8 ms·

Show HN: Amium – A better way to collaborate

168 points by yurisagalov 10y ago

andreygrehov 10y ago
Is it an add-on for Slack?
- yurisagalov 10y ago
  Hey Andrey, It's not. We looked into that, but we needed the ability to create nested channels (e.g. threads) since any file can be a thread/feed.
  - pdenya 10y ago
    https://www.amium.com/img/homepage/product-shot.png https://www.amium.com/img/homepage/product-shot.png Seems heavily inspired by / very similar to Slack though. A lot of features in common. Slack allows you to post and comment on files but doesn't support versioning yet. Are you trying to be a Slack replacement with better file handling or is it meant to be used alongside apps like slack?
  - seagreen 10y ago
    Can you share a file that's anywhere on your computer, or does it have to be in a shared folder? Also, how does Amium handle file renames? This is a tricky one so I wouldn't judge the product if it has trouble here.
    - yurisagalov 10y ago
      File needs to be in the Amium shared folder right now :) File renames shouldn't be a problem. We'll also show you a message in the chatroom if the file is renamed :)
56k 10y ago
TL;DR Amium vs. Google Docs (and others)..?
- yurisagalov 10y ago
  Google Docs is a reasonable comparison, but, a couple of things: First, we do discrete versions/snapshots, so you can revert back to a particular version in time (along with seeing the associated conversation). Thing something like Github but for non developers. Second, we support literally any file type. We integrated with Microsoft Office Online to support co-editing live in browser (which is the "like Google docs" portion), but we also support literally any other file type for conversation and activity feed: Photoshop, InDesign, PDF, etc. For many of these files types we also provide live previews and so on.
  - basch 10y ago
    so how does it compare to just Office.com/WordOnline/OneDrive/SharePoint it has full versioncontrol for all filetypes and provides your coediting in the browser. Why would I use you as my version control over sharepoint, the thing built into Word Online?
Anisa_Mirza 10y ago
I am seriously excited to give this a try today. I've been frustrated by file sharing between my team (we mostly use google docs or dropbox) and esp file collaboration (currently using slack). If this turns out to be the perfect love child between slack and dropbox, Amium is an answer to my prayers.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
daemonk 10y ago
I am in academic research. I want to see if this will be good for my work setting. I tried to sign up and got a nginx bad gatewawy error page :(. I'll try again later if I manage to remember.
- loarake 10y ago
  If you're writing papers in LaTeX, then https://www.overleaf.com https://www.overleaf.com should be good for you. Almost all of our department has started using it.
  - daemonk 10y ago
    I actually just finished a manuscript with overleaf and published it on biorxiv (shameless plug: http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/25/065789.1 http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/25/065789.1). Unfortunately, latex isn't used that widely in biological sciences. There is a bit of a learning curve that people just aren't willing to invest time in. During preparation of the manuscript, I had to convert latex to word to distribute to collaborators and then manually edit the latex file accordingly afterwards. Maybe this type of service where it is more microsoft office based will be better when collaborating with non-computational inclined people.
    - loarake 10y ago
      I've had a similar experience. I'm in a hybrid field (medical physics) where half of the people are from pure physics and the other half from a more biomedical engineering background. It's pretty funny to see the culture clash between the two when it comes to writing articles. We had to learn latex in our first year of undergrad to write lab reports whereas the biomed people really don't see any value in using latex over word (especially for collaborating).
      - dban 10y ago
        Try Authorea! (Disclosure: I work there) Authorea is for researchers to write and collaborate online. Multiple users can write across formats in the same document (including LaTeX, markdown, rich text) and you can push a button to export to different file formats, journal styles, or publish to the web.
nathancahill 10y ago
Seems to be aiming to solve a lot of the problems that Quip solves. @yurisagalov, how do they compare?
- yurisagalov 10y ago
  "Like Quip, but for any file" (not just doc/spreadhseets), would probably be a fair comparison (and one I was tempted to make :-)
adora 10y ago
just tried it. so basically this makes microsoft office usable again? hallelujah.
bshimmin 10y ago
You might want to have a re-think about the favicon - it's pretty similar to InVision's (https://invisionapp.com https://invisionapp.com) and, while they're not quite in the same space, they're also not worlds apart.
- jwise0 10y ago
  Also, is it just me, or does the logo look like it says "fu"? I bounced it off a few other people and they also all seem to think it says "fu". (I was looking at https://www.amium.com/img/features/security.png https://www.amium.com/img/features/security.png, which has a few of them planted about.)
