# Your Thoughts on CubeTimer 2.0



## cubetimer (Sep 15, 2012)

Hey guys, my name is Dan - I'm the creator of CubeTimer.com

When I first made it, it was a quick hack I put together for myself. I didn't start with the intention of making it usable for other people, so I took a lot of shortcuts when building it. Over time, some of those shortcuts have become real problems since the site became so popular, and I'm finally getting around to doing something about it.

I realize there are a TON of online timers out there, but I truly believe I'm building something much better. The main reason this hasn't happened sooner, and the primary reason I'm making this post, is that "spare time" is hard to come by for a business-owning father of four 

I'm trying to find a way to create the best FREE online timer available, but also offer some premium features for a price. I do this stuff for a living, and I know I can build something you'll enjoy. Without getting too much into details, I just wanted to pose the question:

_*Would you be willing to pay for a really great online timer?*_

What kind of features would you be willing to pay a premium for? I'm not looking for a particular response - this is more of a fact finding mission. I'm just trying to find a way to fund my desire to build something awesome. Share your thoughts, ask me questions, etc.


Thanks for your time!
Dan


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## Hunter (Sep 15, 2012)

cubetimer said:


> pay



Why pay when there are free timers?


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## Stefan (Sep 15, 2012)

Hunter said:


> Why pay when there are free timers?



To support the development? Some of us actually have to make a living, not everybody lives with their mom who pays everything.

Also, would you not pay a bit for something that you like better?


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## Mollerz (Sep 15, 2012)

Almost nobody would be willing to pay most likely. Pretty much every decent and commonly used timer out there is free, qqTimer, Prisma, csTimer, PPT, jjTimer. However, this is obviously a very broad statement considering I actually don't know what the benefits of paying are, and how the timer works. I'd have to see what it looks like, maybe give a trial for a few weeks to let people grasp how it is?


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## PandaCuber (Sep 15, 2012)

I pay would for something that has achievements. You know, you login or whatever and you get "awards" and compete against other cubers and what not. 
I say this because its working pretty well for Xbox and Playstation. 
It would kinda make cubers practice more to beat their own times. 

If its not complex and fun, I probably wont pay for it.


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## cubetimer (Sep 16, 2012)

I think "complex" and "fun" are at odds with one another.

I'd also venture to say that there are a lot of timers with a lot of features, but that a lot of those features aren't used much. Something clean, attractive, accurate, easy to use, etc.

I want to be fun, but not complex. I like simple.

As for payment - we all pay for things we enjoy. We've all bought Rubik's Cubes, right? We buy food when we can have a sandwich for free at home. I just want to offer something that's worth it.


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## PandaCuber (Sep 16, 2012)

FUNFUNFUN!


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## Hunter (Sep 16, 2012)

PandaCuber said:


> achievements.



Yes.


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## antoineccantin (Sep 16, 2012)

PandaCuber said:


> I pay would for something that has achievements. You know, you login or whatever and you get "awards" and compete against other cubers and what not.
> I say this because its working pretty well for Xbox and Playstation.
> It would kinda make cubers practice more to beat their own times.
> 
> If its not complex and fun, I probably wont pay for it.



http://twisttheweb.com/


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## cubetimer (Sep 16, 2012)

Leaderboards are something I've thought about, but of course it would be totally on your honor. There aren't any good ways to validate people aren't posting fake times. Achievements is an interesting idea I actually haven't heard yet, but I'm thinking it may have the same problem. What can you achieve with times that are totally on your honor? I'd like to know what you have in mind...


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## PandaCuber (Sep 16, 2012)

People cheating really is a problem.
Of course there will be those nubs that cheat.
This is the problem.


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## StachuK1992 (Sep 16, 2012)

Yes. I'd pay a flat fee of 20$ for a really good timer that had every feature that I wanted.
Problem is, there aren't enough people here that respect the work that goes into it or cares about the few additional features.

My suggestion to you is to not expect a ton of profit from this. In fact, don't expect any. If the community were bigger, I could totally see it being a thing. 

This community (unfortunately, in some ways) is a purely social "here's what I made for the community! You like?" rather than "I made something professional and it'd be nice if I didn't waste many hours doing so."


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## cubetimer (Sep 16, 2012)

StachuK - I've found that to be true, too. Cubers tend to be very young and don't realize it's hard to make anything of quality for free. I appreciate your input. I'm going to give this a shot one way or another, and we'll see what happens. Just trying to gauge the level of interest right now.


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## TheCuber23 (Sep 16, 2012)

Can't wait to see CubeTimer 2.0!!


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## Lucas Garron (Sep 16, 2012)

Many people would. Many people wouldn't. I would pay *if* it was a really good timer.

Problem is, this is not a large enough market that you can truly make it a worthwhile timer. My advice would actually be to try to do something else, maybe related. We have a *lot* of timers, and a lot of people working on them. There are other cubing projects that haven't been attempted, and perhaps you could work on something related that isn't just useful for cubers.


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## StachuK1992 (Sep 16, 2012)

I'd pay you 10$ to go through all of the aCube source code, comment it, and tell me how everything works 

Porting this to C# is no fun when you don't know what's happening 50% of the time.


EDIT - you know what, raise this to 20$. If it's a good, thorough explanation. Please? :s


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## cubetimer (Sep 17, 2012)

Thanks for the input guys. As said before, I'll be working to redo this either way - but some of the responses of adjusted my thoughts on how much effort I might be able to warrant putting into it. I recognize it's a hobby, not a living. Not going to make much money here, but it's still fun to build and gratifying to see people use it. If all goes according to plan, CubeTimer may not be the most feature rich app out there, but I aim to have it be the best balance of simplicity, attractiveness, and most commonly needed/used features.

