Here is a Basic Private Messaging Tool for news.yc Users | Hacker News Reader

Here is a Basic Private Messaging Tool for news.yc Users

news.ycombinator.withmsg.com

14 pointswhacked_new6 comments

Here's a sort of proof of concept for an interesting URL usage; augment by snap-on, versus plugin.

This is a simple little utility that sends browser requests using PHP/cURL, and puts/fetches stuff from a mysql database, meant to provide a substitutional private messaging function for news.yc users who want PM functions.

"Login" with your news.yc account information. It will relay this information to news.yc and check the headers for pass/fail. Your password is discarded after the relay; if the test passes, it saves your username and uses that to post to mysql. The target user with the matching username will be able to check for "messages." You can reply, or delete messages. Messages older than a week are automatically deleted. The login source code is publicly viewable... for now, just in case you want to see when the password variable is discarded (lines 29 and 30). If there are huge problems, do tell.

Also, if you care to use this, the auto-refresh is done using a META refresh every 5 minutes. Type fast and short, I guess.

Again, this is just a rudimentary tool which I hope some people will find useful (and msg me if you want) until pg decides to add PM functions (or demands a takedown) :-)

really nice

nice job!

This seems like an interesting way to tack on community functions to any web site on the Internet. The hard part is to get users to trust you with their username and password, but perhaps the spread of OpenIDs could help that situation for you.

Have you given any thought to turning this idea into something more? The withmsg.com domain name should work great for any site.

I thought about the "more" part a little, just a little; there are some important problems to think through before carrying this further. First of all, it only provides a substitute functionality; if news.yc gets PM then this is totally unnecessary. For more features, there are more ambitious projects like medium (I'm not sure if they're in the same category).

Second, being an unofficial product degrades credibility by a lot; there's no reason why a user would expect to find messages for them on an external server. I imagine this as a disposable tool, like mailinator, in case some people want to trade emails or other non-public data without having to write here or disclose anything personal. Post and delete. For this specific purpose I do think its useful, but how much further beyond the audience especially concerned about privacy, I don't know.

Third, loading an external page in a frame can confuse and annoy users, so I think it's not a good practice. news.yc users might tolerate this kind of hack because they know what's behind it, but I can't say for sure.

Of course, if you have other thoughts/suggestions, do let me know, publicly or privately :)

I had the same idea a while back :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com