- thoughtpalette 10y ago
  Not sure if they've updated the favicon in the time since your post, but they do not look remotely similar to me.
  - bshimmin 10y ago
    They're both pink (a similar but not identical shade); one has "iu" and one has "in", both in white; one is a circle, one is a square. When I clicked the link I was initially confused because I thought it had actually taken me to Invision (which we use a lot), until I squinted and realised it was something else. I'm not saying they're identical, and I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but they are definitely similar to my eye.
newy 10y ago
Discussing files "in-line" is a pretty natural way to collaborate. This should have existed a long time ago, and is a natural evolution of workplace collaboration tools. Bravo, Amium team.
danielpal 10y ago
Wow, congratulations. This is what google should have built for Google Drive and Docs. Best Show HN this year.
- dx034 10y ago
  When I saw this I was actually surprised that there's a need for it. I assumed Office Online has this built in (never used it).
glitcher 10y ago
For organizations that require certain documents to remain internal only (no 3rd party server storage), are there any options besides Amium's AWS hosting?
- prophesi 10y ago
  I'd like to know as well. If it can be self-hosted, I'll jump on-board in a heartbeat.
- yurisagalov 10y ago
  On-Prem is something we're considering on our roadmap (our classic product, AeroFS, is offered on-prem), shoot us an email at feedback@amium.com
  - ptio 10y ago
    Check out https://www.replicated.com https://www.replicated.com
- xir78 10y ago
  Out of curiosity what type of companies see on prem being more secure still? Do they really have top noch security teams or is the reality akin to stuffing money under your mattress to keep it safe vs a bank?
  - zeeZ 10y ago
    Security might play into this, but the main factor would be giving internal documents to a third party that didn't have everyone sign a large stack of NDAs.
  - dottedmag 10y ago
    Not security, compliance.
  - adamhepner 10y ago
    German companies are generally very cautious, if not just scared of any type of external hosting. I'm not sure in what way is that connected to legislation, but the way the EDV-departments (Elektronischdatenverarbeitung - electronic data processing) work in companies here is mind boggling. It's like the progress was happening here not thanks to IT, but despite its overreaching presence.
dang 10y ago
We changed the url to the site from the blog post, but anyone who wants the background can read it here: https://blog.amium.com/a-better-way-to-collaborate-b33d9dc4cb86 https://blog.amium.com/a-better-way-to-collaborate-b33d9dc4c....
- fizzbatter 10y ago
  Appreciated, especially since the site is quite unusable atm.
  - yurisagalov 10y ago
    fixed! our fault for doing anything live today
thenipper 10y ago
This is really slick. Played with it for about 15 minutes and fell in love. Now to just convince people at work to use it... and pay for it.
ironghost 10y ago
Curious if this will have the same issue that Google Wave had; attempting to change a paradigm that is well understood.
- yurisagalov 10y ago
  Hopefully not! We've tried fairly hard to make it fit into existing workflows so that the learning curve is not too difficult.
pencildiver 10y ago
Is this a feature that AeroFS customers will also get access to? Or is this meant to be a completely separate product line? Overall, this is amazing. Congratulations on the launch :)
- yurisagalov 10y ago
  We're launching it standalone so you can run them side by side if you wanted to. It IS built on top of AeroFS, so down the road we may offer a migration path :)
rdl 10y ago
Super excited about this, especially for a future on-prem version.
a1sauce 10y ago
Huge potential if you nail this. Congrats! Buggy to the point of being hard to even play with as of right now though.
- yurisagalov 10y ago
  can you shoot me an email at yuri@amium.com? Would like to follow up
lukasm 10y ago
Do I really need to login to try it out?
rekoros 10y ago
Should we add it to https://sameroom.io/chat-timeline.pdf https://sameroom.io/chat-timeline.pdf ?
gcr 10y ago
This reminds me of Dropbox Harmony for its business users. https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/tag/project-harmony/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/tag/project-harmony/ Basically, every MS Office folder in your dropbox gets a chat box. Everyone on the team who has that file open can chat with each other and edit the document together.
azpoliak1 10y ago
Are there any plans to support batch upload from other services (like Google drive, Dropbox, etc)? It would be nice to be able to migrate lots of folders and files in one click instead of having to download every file and then upload each file directly to Amium.
- yurisagalov 10y ago
  actually, yes! Can you ping us at hello@amium.com and mention that? It'll help us prioritize and make sure we reach out when it's ready.
sidcool 10y ago
Very good product. Thoroughly impressed
sidcool 10y ago
What is your tech stack? The UI is gorgeous.

