It's a great idea: send a flirt anonymously, with your own code, and then you can safely see if the feelings are mutual.
When I saw this post earlier today I initially didn't know what to make of it. So I decided to ask my girlfriend what she thought of it.<p>She said "why doesn't he just tell her?", Thus, we clearly don't understand the purpose of the application. She said "it seems pointless".
What a brilliant idea. This has already ben said in another comment but I have to say that I'm impressed with the no login system.<p>You just need to make sure there is still a way to see what is happening if you clear the cookie cache.
The "secret page" needs to say the name of the person I have a secret crush on so I remember who it was when I created it. I mean, if it's not the current Maxim cover girl, then I may forget.
Cool!<p>Once I had written some javascript to encrypt/decrypt mails between me and my girlfriend...<p>Brandon, Andre and Sharon might get a lot of spam soon, they should avoid email addresses as plaintext in the source.<p>Just an advice.
I don't know whether it is by design but it answers: "You've cracked the cupidcode" almost for any input.<p>edit: Oh, I see: "The system will tolerate names within an edit-distance of 2,"