
Show HN: Haystack, search across your cloud accounts securely - cdouglasosborn
https://app.haystackapps.com/code/SHOWHN
======
QuinnyPig
I see nothing that resembles a revenue model, which terrifies me: where's the
thing I'm not seeing? Are you rewriting Amazon purchases to use your referral
code? Are you selling data about me to third parties? Are you not monetizing
at all and hoping to make up in "exposure?"

When I can't spot the money, I wonder what I'm missing. Your lack of privacy
policy (at least, I can't find one!) doesn't help.

~~~
cdouglasosborn
Apologises that is a direct link to access... To see our privacy policy and
how we plan to monetize:
[https://www.haystackapps.com](https://www.haystackapps.com)

In short, we give out the free version for files, documents, your history. Our
paid version allows you to search Sales, Marketing and other information in an
aggregated form.

Completely agree though, we probably should put that somewhere on that signup
page so that people know how we make money (otherwise it does sound like we
would need to do something iffy to still be around in a years time!).

Appreciate the question, also the direct link to the privacy document:
[https://www.haystackapps.com/privacy](https://www.haystackapps.com/privacy)

------
misterman0
Hi haystack! Can you describe your favourite haystack user story? I didn't get
it from visiting you site. Also, if it's not too time consuming maybe support
mobile devices on your pitch site.

Also, what's your tech stack?

~~~
cdouglasosborn
Sure!

Story: So I was doing a usability study with someone and they were saying how
they couldn't find a particular document (I think it was a pitch deck)
anywhere even though they'd tried for 20 minutes the day before. They were
able to it after a few seconds in Haystack - it turns out they'd mispelt the
name so it didn't come up in Drive, GMail or Slack when they looked for it!

Mobile: Fair point, our 'splash page' supports mobile which you can see here:
[https://www.haystackapps.com](https://www.haystackapps.com)

Tech Stack: So they extension is written in pure javascript using a framework
I designed for some internal stuff I did for a previous company. We then use
Babelify and Uglifiy to compile it into usable code. The web server is written
in Node, but its very simple as it just hosts the splash page and generates
tokens for the extension.

Appreciate the questions, let me know if you give it a try and if we can make
it better for you!

~~~
misterman0
IC. But how can an extension like your's search through gmail better than
gmail's own search? Or better than slack's? Do you use their api's? Did you
roll your own full-text search?

~~~
cdouglasosborn
Great question!

I wouldn't say if you're just looking for something in Gmail that we will be
better. The main benefit is that you're able to search through all of them in
one place.

The way it works is, we show you "instant" results from files/documents that
we have cached from your providers and your browser history. However, we also
show you below that results that come direct from Gmail, Slack, Drive...etc.

That way if we don't find the result you're after, you're able to see the same
results as if you'd opened up all the tabs and performed the searches in each
tool as well. We do this using their OAuth search functionalities.

We do do full text search for documents that you have visited in the past, and
the cloud providers often do this as well so that helps ensure we can find you
good results.

One big difference is that our search uses a less precise search, which means
we support spelling mistakes, different ordering...etc. Which can help us find
documents that are hard to find.

