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Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

airbornos.com

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Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#41

Post by Filligree »

twiss wrote: post #34
ArchReaper wrote: post #30

Why does it have OS in the name? Is it an operating system? (This is a question I cannot find a direct answer to on their site) Their site makes it incredibly difficult to actually find out what this really is. The only text visible on my screen when the page loads are the lines "Airborn OS", "Even if we get hacked, they can't read your documents" and "Collaborate in real time" which tells me essentially nothing abou…

The line that's supposed to tell you what it is is: "Create and edit f​iles online​, securely​." Is that missing for you? (I admit it's smaller and less noticeable than the lines you quoted. I'll try making it more prominent.) A bit of explanation about the name here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15596668

Mm, I don't see it. There's some animation at the top, I scroll down, and... it talks about editing documents, but there's no line anywhere that explicitly states what this is.

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#42

Post by fiatjaf »

twiss wrote: post #12
2474 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I would have chosen a better way to imply that.

Hmm. Do you mean it sounds like we'll get hacked any day now? Do you have a suggestion for better wording?

Your current copy tells something very real and concrete to the user, gives him valid information. It is useful.

All suggestions in this thread ("it is secure!") are just marketing gibberish, slogans without any meaning. If you intend to appeal to a large, stupid audience, maybe they're good, but it is a little dishonest.

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#43

Post by twiss »

ecesena wrote: post #29
twiss wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Do you mean it sounds like we'll get hacked any day now? Do you have a suggestion for better wording?

You should speak to me, as a customer, about my benefit in using your product. Currently you're telling me what won't happen in a very unfortunate event. I think this is wrong in 2 ways. 1. You're telling me a message "the other way around". Even if you just say "Keep your documents secure" is better than "Nobody will access your documents". 2. You're comparing w/ Google docs so, following the logic of your message,…

Thanks for the suggestions. The reason I mentioned getting hacked in the copy, is because I think that for the average customer, it's now starting to seem like every web service is getting hacked. I wanted to highlight that we're trying to solve that in a better way than "well, this time we really won't get hacked!" But yeah, I'll try to bring out that message in a more positive way.

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#44

Post by Filligree »

twiss wrote: post #24
tylerhou wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious (and no negative implications whatsoever): is "we made it so that only one person at a time can type in a paragraph. No longer can that annoying classmate delete what you just typed" code for "operational transforms are hard to implement, especially without a source of truth?"

Yes and no :) I did indeed not implement OT, but it's also a true story that I would create a Google Doc and share it, nobody knows what to write, I type a sentence, and my classmates delete it as a joke, to mess with me :) But yeah, feedback on the collaboration is welcome. Do you think editing one sentence with multiple people is necessary, and if so why? And on the other end of the spectrum, Word-style edit reques…

My main use case for Docs is collaborative fiction writing. There's no concept of "paragraph ownership"; there will be two or more people editing the document, and we'll go over it a half-doze or more times, editing as we go.

The ability to make arbitrary changes is essential for this.

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#45

Post by Filligree »

twiss wrote: post #15
mandeepj wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats on shipping. I noticed a small glitch. Your demo page does not load properly during first time. If I refresh then it's working fine. Update 1 - I'm using Chrome 56

Hmm, that's not supposed to happen. It might be just that the server returned an error for one of the requests the first time.

Your code needs to detect and recover from errors, otherwise no-one will trust it to keep their text safe.

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#46

Post by jasonvorhe »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #22
ttul wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you were running an operation at Google scale, the challenge of fighting fraud is something that people who have not worked at that scale can only imagine. These guys will also encounter fraud at some point. And when they do so, I guarantee they will be no better at it than Google this.

You state that the problem of fraud is particularly challenging "at Google scale". There is a fairly easy solution: Don't do things at Google scale. Many of these nearly unsolvable social problems we've created, such as YouTube content moderation, are manageable, or simply don't occur, outside Google scale. Which begs the question: Is doing things at Google scale really something to aspire to? Has even Google solved…

Better shut down access to your service after a couple of hundred users?

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#47

Post by twiss »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #38
kinlan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was confused too... Then I realised it takes about 10 seconds to appear as you animate the text in.

Now I see it! I scrolled already waaay down before that text appears. Reminder to myself that animations in your essential content are dangerous

Fair enough. There's a fast-forward button for the impatient among us (including myself), but I agree that it's non-obvious that you would need that to read the main copy.

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#48

Post by [deleted] »

twiss wrote: post #34
ArchReaper wrote: post #30

Why does it have OS in the name? Is it an operating system? (This is a question I cannot find a direct answer to on their site) Their site makes it incredibly difficult to actually find out what this really is. The only text visible on my screen when the page loads are the lines "Airborn OS", "Even if we get hacked, they can't read your documents" and "Collaborate in real time" which tells me essentially nothing abou…

The line that's supposed to tell you what it is is: "Create and edit f​iles online​, securely​." Is that missing for you? (I admit it's smaller and less noticeable than the lines you quoted. I'll try making it more prominent.) A bit of explanation about the name here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15596668

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#49

Post by sfotm »

twiss wrote: post #2

Hi HN! I made this. It has bulk import from Google Docs ;) thanks to a feature request from HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15478479

Any plans to make self-hosting straight-forward? Granted, I haven't spent much time looking for it, but I've been looking for something similar to this for quite some time, and Nextcloud's Collabora isn't quite what I'm looking for.

Re: Show HN: Airborn – Private Google Docs Alternative

#50

Post by halwa »

ArchReaper wrote: post #30

Why does it have OS in the name? Is it an operating system? (This is a question I cannot find a direct answer to on their site) Their site makes it incredibly difficult to actually find out what this really is. The only text visible on my screen when the page loads are the lines "Airborn OS", "Even if we get hacked, they can't read your documents" and "Collaborate in real time" which tells me essentially nothing abou…

I was under the impression it stood for "Office Suite" but apparently not. See this[1] comment by the author on /r/privacy subreddit.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/76c605/airborn_os_...

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