
Show HN: Diogenes - a cronjob in a webapp to remind you to talk to your friends - curuinor
http://diogenes.co
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ryan_j_naughton
A few issues:

* Because you are only using http basic auth for authentication and aren't using cookies, if I reload the page or go back to the page later, I have to log in again.

* You are generating the person UUID's client side in the backbone model as well as initializing data (like contacted:false) for a new person. UUIDs and default values are better created server-side as you should never trust that your client side code hasn't been tampered with or that someone isn't hitting your app programatically.

* based on how chrome handles saving the login credentials and password, it tries to autofill the e-mail address but your system expects the username.

I'm pointing these out because I really like this app idea, and I'd like to
use it and see it improved.

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curuinor
I wanted to learn http basic auth and not have to deal with cookies, and it is
sort of the pattern for usage that you never have to deal with this thing more
than once every few weeks. But I guess I could add cookies or localstorage or
something.

I do do some server-side checking to deal with UUID tampering, but I guess
that is a better idea to handle it all server-side.

The email autofill is an easy fix, thank you! I didn't notice because I
autofill nothing.

I actually have no idea whether it's a good idea or not in the abstract, but
I've been using it and it works for me and I like it, so I wanted to share it.
It's good that you liked it!

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ryan_j_naughton
It would be awesome if you added a weighting/priority value for each friend.
As I am adding my friends from Facebook, I am only including those I want to
keep in touch with; however, there is still a dramatic difference in
precedence across friends (with some I want to contact 10X over others).

This should be trivial to implement since weighted sampling is trivial.

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curuinor
I initially put in weighting and priority values for each friend, but my
contacting style is pretty exhausting if I contact one friend 10x that of
others. But that's me, and I've been asked this by two other people before, so
on it goes to the feature list.

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colinbartlett
I have been wanting something like this for a while, thank you! I think your
comment in this thread might answer my question, but: Does it require Facebook
or some other social network? Or can I enter the names of my friends manually?

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curuinor
I quit fb and blocked it on my hosts 3 years ago, so I imagine that answers
that question (to be clear, all you need is an email address). I think HN is
the newest social network I use?

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nekopa
As always, I am a day late and a dollar short, so I don't know if you'll read
this, but here is a feature request:

1: Allow people to import their facebook friends 2: Set up a script they can
download that will block fb on their hosts for *nix, osx and win platforms. 3:
Set up a step by step guide on how to download all their data and completely
delete their facebook account. 4: ??? 5: You profit by being responsible for
creating the world's newest, largest decentralised social network

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curuinor
Hmm. I did do that for myself, sort of manually. That's a good idea! Although
I don't think I will profit much, and looking at my EC2 box right now it seems
pretty centralized to me.

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curuinor
OK, what the cronjob does is to email you, if you were wondering if you needed
to install anything.

This the final incarnation of a fairly elaborate cronjob system that has
entirely replaced facebook for me. I had consistent hashing of friend ID's in
the non-online cronjob, so I'll have to reimplement that in the online thing
sometime.

