
Show HN: Writt – Make and publish notes from Telegram - jajoosam
https://writt.glitch.me
======
Operyl
You’re offering a product for 19/yr, but will this product exist for that
long? Lack of privacy policy, hosted on glitch, and you’re constantly throwing
things up on there.

Things noticed: SSL is not enforced, therefore your payment page is being
served plaintext. Telegram already has this service embedded for free. You’re
using a free host, with no custom domain, what if they decide to disappear
next month without notice?

~~~
jajoosam
Yes, it will.

Just enforced SSL - And if the free embedded service you're talking about is
telegra.ph, that is different than writt because you can't write and publish
within telegram, you have to use a web interface.

Glitch is made by FogCreek, the guys who co-founded Stack Overflow, and have
built Trello and other stuff - so pretty sure they're reliable
[https://glitch.com/faq#trust](https://glitch.com/faq#trust)

~~~
Operyl
That doesn't change my view on this. You're paying Glitch _nothing_, yet are
asking for 19/yr for this product. At the very least, a few users converting
can get you a quality VM from Linode or Digital Ocean. Who's currently doing
backups? You? Or Glitch.

~~~
anildash
Glitch wants apps like this to succeed, so will work with him to make sure
everything stays running. And Glitch apps are just totally standard Node apps,
so worst case he can run it anywhere else. Anything can happen, and there are
no guarantees, but I wouldn’t worry about the choice of platforms as a risk.

Source: I’m the CEO of Fog Creek, which makes Glitch, and we’re excited about
apps like this one!

~~~
Operyl
I suppose. I'm just a bit cynical because Glitch is full of these "apps" that
feel like a train wreck waiting to happen. jajoosam has a number of services
on your platform now, and it's hard to tell if it'll get any updates or
support 6-9 months down the line.

~~~
anildash
Sure, but that’s true of apps on any platform. May be worth a try to state the
same concerns about iOS or Android apps and see what the CEOs in charge of
those platforms say, then make the call on which you trust.

------
kashyapc
This sounds potentially useful. I mostly used (for more than a year) Telegram
for ad-hoc interactions at technical conferences. (E.g. EuroPython 2016 & some
groups I interact with at FOSDEM 2018 used it, so I "had" to use it.). And
right now, it's sitting dormant since February.

[Slightly off-topic & potentially opening a barrel of worms ahead; and this
has been discussed to death here.]

Now ... I have been using (also for well over a year) the _Signal_ Messenger.
Given Signal's funding model, their crypto protocol (which was peer-reviewed &
got robust positive feedback -- corroborated through its adoption by WhatsApp
& Facebook Messenger) and their (almost) zero metadata collection, I found
it's better to invest my energies in Signal.

So, FWIW, I have been trying to "converge" on Signal and slowly persuading
(without forcing, of course) friends to use it; I've had good success so far.
A lot of my colleagues & a decent chunk of people I collaborate with in the
open source community already use Signal. So that's not a problem there.

This is all just to make an attempt at maintaining sanity with the Chat Tool
proliferation. Wonder how others are handling it.

~~~
interfixus
My exact same route and experience, although I heartily detest Signal's _phone
number required_ misfeature and the agressively forced contact sharing.

~~~
kashyapc
Yes, you raise a difficult point about the _phone number required_ feature.
And you're at least the second person I hear (legitimately) complain about it;
the other was from a technical friend, during an in-person conversation.

I realize that requiring phone number compromises the anonymity aspect
(despite Signal's unparalleled privacy, given the alternatives). But I was
giving (and still do) Signal the benefit of doubt and assume they're also
going to implement username / password scheme – not sure if it's a good idea
or not.

------
nbabitskiy
Telegram has a similar service called telegra.ph - free of charge. It doesn't
support written markdown, but has a built-in WYSIWYG editor.

And your credit card form is accessible over http.

~~~
jajoosam
Writt is different from telegra.ph because you cannot write posts to telegraph
from telegram, you have to use the web interface, which makes Writt's use
cases very different, even though some of them might coincide

------
fiatjaf
You don't even have a domain and are already charging $19 for "unlimited"
notes? I like the app, it's not a bad idea, but the business model is not
great.

Just storing notes isn't a great feature, there are thousands of note-taking
apps out there. On Telegram itself you can just send messages to yourself and
they will be stored, editable and deletable.

~~~
jajoosam
Hmmm... What would you recommend instead?

~~~
ReverseCold
FOSS with donations. I'm not sure if people would want to pay to use this, but
if it looked nice and was FOSS then people would probably donate.

~~~
lifencoder
agree because paying 19$ for this product is not worthy. as telegram already
provides telegra.ph which is free of cost. FOSS with donations is a perfect
monetisation strategy.

~~~
always_good
> FOSS with donations is a perfect monetisation strategy.

Only if your monetization goal is less than a few bucks per month.

That's some serious Shit HN Says. Thanks for the chuckle.

~~~
ReverseCold
> Only if your monetization goal is less than a few bucks per month.

It's a service that exists solely through a platform that already provides a
competing service for free. A few bucks per month is as good as it's going to
get.

------
m52go
Interesting. Tried it on some very simple example text and it seems well-
executed. I'm intrigued by the concept of chatting to write. I wonder if the
medium can stimulate thoughts in a way a traditional text editor can't.

Great work, and good luck!

~~~
jajoosam
Thank you

Indeed, notes in the form of multiple texts and chatting could make things
more interesting.

~~~
m52go
Reminds me of Tap by Wattpad. That could be a great market for you.

[https://taptaptap.co](https://taptaptap.co)

------
hestefisk
Why is telegram suddenly so popular? AFAIK it doesn’t provide proper
decentralised cryptography and yet everyone in the crypto coin community is up
in arms about it.

------
monkeydust
Nice. Do I need it though that's the question....

------
justvidyadhar
I like how this works. Need to use more extensively to understand cons.

------
hidiegomariani
but I cannot edit the text?

~~~
jajoosam
Editing with a web interface is in the pipeline, for now you can rewrite by
using the $ sign. /help for details.

------
aphextron
Isn't Telegram compromised by the Russian government..?

~~~
jajoosam
No, they have refused to provide the encryption keys to Russian security
agencies.

