Show HN: "Dropbox for Wi-Fi" | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: "Dropbox for Wi-Fi"

instabridge.com

86 pointsniklas_a84 comments

Since the server just went down: Since the site is having problems: Vimeo video: http://vimeo.com/54228044 Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instabridg... Blog: http://blog.instabridge.com/

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Dropbox for Wi-Fi? I haven't even gotten past the first page of instabridge and I already think the tag-line is more confusing then explanatory.

Do you anything that has to do with shared cloud storage or collaboration? If not, just don't compare to Dropbox just to try to seem disruptive or give yourself an 'air' of success even before launch.

Also: Frontpage explains nothing about what the service does. I would try boiling it down to a few short bullets or an effective one-liner instead of leaning on people knowing what dropbox does and somehow apply it to your model.

Thanks for the feedback. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, while "Dropbox for Wi-Fi" being technically wrong it's the shortest way that we could describe Instabridge that most people grokked.

My previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5362823

Wow. This was unnecessarily hostile.

Though I agree that the tagline's a little confusing, the first two bullet points ("Never ask for a friend's Wi-Fi password again" and "Sync passwords between your tablet and phone") gave me a clearer understanding of what they're doing here.

Irrespective of the quality of their explanation, your cynical assumption (read: projection) that in comparing themselves to Dropbox they're just trying to "seem disruptive" or to put on airs is disheartening. I don't know these guys, but why not give them the benefit of the doubt? Couldn't they be comparing themselves to Dropbox for another reason – namely, that Dropbox is great at syncing, and that, just perhaps, their app is great at syncing too?

I really don't think the reply was particularly hostile. And I agree with it- "Dropbox for Wi-Fi" doesn't really make sense. I know why they've used it, but perhaps "Dropbox for Wi-Fi passwords" would be an improvement.

"Dropbox for Wi-Fi" just confuses me, because Dropbox already uses Wi-Fi.

Or just say "wifi password sync and share". I too had to think far too hard about the dropbox tagline, and the quip at the bottom about facebook. Came off far too tacky.

The idea though, instant classic, love it.

I just hope these things are features:

- I can easily see when a friend is trying to connect to my network and can grant access.

- I have to re-grant access after a password change. (no other way around the revoking access issue I can see)

Edit: Yes I have read their FAQ/Security section, I think it is incredibly stupid of them to act this way. I can see apps being built to show the password easily, I don't see why they think it will always require root (and that root is uncommon / hard to do), or why they think anyone gives a fuck about their ToS, or the "law" maybe its illegal for them to access data on their own phone in their country - others it is not.

The biggest concern I have on this issue that they are making people feel safer than they really are, people re-use passwords everywhere, friends are more than likely going to be the ones to check to see if your wifi password matches your facebook (and I'm more worried about that than some random war driver.)

"Dropbox for Wi-fi passwords" would be more apt.

DropBox for wifi, as in, I have access on all my devices and can assign/revoke permissions with friends. Maybe Airbnb of Wifi is better?

Also, the homepage summed it up for me nicely.

I wanted to write AirBnb for Wi-Fi initially. But our product manager stopped me. A sad day for the world.

Samuel - if you are reading this, look what you have done!

Hi, Niklas from Instabridge here. To expand a bit on the "X for Y" description: Instabridge makes it easy to sync wifi credentials across different devices, share credentials with friends, and revoke access. The Dropbox analogy has been proven to be an effective one-sentence way of giving people an idea of what Instabridge is about, but of course there are differences between wifi access and file storage, so that's as far as it can be stretched.

Apart from trying to solve the usability issues with wifi, we also support sharing of hotspots with the entire Instabridge community. This is intended for cafés, restaurants, and so on.

We've had a short beta run in the Nordics, and launched globally a couple of days ago at LAUNCH 2013 (where we won the "Best International Startup" prize. Yay, us!). I'm a long time HN reader and have seen many "Show HN" posts during the years. I'm really eager to read what you guys have to say, both the good and the bad.

Ouch: "Error establishing database connection"

Scramble to fix it before you drop off the front page!

Done! Back online.

I like the idea, but I'm wondering how you get past the installation barrier.

I'd rather use my phone than a credit card to pay, but finding Google/Square Wallet, opening the app, authorizing the payment, and (for Google) tapping the device are way more work than fishing out my credit card and swiping it. Needing someone to download the app to get on my WiFi vs typing in a 10 digit number feels similar. You're trying to alleviate a minor pain with technology, but at least for the first use, your way is more painful.

I'd like to see you succeed, because I like the idea of community-distributed WEPs and not having to ask people to get on WiFi, but I don't know how you get past the installation barrier to build that community.

