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Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

getsmokesignal.com

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Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#41

Post by avree »

mtgentry wrote: post #29
sixtofour wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I appreciate a good hack, but just can't get past the idea that this is a solution in search of a problem." I had exactly the same reaction: good hack, where's the problem? The solution to the problem of too much email already exists, and that solution is ... email. Email is asynchronous, and you get to decide when and what to do with it.

Overflowing inboxes are the problem. Perhaps we should have provided more context about what we're trying to fix : ) These guys do a good job: http://emailcharter.org We're trying to provide a framework around that first rule of respecting the recipient's time.

But respecting people's time isn't about knowing how much e-mail the person you're sending to has...

It's about sending only important e-mails/"not spamming". So, regardless of whether the guy I'm sending to has an empty or an overloaded inbox, I should always send the e-mail, because it's important.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#42

Post by simplegeek »

Great design and bravo for actually shipping code. But I don't think I would use it because there are definitely more than 7000 emails in my inbox but I always reply emails immediately that I know are important. What if I include some key-phrase in signature and people who send me emails with that key-phrase in subject are more likely to get a quick reply? But this is a deviation from your original idea.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#43

Post by JoshTriplett »

simonsarris wrote: post #25
huhtenberg wrote: post #22

Another take on the same problem is to send an automatic reply saying Your email has been received. There are %N emails in my Inbox before yours. Your email is important to me. The estimated wait time for the response is %M days. Thank you for your patience. :)

If two people both used that automatic reply, and one of them emailed the other, it would result in the world's funniest arms race.

Or ARMMs race: http://catb.org/jargon/html/A/ARMM.html

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#44

Post by gurraman »

mtgentry wrote: post #23
edw519 wrote: post #7

I appreciate a good hack, but just can't get past the idea that this is a solution in search of a problem. 2 Reasons I would never consider using this: 1. I don't want anyone to have any idea "how busy I am". Maybe I'm old fashioned, but the size of my inbox, like many other things, is no one's business but mine. 2. This effectively makes the sender the gatekeeper for deciding what's important. I want to be my own ga…

2) I can understand why you would want to see each and every email. Although I think some people get so much email that they would happily place some of the burden on the sender in exchange for the time savings.

I don't have this problem as I just leave emails I'm not immediately taking action on in the inbox. But maybe an auto-responder is a better solution for those that have this problem. It could explain that you're busy and hint that the sender can add the word "URGENT" to the subject to grab your attention in emergencies. You could then, with a few simple rules, manage your inbox without giving an external service access to your inbox.

Anyway, as far as anyone is concerned my inbox is always swamped. It's usually true, but if it's not I might get away with reading a few extra articles on HN without anyone knowing my inbox is screaming for some action.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#45

Post by mtgentry »

simplegeek wrote: post #42

Great design and bravo for actually shipping code. But I don't think I would use it because there are definitely more than 7000 emails in my inbox but I always reply emails immediately that I know are important. What if I include some key-phrase in signature and people who send me emails with that key-phrase in subject are more likely to get a quick reply? But this is a deviation from your original idea.

As mentioned in another thread, maybe there could be an algorithm that uses multiple data points to determine availability? So it would take into account that you haven't opened that 5,345th email from a year ago, and you're unlikely to any time soon.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#46

Post by ryanlelek »

I wouldn't use it, but the site (which is the thing you wanted us to focus on) is clear and original. Overall, well done.

There might be a typographical error in the Privacy section: "We use Oauth to look at the amount (of?) email in your inbox, nothing else."

(I don't mean to nitpick, but we want your site to be the best it can be!)

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#47

Post by dmbass »

mtgentry wrote: post #4
DanBC wrote: post #2

Good Luck! There's a little typo - "We use Oauth to look at the amount email in your inbox, nothing else." - missing OF after amount. On the learn more page there's an extra apostrophe - "email signature that let's other" It looks really neat. How do you deal with "out of office" situations, where people are likely to have full inboxes?

Ha, I'm sure there are other typos as well! If someone gets a full inbox while on vacation, I'm guessing they would still want others to know their inbox is full, no?

Well, you would probably want the person to know you are out of office/on vacation/not checking email, not that you have a full inbox.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my site "Smoke Signal"

#48

Post by eps »

joshuacc wrote: post #35
Geee wrote: post #27

Completely unrelated, but how does that Museo Sans render so nicely on Win/Chrome? Usually font rendering on Chrome is horrible. Now, checking Typekit, it seems some fonts have nice anti-alias, while some not. Where's the difference?

I believe that is due to the work they explain in this blog post: http://blog.typekit.com/2011/07/26/new-from-typekit-improved...

This and the fact that Jos, the Museo designer, has always been very web-oriented and paid a lot of attention to the rasterization issues. His fonts are all really well hinted to begin with, and then there is Typekit's conditional .ps serving on top of that.
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