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Hum

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131–140 of 140 posts

Re: Hum

#131

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?

Thanks for teaching me that "jackass" is just an animal [1] O_o

Without leo, I would have stupidly increased my use of invective.

[1] http://dict.leo.org/?search=jackasses

Re: Hum

#132

Why 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.

Looks like you're new around here. Welcome to HN, where the top comment for DropBox's launch was something along the lines of "this will never work".

To read the atom.io threads. Plenty of positivity around here when a new product strikes a chord.

Re: Hum

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And google talk and facebook chat both used xmpp, and are both(?) avoiding federation -- and both(?) phasing out even supporting xmpp clients.

For a little while I actually bothered using IM, as I actually had someone to talk to (most of my friends had facebook or gtalk -- and I could talk to them in the same interface I used for xmpp at work) -- and I could keep all the logs in one place (if I needed them) -- and it all supported secure texts (OTR).

Now all my friends have access to crappy html5 chat silos that I'd rather not touch with a stick if I can help it. The things are all but impossible to use in a sane way without having to use a mouse -- and even if I could use them, I can't aggregate the logs, keep them independently of whether or not I keep the account(s) and I can't have access to everything in one application.

Why would anyone use this or slack.com rather than setting up a jabber server? If you desperately want to restrict your choice of interface, you could always deploy a html5 jabber client, and pretend there aren't good native clients out there. I'm not sure why anyone would do that, though.

Re: Hum

#134
post #23

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…

Heaven forbid that businesses might engage with customers...

It's funny to see someone rushing to the defense of the idea of customer engagement, as if it really needs additional promotion or protection. I mean, we only hear about how much companies need to be creating deep emotional connections with their customers and making sweet, sweet love to them 24/7.

As a customer, I want great service too. As a business owner, I understand that their are economics behind delivering such service, especially when customers also want low prices. There has to be a balance, and avoiding unnecessary interaction (or engagement) is an absolute key to providing better service overall.

Re: Hum

#135
Feels a lot like what Google+ should have been - the mishmash of Google+ features point to some of the ideas in Hum, but lack any "here's how you should use it" sense.

Re: Hum

#136
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd bet it's the latter (with a character limit), since this really isn't that groundbreaking of an app...

Re: Hum

#137
post #27
post #14

Am I missing the differences between this and HipChat?

Even if it did resemble HipChat (not sure I agree), did you have a point?

No, I'm just looking for differences. After reading the features I was struck that each one reminded me of HipChat.

Re: Hum

#138
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.

At first I didn't get what you were saying because I just had a black background

I took like 5 to 10 seconds to load on this connection:

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3344597847

.... Well Hum no thanks :)

I prefer Hangout for friends and Hipchat for work

Re: Hum

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pa…

I'm sure support via phone can work. I'm just saying that it usually doesn't. For exactly the opposite reasons you give. Most call center employees aren't especially technical, have little or no training, and are basically forced to stick to a script. I'm not saying it's their fault, quite the contrary. But because of these experiences, I'm automatically put off by the idea of speaking with a phone representative.

Re: Hum

#140
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And google talk and facebook chat both used xmpp, and are both(?) avoiding federation -- and both(?) phasing out even supporting xmpp clients. For a little while I actually bothered using IM, as I actually had someone to talk to (most of my friends had facebook or gtalk -- and I could talk to them in the same interface I used for xmpp at work) -- and I could keep all the logs in one place (if I needed them) -- and it…

HipChat actually supports XMPP, if you don't want to use the native apps. Doubt it's popular enough that services like Slack will do it too.
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