Also, how does the tablet aspect work? If I need to get my tablet on WiFi, I probably don't have a cell connection for it to make the call to lookup the WEP. Do you send it from my phone over Bluetooth? Do you periodically sync the list of known-WEPs between devices when they both have signal?

Also, I just agreed to a 404 message. Your TOS page is missing.

Fixed!

I don't think the app is that useful if you're only using it to access just one Wi-Fi network. I think the real benefit is when you install the app on your tablet, smartphone etc and suddenly you have access to all of your friends' Wi-Fi without typing in the passwords or updating them if anyone changes their Wi-Fi password.

We also support community Wi-Fi hotspots so that you can get access to Wi-Fi wherever you go.

Right now the syncing of passwords between tablets and smartphones is done over Wi-Fi, so the tablet would have to be connected to Wi-Fi the first time for syncing to work.

Going forward one of the top things we'd like to add is syncing of passwords over bluetooth so that if you have a smartphone that's connected over 3G and gets access to Wi-Fi you can sync that right away to your tablet.

It just autopopulated the confirmation code before I got the email. Is that a bug?

I assume you mean text message? Sometimes the app gets notified of the incoming SMS before the users sees it.

Yeah. Well done. It was instant.

I think your one-line description is much more descriptive and simpler than "Dropbox for Wi-Fi", but I understand you want something short. Maybe something like "Share Wi-Fi with friends" or "Share your Wi-Fi, not your password" would be better?

(By the way, typo on the frontpage: "Don't have an Andriod phone?")

Dropbox for Wi-Fi Passwords

I like that! Clever.

I think some of the reason for the problem people are having with the DropBox comparison is that the similarity is in implementation details, rather than what it means to them as an end user.

It does seem like a good idea, but I'd worry about Google doing something similar inbuilt based on Google user accounts.

Hey Niklas, thanks for sharing your startup with us! It looks great and it's absolutely a service I'd like to use. Maybe it's more like a "social network for wifi passwords" but whatever ;)

Here's the thing though: my Android phone doesn't need this, it's got 3G and that's generally enough so I don't go through the hassle of turning on the battery-sucking WiFi just so it can notify me of new emails a bit faster.

What does need an app like this is my laptop. Any plans for OS X / Windows / Linux clients?

OS X, Windows, Linux: Yes, yes and yes!

Now we say that we sync passwords that's only between Android devices. I think the real killer is when we make an app your laptop that sync via bluetooth from your phone.

Great that your 3G is working so well, for some reason I always have really bad coverage and am constantly asking for the Wi-Fi password.

Bluetooth sync would be fine, as long as the laptop itself would be allowed to keep those entries stored until next sync.

> Great that your 3G is working so well

Where are you at? I'm mostly running around in Germany, UK, and well-connected parts of Asia so that's probably where my bias comes from ;)

My PC doesn't have Bluetooth so I am biased against that solution. Maybe also allow Internet sync as well. I know this seems like a chicken and egg problem, but it would work in case today I go to my buddy's house and connect on my phone, but tomorrow I go and bring my PC.

Wifi uses less power than 3g.

Wifi is so much faster than most 3g connections for my phone. The only place I've seen my phones 3g connection being as 'instant' as wifi was in London. Also using 3g uses up a lot more battery than wifi. Also it could be handy for giving the pw out to others (easier than reading out a long random password. Especially if there's an error and have to read out and retype the whole password to your friend)

> The Dropbox analogy has been proven to be an effective one-sentence way of giving people an idea of what Instabridge is about...

In what way has this been proven to be effective? I'm interested in both the methodology and understanding how investigating this in the Nordics might not persist elsewhere with the same results. Perhaps your experimental group has a different understanding of Dropbox than others? The comments so far seem to indicate general agreement that

Since Dropbox has no connection to syncing, sharing, and revoking WiFi credentials/access, you have created a very different product from what "Dropbox for WiFi" connotes.

Off the top of my head, you could probably get better mileage from a descriptor such as "Bump for Passwords", or even "WiFi Password Sync-n-Shareinator". Anything that accurately conveys an immediate expectation of an app that syncs, shares, and revokes WiFi access among mobile devices.

Beyond this, the app implementation, design, and workflows look awfully damn nice. Now I'd love to have this functionality available for my phone, tablet, laptops, PS3, Xbox, TV, and Blu-Ray player. Keep up the good work!

I think first of all, Dropbox is a service that many normal users relate to. We had A LOT of test users in our office that tested different iterations of the app. They connected Dropbox with something that "just worked" and was synced across all of their devices. But maybe we had a bad sample of users, I think with the feedback here we'll have to rethink how position this.

