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Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

monicahq.com

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Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is it explains to the wrong audience -- the overlap in the Venn diagram of "people who know what CRM means" and "people looking for a lightweight, open-source personal tracking application" feels like it'd be pretty small. Since the app has a person's name anyway, I'd suggest abandoning acronyms entirely and making up something that sounds like a job title: e.g. "Monica, your Personal Assistant." (Which i…

That makes sense. Definitely. I bet most people outside of hacker news have no idea of what a CRM is.

Just as a datapoint, my girlfriend drew a blank today when I brought it up. Also because I used to have a file for people, including her, as a test to see if I could keep track of people that I care about better; so this was right up my alley :-)

Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#393
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not excellent. Nothing about data security, encryption at rest, and a whole load of things that would be covered by GDPR (yes the service is registered in Canada, but GDPR standards should be the benchmark now for what is considered acceptable for anything). This is an intriguing idea as a concept but feels like it isn't a sufficient focus. The privacy page hasn't been updated in 18 months either, yet the releas…

Just as a data point, this is the first time I ever heard about GDPR. Not sure it's "the minimum acceptable standard for anything".

It will be if you want to operate in Europe.

Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a big investment, but my immediate thought is I'd love a mobile app. The mobile site was better than nothing, but if you had a slick mobile app, I would use it constantly . So many times I forget little things that I would love to jot down in exactly this type of product. e: On birthdays, might be nice to be able to add day/month but no year. I'm working through adding some of my contacts into this and notic…

If only I knew how to make one... I will first create an API in the hopes that someone creates a mobile app for this.

If you made a solid API, I would be very interested in developing a react-native app.. :)

Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#396

Why a web-app instead of a local application? Why does this need to be connected to the internet, when it doesnt interact with anything? Is it because you want to be able to sync to other devices, such as a phone app in the future?

Because I just know web stuff. I did some .net like 15 years ago, but now I just know PHP and HTML, basically. Moreover, I'd love to create an app too, which would require an API, which requires to be available online.

Well I'm glad this isn't .NET, or almost as bad, Electron. I think web is a fine choice, provided it's open source and self-hostable for those who care.

Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hum. Is there anything I can do to prevent that?

- "No knowledge" (e.g. decrypted on the client) data storage. Very very difficult to do well. - Make it easy for people to host data independently of you. Either by running your app on thier server (related to discussion above about for Heroku/Sandstorm, but a regular VPS is probably preferable), or using your client to read data stored in some generic format, e.g. an existing CardDav server, or even just Dropbox, wi…

Even if people self-host, if a prosecutor suspected you had data about them meeting they could probably subpoena your server.

Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As these things go, the privacy policy is excellent, and can be read in under a minute: https://monicahq.com/privacy.html

That is not a good privacy policy. Founder needs to talk to a lawyer, or the EFF. For instance: > Monica runs on Linode and I'm the only one, apart from Linode's employees, who has access to those servers. This speaks to nothing about future use, which is what my question specifically asked.

Good point.

Re: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

#399
post #363

Really great idea. So, the first thing I did was add my wife, because that just seemed like the right place to start. But then I got into this situation where I was adding myself as the significant other. Is this intended? Is there any concept of "me"?

I half-assume, without looking at the application beyond the front page (I'm still going to), that you're kind of expected to know what your wife has been up to. It might not be a common use-case to select "Me" in the significant other field.
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