I think their copy is doing them a disservice. It their most prominent, preeminent feature is that I have to give them my money to use their service, they ought to rethink their marketing strategy. Most people so not revel in giving away their money. There are better facets of the product to play up...
Show HN: Address book storage you can trust.
31–40 of 41 posts
Re: Show HN: Address book storage you can trust.
#32I think their copy is doing them a disservice. It their most prominent, preeminent feature is that I have to give them my money to use their service, they ought to rethink their marketing strategy. Most people so not revel in giving away their money. There are better facets of the product to play up...
Hi ruswick,
There are lots of options for contacts storage for free, but we are aiming to provide a service for people who care about their data and who has it. There are many other great features of our product, but none as good (we think) as our commitment to your ownership of your data.
Re: Show HN: Address book storage you can trust.
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get iCloud for free. Why would I pay you for this?
Hi sneak, A couple of reasons - by paying for the service you are a customer and your desires align with ours rather than us wanting to use your data to make money - we will never sell it. You fully own your data - no big companies with complicated privacy policies. And we are transparent about backups and security - http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-hona... - our versioned backups don't allow t…
None of those things sell me. I have a local copy of my data on my Mac, and I pay for the service when I buy an iPhone every year. I fully own my data now.
Re: Show HN: Address book storage you can trust.
#34My contact list currently lives in Google Contacts. It is used by Google Calendar and my Android phone automatically, and by Thunderbird via Zindus. Have you given thought to calendar integration?
Hi Eugenio, Yep - your contacts can be easily transferred from Google Contacts and then used on your Android phone and in Thunderbird just the same.
Transferred, yes. Synchronised automatically to my calendar, apps, phone?
I think automatic synchronisation and periodic backup are two things you really should look into.
Re: Show HN: Address book storage you can trust.
#35My contact list currently lives in Google Contacts. It is used by Google Calendar and my Android phone automatically, and by Thunderbird via Zindus. Have you given thought to calendar integration?
Hi Eugenio, Yep - your contacts can be easily transferred from Google Contacts and then used on your Android phone and in Thunderbird just the same.
Sorry Eugenio, I obviously didn't make myself very clear or I'm misunderstanding your need. They are automatically synchronised with your Android phone and available in Calendars, Apps and the Phone. I bet you wouldn't even notice the difference from using Google Contacts.
With regards to backups, already done! We have full versioning so that you can roll back to anytime you want and backups are done continuously.
Re: Show HN: Address book storage you can trust.
#36Soocial is an existing service that does almost exactly this:
Soocial is a contacts sync service. They have a free level and a paid "premium" level of service ($5/month). I use Soocial (paid service) and I really like it. There is a major problem with Soocial however: the company was acquired in November 2011 by the French company Viadeo (blog post: http://blog.soocial.com/2011/11/29/soocial-has-been-acquired...), and the future of the service is unclear. You can still sign up for Soocial (I did!), and it works great, but this is a major worry for me as a customer.
I want to describe my experience using Soocial, because I hope that Columns will include all of the great functionality that Soocial has. The most important feature for me is that Soocial syncs my contacts between two different Gmail accounts (home and work), with Soocial acting as the "main" contacts storage location. I use this feature to keep my home and work contacts separate, while my iPhone has access to ALL my contacts. Also Soocial allows me to sync contact groups to my iPhone, which is not possible just using the MS Exchange server provided by Gmail. This setup allows me to keep a contacts "archive". I have a bunch of contacts (friends from college who I don't contact any more, ex-girlfriends, etc.) that I do not want to have on my iPhone, but that I do want to keep for archival purposes. Soocial allows me to keep those contacts in a central place (the Soocial web app) where they are accessible, but they do not get in my way day-to-day. Actually, having now described all the great features of Soocial, I've come to realize that I really really REALLY like Soocial.
I sincerely hope that Columns is successful and that I can eventually switch from Soocial to Columns. I would much rather be using a service that is being actively developed than one that seems to be coasting.
Question for the Columns team: What is your level of personal commitment to continue this service? Is it your intention to continue Columns as a service "forever", or do you intend to build up a great service and get acquired by another company?
Re: Show HN: Address book storage you can trust.
#37To easily get my contacts to sync with my phone, which is the primary reason I collect them at all, I still have to vouchsafe them to Apple or Google.
Re: Show HN: Address book storage you can trust.
#38I'd love to know what the advantages are over iCloud and Google Contacts, both of which sync all my contacts currently.
You guys could be in a good position to revolutionise this space by allowing me to manage my own contact information as it appears in other people's address books – so I can update my email address when I move jobs, update my phone number when I lose my iPhone etc. – and have this information automatically update in the address books of everyone I know. This, I would pay for.
Re: Show HN: Address book storage you can trust.
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Your model means that I can somewhat believe 1) What makes you believe that your data will be kept private? Is it the fact that they have paid memberships and they have something that looks a bit like a privacy policy on their landing page? As for me, I'm not sure whether I want to use the word "trust" to describe my relationship with a company that offers "storage" in the "cloud" without any mention of, for exampl…
Hi Kijin, We haven't put enough details about encryption on the landing page (because we didn't want to overload the page) but we will do very soon. With regards to exportability, if you check out the feature in the bottom right (Full Ownership) you can see details about how easy it is to take your data elsewhere. Hope that helps and thank you for your comments, really appreciate it.
> if you check out the feature in the bottom right (Full Ownership) you can see details about how easy it is to take your data elsewhere
There isn't a lot of details there. The sentence I quoted above is longer than the details in the "full ownership" box.
Re: Show HN: Address book storage you can trust.
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi Eugenio, Yep - your contacts can be easily transferred from Google Contacts and then used on your Android phone and in Thunderbird just the same.
Sorry Eugenio, I obviously didn't make myself very clear or I'm misunderstanding your need. They are automatically synchronised with your Android phone and available in Calendars, Apps and the Phone. I bet you wouldn't even notice the difference from using Google Contacts. With regards to backups, already done! We have full versioning so that you can roll back to anytime you want and backups are done continuously.
Cool, thanks. I'll sign up.