Your description makes a lot of sense, though. Most regular users know how Dropbox works, right? So way easier to relate. Cool stuff.

Ah, okay. Now that's a different angle than the 'X for Y' device usually follows. I imagine you guys were shooting for the fewest words possible in deciding to go with the 'X for Y' approach as you did here. However, "X for Y" is a stylistic device that employs an analogy, and when the analogy is not based on the form or function of a thing, it gets easily confused.

Think of other products that use the 'X for Y' device--for example, a service that markets itself as 'Facebook for Sex'. The nearly automatic connection potential users are going to make is that this service is going to have certain obvious and well-known features of Facebook--like connecting with other users, building up a list of 'friends', etc. Now, if that service was, instead, a news feed of stories about sexual subjects, I think the users would be rightly confused by the analogy not being correct. Here, they'd have been better suited using the 'Facebook-like news feed for sexual content', or something more apt. The same could be said if the service was 'Google for Philosophy'--someone is going to automatically expect a philosophy search engine, not a pair of wearable eyeglasses that help you connect your everyday experiences to greater philosophical questions.

Perhaps you'd be better served with something along the lines of "Dropbox ease-of-use for WiFi passwords", or "Dropbox-style management of WiFi passwords". Here you're able to invoke the actual Dropbox feature your sample pool was connecting to that is not communicated clearly with the original wording.

Also, the only reason I think it's worth your attention is that you're actually having to explain the analogy multiple times to commenters here beside me. That's as strong an indication you can get that the analogy isn't working. You shouldn't ever have to explain what your marketing message means to your potential users.

Again, I think it's a great-looking product. Very well designed and executed, and the interaction simplicity is the real killer here (as you're obviously trying to communicate).

Are you the guy in the video on your webpage?

Haha I wish I was that good looking! It's a fantastic friend of ours that's a cameraman and actor. His site (in Swedish): http://enblom.nu/

Apart from my security concerns I noted elsewhere, I have one major question why facebook? Why not google plus? why not twitter? Why not forgo the social network douchebaggery and just check my contact list?

Anyway, still love the idea, but until I can use it without facebook (or any other "special" network for that matter) it just isn't happening.

It does support the contact list already!

But going forward we'd like to add even more social graphs: LinkedIn, Twitter, G+ etc.

When I read "Dropbox for Wi-Fi" I thought the app would be something like a shared folder between clients in a local Wi-Fi network.

"Couple your Wi-Fi passwords to your FB account and easily share them with friends" would have been a clearer description for me.

I really like the idea, though. I sincerely hope it will catch on.

Perhaps "Google Docs for Wi-Fi" would be a better analogy for the invitation system?

Edit: "Social Wi-Fi" or "social Wi-Fi sharing" would probably be the best thing to call this instead of "X for Wi-Fi" (if it weren't for the existence of http://www.socialwifi.net/).

Yeah, maybe, but it would still leave me guessing about what it exactly is the service provides.

I'm still a bit confused about what it does, "share your passwords securely through facebook"?

EDIT: read the about page, maybe "Share your wifi password securely with your facebook friends" or "Never have to ask for a wifi password from your facebook friends"

"Wi-Fi with Friends"?

Zynga might not like that though.

Thanks! I'm glad you like it.

It would be awesome if you guys took this to the next step: let me share my wifi to all my Facebook friends (or for some people anyone) as long as they have signed up to share their wifi with me as well.

(Great idea. I also don't like the tagline.)

You can do that already, sorta. Play around with it and let me know if it's what you imagined or if there's anything we should add.

The sorta part is a small problem. It makes my life easier if you have the gaming built in. (Also it might help your viral spread).

I will definitely play with it.

Sorry, but "Dropbox for WiFi" pretty immediately invokes a product like Apple's AirDrop feature, where one can--to quote from Apple's site[1]--"[d]rag and drop a file to send it wirelessly to someone on the same network."

This is exactly what I expected to see the app do--ad hoc file sharing between devices on the same network.

You have chosen a poor descriptor.

[1]: http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/#sharing

Also thought the same thing. Assumed it was going to be AirDrop for Windows and/or Linux.

Point taken. Thanks.

Since the site is having problems:

Vimeo video: http://vimeo.com/54228044

Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instabridg...

Blog (which seems to be working): http://blog.instabridge.com/

And text-only Google cache the above came from, which has a couple other links, but not much to show: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.ins...

Those are some truly nasty app permissions. They should at least explain why they feel a need for them (yes, I can see why they would want many of them but at the very least they should explain it).

