What is Pownce? You can find out all about it at http://pownce.com
Pownce began as my hobby project, playing around with sending messages and media to my friends. I was also learning Django, a new web framework for Python. I really wanted to learn a new language and develop a web application from scratch. My friends Daniel Burka and Kevin Rose were thinking of their own ideas for a new website and after chatting we decided that together we could make something pretty cool.
We also thought that a desktop application would be really nice for Pownce. After hearing about the Adobe Apollo (now AIR) project, we thought it might work well with our application. Our friend Shawn Allen created the sweet Pownce desktop application.
We’re working with several new technologies: Django, Adobe AIR, and Amazon’s S3 for our file storage. Since we’d like to keep Pownce running smoothly, it’s invitation only right now. I really don’t want to lose my bet with Kevin and have to wear a shirt that says, “My website crashed, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” So if you’d like to join Pownce, please enter your email address on the homepage and we’ll get you an invite as soon as we can.
Thanks to Daniel, Kevin, and Shawn! A big thanks to all our Alpha testers and friends who helped us out with Pownce! You all rock.
43 Comments
Christopher Finke
Two bugs: requesting an invite shows “Ack! There’s a bug in our codes,” and ironically, the bugs e-mail address is malformed as “bugs@.com”.
Leah Culver
Christopher - Yeah the site is dying a bit. The bugs email address will be fixed asap. Thanks!
Jesse Kane
Yes! This looks awesome Leah. Just singed up for the next round of invites.
Kitta
Twitter is powncing all over it.
I sent off a invite request, can’t wait to check it out.
Josh
Interesting as always, and hope to see you post more often.
kevin
tell us more about the django side of things - this will be a eventually (fingers crossed for you guys) become a huge Django public site which is great to see.
so maybe a post regarding tipcs, tricks, lessons learned, etc?
also, nice name for the project. best of luck.
Jeremy Osterhouse
One nitpicky thing:
on http://pownce.com/about/
The links to Danga Interactive and famfamfam are wrong.
I like the design. Good luck on scaling!
James McEwan
I’ve thrown up a few screen shots here : http://onezom.com/2007/06/27/pownce-a-quick-rundown/
Alberto Tellez
Hello team!
Trying to inform you on an error in the website I got the email bounced because of the bugs@pownce.com not being active! ;-P
It was the same bug (about page links) as Jeremy Osterhouse wrote a minute ago …
Best,
Alberto
PS: The info@pownce.com account is unactive as well, hmmm, resorting to blog comments hehe
Joe Tao
I just blogged about the fact that this site is now up and running but no one I know seems to have any news about it. I guess I run in the wrong circles but what can you expect with one foot nailed to the floor?
Anyhow, I’m hoping to get an invite soon, I visited pownce dot com and left my email address.
Last but certainly not least, I’d like to wish you luck on your new venture Leah. It must feel pretty amazing to be on the founders side of a startup and to see all your hard work begin to come together.
ciao - Joe Tao
Brian C
This application looks great- i’m tired of copy-paste-e-mailing links and other stuff to my friends. What kind of server capacity did you launch with (100 users, 1000 users, 10k users? (And how long til i get my invite!)
Tamar Weinberg
Looks pretty nice. I also signed up. Can’t wait to try it out. Congrats.
Rich
Lookin good
Joe Tao
Leah - Tara Hunt sez she needs to get a hold of you about speaking at a conference, really. no need or desire to have this comment actually posted just passing on some info
Eric
Cool stuff Leah. How about an invite code?
Hostimal
Thanks for how is made Pownce on http://pownce.com/about/
Benji
Hello, cool site, nice programming. Like Jeremy said the links are wrong but also the email address of info@ and bugs@ bounced. Dont have an invite but hope to receive one soon :).
Igor A
The site looks really great, can’t wait to check it all out. Congrats for doing a very good job!
Jeff Croft
Looks like a great start, Leah! Glad to hear you guys are liking Django!
gastu
nice design.
invite code to me
ralph dagza
It looks amazing, Im hoping to get my invite soon
robert
from what i can see the service looks very nice.
however i expect a million messages to come your way via your blog begging for invites soon.
I won’t be doing that though i signed up for the next round.
Seriously though good work.
robert
oh i forgot to mention i like the name megatechtronium it made me smile.
reminded me of the simpsons compu global hyper mega net? i think that’s what it was. anyways though back to work i go.
Jason
hey there, nice blog. just read about this new service. i plan to check it out.
btw, what inspired the name pownce?
Mike Downey
Leah,
You and your team have done a great job. I’m loving the app so far. Shawn also did a very nice job with the AIR app. Congratulations to all of you!
Mike Downey, Adobe
Jamie
Since no one has actually come out and asked yet, think you could send me an invite Leah?
P.S You’re super hot! If that makes difference…haha
Zed Gagne
sounds interesting! how do i get an invite? maybe from you?
Eric Atkins
It’s famfamFAM.com. Not famfam.com.
O_0
Joao
Congrats Leah!
Christopher
Interesting. I gave my email address.
Leah > Knowing that the software has been (globally) finalized, and released to public testers. Why is it still considered as an alpha-version? I was “working” (just thinking… Anyway) about how to reduce the leakage of size on the servers [it’s really frustating not to be able to say things in english] . Maybe an option to ask users how much time they want to keep the files available.
What about an “idea-box” on the site? This idea came since i’ll quickly get annoyed to have to go through this (we)blog to bring my ideas to the dev. team.
Aiden Bordner
This is cool, Flex and Django are both frameworks I’ve been interested in exploring. I like the concept here and am really eager to try it out.
Best of luck, guys, you’ve done a nice job. Big nods to Daniel for the design. The website is pretty darn usable.
Paul Smith
Leah, great work on Pownce, looks very, very cool. Here’s some unsolicited advice as you try to manage the increasing load: one thing I noticed is that your href’s are for the most part sans the trailing slash: in Django, that’s significant, because the CommonMiddleware will add it in the request cycle and send a 301 redirect back to the client. That’s unnecessary extra HTTP load that can be avoided by amending your templates (or your get_absolute_url()’s) to include the trailing slash (or you can set APPEND_SLASH=False in your settings.py, but that’s less Djangoish). Cheers, and good luck! (Also great to see a non-Y-chromosome-havin’ lead developer in a high-profile web project …
Henrik Lied
This is great, Leah! I’m currently on a rather large project using Django myself. What do you think of the framework? Has it been fulfilling your needs?
Keep up the great work, I’m looking forward to getting an invite.
Jas Dhaliwal
Hi!
Well done for launching the project. Now please give us UK supporters of yours an invite to try out pownce?
jasnmb
I haven’t received my invite yet, but I’m wondering if you could explain why I would use Pownce instead of just good ‘ol email?
Chris Nixon
Looks great Leah. I’m keen to give it a go. It’s nice to see a well designed, pretty piece of software for the PC. Good work.
Wilson Miner
Congrats on the Django-powered launch. Looks great!
Jonathan Hunt
Looks really cool!
I’ll check it out.
wow
why do you another barrier for sending files to your friends when tehre are things like AIM and yahoo? waste
Kiran
Suggestion: Imbed images within, so it’s much better than getting an email to a link to a note with a link to an image.
Alex
I love you, Leah!
That is, I love your geekiness.
Kevin Doyle
Leah, Have you thought about the idea of groups? It would be nice to be able to use the service to not only have “friends” but have group messages too. I envision belonging to say a linux group and having any linux updates posted to my page.
Just a thought.
Robert
hey i already sent you guys an email but i think your bussy so next try over here
i can’t use my account cause i can’t enter the “home” page
i think it’s because my user name has a number in it? [6grad]