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Hum

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Re: Hum

#101

Post by mhb »

tmikaeld wrote: post #7
peteforde wrote: post #6

Putting 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…

I completely agree, not because of opinion but because of experience! For six months i answered all of my e-mails within minutes, because i thought that superb support was the way to go. But it only took a couple of months before i saw the negative effects - both employees and bosses started asking questions about every little problem that they encountered! This distracted me in the middle of all other work, and bill…

Similar to HMOs vs catastrophic insurance.

Re: Hum

#102

Post by timbonicus »

Minor tip when embedding YouTube videos, as with the 'Watch the HUM Trailer' video - add rel=0 to the URL to prevent 'Related videos' from appearing at the end.

Re: Hum

#103

Post by jamesbritt »

emmett wrote: post #100
jamesbritt wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. C…

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.

The essential distinction here is between personal comments and comments about a product.

There's a difference between congratulating someone on launching and telling them their product or idea is great.

I don't believe that "What a great idea" is as bad as "What a stoopid idea", but question whether the former actually contributes any more to to the discussion or is tangibly useful to anyone.

I've noticed quite often comments of the form "+1" or "Cool article!" get down-voted quickly into wispy gray. They contribute nothing to the discussion aside from a virtual pat on the back. One-sentence "Great idea!" comments feel much the same.

From your link: And since it's hard to write a short comment that's distinguished for the amount of information it conveys, people try to distinguish them instead by being funny.

Or perhaps by being super-upbeat, a more acceptable way to post without offering much substance.

Re: Hum

#104

Post by pbreit »

peteforde wrote: post #28
pbreit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heaven forbid that businesses might engage with customers...

I don't think anyone is suggesting that businesses shouldn't/don't/won't engage with customers. All this particular business did was tell people that if they have a time-sensitive problem, call them and get immediate help. Delaying replies to emails solved a number of problems and streamlined the exchange. Everyone seems happy.

That's EXACTLY what was being suggested! Delaying replies to avoid conversation.

Re: Hum

#105

Post by lobster_johnson »

catfoods wrote: post #98
nickjackson wrote: post #85

While 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 an…

Ironically, Whatsapp started out by using ejabberd — the XMPP server written in Erlang — as their main chat infrastructure, and then modified it to the point where it no longer implements XMPP.

Re: Hum

#106

Post by emmett »

jamesbritt wrote: post #103
emmett wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. C…

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. The essential distinction here is between personal comments and comments about a product. There's a difference between congratulating someone on launching and telling them their product or idea is great. I don't believe that "What a great idea" is as bad…

You say the question is whether it contribute more. Obviously it does not, but that's not the question. The question is what produces the best community on the site. Vapid positivity can be easily ignored (and as you point out is often down voted). But even when it's not, no big deal. Vapid put-downs are vastly more dangerous, because they're mean as well as stupid and thus create a negative and toxic environment for others.

Re: Hum

#107

Post by nknighthb »

jamesbritt wrote: post #94
nknighthb wrote: post #78

Earlier 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…

> How much do you know about this particular company?

I know what was posted. What was posted gave me no reason to believe it's any different than 99.9% of companies. Even if it were, that would be inadequate to reverse my opinion of the stupidity of this strategy.

> In my experience it is far easier for someone to follow a script in E-mail than on the phone.

And equally easy to spot. My business is also lost at that point.

> it's used in a way suitable for the medium.

It should be plainly obvious that I disagree with that assessment.

> Trying to have a real-time conversation in email

Is not what I was talking about. Quite the contrary. The non-real-time nature of email is exactly what makes it superior to voice communication.

"Fast" and "real-time" are not the same thing.

Re: Hum

#108

Post by jakub_g »

fournm wrote: post #25

In Firefox, scrolling down the page below the cover image causes a Youtube embed of what I assume is the trailer to get stuck blocking a large portion of the content of the page.

Seems "we're not testing any platform except Chrome" is trendy those days

Re: Hum

#110

Post by grej »

fiblye wrote: post #65
grej wrote: post #10

The application is quite nice looking, and I really like the @ integration/notification. That said, I really hope 11MB splash videos on home pages doesn't become a trend.

Unfortunately, the video background trend is definitely a thing. Paypal's been doing it for at least a couple weeks and I've seen at least one other site doing the same. This might even be worse than the old autoplaying music embedded on every page fad. Hell, at least you could mute it.

I hope you're wrong but fear you're right. I think this site: http://threeringfocus.com/ is an good example of a way to create a cool animated splash without forcing an 11MB download on the site visitor.
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