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Introducing HelloSign for Gmail

hellosign.com

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Re: Introducing HelloSign for Gmail

#71

Post by anonymouz »

joelandren wrote: post #60
anonymouz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically it pastes an image of your signature into a PDF (or other document). So from the point of view of forgeries it is obviously absolutely not secure, because anybody who receives a signed document from you can then themselves use your signature to sign a document in such a way. However, according to the homepage, it is legally binding, which is what you usually want for business transactions. Compare this to t…

HelloSign eSignatures all have an audit trail: What is the Audit Trail? To provide you with a transaction history, we track and timestamp various information from the moment the document is submitted for signature to when it is completely signed and secured, such as IP information and UserAgent information. We display some of this information as part of the Audit Trail that we affix to each executed Signature Request…

I guess that adds some additional legal protection in case there is some dispute in court (e.g, the court may believe you that you always sign via HelloSign and that HelloSign is sufficiently trustworthy to trust that absence of a audit trail means that it was not you who signed the document). It is probably still easy to forge things, after all, you yourself may also be signing documents without HelloSign sometimes, but I don't think that is much of a problem. It has never been all that hard to forge signatures, so in the end it comes down whether you can actually make a court believe that you signed the document or not.

Re: Introducing HelloSign for Gmail

#72

Post by rokhayakebe »

negativity wrote: post #66

Why, why, WHY does no one even question the idea of graphic signatures to begin with? This thing where we scan a piece of paper or paste in a little image has always smacked of forgery to me anyway? All I need is one image of your signature, and I can sign for you anywhere I want. It's like when they hand out rubber stamps for secretaries to use. It's like somewhere along the line, wherever you see hand-written signa…

I thought this was awesome until I read your comment, now I am thinking it again. You are correct in saying this eases forgery.

We should definitely rethink the whole thing. In a sense a signature is nothing other than authentication. I would be comfortable authenticating through my mobile phone and have that be the signature.

Re: Introducing HelloSign for Gmail

#73

Post by djhworld »

It's nice but most contracts that I've signed demand that you return the contract to them in paper form anyway.

But having the option to sign it, then print it off and send it via snail mail does save one step I suppose

Re: Introducing HelloSign for Gmail

#74

Post by sharjeel »

guiseppecalzone wrote: post #29
mapgrep wrote: post #26

This looks really cool. A small respectful note: As a consumer, if I didn't know about Paul's financial connection to HelloSign, I'd have liked to seen it disclosed in connection with his prominent endorsement. I hope this comment isn't taken as an attack on HelloSign or Paul; Paul is known as particularly ethical (thanks in part to his suggesting Google's motto), and I'm sure he really believes what he says in the q…

Joseph here, cofounder of HelloSign / HelloFax. Thanks for the comment. Paul Buchheit is an investor, so he got an early view of the plugin. We were especially interested in his feedback, since he created Gmail. As a company, we have made a conscious decision not to disclose our funding. But, for the purposes of transparency, we'd like to make clear that he's an investor.

How about changing the quote to "HelloSign for Gmail is awesome! I'm putting my bets on it!"

Re: Introducing HelloSign for Gmail

#75

Post by davidjgraph »

pdonis wrote: post #70
davidjgraph wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long does something need to be provider for for free before you trust that it'll stay that way? This is an attitude we're trying to overcome with our model.

How long does something need to be provider for for free before you trust that it'll stay that way? My personal answer: never. Google has killed free apps that had had lots of users for years. If Google can't guarantee that a free app will stay free and available, nobody can.

As just the kind of 100% no person I need to convince, does our explanation of our model http://forum.jgraph.com/questions/4323/is-draw-io-here-to-st... not sway you at all?

Re: Introducing HelloSign for Gmail

#77

Post by pdonis »

davidjgraph wrote: post #75
pdonis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long does something need to be provider for for free before you trust that it'll stay that way? My personal answer: never. Google has killed free apps that had had lots of users for years. If Google can't guarantee that a free app will stay free and available, nobody can.

As just the kind of 100% no person I need to convince, does our explanation of our model http://forum.jgraph.com/questions/4323/is-draw-io-here-to-st... not sway you at all?

This tells me that your real product is not free. You are selling a product, technology for making custom diagramming applications, that happens to have an offshoot that you can make freely available without compromising your core business model, and making it freely available has a better cost-benefit for you than trying to sell it as a cheap app, or for that matter not releasing it at all (releasing it gives you positive PR if nothing else). (Btw, is there a similar business model and explanation for hellosign? I assume there is. If not, the link you gave is not really relevant to this discussion.)

None of the above is communicated when you say "it's free!" on your front page with no other explanation, or when you ask "how long does it need to be provided for free before you trust that it will stay that way?". The critical factor is not how long you've been providing it for free; it's that the free "product" is not really the product, it's just a side effect of your real product.

If you really want to change people's attitudes about the issues involved here, find a catchy word that differentiates your business model from "free".

Re: Introducing HelloSign for Gmail

#78

Post by rdl »

HelloFax is one of my favorite products -- takes something I hate but still need rarely (fax) and makes it painless. I also love Earth Class Mail for doing the same thing to receiving postal mail.

I have used the other signers so far (as a customer of comcast, etc.), and was looking at setting up service with them for my company (to let people sign various contracts), but it was super complex (still worth it vs. nothing). Seriously looking at HelloSign.

Re: Introducing HelloSign for Gmail

#79

Post by rdl »

ForFreedom wrote: post #64
guiseppecalzone wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joseph here, cofounder of HelloSign / HelloFax. Thanks for the comment. Paul Buchheit is an investor, so he got an early view of the plugin. We were especially interested in his feedback, since he created Gmail. As a company, we have made a conscious decision not to disclose our funding. But, for the purposes of transparency, we'd like to make clear that he's an investor.

How different is it from digital certs or pdf signing.

Signing with digital certs is an awesome idea but the technical infrastructure to make it work is pretty heavyweight -- it's more work for the first agreement than printing something out, signing it, scanning it back in. It's great once you have huge volumes of documents shared among the same people, but a very large up-front cost. For a lot of uses, someone is signing a single document to get signed up on your service, which is exactly when you don't want to add friction.

The other benefit of the "fake handwritten signature" systems is they are a drop-in replacement for scanned forms in lots of workflows, and have legal standing (thank you fax machine).

Re: Introducing HelloSign for Gmail

#80

Post by davidjgraph »

pdonis wrote: post #77
davidjgraph wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As just the kind of 100% no person I need to convince, does our explanation of our model http://forum.jgraph.com/questions/4323/is-draw-io-here-to-st... not sway you at all?

This tells me that your real product is not free. You are selling a product, technology for making custom diagramming applications, that happens to have an offshoot that you can make freely available without compromising your core business model, and making it freely available has a better cost-benefit for you than trying to sell it as a cheap app, or for that matter not releasing it at all (releasing it gives you po…

"Btw, is there a similar business model and explanation for hellosign? I assume there is. If not, the link you gave is not really relevant to this discussion."

Threads in topics often vary in subject. My posting would not be suitable as a reply to the OP, following from the top of this thread, I would say my replies are perfectly reasonable relative to the parent post.

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