Absolutley. This is a non-obvious but simple idea executed well and the creator deserves to make buckets of money.

I feel that localtunnel was also executed quite well, is free and open source, and has been around for a while now: https://github.com/progrium/localtunnel

Where are my buckets of money? Oh yeah, I don't care.

Oh but I detect that you care. Well, the difference between this and an obscure open source project buried on git hub is for a starter to at least have a web-site at localtunnel.com!

I care about my work and it being used and contributed to if people are interested in it. I don't care about money, which is why it's open source and run as a free service. My code is MIT and I would love it if people took my code and made a pay-for service like this with it... but instead, they (to be fair, probably unknowingly) duplicate effort and obscure my work.

If a fancy website is all I need, I guess that's what I'll be doing this weekend. And I guess SSL and CNAME support...

I don't think there was ever an intention to obscure work, maliciously or otherwise. This project started because developers started developing, not googling or searching github. 

To be fair, the "fancy website" is a byproduct of designers who like to make stuff look good, and the rest of Showoff's team caring very much about not just making stuff that works (of which they make a lot, much of which is hidden away in obscurity), but about making it easy for people to use who wouldn't perhaps take on the task themselves—and I don't think there is anything at all wrong with that.

However, I don't think it is fair to imply creating this tool (and its website) was a product of caring about money, or duplicating and obscuring your (or anyone else's) efforts. It is like many other ideas out there that came from a real need, hacking it together, and then asking if people might find it useful enough to pay for it. That's not a reason to disparage or diminish a job well done.

In the end, it looks like Showoff's also brought attention to your project, pagekite, and plenty of other ways people have shared to do the same thing. Today was the first time I'd heard of localtunnel, but I've done this same bit of showing off localhost before for clients and coworkers on my own--and it's a bit like splitting hairs to call it duplication. Hackers hack. It's what we do. I definitely like open sourcing when it makes sense. But I also like to eat and have a roof over my head. Open source does not hold a monopoly on good intentions.

I totally agree, this thread is probably the best exposure any of our projects (I'm the PageKite guy) could ask for.

The idea is clearly communicated, pros and cons and alternatives discussed... and now it's a tiny bit easier to explain to people what we are doing.

Hats off to the Showoff team for a job well done! :-)

You're both right. However, if I didn't complain as much, my project probably wouldn't have doubled in GitHub watches. ;)

It's great to have the idea validated, especially since mine and showoff.io's user experience are nearly identical. And this will force me to make a pretty homepage and add features.

So now that I've complained, I don't think I can complain much more.

I guess I can't blame you for philosophical differences. Personally, I do a lot of research before investing my time in building something. Not only do I try to avoid NIH, but I prefer investing my time in clever and useful things not done before -- I tend to think I'm good at producing novel things. I suppose others doing something similar a year later and getting more attention comes with the territory.

Now... open source vs commercial, that's a whole different discussion (although probably not what you'd expect).

NIH is a willful decision to create something that already exists and is fully known to all interested parties, but summarily rejected on the basis that it is ... wait for it ... Not Invented Here. Sometimes, an identical result issues from identical circumstances wholly independently and honestly--leaving the world with nearly identical objects that attempt to solve an identical problem in an identical way.

Casually suggesting NIH can be an insult to the intellectual & creative abilities of a team. Sometimes it is warranted. Other times, it is not. I believe most guys and gals in the developer community are astute enough to ferret out NIH and ignore it.

P.S. On the other hand, you have a very impressive set of github repos. Kudos. You have successfully made me both care and jealous that I never get around to open-sourcing anything because I never feel like any side project is perfect enough to let others see (and because most of what I work on is closed-source for clients). Sad.

Sorry to bring up NIH so willy-nilly. Ultimately, you guys did an inspiring job and from what I can tell of implementation you did it even more elegantly than I did.

The whole simultaneous invention thing is really interesting to me. It was covered in two great books, What Technology Wants and Where Good Ideas Come From. Both seem to imply that the more utility something has in the "adjacent possible", the more likely it will be invented by many people in roughly the same time period. This actually quite frustrates me about technology! What's worse is that this phenomenon will only increase over time. And because it's about utility (never mind the illusion of unique "UX" of products now), there is little room for expression or creating something unique to you that matters.

Don't be some negative about it.

On a positive note, this is the first time I thought about doing something like this, and it's also the first time I heard about your project.

I'll try it out, thanks!

It doesn't matter what you do -- writing, design, code, philosophy, advocacy, lemonade -- if you want it to get out there, if you want people to use it, you have to market. It doesn't matter whether you're "selling" in the sense of exchanging money or not.

Marketing is critical. And marketing isn't just telling people about it, or advertising. Marketing is making a site that is attractive (to the audience), giving your project a name that is easy to understand and remember, and easy to google for, and making it easy to use, to install, work with it, share it, troubleshoot it, making it easy to find help, easy to find other people who use it in a community. Marketing means making it clear as hell what the user gets out of your "product," and keeping the focus on the user at all times.

These are all relative, depending on your audience. (Ex: Lots of developer types actively enjoy the simplest possible visual design, and enjoy the thrill of conquering something that's a little bit technically hard. But not all. And none of them enjoy searching & searching and being unable to find the thing.)

If you don't to make money off your work, great. But if you want people to use it, you have to market it, that's just the way it works. It's not good enough to simply make something you want to make and stick it out there. Just being "free" and "open" isn't enough.

If more open source developers would take the time to learn how to effectively promote their own work, the world would be a better place. But sadly, because most OSS developers belong to a group that considers marketing "evil," and has a chip-on-the-shoulder reaction to the idea that marketing is required for even free-as-in-beer projects, it won't happen.