I agree, we did our best to keep the app permissions at a bare minimum. But I guess you can say we failed. As soon as you start doing anything interesting you want a lot of permissions.

But good point. I'll update the Google Play description.

The video was more explanatory than anything. Great job with it. I'll be waiting for the iPhone version. I'm not sure if you can access the Wi-Fi settings through the SDK on iPhone, but it looks like they've done it on Android. Cool app!

Thanks! I'm glad you like it! iOS is unfortunately a bit restricted on the Wi-Fi front. Hopefully Apple will open it up in the future.

Even a copy and paste of the password would be useful, like 1Password does.

Cool app, I like the idea of it. I installed it and went through the verification process in the app and two problems: first, the verification text message it sent to me was auto-populated into the box (I suspect this to be some debug code that got shipped accidentally). Second, it couldn't actually connect to my Wifi using my password despite entering it multiple times, even resetting my router's wifi password.

The auto population is actually supposed to be a feature. We shamelessly looked at what WhatsApp did and did the same thing ourselves.

Ouch on the router passwords. Any chance I could get you to send an email to niklas a.t. instabridge dot com with your name and type of router?

Great job on the video.. seems pretty professionally done and explained the purpose of the app with clarity.

Thank you so much! It's a lot of work behind it, all done on a scrappy startup budget. Bonus points if anyone can spot all the references to HN/Reddit related stuff in it.

Very nice, I could only spot OAG. How did you handle the music?

As for the product, there are a couple of things that aren't clear; do you actually end up connecting directly to your friends' wifi, or are you routed through their phone? IE can I turn my phone's wifi off and they are still able to access my network? It also comes across that my friends' friends will automatically get access to my network.. don't like that. I imagine it's probably configurable, but that's not made clear.

Ok, we should probably clarify that then. Everything is routed to their home/office router. Once you've given access your phone is out of the equation.

The "Don't have an Android phone?" link brings you to an early access signup page. Can this be used on a device besides Android? While I have a droid and really like the idea, it doesn't help me if all of my friends (all of them iPhone users) are unable to use it.

We can do iOS. The user experience would not be as nice as on Android, we'd need to work with profiles but it's definitely doable.

Invite your friends and as soon as we release the iOS version we'll let your friends now.

I am super interested in this, and I think it is a fantastic idea. One critical problem (for me): I don't use Facebook. I look forward to seeing the address book integration, or even better, G+.

You can use the address book too! No Facebook required.

I could have sworn I saw that address book integration was upcoming (not available now). My mistake! Thanks for the heads up. That said, G+ sign in would still be cool. :)

Dropbox for Wi-Fi seems a more confusing description that just "Wi-Fi password sync".

This happens out of the box on Windows 8 (when tied to a Microsoft account) and freaked me out a little when it first happened. Took a work tablet home for some testing and found it connected to my Wi-Fi automatically. Had me hunting for security problems before I realised what had happened.

Yes, I think that's a great move by Microsoft. Let's hope they Instabridge enable it too so that's it's just as easy to share it with your friends!

While I agree you need to get rid of the "Dropbox for Wi-Fi" tagline, that is one hell of a well done promo video.

Thank you! It's a lot of work put into it, all with a scrappy startup budget.

Nice to see an explanation video that isn't just stick figures and animation. It was really slick - informative, humorous, and on brand (love that your socks match your brand's colour).

Agree that dropbox for wi-fi is confusing. Why not something like 'easy wi-fi sharing' or the like.

PS - where was this filmed? Geneva?

Glad you noticed the socks! It's all filmed in Stockholm, Sweden.

I prefer WifiPass: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.movile.wp

Cool app! Why do you prefer it? Any special feature you feel that Instabridge is missing?

I'm a little confused on how you keep the password private. Can't an Android user just go to Settings->Wifi and look at the current network password?

Nope, but it's available in plain text if you root the phone. That's why we only suggest you share with people you trust.

There are a bunch of stuff we could do to prevent even that.

For Android: http://blog.qr4.nl/QR-Code-WiFi.aspx

That's really cool. Would be cool to do the same thing with NFC now that most phones have it.

I think this one might do it... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.jessechen....

I think this is awesome..but I have almost no friends with android. Do you guys have a timeline for the iOS port?

I'm guessing you can still see the password in wpa_supplicant at least when connected to the network ?

Loved the video - funny, a little cute, and not overdone. Great job!

Thank you so much! It's a lot of work behind it, all done on a scrappy startup budget. Kudos if you can spot all the references to HN/Reddit related stuff in it.

While the name is confusing, the concept is pretty awesome.

how about "browsing patterns of strangers get attributed to your network connection"

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