Ask HN: Why did nobody bid on this job spec?
I've been using an online outsourcing site successfully for a large number of projects over the last year, and almost always had plenty of bids and interest in the projects I put up.

My most recent job spec received no bids at all. I was a little more demanding in what I wrote, but was really hoping it would turn up someone we could work with not just on this, but on various upcoming projects.

I'm hoping somebody here on HN can shed some light on why nobody bit.

I'm a programmer but web isn't really my domain. Have I asked for something stupid? Was I overly demanding? The budget was listed as <$500, which I thought was realistic for somebody who knew what they were doing. At the very least, I was hoping for a few bids which told me why I was being unreasonable!

Here's the spec I wrote:

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Who we are:

We run a popular music education website which mostly publishes articles and tutorials. We're keen to provide more interactive functionality, in the form of audio games, audio quizzes, and simple audio playback apps. We're very interested in making these same apps usable offline (e.g. on iPhone).

Who we are looking for:

We are looking to form a relationship with a highly competent web app developer, who stays up to date on the latest technologies. Specifically, we will be producing several apps in the next 6 months which will make use of HTML5's offline app capability, and must work well on iPhone and iPad as well as the usual desktop browsers.

Although offline functionality is not a requirement for this first project, please only bid if you are HTML5-savvy and a good match for our ongoing requirements!

We are not interested in using Flash for this project - sorry.

Ideally, we are looking for somebody who is also talented on the design side, but this is not essential.

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Project Description:

This project is to develop a simple audio player app for use on our website. It allows the user to choose between five tracks, start and stop the audio, and control the volume. The audio is streamed from our website, and the tracks will be approximately 10 minute long MP3 files.

A key requirement is that the app gently fades in when playback starts, fades out when playback stops, and cross-fades between tracks when the user changes track. It also cross-fades to repeat the track when it nears the end.

Please find a mockup attached, along with a labelled version.
[ http://sonictruths.net/temp/Mockup1.png ]
[ http://sonictruths.net/temp/Mockup2.png ]

It is expected that the exact layout and dimensions of the app elements will be controlled in CSS.

The track and background image information should be configurable in some way by us, without editing source code directly. However, we do not plan to frequently insert this as a page element - it is a standalone app, of which we might produce half a dozen versions.

The app should work correctly in Safari 4+, Firefox 3.6+, Chrome 5+, IE 8+ and Mobile Safari on iPhone and iPad.

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If you are interested in this project, please include with your bid:

- Which technologies you would use on the browser and server side
- How you would handle buffering of audio to ensure smooth playback
- Examples of web apps you have previously developed (particularly if they were audio-focused)

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So, why was this so unappealling?