I just launched a new site called TipBin. The tag line is "Share What You Know". The concept is incredibly simple, but I think it's also incredibly useful.
It's a place where anyone can share short simple tips about anything. Programming, cooking, dieting, business. Anything. Tips are tagged so they can be dynamically categorized and easily found. You can recommend, comment on, bookmark, aggregate, and email tips to your friends.
TipBin is my response to a theory I've had for a long time: everyone out there knows something most other people don't. Everyone is in to something, and whenever you're in to something, you uncover little tips and tricks that make whatever it is easier, more fun, safer, etc. The problem is that other people usually don't get to benefit from that experience. But by posting those little pieces of knowledge on TipBin, everyone can benefit.
There are four components of TipBin which I put a lot of time and work into:
- Tags: Since the site can accommodate any type of tip, I put a lot of work into using tags as navigation. The Tip Cloud is a particularly powerful way to browse and find information you're interested in.
- URLs: The best thing about tips is sharing them. Although you can email tips through the app, I know most people will want to share tips by emailing them themselves, or using their IM clients. So I put a lot of work into making the URLs short and email/IM friendly.
- Search: Search is difficult feature to implement because although you want it to be powerful, you also want it to be as simple as possible. I hope TipBin strikes the right balance.
- Simplicity: I tried very hard to keep the site simple, easy to use, and intuitive. I tried to reduce the application to its simplest form, which is usually a good place to start. I will definitely add features over time, but I never want to the site to grow into anything that anyone can't understand immediately.
I hope you find TipBin as useful as I have already. I invite you to take a look, enter some tips, leave some comments, share some tips with your friends and family, and, of course, let me know what you think.
