

Show HN - aangjie
http://tonecheck.com/
Hi, i was wondering what the HN community thinks of this email tone check application? Do you think this can be done better with open-source?<p>Disclaimer: I am neither a founder or an employee at the company. Just someone who had a similar idea.
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acangiano
1\. If you can, consider changing the title to "Show HN: [DESCRIPTION]"

2\. It's an awesome idea and I installed it for Gmail, but I feel it doesn't
do a particularly good job at this stage (unless of course one introduces
direct offenses using words like moron, idiot, etc).

I'll give you one crude example, where the software miserably failed to detect
potentially upsetting language. It's intentionally over the top.

"That's not what I said at all. You guys don't understand what I'm saying. I
wish I had smarter coworkers. Your mothers were clearly too busy sleeping
around with large animals, instead of teaching you how to listen. I'll talk
with your manager about this, because you clearly don't get it. Fuck this."

It would be an incredible product if it could catch much more subtle issues
than that.

For example: "Did you even bother reading my email?" should be red flagged, so
that it can be corrected to something like "Did you have a chance to read my
email yet?" or "I wasn't very clear in my previous email. Allow me to explain
further."

3\. This would be an amazing tool for any textbox on the web (via browser
extension). Its use would certainly be encouraged here on HN for commenters.

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aangjie
Thanks for the detailed feedback. 1\. Oops too late to edit it now. 2\. Hmm
that level subtlety will take time to evolve i guess. My understanding(from
the api results) has been that they use an elaborate model. 3.Cool idea, never
thought of that. They do have an api and i think they can persuaded to give a
free developer account for HN. Where can i propose this as a feature? Or
perhaps i can learn arc and create a wrapper.Any idea where i can find the
source for HN code?

~~~
acangiano
Regarding point 3, I don't suggest that they make it HN specific. Rather, via
browser extension, append that functionality to any textbox the user is
writing in.

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e1ven
Very neat. I like the name quite a bit, and I like the idea. It's always good
to have a reminder ;) Does it run client-side, or server side?

I'd appreciate a textarea version to test with, as a demo, before I either
give you my Google Credentials or download an app.

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ses
A very interesting product. Integration with Gmail seems to be working pretty
well. I know I would use this, along with my friends / colleagues for both
personal and business emails. It would be interesting to perhaps see a web app
or mobile version where you could paste in the contents of an email or simply
a browser plugin which checks all text entered into web pages, rather than
just for emails. But I'm sure you've considered this and there are probably
many reasons why you haven't (yet) gone down that route.

I suspect a lot of work has gone into making this a genuinely useful product,
so congratulations on achieving that.

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wccrawford
Interesting.

I'd like the ability to tone-check emails that have already been sent... As
well as tone-check emails from other people.

Edit: lol Apparently I've already started using your brand name as a verb.
Congrats!

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wccrawford
I just sent my first email with it, and even though it appears to check in
realtime, it hung up on some process where I had to click again to get my
email to go through, canceling your check.

I dunno if you're just overloaded, but it's not a bright first try.

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skrebbel
Lovely splash page.

The feature list _very much_ lacks a "supported languages" list.

I know that the USA is the world, except that, well, it isn't.

I like the pricing, btw. 10$ is an amount I'd be willing to pay for this (if
you'd support Dutch).

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aangjie
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with the original
company/product(lymbix.com). I just have been following them for some time
now. I am thinking of building a open-source approach with a different
approach though..

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bcromlish
Hello Aangie,

I'd love to hear about this open-source approach you are mentioning. Could you
please email me at bcromlish AT gmail DOT com?

Thanks!

