Geckoboard launched into private beta last week. It's very much a minimum viable product in that it's a functioning product but there's still lots to do. It's bootstrapped by me with the design and development outsourced to companies in the UK and Belarus respectively.<p>Geckoboard is SaaS status board that uses other services' APIs to collect and summarise key business information and display it in a way that's easy to understand and interpret.<p>Data from web analytics, server monitoring, project management, email marketing, CRM/helpdesk etc shown together on one dashboard to give a near real-time status on the health of all aspects of your business.<p>At the moment we integrate with about a dozen different API but more are being worked on right now and even more on the backlog. I'd love to hear your thoughts and/or suggestions.<p>EDIT. Signup instructions:
We're in private beta but you can bypass the private bit by using the invite code "HN" on the signup page (don't include quotes).
Link: http://geckoboard.com
I'm trying to add a Google Account for my Apps email, and the oAuth connector seems to be broken.<p>Here's the output:<p>Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'OAuthException2' with message 'Request failed with code 400: The token is invalid. ' in /home/geckoboa/public_html/system/libraries/oauth/OAuthRequester.php:125 Stack trace: #0 /home/geckoboa/public_html/system/models/gmail.class.php(195): OAuthRequester->doRequest(0, Array, Array, Array) #1 /home/geckoboa/public_html/system/controllers/oauth.class.php(76): GmailModel->getAccessToken(Array, '4%2FUvLUOZSga3M...', 'CVoQvrifDsxjv%2...') #2 /home/geckoboa/public_html/system/base/controller.class.php(82): OauthController->response() #3 /home/geckoboa/public_html/system/base/base.class.php(80): Controller->execute() #4 /home/geckoboa/public_html/system/base/base.class.php(50): Base::routing() #5 /home/geckoboa/public_html/index.php(21): Base::createWebApplication('/home/geckoboa/...') #6 {main} thrown in /home/geckoboa/public_html/system/libraries/oauth/OAuthRequester.php on line 125<p>This is on Snow Leopard and Firefox 3.6.6
We're in private beta but you can bypass the private bit by using the invite code "HN" on the signup page (don't include quotes).<p>Link: <a href="http://geckoboard.com" rel="nofollow">http://geckoboard.com</a>
This is great! I had some penned out drawings of something like this but never really took it anywhere. As a developer what I would really like to see is some GitHub/Google Code integration - I want to know when a commit is pushed etc.<p>Some other ideas:<p>- RSS feed block<p>- "Pings" - when a block is updated flash it yellow and fade to the original colour over 5-10 minutes.<p>- "Workspaces" - separate dashboards that suit different uses, for example a build indicator, site-status and other monitors on one, support requests and tweets on another.<p>- Custom components - having a developer ecosystem would top this off.<p>I could see myself using this on a spare monitor or TV if some more components were available.
create a demo site. personally i wouldn't start entering passwords before having seen a demo and being convinced that it'll be useful.<p>also a votebox (as in dropbox.com/votebox/) to suggest widgets would be nice.
Great work,very slick. Out of interest, can you provide any information about the system architecture?<p>Things i noticed:<p>* do you really need my pingdom password?
* drop-down in pingdom setup process does not work on the iPad (can see the options, but cannot scroll)
* I wasn't really clear on what the fields did on the last stage of the pingdom setup process
* The text in the text boxes could do with being lighter, it doesn't really have enough contrast in comparison to the background and is hard to see
* I am asked to choose the size of the widget without really knowing what is going to be appearing in it. I do nit have enough information to make the decision. Maybe always make the small type, with the option to enlarge later? Would shorten the process a little
* nice work on the 2-step signup (getting my email then asking for the other information once the user has brought into the process)<p>Anyway, great work! We hope to be in your position soon with our startup, <a href="http://playnice.ly" rel="nofollow">http://playnice.ly</a> </shamelessplug> :)
You need to go a bit deeper on Google Analytics. I can't get trendlines, just numbers, and no ability to see goals. (This probably goes for a lot of analytics packages, but we're using GA.)<p>Also, Flowtown and Wufoo would be nice - I believe they both have Webhooks, so it shouldn't be that difficult to add.<p>That said, this is exactly something I've wanted for quite a while; congrats!
Very nice UI. One big improvement could be a small graphic with instruction when you get to the blank dashboard. At the moment it's looking a bit empty at first impression (and that matters!)<p>Maybe provide a desktop version which is just a shell for the online site? That is, using AIR or Prism or other?<p>Good luck, it looks like a great product.
It's beautiful. Great job!<p>It definitely needs those additional API's. And could you offer a simple full list of all the widgets upon signup, where you could checkbox the ones you want, instead of hunting one-by-one in a dialog? It would make it easier to get started.<p>But I would definitely use such a service. That'll do pig!
