Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Millow – Stay connected with your inner circle

millow.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 97 posts

Re: Show HN: Millow – Stay connected with your inner circle

#41

Post by jsherwani »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #8
gomox wrote: post #6

I find the pitch story compelling and the idea intriguing, but having people download an app for it strikes me as frictional and a bit invasive. Essentially you are asking me to volunteer relationships that are usually in a somewhat fragile state (i.e. valued but undermaintained) to some impersonal external system that's going to send growth-hack-like e-mails to them and ask them to download apps. How about something…

Likewise! I would love to have a "personal CRM" if it was well done. Preferably integrated with my phone's contact database, but also usable via my computer with a real keyboard.

We are a personal CRM, but most consumers don't know what "CRM" means, so we stayed away from that language. It integrates optionally with your phone's contact database (we only import one contact at a time for now), or you can add contacts manually. We're currently iOS and Android only, but in the future will add support for desktop if there's interest (and it sounds like there is a lot of interest from what folks are saying here!).

Re: Show HN: Millow – Stay connected with your inner circle

#42

Post by jsherwani »

DiogoMCampos wrote: post #12
JoshTriplett wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise! I would love to have a "personal CRM" if it was well done. Preferably integrated with my phone's contact database, but also usable via my computer with a real keyboard.

It already exists: https://github.com/monicahq/monica . I've never used it though, maybe I should actually try it out.

We looked at alternatives and chose to go a much more minimalistic route with Millow. It does just a few things:

1) Single-player: set reminders for when to meet friends, and log when you do

2) Multi-player: share your availability with friends you add, and see theirs (if they add you), so you can find times to meet. Especially helpful when time-zones are involved (we show you their availability overlaid on your time zone.

Other apps do a lot more, but in our opinion, are a lot more complicated. We wanted to create a much simpler alternative and iterate based on feedback — so we'd love to hear what you think, especially since you're interested in trying one or more of these apps out.

Re: Show HN: Millow – Stay connected with your inner circle

#43

Post by jsherwani »

apatters wrote: post #15

The learn more page is brilliant and insightful. I haven't heard the term "commemorative friends" before and I agree that this is a real problem with Facebook (they have many, but the bottom line is they just fucked up the signal to noise ratio in order to make an extra buck, and they're on the defensive because of it now). So I agree there's a real problem here that needs solving (help me nurture the relationships t…

We will eventually do a web version (perhaps sooner than we'd originally imagined, based on feedback here!).

At a high level, we want to be a tool that you use for a few minutes at the most, perhaps not even daily. But as long as we're able to help you get out into the real world and meet / call your friends, we will have achieved our objective.

We aren't a social network — we have no feed, and employ no growth hacks (we would love for you to invite your friends because you want to). We don't consider ourselves social media either. We're a tool closer to your calendar app than to your Facebook/Instagram.

When we spoke with our initial users (friends and family), we found that there were two main reasons why people didn't stay in touch with others as much as they'd like:

1) They weren't sure if the other person (typically a dormant friend) was interested in staying in touch 2) They weren't sure when the other person was free (especially if time zones were an issue)

This is why we added the ability to share your availability with your close friends — our first 'multi-player' feature. Everything else can be used standalone ('single-player') — in fact, you could even manually add contacts without even putting in their phone number if you so choose.

I'm curious to hear how you feel about the app if you were to try it and use it. Please do reach out to us (support@millow.app) if you're up for it — we're a two person team and are eager to engage with our users (and potential ones), and are especially interested in critical feedback!

Re: Show HN: Millow – Stay connected with your inner circle

#44

Post by jsherwani »

tom-- wrote: post #35
jsherwani wrote: post #2

We're the founders of Millow (I previously co-founded Screenhero), and are happy to answer any questions folks may have!

Nice idea, what did you write the app with? On Win 10 Chrome the font is Times New Roman which makes the site look a little cheap, but the graphics are cute.

Oops! Just deployed a temporary fix (we tested mainly on Mac!) and added sans-serif. We'll improve the Windows situation in the next day or so.

It's written in Ionic (so we could iterate quickly on iOS/Android, and potentially have a web version up without too much additional effort).

Re: Show HN: Millow – Stay connected with your inner circle

#45

Post by jsherwani »

ada1981 wrote: post #30
jsherwani wrote: post #2

We're the founders of Millow (I previously co-founded Screenhero), and are happy to answer any questions folks may have!

Do you want questions in this thread? Or will you go comment on some of the other comments? There seem to be a number of things you could reply to. Cool idea.

Anywhere is fine, thanks! :)

Re: Show HN: Millow – Stay connected with your inner circle

#46

Post by jsherwani »

rc-1140 wrote: post #34

Why is this different from all of the other "stay connected with your true circle of friends" apps that we (as a tech-based community) keep pumping out as The Answer to Social Media™?

We haven't found any apps that did exactly what we're doing:

1) Single-player mode: let you add friends in manually, set reminders and log when you do meet or call

2) Multi-player mode: let you share availability with your inner circle (and vice versa) so you can more easily find times to meet or call (especially useful across time zones)

We want Millow to be simple and focused on a very short list of use cases, rather than trying to do too much.

Re: Show HN: Millow – Stay connected with your inner circle

#47

Post by jsherwani »

Nerada wrote: post #17

I'd be really interested in purchasing something like this as an Outlook add-in. I try to keep all my contacts in Outlook and synced/backed up with CalDav.

We don't have plans to create a plug-in for Outlook at the moment, but this is something we will keep in mind :)

Re: Show HN: Millow – Stay connected with your inner circle

#49

Post by jsherwani »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #40
asherwani wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there – I'm Ashley, one of the two Cofounders at Millow. Thanks for pointing this out! The font should be Helvetica Neue and we're wondering which browser you might be using? It'll help us identify the problem so we can fix the issue immediately :) Thanks!

Helvetica is not pre-installed on Windows PCs and other non Apple devices. You need to include Sans-Serif in your CSS - so the default sans serif font is picked for non Apple devices. Or be more specific and list Arial, Segoe UI, Calibri etc There are still tons of Windows users out there, so worth checking on non Apple devices.

We just did this, sorry about that!

Re: Show HN: Millow – Stay connected with your inner circle

#50

Post by jsherwani »

jobigoud wrote: post #24
nuclx wrote: post #7

Are you serious about the font choice on the website?

I think it's a bug actually. According to the CSS the font is supposed to be "Helvetica Neue", but the user may not have it installed. For me I get the Firefox default "Times New Roman" instead.

Spot on — we just added sans-serif to our CSS.
Post reply on HN