I consider it a significant failing that we (in the US) don't have a public email system like the USPS.
It is such a fundamental and important form of communication.
Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
171–180 of 219 posts
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#172> It costs $99 a year, and its business proposition is simple: You can pay Google with your privacy or Basecamp with your money
Um... Tutanota and Protonmail are both privacy-conscious and cheaper than that.
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
I loved Inbox, but what actually happened there was that there were two visions of Gmail 2.0 internally. Inbox didn’t win, partly because it was written in a nightmarish C++ framework, but some of its best features were brought into Gmail. Gmail is a conservatively managed product, but it does improve over time.
Nobody I know who used Inbox feels that the current Gmail interface—even with some Inbox features backported—is an acceptable substitute for Inbox.
Have you tried the Simplify GMail browser extension? It made the transition from Inbox to GMail less painful to me.
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#174I’m disappointed in Hey so far. It’s a closed system (no IMAP). They are charging a premium price for it over Fastmail or Google Gsuite. There is no calendar. No ability to import old emails into it. Seems like they could have just released a mail app sitting on top of Fastmail and had more/better features from day one.
Considering >50% of my email is just meeting invites I don’t see Hey as being an option right now. Throw in no IMAP support and I’m not sure if I would ever use this service. Who is this intended for? Genuinely curious.
IMAP support is completely pointless for most people, but most people like privacy, and most people have to use email.
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s a closed system (no IMAP). That's a huge bummer :( Does Hey support custom domains? IMAP and custom domain support would make Hey very appealing as a Fastmail replacement after Australia shot its tech industry in the foot with new surveillance regulation. Edit: Looks like custom domain support is planned but not yet available: https://hey.com/faqs/ Edit edit: timdorr beat me to it :D
Nope: https://hey.com/faqs/#can-i-use-my-own-custom-domain-with-he...
Or more significantly not yet. This is still in development and they've only sent out invites
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#176>Most of the Basecamp team's recent rebelliousness, and seemingly the initial reason for building Hey, has to do with spy pixels. How can you tell the difference between a "spy pixel" and an image? Whatever criteria you use can be worked around. Email clients should not allow emails to initiate outgoing network connections... period ... and most of the good ones don't by default.
So do we go back to a world of completely plain-text emails? No buttons? Links buried in a wall of ASCII? We use SendGrid to fire important, user-anticipated emails (i.e. "the Zoom class you paid for is starting at 8:30 AM, here's the private link"). Blocking all images is insane, and would set back email UX to the BBS ages. Blocking all SendGrid-served images would simply mean people host images on their own domain…
You can after all just include the images with the email using something like a CID URL.
... and a link that a user has to explicitly click on is not a 10th as bad as any sort of process out of their control.
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#177I think the most exciting thing about HEY is the promise of a new way to build web applications. https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1266056835749965829
Does anyone know anything more about this (more than what is in the tweet thread that is, which is not much!)
I dont think DHH has revealed much yet. But he said most of it will be extracted for Rails 6.2
I am wondering if it is similar to live view or Stimulus Reflex.
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've worked remotely now for just shy of 10 years in a row and more like 15 years total out of a 25 year IT career. I have found the biggest hurdles to remote work usually boil down to one thing, your clients or employer and fellow employees, who still "go into" an office, need to buy into the remote worker situation. This usually entails wrapping their heads around fewer meetings (even adhoc ones) and utilizing onli…
I've found that the biggest problem was missing those things that got discussed informally around the office. There would be interesting problems you could solve, but you rarely heard about them.
I've become quite adept over the years at building up contacts across different parts of the business org, just through quick "water cooler" chats with people I meet while I'm making a cuppa. I'll even go to a different floor from time to time just to expose me to more people. The convenience factor of "Hi, how are you doing?" turning in to a little bit more of a conversation, in a circumstance when I know I'm not disturbing them in the middle of something. I don't get that with Slack etc.
I'm really enjoying a bunch of the aspects of working from home, and picking up a strong preference for it, but I can't help but wonder about the impact less casual contact with other teams is having on overall performance. There's a lot you can get solved, much faster, by having friendly contacts all over the place (which of course, you have to be careful not to abuse or they'll stop being friendly contacts).
That applies both to problems I'm dealing with, and problems they're dealing with that we'd never know about under other circumstances.
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#179I think the most exciting thing about HEY is the promise of a new way to build web applications. https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1266056835749965829
Does anyone know anything more about this (more than what is in the tweet thread that is, which is not much!)
Some very broad outlines here https://twitter.com/sstephenson/status/1272608076433166336
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#180I am fully behind something like this, and more than happy to pay for an email service that will stop all the "new-age spam". But! "Want an invite? To get a code, email iwant@hey.com and tell us how you feel" Seriously? A Gmail trick? By playing this trick, you just destroyed all your credibility.
They will go invite-free next month
It's not a matter of time, but about their mentality. Playing old Google tricks make them lose all good faith.