I had the exact same idea. When I saw panic's dashboard, I thought "Man, If I could make a script to do that for everyone, that would be awesome"<p>Granted I wanted to release mine as open source. Congrats man, It looks awesome :)<p>See if you cant find a way to get server uptime in there. Maybe with a script we throw on our server.
Oh, this is fantastic. I can definitely see myself using this, thanks!<p>One quick note: On the Beta sign up form there's a misspelling: "Acount" instead of "Account."
UI suggestion:<p>I'm in the "add widget" pop-up. Currently, I select a widget, then have to hit the green "select widget" button. I think that step could be eliminated? I actually went through the different service categories on the left, and for the ones that I wanted, I just clicked on the small gray box, and once I got the green dotted highlight, I thought that I had maybe added the widget.<p>Not a big deal. Just a thought.
This is really slick & feels especially solid, especially given that it's an MVP.<p>I'd love to see Clicky integration.<p>Also, thoughts on pricing? Flat rate, per widget, other?
5 second review:<p>I visited the site, read the headline (good job there), and then clicked the thumbnails to see larger images of the status board. It is very confusing that some of the images are snapshots of panels with an X in the upper right hand corner, but you have to click off the picture for it to close. Maybe make it so any click closes the picture?
I'd feel a lot more comfortable if I knew what you were doing with my Pingdom password (e.g. securely storing it), and if you used an input type="password" when entering it.<p>Also, I'd would be cool if I could choose to show only stats from Gmail with a certain label. That way I could show stats about unanswered ticket/support emails.
I really like this idea and the look and feel/usability of the app. I like it so much that it would be homepage if it had the metrics I needed, but it doesn't have them right now.<p>Here are the stats I want to see:
1) MailChimp - it only has campaigns. Right now I am more interested in seeing the number of people on a certain list
2) FeedBurner for my blog's RSS feed
3) Karma for various sites where I am active (like <a href="http://duckduckgo.com/karma.html" rel="nofollow">http://duckduckgo.com/karma.html</a>)
4) For twitter, I want to see number of tweets, replies, etc, not rotating tweets
5) Bit.ly (not sure if the API lets you do that though)
6) UserVoice
This is beautiful. I've just played with it for a few minutes. Only comment so far is have defaults wherever you can, instead of asking the user to fill in a value. For example, "label" for the email widget can be "email" as default instead of blank, so that it doesn't fail when i just want to add it quickly. I can always edit to relabel it. In a similar way, you could probably reduce the number of clicks it takes to add a widget.<p>Fantastic idea and pretty good execution so far. All the best!
This would be absolutely huge if you integrated with other affiliate networks(especially Linktrust and DirectTrack API).
I know a lot of affiliates who would pay good money to have all of their stats in one place. Your major competitor would be statsjunky.com, which is an expensive desktop based crap tool.
This looks fantastic, congratulations!<p>You might want to remove this weirdness at the bottom of the front page:
"Start GOOGLE ANALYTICS<--> End GOOGLE ANALYTICS<--> Start CHARTBEAT<--> End CHARTBEAT<--> Start ZENDESK<--> SupportEnd ZENDESK<-->"
Fantastic app! UI is particularly well done, great job.<p>Small number of currently present APIs definitely is a let down, but I suppose that will change soon?<p>I would love to have ability to create multiple "pages", for monitoring different projects - so that their widgets don't overlap.
I am not sure if it is possible (as my programming experience is very limited) but an API for this so, rather than continually having to provide support for other services, you outsource the development to the community!
I wanted to work on something similar so I'm very curious about the pricing of this app. If it's not what I expect I might consider trying to work on it with a different approach so it wouldn't be just a copy. :)
Wonderful! This is EXACTLY what I requested in a HN post here just a month ago: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1441770" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1441770</a>
Some weird behavior when I open a new browser and try to go to <my_account_name>.geckoboard.com. It would be nice if that went to a login page and then took me to my account.
That is awesome, both because it looks great and also because I was going to build something similar and now I don't have to!<p>If you could add Clicky and Recurly support I would be your best friend.
Great Work, we created our own custom Status Board a few weeks ago but this definitely rocks. Will be using this in the near future on other projects for sure! Great work.
Well done on launching! find the bootstrap/outsource combo very interesting - surely this is somewhat of a oxymoron What's your background if you don't mind me asking?
I know this isn't going to concern you TOO much, but I thought I'll add my comment anyway.<p>I'm on a Fedora X86_64 box running Firefox 3.0.11 (with no flash, but I don't think your site needs it anyway), and whenever I click the "Add a Widget" button, I get an error.<p>I provided the browser/OS details to help narrow the problem.<p>The screenshots make it look like it'll be a great app. Congrats on getting it out there.