Rapportive (YC S10) integrates Gmail People Widget, gains features | Hacker News Reader

Rapportive (YC S10) integrates Gmail People Widget, gains features

mashable.com

53 pointssamstokes12 comments

I pondered on how the GMail People Widget would affect Rapportive in the initial thread about it's announcement, but I think this is the best possible response to it. Embrace the technology and use it to further your own product. Kudos Rapport, kudos.

Well done rapportive, Google should buy you out instead of trying to eat your lunch.

Hear hear. This space is so small, Google should buy it just to consolidate it and clean up the available options.

Frustratingly, I couldn't find the actual widget from the blog announcement. Is it in Labs? Even googling the widget took me to their announcement and not to the widget. Certainly I'm missing something. Does anyone know where the gmail people widget is?

it is apparently being rolled out gradually, so it may not be activated for you yet.

It's a built-in feature of Gmail, rather than a Labs feature or an installable addon - once the gradual rollout reaches your account, it will just appear in your Gmail sidebar (or, if you're already using Rapportive, in the Rapportive info).

Google is doing a characteristically excellent job of communicating this to users.

on the theme of Rapportive: I played today with it to build an HN raplet and I realized something slightly scary: whenever I installs rapportive, or any raplet, all of my contacts's email addresses get broadcasted to the builders of the raplets plainly.

Was this discussed previously on HN, or on some of the Rapportive public comunications? It seems a moderately bad thing to me, although I have not pondered the alternatives (hash a-la gravatar for example).

This is why we have a big warning when you install a Raplet — you are trusting the authors of the Raplet to treat your email addresses with respect. This is why we only list Raplets in the gallery from authors we know and trust.

A hash would work for many use cases, but wouldn't work for adding a contact to a CRM/Helpdesk/etc.

Access to the plaintext email addresses could be a permission that Raplets ask for, but this may be unnecessary complication.

true, the warning is there for me whan I install my raplet, but it's not for when my contacts do, which would be the discomforting bit. As I said, I did not put much thought on this anyway, and I can see how this is basically "your friends know your email and can sign you up to a spammy ml" in another form.

Re HN Raplet - I'd be eager to try that out. Got a link?

not yet, but if you want I'll let you know when I have something decent.

Mind you, since HN does not show emails, and I do not run the site, this only works hackishly and lacks the exactness of "real" raplets.

Sure, Raplets are tricky when you can't search by email. We're thinking of a few ways to improve this though.

Please do send me details when you're ready - email's in my HN bio.

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