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Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

phonejanitor.com

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Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#121

Post by [deleted] »

njloof wrote: post #112
biot wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's utilitarian to the max in that it cares little for graphical design. The layout is fairly functional, though I did initially think the menu links at the top were disabled given that the links below were classic blue underline. I can easily see why someone would call that terrible; it looks like a time-warp back to the mid-90s when Netscape rendered the default HTML background as grey before everyone eventually s…

Phone numbers are pretty utilitarian. You mean I need a number just to contact someone? What terrible UI.

[deleted]

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#123

Post by TodPunk »

ttctciyf wrote: post #99
aresant wrote: post #34

I think it's a stroke of genius to launch something so aesthetically terrible on HN / PH (aka the early adopter crowd). For a group of people that see a dozen bootstrap / sandwhich vid style launches a week this stands out, and got me to read 3 paragraphs of ad-copy. Other notable examples of this launch strategy, intentional or not, in recent memory were Pud launching DistroKid (1) and the team behind Magic (2) I th…

The page aesthetics work for me - I particularly liked the absence of three USP divs under the lede (though the illuminoid-friendly logo was a close second..) Hey, feature idea - riffing off the now overdue but unlikely to happen call flag for non-human callers, how about a voice-recognised audio-captcha before you're put through during open hours?

Doable, but voice recognition is severely lacking outside of targeted small dictionaries, and a simple wav file can beat it. I wouldn't rely on it for a long while.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#124

Post by TodPunk »

jessaustin wrote: post #119
TodPunk wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't keep much data around for a CDR, just who called, what time, and what happened to it. Even my number hasn't generated more than 1K of data thus far. I don't see that being a big problem for 10 years of someone's line data. We can change the wording on that, but there is a requirement for when a number is active or not and who it is attached to, and there's some significant liability if we can't say where a n…

Thanks for your detailed reply. Can we agree that there is a difference between CDRs and provisioning info? No one will complain that you are obeying the law with respect to the latter, but "never" is a strange call record deletion policy. Not even an ILEC would try that. A policy this strange will cost you customers, especially since anyone trying this service is much more likely to think about privacy issues.

That's a fair perspective and I will give some sincere thought to the prospect. Striking a balance is important to us as a team, so I can't say I will cater to everything you wish, which I'm sure you understand easily enough, but I do wish to treat it with the weight it deserves when you're being very reasonable about explaining your position. Cheers.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#125

Post by jqm »

biot wrote: post #110
david-given wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks terrible? Really? It's an uncluttered layout with the tl;dr description of what it actually is prominently on the front page, and with easy-to-find navigation links to everything else above --- and if you notice, the informational links are on the left, and the actionable links are on the right. To me, it's exactly what I want out of a product's website, and I wish more looked like it!

It's utilitarian to the max in that it cares little for graphical design. The layout is fairly functional, though I did initially think the menu links at the top were disabled given that the links below were classic blue underline. I can easily see why someone would call that terrible; it looks like a time-warp back to the mid-90s when Netscape rendered the default HTML background as grey before everyone eventually s…

I like. It has easy to glean information and no extraneous clutter. I personally have grown weary of pages with little to no information and half blurred pictures of people in coffee shops. And don't get me started on the scroll bar tricks....

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#126

Post by TodPunk »

intopieces wrote: post #122

How does this differ from Google Voice?

A fair question. =c)

I can't really answer that exhaustively, as I am not intimately familiar with all of GV. Phone Janitor does have some things I couldn't find in one package elsewhere that I wanted for managing my own stuff (some of which might be doable in GV? I'm not totally sure), and these include:

- Being able to route based on group, contact, time of day, day of week and to any phone number I want all in a single rule

- Linking my voicemails to family and friends without having to go through some authentication stuff I never saw a reason for (there's a story to this one actually, and I'll happily tell it to anyone interested)

- Not having to call anyone to access my voicemails

- Being actively developed on (this space seems rather stagnant to me from big tech. I have some tools options as a developer, but my parents can't really take advantage of any of that)

- Something I can integrate into other things I care about through some sort of API or export format or something (we chose the API route).

