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Hum

letshum.com

121–130 of 140 posts

Re: Hum

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although it's not quite the same as a native app, we already have built in support for desktop notifications on all browsers that support them, including some older WebKits.

so how about a tray icon? AFAIK there is no way to create one using HTML5.

What do you need the tray icon for...?

Re: Hum

#122
post #118
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the ring-shaped indicator around people's avatars to indicate not only that they're typing, but how much they're typing. Interesting, but might be a little creepy in practice, I'm not sure.

I'm curious about the ring. How do you know how much of the ring to "populate" unless you know how much they're going to type?

I don't know how they do it, but I'd populate the ring with frequency, not quantity. Keydown Events per Second is probably pretty easy to track.

Re: Hum

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I immediately become furious when I have to speak to someone on the phone because I assume, from years of experience, that the person I'm speaking to will be useless. Not because they aren't intelligent, but because they simply aren't given the authority to solve my problem. It's an unfortunate side effect of the tiered support system. Most people are calling because of a PEBKAC error, but I typically have a much bet…

Hey Zac,

If you can be un-furious long enough to consider that you might have a blind-spot, here's what I can tell you about the company I am referencing:

- they are well-loved - it's highly likely that you are their customer or know someone that is - it's flat, not tiered (there's no "supervisors") - the system I'm describing is working specifically because those people that pick up are carefully trained and well paid North Americans that are actually subject-domain experts

The key detail and the reason I'm replying is because I know that what I described is working and you're not allowing yourself to imagine the possibility that it could actually work just fine.

Re: Hum

#124
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait....there's a myth that "teens don't have email"? Who are the jackasses that perpetuate this garbage?

Well, cui bono ? Facebook, who wants to replace email with Facebook.

I think Facebook have just abandoned that original strategy, though it's probably related to the WhatsApp pick-up.

Re: Hum

#125

Why announce the product before shipping? I added my email to the list, but I probably won't remember what the product is when you finally release it. The copy could use some work, you should be able to pare down a lot of the text. Also, you could increase the font size for maximum comfort. Why is the product name capitalized? When I see HUM I think "H. U. M."

This isn't the first time I've seen this on HN either. Pretty sure it's been mentioned before some time ago.

Re: Hum

#126
Looks like another closed communication system that won't work for me until all my friends DL the app - and they won't.

Re: Hum

#127
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

That's a good question, but it's not the question I posed.

I agree that vapid positivity is easy to ignore.

Sniping is arguably worse than "+1" back-patting for the community overall, but I was asking whether vapid positivity was adding any benefit to anyone, or is it simply a lesser or different kind of bad.

As someone else pointed out, individually these sorts of three-word comments do not contribute to the discussion. In the aggregate, though, both the good and bad may have real value, at least to whomever is behind the product under discussion.

It's a weird situation because no single comment of that form provides discussion space for a response (other than perhaps meta-comments about superficial commenting) but as a whole they may drive some useful observations.

Re: Hum

#128
post #9

Hey 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.

You mean to get rid of the annoyingly distracting video?

Re: Hum

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About a year ago I started making a point of sampling all of the teens I found myself in conversation with — family dinners, speaking at high schools, friends' siblings — and asking about their email usage patterns. While it's true that they don't use email as a primary communication medium (yet) it seems likely that this is because they also don't have jobs (yet) and that it's currently easier to talk to their frien…

Wait....there's a myth that "teens don't have email"? Who are the jackasses that perpetuate this garbage?

The parent post said:

> Most teens I know never check their email. Many of them don't even have email addresses.

Re: Hum

#130

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…

> They added a 3-hour delay before support sees any email, specifically to prevent threads from becoming chats. Note that phone support is also available; people with time-critical issues are encouraged to call in for immediate help.

Interesting observation (and "solution"). I'd say that model of dividing things is completely wrong, though. When I worked in support, I would much prefer to get everything via email. At the time we had a small user base (small office internal support) -- and this wasn't an issue -- we could educate our users (if needed).

But the general rule I've formulated, is don't let the user set the priority level. They'll be wrong. So for email, you might want to triage/prioritize every issue at once (and: eg group requests that have to do with a service being down/unreliable) -- adding a full 3 hours delay on top of every email sounds like the wrong approach for most help desks. If for no other reason than that it seems it would generate an increase in calls -- which are much harder to handle (scale) than email.

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