Show HN: Contacts storage the way it should be done.
useadd.com
useadd.com
For me, it's either use something like Google Contacts, or use something like add. They both have several features:
* Stores your contacts
* Synchronize across multiple devices
* Works on all my mobile devices as well as web (I'm giving add the benefit of the doubt here)
* Respects my privacy (Google has a good reputation here)
* Allows me to export my data
Google contacts has several advantages out of the starting gate:
* They are MUCH more likely to still be here in 5 years
* They're free
So if you want to beat Google contacts, you have to offer something they don't. Here are a few examples:
* Better structures for additional data. Like tracking relationships so I can store an address or some notes for a family or married couple instead of typing it in only one of them.
* Better tools for managing large numbers of contacts.
* Automatic updates to addresses, phone, etc. (Fed from somewhere... where would that be?)
* Automatic linking to external sources. (If it recognizes the name, propose a possible address for my friends, culled from other public or private databases.)
Basically, in order to compete with big, reliable, and free you have to offer something special that the big guy doesn't. There is LOTS of space for innovation in contact storage, and I'm willing to pay $3/month for such a service. And ubiquitous access to that (even integrated into my phone OS) and a way to avoid lock-in (so I can move my data if I want) is the minimal level needed to play. Now you need to take it further before you can attract me as a customer.
However, I don't think Google does respect your privacy [1] [2]. That is a massive issue and is becoming greater over time and is something Add was created to directly counter.
Hopefully we can prove you wrong and still be here in 5 years - I want to build a sustainable and growing business, not a flash in the pan startup looking for a quick sale.
1. http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/update-on-buzz.html 2. http://blog.eset.com/2011/07/07/google-prepares-to-share-you...
Lets say I use your service instead of Google, I will protect my contacts from getting into Google's hands (this is only if I don't use gmail/google voice/google plus, which I do so they get my contacts anyways). Now I have protected my contacts, against google. But I have 173 friends/family that also use Gmail. This means that every single one of them probably has my email/phone/address and uploaded it too into Google Contacts. And if I haven't uploaded my contacts, someone else will do it. There is no way of protecting yourself against this sort of social network.
1) Most importantly, de-dupe contacts on all devices. Get VERY good at fuzzy matching algorithms, they can't possibly be too hard. I have an iPhone that for no obvious reason to me, has 8 different versions of a single contact, despite having near-exact replicas of the contact's data. I want a 1:1 match of people:contacts. Even a basic flow wherein you say "Here's all the contacts we're merging... uncheck any you think we messed up" would be hugely useful on all devices. But for this, you need to be able to write/delete contacts.. no idea if that's possible in an Apple world. I'm staggered that no one is doing this today (that I know of).
2) Import from all normal places where people store contacts (Facebook, Google, Yahoo, ICQ, Twitter, AOL Messenger, LinkedIn, Myspace, iCloud/Apple, Exchange, Linux datastores, etc... this obviously takes time).
3) Once you've imported, provide re-export / de-duping for all sources (in other words, after you've gone through and classified my contacts, allow me to say "Sync all that information back into Google contacts, Plaxo, etc.").
4) Really ideally, don't store the raw data on your servers, only store it encrypted so that you can't answer government requests. This requirement conflicts with your ability to get raw data to feed those fuzzy algorithms, though, so it'd probably have to get dropped, I'm guessing.
5) If you want to increase your viral coefficient dramatically, start building identity profiles of people based off of publicly-available information on the Net, and offer it to people who already have that person as a contact. Increased stalking capabilities are always popular (if evil).
6) Export not just to services, but to any popular data formats (Sounds like you have CardDav taken care of, but even just raw XML exports, CSV exports, tab-delimited exports, exports of just address data or phone numbers or names, etc.)
7) Allow an option whereby a user can have a personal profile, and when that user's contact info changes, notify anyone connected that their contact info has changed. (Probably not that important until you get to Facebook scale)
8) Allow for groupings, and allow a person to be in multiple groupings (while still understanding that that person is the same person). Start with some basics (Family, Friends, Co-workers), and import say Exchange contacts into Co-workers by default). Also, sync groupings with external services on demand.
There's probably more, but even just solving #1 would be a huge deal.
I believe it is useful information for the owner of the web site. Whether you like it or not, people make decisions based on seemingly irrational factors, such as the design of the web site. It is particularly regrettable in this case, as the main design idea of the site is fine, but there are some glaring errors in the implementation. It would be simple enough to fix and could make a big difference for the company.
Personally I'd say that the font weights are far too low on much of the text. Thin text is in vogue and often looks great, but it's a bit overdone in this example. The phrase "Address book storage you can trust" at the top practically bleeds into its own red background. The sentence below is less readable still. And the text in the two buttons below that isn't vertically centered at all.
Logo - The simple wordmark is fine, but you should render it with a bolder font - That thin looking plus looks cheap. Also, the rendering should be antialiased - right now there are some really rough jagged edges in the logo text. Make sure it's evenly positioned (There's more padding under than over it as of now).
The font looks great, but you need a better fallback. You haven't linked the web fonts in properly, because some in places it renders as intended, but in other places it falls back to the browser default, which is a serif-font in most cases. It looks hideous in contrast to the very modern typeface.
The hero-block should have text positioned a bit further down (Same issue as with the logo). Also, consider bolding the first line to add contrast to the subheading.
The buttons in the hero bar have the fonts positioned wrong. This might be down to my system not picking up the same font as you have used. I would suggest to just use plain helvetica for buttons and main text and leave special fonts for headings.
