
[Show HN] An experiment - Group Chat from just a URL - ad93611
http://groups.gaglers.com/
======
jmathai
Looks great. I've seen similar projects and I think these disposable group
chats are very powerful.

My biggest problem is that I never remember them for when I need them and
resort to group chats. Often that's "good enough" but for when everyone isn't
on the same network something like this would be nice. Again, the hardest part
is thinking about the service when I need it.

A feature request would be file attachments. It's 2013 and attaching a file in
a chat is still extremely painful and rarely works.

~~~
ad93611
Gee, thanks! We were thinking that we'd allow other websites to take a url and
embed it within their site or collaborative area. Do you think that will help?

Yeah, I hear you about file attachments :)

~~~
grey-area
A great and simple idea and a service that I think a lot of small companies
would actually pay for if you execute it well. The front page of HN will be a
good load test...

However I'd also be concerned about security - if you're trying to sell this
as a service, you'd need to password protect groups somehow and ideally serve
on https. Can't see this on the site right now but presumably you're planning
to offer this? Perhaps this is just an experiment, but having no guarantees
like this would not reassure me - ideally chats should be namespaced too so
that there are no issues with collisions of chat room names.

There's no way I'd type anything useful into a chat like this without basic
security in place and being reassured about how the data was stored and
deleted. Chats are just too prone to leaking information because they're so
informal, so it's even more important than email in a way. In fact I'd
probably prefer to buy the software and run it on my server to be sure about
that if actually using it.

~~~
ad93611
Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, we would provide https, password protected
groups and a nice dashboard to view the transcripts.

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charliesome
> _"Profanity detected. Message cannot be sent"_

Seriously?

~~~
ad93611
Yeah, there is a simple trie that checks for common profanity words. I'm sure
we can improve it. :)

~~~
blackhole
I would love to use this service, but I demand the freedom to bitch and moan
to my friends using whatever cuss words I fucking feel like.

~~~
cocoflunchy
Just override the isProfanityPresent() function:

    
    
        function isProfanityPresent() {return false}

~~~
Pezmc
See <http://groups.gaglers.com/chat/wordfilter/> for the data is loads as
profanity

~~~
cocoflunchy
Really ?!

    
    
        attractive
        abusive
        bra
        style
        naked
        seduce
        seductive
        sex
        sexy
        gay
        homo
        oral
        testicle
    

WTF?

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hardik988
What do you mean by "may exist"?

    
    
         Failed! "asdjoiqndiqnw09d21eh09n20dnqdqddqw" may exist, try another name 
    

Are you using a bloom filter or something?

~~~
netrus
My guess would be they spread random false positives for privacy reasons?

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racbart

      Failed! "sdf" may exist, try another name
      Failed! "sdkjfhjkshf" may exist, try another name
      Failed! "kjht7y248i23uh" may exist, try another name
    

Great minds think alike, right? (edit: formatting)

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lancefisher

      > Failed! "test" may exist, try another name
      > Failed! "another name" may exist, try another name
      > Failed! "i just did" may exist, try another name

~~~
Hortinstein
but apparently touchme wasn't taken!

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jameskennemore
<http://groups.gaglers.com/r/EM3m/>

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gizzlon
Choosing 'Ø' as my name made the whole thing go blank.. removing the cookies
and choosing another name made it work again..

Edit: Great idea btw :)

------
lambda
> Failed! "sodihfoihvocin" may exist, try another name

Hmm. Every name I tried gave me this message. At first I thought it was
because I used obvious names that other people had used, like "test" and
"foobar", but even the above random string of gibberish failed.

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ryandvm
Kudos. Very clean design. I toyed with pretty much the exact same concept a
few years ago when I wanted to try out Google's AppEngine:

<http://yakeze.appspot.com/nick/hackernews2013/>

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crucio
If you're going to give people a unique URL to give out, then can we have non
unique group names? I couldn't find a relevant group name that wasn't already
taken, so resorted to mashing the keyboard

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malditogeek
Interesting. I've been working on a very similar concept but based on IRC.
There's a version running here: <http://lalo-g7stltno.dotcloud.com/>

Once authenticated with your Twitter account you can join a room using the
URL, the path represents a room/channel. The cool thing is that you can also
join to that channel using a standard IRC client as well.

The code is here: <https://github.com/malditogeek/lalo>

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pyxy
When me and a friend of mine were experimenting in creating a web chat we
realized that inserting new messages into the beginning of page (or div) is
much better for both users and developers. No bothering with autoscrolling. No
user distraction of autoscrolling when he reads previous messages. It was
really a good decision.

Anyway IRC is much better. I don't want to live my life in a multitabbed web
browser window.

~~~
ad93611
Good idea! thanks.

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mtrimpe
I'd also make the identifiers non-guessable.

I'm having quite a nice conversation with kokpo at the moment but I don't
think he meant to invite me ;)

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p4bl0
Whatever I try to use as group name, "it may already exist":

“Failed! "almzirfmzeurfuerzf" may exist, try another name”

“Failed! "lalalalalalalahello" may exist, try another name”

…

~~~
shanelja
Same issue:

 _Failed! "this name is clearly not in use due to the random string of
characters it ended with ~agsh1das82S~" may exist, try another name_

Perhaps the system is overloaded, or they use a dynamically generated unique
identifier with each room, such as a short URL of 3-6 characters, if they're
numeric only HN and Reddit could probably fill it pretty quickly - but without
any more information, this is all guess work.

------
thejosh
Keep getting:

Failed! "rexasdsfed" may exist, try another name

~~~
MichaelApproved
I was surprised by what names were already taken. Seemed like there was a bug
in the name check rather than the name actually being taken.

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spiritplumber
I'd like to be able to use this for my telepresence rig. Please let me know if
I can license this.

~~~
ad93611
Let us talk. Can you send me a email? My email is in profile.

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guynamedloren
I tried 5 random names (each more complex and more unique than the last) and
each one failed...

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polack
Tried to create groups with non-us character in it (ö) and get the following
message:

Page unavailable Sorry, but the requested page is unavailable due to a server
hiccup. Our engineers have been notified, so check back later.

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Hortinstein
this is cool, any possibility of the source showing up on github?

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glomph
<https://crypto.cat/> will give you encrypted group chat from a word. But you
do have to install an extension.

------
ad93611
The bug that caused many group creations to fail is fixed now. Let us know if
there are still more issues.

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bevenky
If I could use this for our support chat with my customers on a native client,
that would be awesome too..

~~~
ad93611
We are experimenting with some like that. We'll be glad to work with you on
this.

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Pyramids
One issue I noticed immediately, if you resize the window while in chat, the
input box overlaps the chat.

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gizzlon
Feature request: The ability to associate an gravatar email address after I've
entered a room..

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robinduckett
These things pop up about every six months. Some have a USP, others like this
one, don't.

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globalpanic
typed in three choices of group name: one a dictionary word, another a
university module code, the last a random selection of about 20+ letters. All
three choices returned the same error message - that this group may already
exist.

