What about security? Are chats encrypted over the wire, and in storage? What's the underlying protocol - XMPP/Jabber?
Hum
91–100 of 140 posts
Re: Hum
#92A little off topic, but I wonder if Hum was developed using Meteor.js?
Re: Hum
#93i don't feel like this is significantly different from whatsapp. at least not yet
Re: Hum
#94Putting aside my own aversion to yet another opportunity to ramp up my continuous partial attention deficit, this strikes me as a solution looking for a problem. One of my smartest friends noticed that when his support team answered emails quickly, the customer would treat this as an implicit invitation to shift the support thread into a support chat, via email. They added a 3-hour delay before support sees any email…
> people with time-critical issues are encouraged to call in for immediate help This is a company that doesn't want my business. If I have to pick up a phone, you've already lost. Email provides quick but asynchronous communication. Each side can take a few minutes to do research or investigation, find someone with more information, and try possible solutions, without heavy distraction. Discarding this communications…
Discarding this communications channel and demanding my attention be monopolized by a voice following a script is somewhere between disrespectful and outright inhumane.
Why do you claim the OP would have the customer monopolized by a voice following a script? How much do you know about this particular company?
In my experience it is far easier for someone to follow a script in E-mail than on the phone. If a company wants to give users the runaround there are much better ways than a 3-hour hold on E-mail replies.
OP explained how E-mail was handled. It's not discarded, it's used in a way suitable for the medium.
Trying to have a real-time conversation in email is nowhere as good as an actual voice conversation. If that's what's needed then that's the better option and people should be encouraged in that direction.
Re: Hum
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
> people with time-critical issues are encouraged to call in for immediate help This is a company that doesn't want my business. If I have to pick up a phone, you've already lost. Email provides quick but asynchronous communication. Each side can take a few minutes to do research or investigation, find someone with more information, and try possible solutions, without heavy distraction. Discarding this communications…
Discarding this communications channel and demanding my attention be monopolized by a voice following a script is somewhere between disrespectful and outright inhumane. Why do you claim the OP would have the customer monopolized by a voice following a script? How much do you know about this particular company? In my experience it is far easier for someone to follow a script in E-mail than on the phone. If a company w…
If the support staff knows the answer to the questions immediately, and needs to probe the client a bit to find the problem, voice calls could be preferred.
However, if the support staff needs to look into the problem a bit, and already has required information from the client, I think email is far preferable. Being on the phone is likely to put the support person on the spot to make instant answers, else appearing to lack knowledge), whether or not correct.
Re: Hum
#96Hey all! Co-founder of HUM here, and happy to answer any questions you may have about it. We've been cranking away on this product for the better part of the past year and are very excited to be rolling it out over the coming weeks.
That's a beautiful launch page. I like that you subtly get the user to scroll down.
Yea I noticed that too. You initially scroll down to see the rest of that sample chat inbox, which provides a smooth transition between the div with the background video and the div with the main content (since the first chat inbox spills into the second div). Looks good.
Re: Hum
#97It appears that you're targeting corporate users, am I right? I would guess that individuals would probably just use something like Google Hangout or e-mail or some other chat client. For many corporations, I think one of the biggest issues is having their internal chats hosted in the "cloud". Maybe I'm assuming too much here, but i'm guessing all of this is happening on your servers. I'd highly recommend allowing pe…
Well, the main 100-pound competitors are Google and Microsoft. Google is cloud-only, Microsoft offers self-hosted and cloud solutions.
I would generally agree that the biggest market is probably for self-hosted solutions.
I'm sure there's a big market here, but companies have been reinventing the wheel here since the days of AOL. What the world really needs is for something like XMPP to gain traction and actually work in a federated way with email addresses.
Re: Hum
#98While the app looks pretty cool and I have no beef with the app specifically, introducing yet another IM app is just going to fragment the market further and cause more issues than it solves. There are so many different ways to communicate currently, that soon we aren't going to be sure what app to best contact a particular person with. You've got Email, SMS, iMessage, Facebook (Chat), WhatsApp, Twitter, and those ar…
Yeah, that exact thing already exists, it's called XMPP/Jabber but hardly anyone uses it. It's a shame. There is a federated chat protocol just like federated email, but it's businesses trying to lock in customers that is causing all of these communication problems.
In a perfect world Google, Apple, Mozilla, etc would just contribute new features to the codebase, and everyone could have their own client interfaces and do unique team apps etc
*Bonus points: Jabber chat protocol addresses are the same as email addresses, they are interchangeable. One less thing to list on your business card. Socially, this mindset would potentially shift into just being called an 'address' instead of assuming it's only for email.
I have noticed we're running into this right now with iMessage, Facetime etc in giving out an 'email address' to do connect doing something other than emailing.
Re: Hum
#99Why are there so many negative comments? And most of these aren't even constructive criticisms. Do you have any suggestions to give the founding team? Any constructive criticism to offer? I'm sure they'd like to hear it. On the other hand, snide remarks provide hardly any value to anyone.
On the other hand, snide remarks provide hardly any value to anyone.
Sure. Does the same apply to single-sentence "This is great!" comments?
Is a new business helped by people who cheer them on with vague support without also confirming that the product solves a real problem for them?
It brings to mind some of the ideas behind having an MVP. It's almost meaningless to have people say your business idea is great. What matters is will they part with their money for it.
Empty naysayers don't contribute much, but neither do empty cheerleaders. They're just less irksome.
Re: Hum
#100Why are there so many negative comments? And most of these aren't even constructive criticisms. Do you have any suggestions to give the founding team? Any constructive criticism to offer? I'm sure they'd like to hear it. On the other hand, snide remarks provide hardly any value to anyone.
On the other hand, snide remarks provide hardly any value to anyone. Sure. Does the same apply to single-sentence "This is great!" comments? Is a new business helped by people who cheer them on with vague support without also confirming that the product solves a real problem for them? It brings to mind some of the ideas behind having an MVP. It's almost meaningless to have people say your business idea is great. What…
In fact, no. The same is not true of empty positive comments. A good place to read about the HN philosophy on what makes a bad comment: http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html (scroll to the comment section)
As I write this though I realize I have a pretty fundamental disagreement. Going up to someone and telling them that they're an idiot or otherwise abusing them is totally unacceptable in most social settings. Congratulating someone is not. Why should HN be different?