I completely understand. Unfortunately, I'm too busy building cool shit to market it like crazy. I look for clever ways to market, like getting my company to promote it or including it in presentations.

I know it's human nature to like prettier things, I'm just surprised when localtunnel was posted on Hacker News originally, it did not get as much attention as showoff.io and it does the EXACT same thing. I guess I'm disappointed in the community for that?

let's not get carried away - a great idea, but not exactly defensible technology, so "a small pile of money" may be more appropriate.

Sorry, I don't quite get this. Why can't I just grab my public IP address from Whatismyip.com, and check the Web Sharing option under System Preferences on my Mac? (For Linux, simply fire up Apache; my guess is that most Linux users know how to do that).

Often times you are behind a firewall and this isn't a viable option. It's also easier to remember a domain name rather than an IP address.

You'll often have NAT to deal with as well, and have to set up explicit port forwards to your local device (and give it a static IP address) in your routers.

"Simply fire up Apache" is a bit of an oxymoron.

/etc/init.d/httpd start

Though the real challenge this product solves is in getting around firewall restrictions. Let's say you're at the airport on free wifi. How are you going to share localhost then?

python -m 'SimpleHTTPServer' 8080

service httpd start

You could do that, including figuring out your NAT/Firewall, how to proxy through apache to your app and have to worry about security. Or, you could just do this:

  show 3100

I dunno, I'm a busy dude and my time isn't free. So I'd rather pay $5 a month to have someone figure this out for me and let me spend time leveraging it to build cool stuff of my own.

I'm inclined to agree, currently I have ssh setup on my home machine and use dyndns which is free and pretty simple. Setting up a server would be equally simple for the technically inclined.

Err... what? If you're even a half-serious developer, you're going to have a static IP or something like dyndns. You're also going to have your own domain, VPN, and port forwarding. Setting this up on your own network is trivial. You can use it no matter where you are, so long as you have internet. Just buy a cheapo router that supports DD-WRT, set up dyndns, and you're good to go. Seriously.

I get it that some people aren't great at networking, but all this stuff is really basic. Not that hard to learn.

DynDNS is a bitch, but I usually just setup an SSH tunnel between my box and one of my cloud servers to show off my localhost over any kind of shitty connection.

Even works at Starbucks, which I don't think DynDNS does.

This app is really neat, though. Creating an SSH tunnel is trivial once you learn how it works, but before, it seems insurmountably complicated. This service makes it super easy.

Oh, and using the same trick in reverse, I get to use Netflix, Hulu, Pandora etc. when I'm out of the country. Or just protect my privacy from Coffee shops.

No way. Having your own static IP can get very expensive. Dyndns is a horrific pita. Fiddling with routers is annoying. No serious developer is judged by a client on any of these things. And none I have ever worked with as an indie developer (like an $8 billion/yr company who depends on software I built every day) would ever care or even ask about any of those things. One's professionalism is not determined by these things. I made a lot of money as a serious developer without any client caring or knowing if I had a domain, static IP, etc. But I made stuff work, and that's all that ever matters.

I get a block of 8 static IPs included with my service. Then again, I have an office and it's a business class connection. I pay $75 per month and get 25 down / 5 up.

I have 0 static IPs (that I am aware of) included with my service. Then again, I have a residential line and it's a fiber optic connection. I'm a bit cheap, so I pay $70 per month and get 50 down / 50 up.

:)

>If you're even a half-serious developer, you're going to have a static IP or something like dyndns. You're also going to have your own domain, VPN, and port forwarding. Setting this up on your own network is trivial. You can use it no matter where you are, so long as you have internet. Just buy a cheapo router that supports DD-WRT, set up dyndns, and you're good to go.

Um,

Assume none of the above - and instead assume that I am a designer with a local copy of the new t-shirt site im making for my hipster clients - and I am working from the local Java Jungle, not behind my 'cheapo dd-wrt + dyndns +blah blah blah'

I want to show them a latest rev and get feed back.

Use this, and its no problem. Yours is doable, non-trivial and zero elegance.

I'm sort of shocked that most web developers don't have at least one small virtual node somewhere out in the real world where they can demo things and/or forward ports.......

But that's just me.

So, like, the cheapo dd-wrt router is always on, always connected to the internet, at your home/office. You set up your domain to point to it. You VPN to it from your Java Jungle. On Windows/Mac it's a simple as clicking a few buttons. On Linux, a single command at the prompt. That's it. You're done. The router routes the traffic to your lappie via the VPN.

On top of that, you're using your own domain, which is more professional in my humble opinion. It's lappie.yourdomain.com and not lappie.theirdomain.com ... oh yeah, and it's free. Just get one of your nerd friends to set it up. Once it's up, it'll run forever.

This is all true, and I am sure a lot of us on HN do such things. But a fresh designer type prolly hasn't/won't.

There is nothing wrong with your method, except that it is longer than "Step one."

Wow. I'm glad you said that. I've got experience with networks, but I can't design or code (I have utilized plenty of templates, libraries, and shell scripts written by others, but I'm not much of a creator). I simply looked over this segment of the populace. It's still a niche, and any criticism I've leveled in this thread is in the hope that they create better clients or an API for their service to make it more accessible, as it is too technocal still to make a difference outside of semi-technical people.

This could be a great step forward in helping peopole understand, and take responsibility for their online presence.

If it's a static site, copy it into your dropbox public directory and share the public link.

Is anyone making sites where this would work, for money?

email it to them?

call me oldschool, I know...

well, it's trivial after reading ssh's man page. though the execution is nice and everything is packaged that relatively tech un-savvy users can make use of it.