168 points by yurisagalov 10y ago

andreygrehov 10y ago

Is it an add-on for Slack?

yurisagalov 10y ago
Hey Andrey, It's not. We looked into that, but we needed the ability to create nested channels (e.g. threads) since any file can be a thread/feed.
- pdenya 10y ago
  https://www.amium.com/img/homepage/product-shot.png https://www.amium.com/img/homepage/product-shot.png Seems heavily inspired by / very similar to Slack though. A lot of features in common. Slack allows you to post and comment on files but doesn't support versioning yet. Are you trying to be a Slack replacement with better file handling or is it meant to be used alongside apps like slack?
- seagreen 10y ago
  Can you share a file that's anywhere on your computer, or does it have to be in a shared folder? Also, how does Amium handle file renames? This is a tricky one so I wouldn't judge the product if it has trouble here.
  - yurisagalov 10y ago
    File needs to be in the Amium shared folder right now :) File renames shouldn't be a problem. We'll also show you a message in the chatroom if the file is renamed :)

56k 10y ago

TL;DR Amium vs. Google Docs (and others)..?

yurisagalov 10y ago
Google Docs is a reasonable comparison, but, a couple of things: First, we do discrete versions/snapshots, so you can revert back to a particular version in time (along with seeing the associated conversation). Thing something like Github but for non developers. Second, we support literally any file type. We integrated with Microsoft Office Online to support co-editing live in browser (which is the "like Google docs" portion), but we also support literally any other file type for conversation and activity feed: Photoshop, InDesign, PDF, etc. For many of these files types we also provide live previews and so on.
- basch 10y ago
  so how does it compare to just Office.com/WordOnline/OneDrive/SharePoint it has full versioncontrol for all filetypes and provides your coediting in the browser. Why would I use you as my version control over sharepoint, the thing built into Word Online?

Anisa_Mirza 10y ago

I am seriously excited to give this a try today. I've been frustrated by file sharing between my team (we mostly use google docs or dropbox) and esp file collaboration (currently using slack). If this turns out to be the perfect love child between slack and dropbox, Amium is an answer to my prayers.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

daemonk 10y ago

I am in academic research. I want to see if this will be good for my work setting. I tried to sign up and got a nginx bad gatewawy error page :(. I'll try again later if I manage to remember.

loarake 10y ago
If you're writing papers in LaTeX, then https://www.overleaf.com https://www.overleaf.com should be good for you. Almost all of our department has started using it.
- daemonk 10y ago
  I actually just finished a manuscript with overleaf and published it on biorxiv (shameless plug: http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/25/065789.1 http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/25/065789.1). Unfortunately, latex isn't used that widely in biological sciences. There is a bit of a learning curve that people just aren't willing to invest time in. During preparation of the manuscript, I had to convert latex to word to distribute to collaborators and then manually edit the latex file accordingly afterwards. Maybe this type of service where it is more microsoft office based will be better when collaborating with non-computational inclined people.
  - loarake 10y ago
    I've had a similar experience. I'm in a hybrid field (medical physics) where half of the people are from pure physics and the other half from a more biomedical engineering background. It's pretty funny to see the culture clash between the two when it comes to writing articles. We had to learn latex in our first year of undergrad to write lab reports whereas the biomed people really don't see any value in using latex over word (especially for collaborating).
    - dban 10y ago
      Try Authorea! (Disclosure: I work there) Authorea is for researchers to write and collaborate online. Multiple users can write across formats in the same document (including LaTeX, markdown, rich text) and you can push a button to export to different file formats, journal styles, or publish to the web.

nathancahill 10y ago

Seems to be aiming to solve a lot of the problems that Quip solves. @yurisagalov, how do they compare?

yurisagalov 10y ago
"Like Quip, but for any file" (not just doc/spreadhseets), would probably be a fair comparison (and one I was tempted to make :-)

adora 10y ago

just tried it. so basically this makes microsoft office usable again? hallelujah.

bshimmin 10y ago

You might want to have a re-think about the favicon - it's pretty similar to InVision's (https://invisionapp.com https://invisionapp.com) and, while they're not quite in the same space, they're also not worlds apart.

