

Show HN: I made a site that rings a bell every time you have a new customer - pud
http://bellbot.com

======
moconnor
From the landing page: "One of the programmers set up the computers so that a
bell would ring every time an order came in."

Continuation of the quote in the WSJ source: "A great novelty at first, it
quickly got annoying and had to be turned off."

~~~
pud
I love that. Though I think what the author was trying to say (I read an
interview with Bezos somewhere) is that "[amazon orders started pouring in so
rapidly that] it got annoying..."

Nevertheless, I think I could find a "softer" sound that would be less
jarring. Maybe let users select from different sounds or upload their own. Or
something.

I read somewhere about a company that did monitoring by playing white noise
that corresponded with certain key metrics (such as the rate of new users).
The noise was invisible until it changed slightly in pitch, which meant
something unusual was happening.

~~~
thetrendycyborg
The white noise idea is fascinating.

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drp
We used to have a computer play a gong noise when we sold something. It was
just an email client that got a copy of all the receipts and played a sound
when mail came in. That got really annoying so we killed it.

Now we have a physical gong in the office that our sales reps get to bang on.
We don't learn from our mistakes.

~~~
dmix
We used to have emails that got sent to our inbox every time a user converted.
But that got annoying during all of the peak times.

I can't imagine a bell or sound happening.

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patio11
Fair warning: a similar system nearly caused me to destroy my cellphone, the
screen over my window, and the windshield of the Honda beneath it.

~~~
solutionyogi
Patrick, I don't get this comment. Is there an inside joke I am missing?

~~~
sukuriant
He violently threw his phone when it wouldn't stop ringing and he was in a
mental state that didn't want to experience said ringing.

In other words: understand that it will ding for all new users. all of them.
Get a lot of dings. Get them at 3 in the morning. Get them during a date. All
dings.

To relate: if you're the kind of person that turns off your IM sounds because
they annoy you, this is not for you. I am one of those people: even a window
blinking too frequently bothers me.

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Dexec
Philip, just know that the rate at which you put out projects of all sizes
really is inspiring.

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rachelbythebay
This reminded me of the Netscape FTP server rigging. They had an Indy play a
cannon shot every time someone successfully finished a download. It's a small
part of a much bigger story, and all of it is good as far as I am concerned.

<http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html>

~~~
sneak
Interesting looking back on the truthiness of "pushing bits around in ways
only meaningful to other nerds", then-and-now.

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pud
Okay, having put Bellbot on one of my sites today I can see that the sound I
chose can get irritating. So I just changed it.

Old sound: <http://bellbot.com/sounds/up.mp3>

New sound: <http://bellbot.com/sounds/bell.mp3>

------
apeconmyth
Reminds me of Middle Men. "We just made $9.99..."
[http://www.traileraddict.com/clip/middle-men/we-just-
made-99...](http://www.traileraddict.com/clip/middle-men/we-just-made-999)

~~~
talmand
I was thinking the same thing. Now he can make different sounds based on type
of customer...

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JonnieCache
A slightly less annoying suggestion: rig up a box to make a noise every time a
build passes the tests on your CI server. I suggest a golf clap, or the sound
of a slot machine paying out.

~~~
Someone
Instead, play a truly annoying sound (rickroll?) when the build fails…

…on the computer of the developer that broke the build.

------
nsmartt
I have nothing useful to say, but I can't help but wonder if I'm the only one
who read "Beeps when you've got customers" and immediately thought "Goes ding
when there's stuff!"

~~~
pud
I had to Google that for the reference. I'm still not sure I get it but "Goes
dint when there's stuff" would be a brilliant slogan - might have to
appropriate it!

~~~
nsmartt
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LqmAQwHNA0>

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jamese
Nice work! It would be very helpful if there was a special URL that could be
shared with employees that want to receive the notice.

