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Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

clap.chat

51–60 of 65 posts

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#51

Hey everyone, todd3834 and I have been wanting this for awhile and decided to just start building it ourselves :-) The hope is it makes HN an even greater place to find people with similar ambitions so that we can build great things. This isn't meant to be the next coming of Facebook, it's just a super useful tool we like and want others to use with us. Main features we think you'll like: - frictionless signup. You d…

I made basically the opposite; integrate HN comments into your website: https://comments.network/

You can add this HN conversation on the bottom of your landing page easily to show what people is saying about your project in context. Still in development though.

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#52
post #10

Just a thought on the auto-login functionality... If I run an intercepting proxy and alter all instances of my username in the HTML response from HN servers to appear in every way to be logged in as 'dang'.... How would your extension detect the forgery?

Glad you asked! So here is a teaser on how it works: 1. ClapChat gives you a unique id, the extension posts the id in your profile, ClapChat independently verifies that your profile contains the correct ID so that we know you really do own the account, then we double check the ID vs the session that we gave the id to and we can validate the authorization. I'm working on a blog post that goes into much further detail…

You should offer HN Auth As a Service/Platform so that others can easily build around it and users can easily auth into others services.

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they say further up that they will be open sourcing it. my first thought was the same, but the twillio chat they've used seems super simple, so potentially matrix was just too heavy for their simple needs at the moment

Hi yes! You are correct. We just wanted to go with the most simple backend service with the least amount of maintenance that we could use for starters.

guess we have our work cut out for us on Matrix then :D

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#55

serious question: why is this not open-source? I think serious tools to communicate in this community should as much open-source as possible.

We plan to open source it once it is opened up to everyone.

Out of idle curiosity, why wait? Seems that is only delaying any improvements people might contribute.

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi yes! You are correct. We just wanted to go with the most simple backend service with the least amount of maintenance that we could use for starters.

guess we have our work cut out for us on Matrix then :D

I know that I'll be checking it out for more details soon. Thanks for bringing it to my attention :)

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#57

What happens if I want to PM someone but they're still not signed up for ClauChat? You should probably also answer this on your page.

We are considering a few things. Our first pass is to use mechanical turk so that we get the email address from the profile page and send an email with the message. We want to be sure not to bother people who truly don't want to participate so we are working on a solution to make sure this doesn't turn into a way to spam HN users.

Seems to be a lot of dissent around this idea. I think if you send the original message to my email, and make reply-to without your app easy (or transparent or whatever), then you're just making it easier for other users to email me and that's OK.

If I have to sign up to your service to read or reply to the message then it would be spam.

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#58

Shame this is neither FOSS nor standards-based... Matrix-based HN chat would be awesome :) (i work on matrix so am probably biased though :D)

> nor standards-based...

Not to be antagonistic but what difference does it make if it's not "standards based" while it works for them and does what they want it to do?

Re: Show HN: ClapChat – Instant messaging for HN users

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are considering a few things. Our first pass is to use mechanical turk so that we get the email address from the profile page and send an email with the message. We want to be sure not to bother people who truly don't want to participate so we are working on a solution to make sure this doesn't turn into a way to spam HN users.

Seems to be a lot of dissent around this idea. I think if you send the original message to my email, and make reply-to without your app easy (or transparent or whatever), then you're just making it easier for other users to email me and that's OK. If I have to sign up to your service to read or reply to the message then it would be spam.

That's how we have it :-) Albeit with a call to action in the footer of the message to sign up. If you, don't though it will continue to work
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