But - time will tell how good my aim is


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## samchoochiu (Sep 17, 2012)

Stefan said:


> To support the development? Some of us actually have to make a living, not everybody lives with their mom who pays everything.
> 
> Also, would you not pay a bit for something that you like better?



are you implying that Hunter lives with his mom who pays everything?


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## Stefan (Sep 18, 2012)

samchoochiu said:


> are you implying that Hunter lives with his mom who pays everything?



Are you implying that he doesn't?


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## zebra (Sep 23, 2012)

I'd pay $10 but I'm not sure about $20...


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## Hunter (Sep 23, 2012)

Stefan said:


> To support the development? Some of us actually have to make a living, not everybody lives with their mom who pays everything.
> 
> Also, would you not pay a bit for something that you like better?



I'm not sure one should try to make a living off a Rubiks cube timer.


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## ianography (Sep 23, 2012)

I would pay

Buuut I only have 2 dollars and 75 cents.

So that's a bit of a predicament.

Also, if you could make a timer that was actually good for mobile, yeah I would probably pay.


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## rjohnson_8ball (Oct 21, 2012)

Dan, thanks. I've been using Cubetimer more than qqtimer or iitimer because separating the various puzzle results is so important to me. If your new timer had all the options I want for my iPhone or iPad, I would pay for it.

Options I want:

Selecting puzzles of type "BLD" should assume no WCA inspection limit and display results as "fulltime[memotime]".

More than 4000 bytes of results should be allowed. One idea is to have separate cookies for each puzzle type.

Add an option to display a START/STOP button for devices like iPhone or iPad that do not have a spacebar. The timer should start with "button release" and stop with "button push".

In addition to allowing individual times to be deleted, it would be nice to allow entering a time by hand.

Like qqtimer, the best of 5 or 12 solves should indicate and ignore the (slowest) and (fastest) time. I think you were doing that already, right? The 5 or 12 times should be prepared for an easy copy/paste operation, for example to Jon's Rubik's Cube Sunday Contest (if that site ever comes back).

Just as you have had it, the text size for the Timer should be large enough for an audience to see. Also, each single quote (or "prime") mark in the scramble should be easy to see, perhaps by using a fixed width font or by inserting a space before the quote.

One way to get money for it is to simply ask for a $5 or $10 donation, especially if a donation removes advertisements. Assuming it is usable on any computer or mobile phone, you may get many donations.


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## rahulkadukar (Oct 21, 2012)

Stefan said:


> To support the development? Some of us actually have to make a living, not everybody lives with their mom who pays everything.
> 
> Also, would you not pay a bit for something that you like better?



1. Why would someone pay for something when it can be had for free. A lot of timers have almost every required feature and their source code can be changed such that the user can make any change that they want.
2. You can make a living from a lot of things. The fact that somebody does not ask for some money for such things does not imply that they live with their mom.


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## blokpoi (Oct 21, 2012)

rjohnson_8ball said:


> Dan, thanks. I've been using Cubetimer more than qqtimer or iitimer because separating the various puzzle results is so important to me. If your new timer had all the options I want for my iPhone or iPad, I would pay for it.
> 
> Options I want:
> 
> ...


What about using the home button at the bottom as the spacebar for ipads and iphones?


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## tim (Oct 21, 2012)

blokpoi said:


> What about using the home button at the bottom as the spacebar for ipads and iphones?



Can't be done.


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## blokpoi (Oct 21, 2012)

tim said:


> Can't be done.



Oh, why not? I thought there were some games that disable it and put an exit button on the screen if you wanted to exit, because they use the home button.


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## NevinsCPH (Oct 21, 2012)

I would pay an affordable price, 10~20, IF it has experience and level up like RPGs. Please forgive my inappropriate imagination.


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## tim (Oct 21, 2012)

blokpoi said:


> Oh, why not? I thought there were some games that disable it and put an exit button on the screen if you wanted to exit, because they use the home button.



We're talking about a web page. Every stupid javascript-haxx0r could render the home button useless. Of course it's not possible.
And even if we talked about native games, it'd still be a very stupid idea to abuse the home button, since it's the only way to close that particular app.


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## rjohnson_8ball (Oct 22, 2012)

blokpoi said:


> Oh, why not? I thought there were some games that disable it and put an exit button on the screen if you wanted to exit, because they use the home button.



It would make more sense to offer a START/STOP button and permit the Home button to work normally than to change the Home button behavior and add an Exit button. I recommend the Start/Stop button be optional, for devices without a spacebar.

By the way, with the old Cubetimer, I would toggle on the countdown sound and set the timer to 10 or 15 seconds, but then I would need to click the window background so the selection focus would not be on those items. Otherwise pushing the spacebar would toggle the countdown sound or bring up the timer selection list. Is there a way to remove selection focus when done setting preferences?


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## frici (Oct 22, 2012)

This cube timer I found is optimized for mobile browsers: http://ruwix.com/online-rubiks-stopwatch-timer/mobile-rubiks-cubetimer-iphone-android-stopwatch/
It's pretty simple, just the basic functions like best time, scramble generator etc. What do you think about it? I think it's just enough for a mobile timer.


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## collinbxyz (Oct 22, 2012)

Sorry if someone said this before, since I only read the first page, but I might pay to track my progress, in addition to racing against friends. Profiles similar to WCA would be nice.

Just a few ideas.


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## SketchCuber (Oct 23, 2012)

I would also like a way to track my progress plus leader boards.


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