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HipChat releases native app for Mac

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Re: HipChat releases native app for Mac

#61

Post by lazerwalker »

shizcakes wrote: post #28
n9com wrote: post #19

I know people are happy as the infamous GIF bug is fixed, but seriously this is one of the worst 'beta' apps I have tried. This mac app has been in development for ages, then been in closed beta and now finally it's available to everyone to try. Our team just switched to the beta native app, and already found several critical bugs with the app within minutes. Sorry guys, this is really poorly put together and the num…

I agree - I feel like the time would have been better spent implementing Adium/Pidgin plugins first.

HipChat uses XMPP, so you can already use it with Adium/Pidgin without much trouble. The only things that are really missing by default are the syntactic sugar for @-mentioning people, HipChat's custom emoticons, and inlining of image/link previews (many of which you can fix with already-existing plugins).

Re: HipChat releases native app for Mac

#62

Post by jedberg »

javery wrote: post #37
n9com wrote: post #19

I know people are happy as the infamous GIF bug is fixed, but seriously this is one of the worst 'beta' apps I have tried. This mac app has been in development for ages, then been in closed beta and now finally it's available to everyone to try. Our team just switched to the beta native app, and already found several critical bugs with the app within minutes. Sorry guys, this is really poorly put together and the num…

Been using it for an hour or so and haven't run into any issues - what have you found? Just saying critical bugs is pretty unhelpful to everyone.

I used it for five minutes and found: There is no way to search for a person in the Lobby and you can't reorder the tabs. These are two things I do a lot.

Re: HipChat releases native app for Mac

#63

Post by spotman »

Can anyone comment on the battery life for the iOS client in comparison to skype? I am a heavy skype user, and it doesn't seem like hipchat has a lot to offer than skype does not. Not to mention the inertia that skype has.

however, I would totally consider it, if i could keep it on my phone all day and not have 10% battery by 2pm.

also, curious, does it do group video chat, ala skype?

Re: HipChat releases native app for Mac

#65

Post by potatolicious »

easytiger wrote: post #59
potatolicious wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HipChat is more than an IRC server - it's a fully searchable web-based chat archival system, as well as a file transmission and sharing app backed by S3. It's also fully mobile-compatible and will do proper message routing to multiple devices owned by the same user, as well as temporary message caching/retry if your device is unreachable when a message is sent. etc etc. The list goes on. None of it impossible to repl…

at that point you might as well get google apps for business.

Google doesn't exactly have an "IRC on crack" product though? Also, I find GTalk's routing to be spotty when it comes to multiple devices - it's quite common for me to receive messages from coworkers at night and have them route to my work machine instead of one that's active on the GTalk account at home.

Nowadays we use GroupMe for things that must be read in a timely manner. It'd be nice if we could use GTalk for it (this is a Google Apps GTalk account, not a public one).

Re: HipChat releases native app for Mac

#66

Post by holman »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #36

Apologies for hijacking the thread, but I'm wondering: We're using Campfire right now, with the Propane mac client, and we have a dedicated room for notifications (currently exceptions from Errbit, monitoring alerts from Nagios, CI build failures on Jenkins, app deployments from our own custom tools). It works pretty well, but we're a team working on a whole bunch of unrelated but overlapping apps, and having everyth…

We pipe everything into Campfire, scoped into the relevant room (last time I checked we had about 80 separate rooms).

The topical bit is important- a particular app's notifications get dumped into that app's room, for example. That means I only get notified if I'm in that room. Conversely, that means I don't get excessive notifications if I'm not in the room, for apps I'm not interested in.

"Spheres of interest", as you mention them, become less important as you grow the company. We've found it important to not get too sucked into every little aspect of the company- it's too broad. If someone thinks you should know something that's happening in a room you're not in, they can just ping you and you can hop in and stay up-to-date. That's been a really good solution for us.

Re: HipChat releases native app for Mac

#67

Post by marquis »

jedberg wrote: post #62
javery wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been using it for an hour or so and haven't run into any issues - what have you found? Just saying critical bugs is pretty unhelpful to everyone.

I used it for five minutes and found: There is no way to search for a person in the Lobby and you can't reorder the tabs. These are two things I do a lot.

Interestingly the first thing I did was re-order the tabs. Now I went back to check and I can't re-order them. Maybe that info helps the Hipchat devs out - I just trashed prefs and then you can re-order one tab. Then it stops allowing you to do this.

Re: HipChat releases native app for Mac

#68

Post by potatolicious »

subpixel wrote: post #48
pbiggar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One major difference is that it maintains persistent state - so when I log back in I see all the history and conversations from when I was logged out.

I've never really had a thorough introduction to IRC. Is it correct to assume that it's 100% ephemeral, that all conversations, questions, answers are gone when you log out? If that's the case, I'm puzzled as to why it would maintain so much traction when the record of communication can be so valuable (e.g. people searching the log vs asking a question that has been answered many times... )

It's common for people to log channels - either directly via the server or via a bot that sits in the room and just records everything. Logs can be exposed via various web frontends, most of which are pretty limited feature-wise.

Most IRC clients do not log out of the box, so direct messages from other users are easily lost unless you go out of your way to make sure - the server does not do this logging for you.

Re: HipChat releases native app for Mac

#69

Post by mcantelon »

lmm wrote: post #18
jug6ernaut wrote: post #13

Maybe I am being naive(going to assume I am), and i admittedly have never used HipChat. But could someone explain to me what this offers over say setting up your own XMPP or IRC server and using that?

Not having to maintain your own server. Slightly better integration with other things (e.g. messages sent when you're offline can be emailed to you) - nothing you couldn't do with a bunch of client plugins, but it's there and set up for you already. A very nicely polished in-browser client, nicer even than irccloud, which makes it much easier for non-technical folks to use.

There are lots of open IRC servers on which you can create password protected rooms. That plus Google Docs /Drive works great for small companies. For larger companies, however, I can see why something like Hipchat could be useful.
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