Perhaps also a small Win/Lin/Mac resident service, and mobile app?

~~~
pud
Good idea about letting users send out a special (obscure) URL for public
consumption.

Also good idea about an app.

As for Win/Lin/Mac resident service -- I just open a browser window, load
bellbot, then minimize it.

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mattblalock
I've worked with numerous retailers who use something like this. Usually an
eMail server just makes a ping when a payment notification comes in.

During peak seasons (read: December) at an ecommerce company of mine a few
years ago, we did pretty much exactly this. We used a cash register sound,
though. Played it into the office and warehouse so everybody knew how fast
things needed to be going. Totally worked, the faster the register went, the
harder everyone worked.

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PaulMest
There was a pretty funny scene in Middle Men regarding this very topic.
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1251757/>

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jakegottlieb
We just got a new system like that for Levion. It was fun initially when you
have no customers but when accounts are being made non stop it gets impossible
to work. It did give our employees energy initially until they made us turn it
off.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3521108>

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dpritchett
Last week I set up a heroku+twilio app to call me and yell whenever I curled
its URL.

The idea was to use it to train myself to stop hitting ESC in vim, but I'm
sure it's portable for other pavlovian needs.

<https://github.com/dpritchett/no-calls-please>

~~~
fishtoaster
I'm somewhat curious- why were you trying to train yourself to stop using ESC,
and why couldn't you just unmap that key?

~~~
dpritchett
I mapped <jk> to serve the same purpose (quit insert mode) - it's a common
power user tip but I've never gotten used to it. Unmapping wouldn't have been
so fun... I also display a `fortune -o | cowsay -f hello-kitty | lolcat` on
screen for five seconds while the phone is ringing.

~~~
Dornkirk
@dpritchett, how is your key mappings defined for this?

I have the following in my .vimrc, it's commented out because I had gotten
some weird behavior:

inoremap <esc> <nop>

inoremap jk <esc>

When I'm in insert mode with these mappings un-commented, if I hit the arrow
keys I get input like the following:

0A0D0B0C

(up, left, down, right keys). It prints the hex values into the editor instead
of moving the cursor. And if I click with the mouse or drag in insert mode:

[M_M1[M@M2[M@N1[M#U ... etc.

With those mappings commented out I don't have this problem - of course I'm
back to stretching my pinky 3 rows of keys up to the escape key :(

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bootz15
How does it know when I've got a new customer... a new site visitor? So
confused...

~~~
pud
When you sign up for bellbot.com, it gives you a small Javascript snippet. You
embed that snippet in your "thank you!" page (or whatever page your users see
after they do stuff on your site).

Every time a user hits that page, you'll hear a beep on your end if you're
logged into bellbot.

------
rbustamante
This is awesome. When blackberries were in use we were able to customize our
ringtones, which created the same affect. We have downloaded iPhone apps and
created additional email accounts to mimic the new sign up "gong."

------
apalmblad
Hah, I remember seeing that quote from Bezos and wanting to do the same thing.
At the moment, I make do with Jabber and a cron job, but a bit of semi-
realtime feedback on positive activity is fun.

------
lancefisher
If you are curious what it sounds like, just hit this url:
<http://bellbot.com/sounds/up.mp3>

~~~
gridspy
Gah! Made me jump!

------
tommoor
At Buffer we have the mario coin noise every time a user upgrades. It's just
often enough to be pleasant rather than annoying!

------
rksprst
Great idea - nice when you've just launched. FYI, GetClicky does this as well
as part of their Spy section.

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mjhoyer
Clicking on bellbot.com with headphones in... not recommended. I almost
crapped myself.

~~~
pud
Sorry about that. I put the sound onload because I thought it was kinda funny
-- and also as a demonstration in case some potential users were unaware that
a website can make noises (thank you HTML5. no thank you to Chrome/Safari
supporting only mp3 and Firefox for only supporting WAV).

Perhaps I should get rid of the onload sound. Or have a link that says "click
here to hear a sound" or something.

Update: I just commented out the onload sound. In retrospect it was annoying.
Thank you.

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coryl
You didn't include a button to hear the sound without signing up? Come on!

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spung
A cash register sound would be appropriate!

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ClintonWu
Pud, you make really useful and rad stuff

------
known
Customer != Potential customer

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JMiao
hey pud, did you do your own art?

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jlazer
lolz

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zeroboy
If instead of a ring it taught you a new French word, then that would be
something, but this would drive me insane.

Awesome landing page though!

