

Show HN: Contacts storage the way it should be done. - tristanthomas
http://useadd.com

======
mcherm
Here is my take on it.

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.

~~~
tristanthomas
Agreed completely with most of your points - as I've already mentioned this is
just the start and some of the things in the pipeline will easily surpass
Google's relatively stagnant option.

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...](http://blog.eset.com/2011/07/07/google-prepares-to-share-your-
contacts-with-the-world…-again)

~~~
testimoney
I do agree that there might be some privacy concerns over google, but for
contacts I actually don't really care.

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.

------
calebl
This is probably repetitive with some of the other comments, but I'd
absolutely be willing to pay $3/mo for a service that will do the following:

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.

------
troels
You really need to iterate a bit over the design. It looks like a train wreck
on my screen.

~~~
tristanthomas
Useful comments and suggestions more than welcome - hi@useadd.com

~~~
troels
Just some quick observations. I like the general minimalistic monochrome
theme. It's just the execution that lacks.

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.

~~~
tristanthomas
Very much so troels, thank you. An unbiased, outside view of the design is
critical. Working on it now.

~~~
lewispollard
Here's[1] a screenshot from Chrome 24.0.1312.52 on Ubuntu 12.10. You can see
jagged rendering on the logo and headline, the buttons look a little funny
(padding? font?) and the top nav uses an inconsistent font.

[1] <http://i.imgur.com/o0HR9Ke.png>

~~~
troels
I realised that the logo is rendered with svg. Probably a bad idea - Just
render it to PNG with an alpha channel.

------
FreshCode
Raleway Thin is a terrible reading font. Consider using it for large headings
only and sticking to Helvetica for paragraphs.

~~~
jahewson
I second that. Try it in portrait on an iPad.

------
holgersindbaek
It sounds cool, but I'm not really sure what it does?

~~~
tristanthomas
Hi Holger,

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?

~~~
mikle
First of all I agree with gf - the site does a horrendous job in explaining
what it is. Add screenshot, actual content. People aren't looking for
"simple", "familiar", etc. We're looking for what problem does this solve me
with my 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.

------
impostervt
The "How it Works" page doesn't seem to actually explain how it works. I found
the Export Guide to be more what I was expecting on the How it Works page.

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.

~~~
tristanthomas
Hi impostervt,

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.

------
tristanthomas
Founder here: started on Hacker News back in November (1) and now built.
There's lots still to do though - all thoughts and comments welcome. You can
email directly at hi@useadd.com as well.

1\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4777826>

------
nekgrim
Inline CSS :o

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)

~~~
napoleond
(I'm not affiliated with Add in any way.)

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.

~~~
nekgrim
I'm for dropping in inline CSS for quick fixes too. But I didn't think using
inline CSS everywhere was something people still do today. (To be honest, I
looked at the source because the rendering was odd on my computer, and I
wanted to know if it was my you-should-not-pass corporate firewall which was
blocking something, or just a it-renders-better-on-chrome problem)

------
pieter
With $3 / month, $30 / year isn't 20% off, it's 16⅔% off.

~~~
tristanthomas
Doh.

------
dazzawazza
before I would use a service like this I would need MY data to be encrypted on
your servers so NO ONE but me can read it. Even you.

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.

~~~
readme
Your data is already out there on the open Internet. I could probably find
your blood type based off your HN account.

~~~
beagle3
If you can, please drop me an email with mine.

~~~
readme
Honestly, I could. It'd probably require deception, though. Once I found your
address or even your name I can grab a list of your suspected relatives. After
that, I can find their phone numbers, and call them, and tell them you're in
the hospital and in need of a blood transfusion or you'll die.

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 :)

~~~
beagle3
That's cool. Part of the reason I asked is that I haven't even disclosed my
email, let alone name, on HN.

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.

------
jordn
Nitpicking, but technically the $30/year membership is saving 16.7% on the
$3/month membership and not 20%.

------
lifeisstillgood
I am desperate for a good contacts solution

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.

~~~
tristanthomas
Hi lifeisstillgood,

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

~~~
lifeisstillgood
> We obviously haven't made it clear enough on our site. I was just letting
> you know. :-) Just a small point but your site stuck me as making fatal
> marketing mistake #1 - it was talking about you not about me.

not Mac, FreeBSD. But thinking of moving to Ubuntu for simplicity.

~~~
tristanthomas
You should be able to get your contacts into Evolution or any other software
that supports CardDAV. We will try and get some instructions up this week -
check back on <http://useadd.com/guides/connect> later

Thank you for the comments, really appreciated.

------
jasonvolpe
I was really hoping this had to do with the lenses in my eyes.

~~~
tristanthomas
Sorry :)

