The app is Web Roulette 0.1 and it’s out today for iPhone (free download). The basic idea is most of my ‘internet checking’ is mindlessly and semi-randomly bouncing back and forth between my favorite sites, hoping for something fresh. So what if there was a simple and fun browser built just for this? In Web Roulette you set up your favorite sites once, and just swipe through them. If you’re ever bored, you can shake for an interesting site drawn from a curated list. (This list isn’t infinite so shakes are somewhat limited, capped at 10 and ‘charged up’ by swiping through your sites.) We had some fun leaning into the innate dopamine of this internet checking ritual, similar to how we had with Clear and todo lists back in the day. So there’s some confetti, ascending chimes as you swipe through and haptics. Plus zero page load time since every shake and next swipe is precached. (Built in simple ad blocking too.) This form of checking the internet is muscle memory and almost subconscious when I’m at my Mac, but still a subpar experience on my phone. So we prototyped Web Roulette on the side over the past few weeks and decided to ship an MVP 0.1 while we continue cranking away on a sequel to our listing app Clear. (useclear.com) Was a lot of fun jamming on this one with lower stakes with @austinsarner, @dlanham and @tamas You can probably tell this app idea started as a bit of a joke but we think there’s something here so felt compelled to at least put it out there. Take it for a spin and hope you enjoy. |