OhBoard

If you read my manifesto piece for OhBoard, you will notice something different than what you’ve seen before. I listed the benefits, but not the cool features. I showed the screenshot, but not the fancy technology. I pitched in 1 short sentence, not a long paragraph.

Most of the time, when you are seeing a new startup launch, or a new app announcement, you’ll mainly hear something like this:

We use some of the latest technology such as HTML5/CSS3/jQuery/Node.js/RoR/Django/MongoDB/[an open source framework] and build this very cool app called xyz in 10 months that allows you to share random pictures/upload funny videos/shorten long URLs/tell your current location/any combinations of each. You will be able to login from your computer or your mobile smartphone, and you can see in real-time what your friends are doing. We’ve integrated our app to different social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Gowalla, Flickr, Tumblr, Posterous, and 25 more. The app is free and you can try it here. If you love our app, feel free to tell your friends and tweet about it! We need some serious tractions. :)

That was what I did with OneExtraLap (my strategically-failed social quizzing app). And it was proven that it should not be the way to go. Most of the time, because you are so much into what you are building yourself, you are over-familiarizing with it. You know everything about it, and you naturally tend to think other people do as well. But they actually don’t. When they see a giant piece of text of what features you have, they will be lost immediately because they don’t even know what your app is fundamentally. Right now, I feel like my points of view on things I built are still different than others (which I hope I can improve over time), so I decided to take a different approach: show visitors screenshots. I love screenshots. It is so direct that it won’t change if you build the app or if you are still not sure what it is. I think that is the best way to demonstrate your products.

I also want to talk about the excessive use on specific technology in a pitch. For normal people, they don’t care what technology the app is using. It does not matter if it is built on jQuery or normal JavaScript, as long as it works, and both works great! For geeks, you think it’s cooler to use jQuery because it’s simpler and faster. But ultimately, you won’t stop using it just because they don’t use jQuery anymore. Recently, headlines like HTML5-based xyz popped up a lot and received a good amount of attention. It’s really great that people do care about the innovation, but I think it should not be the attention-grabber. As Jason Fried said, focus on things that won’t change in 10 years. HTML10 will probably come out in the year of 2020, and HTML5 will be massively outdated at that time. But the goal you are trying to reach (e.g. save 1 hour of your customer’s time each day by doing xyz) will still remain the same. Yes, OhBoard is written based on HTML5/CSS3/jQuery, but I don’t want it to be on the headline.

To conclude that off, I personally think simplicity when explaining things is very important. Just tell them the information they needed to take your designated action. When you buy a physical whiteboard, you want to know what does it look/feel like and how much is it. You certainly don’t want to know what the raw materials are, since you either don’t care or you don’t even know what they are after you hear them. And that’s what I do with OhBoard, hopefully it will be successful, and I’ll share with you guys soon on how the results turn out.

Hello everyone. I am Stephen Ou, the creator behind OhBoard. For those who don’t know me, I am known for developing several other (somehow-got-popular) web applications, including iTunes Instant, TwtRoulette and OneExtraLap. For those who do know me, you will hear a lot more from me, because I will be blogging very frequently here about what I learn.

So I’m sure you have this question in mind: What exactly is OhBoard?

OhBoard is a simple, zero-distraction whiteboard app for Google Chrome. It comes with 4 buttons and a blank canvas. And it costs $3.99.

I am going to show you 5 screenshots of what it looks like and what it can do:

Some simple use-cases:

• Fire up OhBoard to drop down a cool idea.
• Mockup a website in exactly the size you want.
• Solve a complicated math equation (no more scratch paper!).
• Make pretty graph/drawing for presentations.
• Write down important reminders in CAPS.
• Doodle when you are bored at home.
• Let me know if you use it in other ways!

Now you probably wonder and say, “I already had a whiteboard at home, I don’t need one in my computer.” I think you do need one, you just haven’t realized why yet.

I broke it down and list 10 characteristics physical whiteboard has:

• It has limit. There’s only one possible surface to write on. Old drawing has to be physically disappeared in order for new drawing to be created.
• Sometimes it doesn’t fit the size you want it to be. If you are sketching a website mockup on a whiteboard, everything becomes proportionated.
• It requires a special-made writing utensil, called marker, to utilize the whiteboard. The marker is not physically attached to the whiteboard, which means it can be lost (or worse, stolen).
• Marker smells. Barely anyone likes it.
• Marker runs out. You have to purchase a new one when it does.
• There’s also a thing called cap in each marker. If it is not correctly positioned, the marker can become useless quickly.
• It requires an eraser (sometimes I use tissues), which most of the time can’t clean the surface entirely – little marks are left on the board.
• When writing/drawing, you need to pay close attention to prevent your hands from erasing previous work unnoticeably.
• The material includes paper, plastic, and melamine. They aren’t so environmental-friendly.
• Staples sells it for $15.99. Office Depot sells it for $29.27. Walmart sells it for $8.55.

These are all the problems I, you, and probably everybody, have encountered. They are real problems, but they never get your attention. The reason being is they are way too common. You think they will never be solved, so let’s not worry about them. Wrong, OhBoard will be solving them. And here are some benefits of OhBoard vs. physical whiteboard:

• It has no limit. And everything is saved automatically.
• The canvas covers up the whole content section. You can make your website mockup exactly the way you want it to look like.
• It requires a mouse, or a trackpad. But you will have one if you are using a computer. And you are using a computer if you are on OhBoard.
• A mouse/trackpad doesn’t smell.
• A mouse/trackpad doesn’t run out. (Well, a wireless one does, but the price vs. usage ratio is extremely low.)
• A mouse/trackpad doesn’t need a cap/cover/protection mask/security guard.
• An eraser is not required. An undo button is already included in OhBoard.
• Your hand will never smear the computer screen. If you do, your drawing won’t be erased either.
• The material only includes code and pixels, which will not harm the environment.
• I sell it for $3.99.

You’ve know all the great things about OhBoard, and hopefully think it’s perfect and flawless. But I am completely honest and I want to tell you a little bit on how a physical whiteboard is better than OhBoard.

• You can touch it, hold it, move it, throw it, catch it, bend it, and even kiss it.
• Writing/Drawing with a marker can produce more organized things, sinced you are trained to do so for your entire life.
• You can see what’s on the board by turning your head, not opening the app. (Not sure if that would cause neck pain though.)

If you think these are more important, OhBoard is probably not for you, although it would be great to give it a try and see if your opinion changes.

Otherwise, if you are ready, the OhBoard app is available on Chrome Web Store for $3.99.

Grab it while it’s not too late! :-)