jwise0 10y ago
Also, is it just me, or does the logo look like it says "fu"? I bounced it off a few other people and they also all seem to think it says "fu". (I was looking at https://www.amium.com/img/features/security.png https://www.amium.com/img/features/security.png, which has a few of them planted about.)
thoughtpalette 10y ago
Not sure if they've updated the favicon in the time since your post, but they do not look remotely similar to me.
- bshimmin 10y ago
  They're both pink (a similar but not identical shade); one has "iu" and one has "in", both in white; one is a circle, one is a square. When I clicked the link I was initially confused because I thought it had actually taken me to Invision (which we use a lot), until I squinted and realised it was something else. I'm not saying they're identical, and I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but they are definitely similar to my eye.

newy 10y ago

Discussing files "in-line" is a pretty natural way to collaborate. This should have existed a long time ago, and is a natural evolution of workplace collaboration tools. Bravo, Amium team.

danielpal 10y ago

Wow, congratulations. This is what google should have built for Google Drive and Docs. Best Show HN this year.

dx034 10y ago
When I saw this I was actually surprised that there's a need for it. I assumed Office Online has this built in (never used it).

glitcher 10y ago

For organizations that require certain documents to remain internal only (no 3rd party server storage), are there any options besides Amium's AWS hosting?

prophesi 10y ago
I'd like to know as well. If it can be self-hosted, I'll jump on-board in a heartbeat.
yurisagalov 10y ago
On-Prem is something we're considering on our roadmap (our classic product, AeroFS, is offered on-prem), shoot us an email at feedback@amium.com
- ptio 10y ago
  Check out https://www.replicated.com https://www.replicated.com
xir78 10y ago
Out of curiosity what type of companies see on prem being more secure still? Do they really have top noch security teams or is the reality akin to stuffing money under your mattress to keep it safe vs a bank?
- zeeZ 10y ago
  Security might play into this, but the main factor would be giving internal documents to a third party that didn't have everyone sign a large stack of NDAs.
- dottedmag 10y ago
  Not security, compliance.
- adamhepner 10y ago
  German companies are generally very cautious, if not just scared of any type of external hosting. I'm not sure in what way is that connected to legislation, but the way the EDV-departments (Elektronischdatenverarbeitung - electronic data processing) work in companies here is mind boggling. It's like the progress was happening here not thanks to IT, but despite its overreaching presence.

dang 10y ago

We changed the url to the site from the blog post, but anyone who wants the background can read it here: https://blog.amium.com/a-better-way-to-collaborate-b33d9dc4cb86 https://blog.amium.com/a-better-way-to-collaborate-b33d9dc4c....

fizzbatter 10y ago
Appreciated, especially since the site is quite unusable atm.
- yurisagalov 10y ago
  fixed! our fault for doing anything live today

thenipper 10y ago

This is really slick. Played with it for about 15 minutes and fell in love. Now to just convince people at work to use it... and pay for it.

ironghost 10y ago

Curious if this will have the same issue that Google Wave had; attempting to change a paradigm that is well understood.

yurisagalov 10y ago
Hopefully not! We've tried fairly hard to make it fit into existing workflows so that the learning curve is not too difficult.

pencildiver 10y ago

Is this a feature that AeroFS customers will also get access to? Or is this meant to be a completely separate product line? Overall, this is amazing. Congratulations on the launch :)

yurisagalov 10y ago
We're launching it standalone so you can run them side by side if you wanted to. It IS built on top of AeroFS, so down the road we may offer a migration path :)

rdl 10y ago

Super excited about this, especially for a future on-prem version.

a1sauce 10y ago

Huge potential if you nail this. Congrats! Buggy to the point of being hard to even play with as of right now though.

yurisagalov 10y ago
can you shoot me an email at yuri@amium.com? Would like to follow up

lukasm 10y ago

Do I really need to login to try it out?

rekoros 10y ago

Should we add it to https://sameroom.io/chat-timeline.pdf https://sameroom.io/chat-timeline.pdf ?

gcr 10y ago

This reminds me of Dropbox Harmony for its business users. https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/tag/project-harmony/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/tag/project-harmony/ Basically, every MS Office folder in your dropbox gets a chat box. Everyone on the team who has that file open can chat with each other and edit the document together.

azpoliak1 10y ago

Are there any plans to support batch upload from other services (like Google drive, Dropbox, etc)? It would be nice to be able to migrate lots of folders and files in one click instead of having to download every file and then upload each file directly to Amium.

yurisagalov 10y ago
actually, yes! Can you ping us at hello@amium.com and mention that? It'll help us prioritize and make sure we reach out when it's ready.

sidcool 10y ago

Very good product. Thoroughly impressed

sidcool 10y ago

What is your tech stack? The UI is gorgeous.