The columns in the main section are too wide on my screen. I would suggest that you set the page in a fixed width grid - it's simpler to control the layout. Also, the gutter is way too big, to the point of having less margin on the sides than gutter between columns, which makes the layout look cut in half.
On the front page, you have two links between columns, that are centered. They look strange like they should have gone together with the left column, but have drifted too far to the right. At least put a horizontal ruler above, to separate from the columns above.
Hope that helps.
Edit: Just noticed. If you resize the page under a certain size, the menu jumps down below the logo, which is fine. But since the text is white and the background is an unrepeated image, it becomes white text on white background. Related - on the shorter pages (Such as contact), the footer ends before the screen does (on a large resolution anyway), which means that the white background comes after the dark red colour. Just set the same dark red colour as body background.
OK, so Add is a replacement for your contacts syncing and storage (of Gmail/iCloud etc.) for people who care about their privacy and believe that paying for a product means you are the customer, not the user or worse, the product being sold.
Does that make it clearer?
People that don't trust Google are not likely to trust you.
Contacts is something you want to / should have on a computer that is totally under your control.
Given the low traffic and speed requirements, im my ideal world this world sit in a Raspberry PI like mini computer next to my router (or on my always on smartphone)
Here is also a few problems I find:
1) I love that my google contacts are in Gmail and Google Voice on my desktop. I don't think that if I use your service it will autocomplete my contacts in Google Voice for example.
2) Google will most likely still exist in 20 years, you? I'm not so sure.
Do you have any advantages of using your service ? I do not care about more simple or secure, Google Contacts is simple and secure enough. Do you have any cool features, like for example synchronisation between accounts ? Me and my wife would love to have a group in Google Contacts called "Family", where if I add a person, or change a setting it would automatically update in her contacts.
And oh I've got a few. First is that I contact people in different ways - phone, email, gtalk. I want it all unified in their card (Google does a meh job with this with their "linking" feature, but still misses obvious doubles). Not only that but I want a unified history - not a call log, not a message log. I want to see when I last contacted the person, not how.
Secondly - reminders. People need to be contacted sometimes. I need to call my mom later today, email a future client in a few hours etc. Not only that but as a good son I want to call my mom every day, unless she already called me. This is easy to check and to implement and I have no idea how it not standard. There is an Israeli android app called "Assistive" which kinda helps with this but not really enough. It basically sets reminders for missed calls. This needs to be taken further.
Just these two features will practically revolutionize the way I communicate with people, but I can keep on going on other things I want. You've chosen to do contact syncing which is a nice feature my phone already has for free.
I was also expecting it to be a bit more seemless than it is. It appears that to sync, I have to manually export my contacts from each source and upload the file to you. Same for syncing. Also, having to use a third party paid tool to sync to Outlook isn't desirable.
Yep, agree with you - we by no means are all the way there yet and there's still lots to do. Syncing is seamless, but at the moment you do need to export your current contacts and upload them to us. We are working on fixing that. Outlook is an issue because of its lack of support for CardDAV and is an issue I'm looking at as we would love to have better support or at least a free plugin.
This is very much just the start. Thank you for your comments though.
But nice idea!
"We are constantly working to improve Add and add useful and exciting features."
Do you have a roadmap? (pure curiosity, I don't see what kind of feature you can add)
It's nice that you looked at the source, and if you were a manager of an established site or app it would make sense to be concerned about inline CSS there because it's a maintainability nightmare, but frankly I'm sure these guys have other stuff to be working on. I will be the first to admit to dropping in some inline CSS on occasion, and if it helps get things out the door then I'm all for it.
I can't quickly/easily see if this is how the data is stored.
There is no way I'm giving you my social graph even if you say you wont sell it or give it away. You might be bought or the government might ask for it.
Looks good though, good luck.
They'll find me it very quickly.
I used intellius to conduct a background check on someone the other day and for a few bucks I got all their public records, prior addresses, emails they used when they were in high school (mine too, apparently AOL and Yahoo sell your data to companies like intellius). Also, a fairly complete list of relatives, and contact info for them as well, neighbors too.
While finding your blood type is definitely possible, I don't really have an interest in spying on you :)
re:family - my family is (unfortunately) well aware of aware that this would be a scam, having spent too much time with health services. Also, the fact that I wasn't raised in the US puts me at a distinct advantage here :)
But your point is well taken: some intellius&friends, some social engineering, and you get what you want.
Your page does nothing to focus on my pain or tell me how you can fix it
I (and I am guessing My pain is pretty common) want
1. The same contact list on my email, Skype, mobile 2. That's it
Tell me how you solve that - iPhone and android integration, outlook and gmail will capture what 75% of the market?
I will leap through fire if you can then give me reports on who I talked to, who I skyped and rang and emailed Nd for how long.
But really I do not know what you do, what of my problems you solve and how you do it - even after glancing at the how page.
Sorry for the Downer but there is a big market out there with pretty simple requirements.
We obviously haven't made it clear enough on our site.
1. I would need to know a bit more about your setup - but if you are on a Mac, we have integration with your email, the Skype app and syncing to iPhone/Android.
If you are on Windows, then it's a bit more complicated and depends on what you use.
Drop me an email at hi@useadd.com if you want with your setup and I'll see if it will work, now or in the future.
Regards
not Mac, FreeBSD. But thinking of moving to Ubuntu for simplicity.
Thank you for the comments, really appreciated.