Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal" • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#51

Post by JoshTriplett » Wed, Oct 19, 2011, 9:06 PM UTC

mtgentry wrote: post #10

arkitaip wrote: post #6

I get the feeling that this is a MVP or feature test for something bigger. Because truth be told, I don't see why people would care about someone's inbox health, especially since people use their Gmail account as a garbage dump+todo list+backup. I've seen inboxes with THOUSANDS of unread email and most people I know don't archive anything at all.

Yep, MVP indeed! Our core idea is that email interactions should be based on one's availability. More thoughts on that here: http://blog.getsmokesignal.com/post/10660730744

An interesting idea, but one I'd disagree with almost completely. Email works extremely well for me because I can receive it regardless of my availability, and respond to it when I have time. Your blog post notes that email interactions don't match real life; I agree, but I'd consider that a feature. I can easily solve the "important people" problem by using filters to call attention to email from those people, but I'd only need to do that if I couldn't keep up with email in the first place; currently I can see at a glance who my email comes from, and optionally cherry-pick mails to respond to first. Otherwise, to the extent email becomes more like real-life interactions, it becomes less useful to me.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#52

Post by mtgentry » Wed, Oct 19, 2011, 9:09 PM UTC

avree wrote: post #41

mtgentry wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overflowing inboxes are the problem. Perhaps we should have provided more context about what we're trying to fix : ) These guys do a good job: http://emailcharter.org We're trying to provide a framework around that first rule of respecting the recipient's time.

But respecting people's time isn't about knowing how much e-mail the person you're sending to has... It's about sending only important e-mails/"not spamming". So, regardless of whether the guy I'm sending to has an empty or an overloaded inbox, I should always send the e-mail, because it's important.

Great point. That's why theres a line underneath "unbearable" that says "please only send if it's urgent."

Also to your point, I'm not sure if this is a good product for workplace email exchanges. In that setting you're sort of forced to send things to people wether you want to or not.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#53

Post by sunahsuh » Wed, Oct 19, 2011, 9:10 PM UTC

My friend Eric's courteous.ly (featured on lifehacker and mashable a few months back) does something similar except it uses rolling data points to determine what "normal" is for you, as opposed to a single absolute scale for everyone. The advantage of Smoke Signal is that it has a real-time meter as opposed to making a recipient click on a link to get the status of your inbox.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#54

Post by Geee » Wed, Oct 19, 2011, 9:13 PM UTC

joshuacc wrote: post #35

Geee wrote: post #27

Completely unrelated, but how does that Museo Sans render so nicely on Win/Chrome? Usually font rendering on Chrome is horrible. Now, checking Typekit, it seems some fonts have nice anti-alias, while some not. Where's the difference?

I believe that is due to the work they explain in this blog post: http://blog.typekit.com/2011/07/26/new-from-typekit-improved...

Thanks a lot, I think that's exactly what's happening here.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#55

Post by mtgentry » Wed, Oct 19, 2011, 9:19 PM UTC

sunahsuh wrote: post #53

My friend Eric's courteous.ly (featured on lifehacker and mashable a few months back) does something similar except it uses rolling data points to determine what "normal" is for you, as opposed to a single absolute scale for everyone. The advantage of Smoke Signal is that it has a real-time meter as opposed to making a recipient click on a link to get the status of your inbox.

I actually reached out to Eric about the idea originally but didn't hear back, so we just went ahead and built it on our own : ) The only thing I'm not crazy about w/ coutreous.ly is the stats live outside email ecosystem.

Buster Benson is doing cool things too with http://howsmyemail.com. He provided some encouragement early on.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#56

Post by FuzzyDunlop » Wed, Oct 19, 2011, 9:20 PM UTC

Nice site, clearly written and straight to the point. However I agree with the sentiment that, if it indeed addresses a problem, it tackles it from the wrong angle.

The problem this introduces is that it's useless unless people only email you by replying. If they're replying to you it's probably important, and you don't want to tell someone not to reply or to reply later. And to expect someone to do that is unreasonable.

If someone emails you direct, they don't see your signature. So it doesn't fulfil its purpose then.

Finally, an overflowing inbox shouldn't be the responsibility of someone trying to contact you. Things like labels, filters and priority flags are all tools used by email clients to allow the user/recipient to establish a system to manage large amounts of email that is most suitable for them.

You can't expect the sender to help you manage your time better. And thus if this servie is useful to you, I'd be more inclined to think your email client isn't being worked hard enough.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#57

Post by timjahn » Wed, Oct 19, 2011, 9:27 PM UTC

I'm curious. Out of the total amount of people you surveyed before building this, what percentage raised their hands and said they would use it?

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#58

Post by fastfinner » Wed, Oct 19, 2011, 9:37 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #22

Another take on the same problem is to send an automatic reply saying Your email has been received. There are %N emails in my Inbox before yours. Your email is important to me. The estimated wait time for the response is %M days. Thank you for your patience. :)

The problem with this approach is that I would not want to auto-reply to every message, particularly not group lists or important people who expect their stuff to be read on time. I think smokesignal is a lot more subtle.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#59

Post by mtgentry » Wed, Oct 19, 2011, 9:49 PM UTC

timjahn wrote: post #57

I'm curious. Out of the total amount of people you surveyed before building this, what percentage raised their hands and said they would use it?

We're counting hands now on HN. It's very much a MVP.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#60

Post by hugh3 » Wed, Oct 19, 2011, 10:11 PM UTC

avree wrote: post #41

mtgentry wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overflowing inboxes are the problem. Perhaps we should have provided more context about what we're trying to fix : ) These guys do a good job: http://emailcharter.org We're trying to provide a framework around that first rule of respecting the recipient's time.

But respecting people's time isn't about knowing how much e-mail the person you're sending to has... It's about sending only important e-mails/"not spamming". So, regardless of whether the guy I'm sending to has an empty or an overloaded inbox, I should always send the e-mail, because it's important.

I don't have an overloaded inbox, but for those who do, it seems to me that they're mostly overloaded with stuff that was sent to a group rather than to them as an individual.

If the sender is even thinking about the question "Does this particular individual have time to read this email?" then the chances are that this email is already far more important than average.