- Support. I don't need 24/7 instantaneous phone support (and don't want it, ideally) but somebody in the case of a huge issue should be contactable, fairly easily.

Even Phone Janitor isn't everything I want it to be (yet), but we've found customers find it incredibly useful, and we've had some good feedback for features that others will also find useful but still stick to our core goals (so ads probably won't be supported any time soon). Some of the feedback has been here today as you can see. I'm pleased with the criticism and praise we've received here, and I'm hoping to incorporate some of it into some progress in the near future.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#127

Post by joshcanhelp »

david-given wrote: post #73
joshcanhelp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking "ugh, this looks terrible" and read all of the copy as well.

It looks terrible? Really? It's an uncluttered layout with the tl;dr description of what it actually is prominently on the front page, and with easy-to-find navigation links to everything else above --- and if you notice, the informational links are on the left, and the actionable links are on the right. To me, it's exactly what I want out of a product's website, and I wish more looked like it!

I agree, it's uncluttered and refreshingly simple. It's the default Times font that looks bad to my eyes.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#128

Post by rsync »

eevilspock wrote: post #66
kazinator wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be either-or! Ads or fees can just be different points in a price structure. Pay nothing, and be the product sold to the ad syndicate. Or pay for the service, and don't view ads. One consumers may be all "Death to ads!". But the next one might be "Gimme for free! (And I will find a way to block the ads or just live with them)." In this situation, however, it's not obvious how the service could be s…

Yes, it does. We all collectively pay for the economic and social costs of advertising. Advertising makes nothing free for anyone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237 Maciej Ceglowski (idlewords) also calls for an "anti-free-software movement" in Don't Be A Free User : https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ There are better ways to screen out unwanted callers. As Jeff Hammerbacher, fmr. Manag…

"Maciej Ceglowski (idlewords) also calls for an "anti-free-software movement" in Don't Be A Free User: https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/"

His examples and his cause have nothing at all to do with free software. It's an almost comically clumsy misnomer.

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#129

Post by cnst »

slg wrote: post #35
TodPunk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fair reluctance and I can't take it away because at the end of the day you'll just have that lock-in with anyone. Such is the nature of telco lines. I have the same problem (having carried my home phone line through multiple stacks). What I can say is that I can cover costs out of pocket every month indefinitely (because each user covers their telco costs of that line, I'm just covering infrastructure) and m…

I'm not sure you can compare your lock-in to the telcos. The telcos are for the most part commoditized. I use my phone the same way whether my phone is on Verizon or AT&T. However, you are not exactly offering a commoditized service and I would venture a guess that you don't want to considering your pricing compared to your competitors. You are asking that we make a fundamental change to how we use our phone. Instead…

You have a good point, however, I think Google Voice is already quite good at doing quite similar kind of filtering that the site talks about; as such, I don't even see what kind of value this service is supposed to provide, especially at 15$/mo.

In the absence of Google Voice, this service might be interesting; however, otherwise, why would I pay 15*12 = 180 USD/year for something that I can already get for free?

Re: Phone Janitor – Take control of your phone number

#130

Post by cnst »

Hysterica wrote: post #89
aresant wrote: post #34

I think it's a stroke of genius to launch something so aesthetically terrible on HN / PH (aka the early adopter crowd). For a group of people that see a dozen bootstrap / sandwhich vid style launches a week this stands out, and got me to read 3 paragraphs of ad-copy. Other notable examples of this launch strategy, intentional or not, in recent memory were Pud launching DistroKid (1) and the team behind Magic (2) I th…

As honest as the text appears, I usually associate websites which look similar to this as outdated and untrustworthy. It's the type of website you often see for old freeware, which is why it doesn't seem so great to a potential user as they'll assume the website style may reflect on the service they're about to receive. I would take a bootstrap style over this. Maybe that's just me.

It's funny how you're saying this on Hacker News, which, thankfully, still pretty much fully works even with JavaScript disabled, unlike pretty much every single web2.0 site nowadays, even HN clones or competitors.
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