4 ms·

Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but what's wrong with using Bluetooth? The last thing I want to do with a $600 phone is smack it into somebody else's $600 phone just

Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but what's wrong with using Bluetooth? The last thing I want to do with a $600 phone is smack it into somebody else's $600 phone just to transfer some pictures.

CrazedGeek 17y ago
Turn Bluetooth on. Set one device to discoverable. Send contact. Wait for approval. Enter PIN. Wait for transfer. Accept transfer. Compare to: lightly tap your phones together.
- jmillikin 17y ago
  More accurately, based on the Bump FAQ[1]: Bump your phones together. Bump them together again. Wait for both to connect to the central Bump server, potentially failing to do so. Approve the transfer. Accept the transfer. Now, lets assume the same amount of development effort goes into writing a proper interface for Bluetooth transfers. It could be something like: Put two phones near each other. Drag an image/contact/money onto the "Bob's Phone" on my screen. Bob drags it from his inbox to wherever he wants it. That seems easier to me: it doesn't involve third parties[2], complex bump-matching heuristics, or physical contact. [1] http://bu.mp/faq http://bu.mp/faq [2] Even if Bump's servers have 100% uptime, how do you know that the local cell towers will have similar records? What if you're in San Francisco or New York, which have notoriously poor iPhone reception?
  - brk 17y ago
    I think this is an excellent point. Bump is (IMO) an example of too much dependence on the "magic cloud" and an odd combination of over and under engineering. Data shouldn't have to travel to a datacenter and back to move 3 inches from one phone to another, although I can see how it's easier to leverage a cloud server for some of the functions instead of making a 100% stand-alone app.
  - samratjp 17y ago
    "the local cell towers will have similar records" I didn't see anything about cell towers keeping information in the faq and why would they. Bump manages all the handshake (and probably uses something like diffie-hellman for security) and the location information seems like a secondary heuristic. I am sure Bump uses more than mere cell phone reception, for iPod Touch is supported, which means wifi must/can be involved as well. In a perfect world, yes, Bluetooth would do what it's meant to do, but in the real world people like to bump into each other :-)
    - jmillikin 17y ago
      Was my choice of words poor? I didn't mean to imply that Bump or cell towers are retaining information. Rather, I don't trust cell phone companies to maintain their infrastructure more than absolutely necessary.
      - samratjp 17y ago
        While I appreciate your sense of doubt about the cell companies, I personally wouldn't go as far without proper data on their high availability. Again, I am sure Bump has thought about this extensively enough to get some money from Sequoia.
  - jeff18 17y ago
    This is a pretty loaded example. You're using the absolute worst case scenario as the use case for bumping (requiring two bumps and that their server is down). 99 times out of 100, you only need a single bump, and their uptime has been great so far!
jmintz 17y ago
Bluetooth doesn't work very well or reliably between two of the same phone (such as iPhone to iPhone). And lots of people have Bluetooth turned off to save battery (you can't turn it on programmatically, users have to leave your app and goto settings). And it definitely won't work well between any two different phones (such as iPhone to Android). The official recommended bumping techniques is hold phones, and bump hands. Like a fist bump. That eliminates the risk of damaging your phone and actually works better. The long-term goal is to bump more than contacts and pictures. For instance you can bump money using the new PayPal app on iPhone.
- jmillikin 17y ago
  > And it definitely won't work well between any two different phones (such as iPhone to Android). Interesting -- could you elaborate more on this? I've never had a problem getting two Bluetooth devices to communicate. If my old laptop, older cell phone, and modern headset can all interoperate easily, I don't see why two months-old phones from the world's leading technology companies won't work together.
- jrockway 17y ago
  you can't turn it on programmatically, users have to leave your app and goto settings Uh, on Android? False: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/bluetooth/BluetoothAdapter.html#enable() http://developer.android.com/reference/android/bluetooth/Blu...
  - jmintz 17y ago
    Yes that statement was about iPhone OS devices which are used by the majority of our users.
- perokreco 17y ago
  I never had trouble connecting my Nokia to any other phone, including Samsungs, Sony Ericssons, etc. Bluetooth has been nothing but easy to use and reliable. Couple of UI things on some phones could be improved, but I do not see a reason for switching technologies. IR to bluetooth has been a vast improvement, this bump thing seems ridiculous.
hristov 17y ago
I agree. I went to their website and saw how the technology works, and it seems really iffy. The way they recognise that two phones were bumped into each other is by having each phone contact a central server and having the central server compare the timing of the two events as well as some rough location information. So this means that you have to send your data through their central servers. Yes, it is encrypted, etc. but I would feel much safer if it were encrypted and sent locally instead. Also I am sure as it gets popular there will be issues with timing, such as different people bumping at the same time, or the bumps being mistimed, due to differences in the way the wireless networks of two different providers time stamp the various notifications. So it seems that while the act of bumping may give an impression of security (i.e., that you know for sure who you are sending your data to), this impression is illusory which means you will have to authenticate the recipient anyways, so you might as well use bluetooth. And as somebody else noted if they devoted the same efforts to bluetooth, I am sure they could make their app just as nice. And they can also use bumping to initiate bluetooth transfer too. It seems that they are eerily insistent on transferring the data through their servers.
- Tichy 17y ago
  That's disappointing, I had expected them to analyze the vibrations of the bump on the two devices. Maybe that would be too much black magic after all.
- sethg 17y ago
  Bluetooth connects devices that are close to each other, but your phone’s Bluetooth driver can’t tell the difference between a device that is touching the phone and a device that is ten feet away. So in order to establish a Bluetooth connection between two devices, they need to go through a mutual authentication handshake before anything else happens. You wouldn’t want some stranger on the bus to accidentally get a message on his phone saying hristov wants to send you $100, right? I think there are some folks at the MIT Media Lab who were experimenting with using touch as a way to establish relationships between devices (e.g., you touch a light-switch panel to a lamp, then stick it anywhere on the wall, and that switch will control the lamp it was bound to), but obviously current cellphone technology doesn’t support that. The alternative to mutual authentication is to have a trusted third party, and that’s what the Bump server provides. Using the server to create the illusion that information has passed from phone to phone by osmosis is, IMHO, a neat hack.
jeff18 17y ago
You're seriously scared about destroying your phone by lightly tapping fists?

Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but what's wrong with using Bluetooth? The last thing I want to do with a $600 phone is smack it into somebody else's $600 phone just to transfer some pictures.

CrazedGeek 17y ago

Turn Bluetooth on. Set one device to discoverable. Send contact. Wait for approval. Enter PIN. Wait for transfer. Accept transfer. Compare to: lightly tap your phones together.

jmillikin 17y ago
More accurately, based on the Bump FAQ[1]: Bump your phones together. Bump them together again. Wait for both to connect to the central Bump server, potentially failing to do so. Approve the transfer. Accept the transfer. Now, lets assume the same amount of development effort goes into writing a proper interface for Bluetooth transfers. It could be something like: Put two phones near each other. Drag an image/contact/money onto the "Bob's Phone" on my screen. Bob drags it from his inbox to wherever he wants it. That seems easier to me: it doesn't involve third parties[2], complex bump-matching heuristics, or physical contact. [1] http://bu.mp/faq http://bu.mp/faq [2] Even if Bump's servers have 100% uptime, how do you know that the local cell towers will have similar records? What if you're in San Francisco or New York, which have notoriously poor iPhone reception?
- brk 17y ago
  I think this is an excellent point. Bump is (IMO) an example of too much dependence on the "magic cloud" and an odd combination of over and under engineering. Data shouldn't have to travel to a datacenter and back to move 3 inches from one phone to another, although I can see how it's easier to leverage a cloud server for some of the functions instead of making a 100% stand-alone app.
- samratjp 17y ago
  "the local cell towers will have similar records" I didn't see anything about cell towers keeping information in the faq and why would they. Bump manages all the handshake (and probably uses something like diffie-hellman for security) and the location information seems like a secondary heuristic. I am sure Bump uses more than mere cell phone reception, for iPod Touch is supported, which means wifi must/can be involved as well. In a perfect world, yes, Bluetooth would do what it's meant to do, but in the real world people like to bump into each other :-)
  - jmillikin 17y ago
    Was my choice of words poor? I didn't mean to imply that Bump or cell towers are retaining information. Rather, I don't trust cell phone companies to maintain their infrastructure more than absolutely necessary.
    - samratjp 17y ago
      While I appreciate your sense of doubt about the cell companies, I personally wouldn't go as far without proper data on their high availability. Again, I am sure Bump has thought about this extensively enough to get some money from Sequoia.
- jeff18 17y ago
  This is a pretty loaded example. You're using the absolute worst case scenario as the use case for bumping (requiring two bumps and that their server is down). 99 times out of 100, you only need a single bump, and their uptime has been great so far!

jmintz 17y ago

Bluetooth doesn't work very well or reliably between two of the same phone (such as iPhone to iPhone). And lots of people have Bluetooth turned off to save battery (you can't turn it on programmatically, users have to leave your app and goto settings). And it definitely won't work well between any two different phones (such as iPhone to Android). The official recommended bumping techniques is hold phones, and bump hands. Like a fist bump. That eliminates the risk of damaging your phone and actually works better. The long-term goal is to bump more than contacts and pictures. For instance you can bump money using the new PayPal app on iPhone.

jmillikin 17y ago
> And it definitely won't work well between any two different phones (such as iPhone to Android). Interesting -- could you elaborate more on this? I've never had a problem getting two Bluetooth devices to communicate. If my old laptop, older cell phone, and modern headset can all interoperate easily, I don't see why two months-old phones from the world's leading technology companies won't work together.
jrockway 17y ago
you can't turn it on programmatically, users have to leave your app and goto settings Uh, on Android? False: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/bluetooth/BluetoothAdapter.html#enable() http://developer.android.com/reference/android/bluetooth/Blu...
- jmintz 17y ago
  Yes that statement was about iPhone OS devices which are used by the majority of our users.
perokreco 17y ago
I never had trouble connecting my Nokia to any other phone, including Samsungs, Sony Ericssons, etc. Bluetooth has been nothing but easy to use and reliable. Couple of UI things on some phones could be improved, but I do not see a reason for switching technologies. IR to bluetooth has been a vast improvement, this bump thing seems ridiculous.

hristov 17y ago

I agree. I went to their website and saw how the technology works, and it seems really iffy. The way they recognise that two phones were bumped into each other is by having each phone contact a central server and having the central server compare the timing of the two events as well as some rough location information. So this means that you have to send your data through their central servers. Yes, it is encrypted, etc. but I would feel much safer if it were encrypted and sent locally instead. Also I am sure as it gets popular there will be issues with timing, such as different people bumping at the same time, or the bumps being mistimed, due to differences in the way the wireless networks of two different providers time stamp the various notifications. So it seems that while the act of bumping may give an impression of security (i.e., that you know for sure who you are sending your data to), this impression is illusory which means you will have to authenticate the recipient anyways, so you might as well use bluetooth. And as somebody else noted if they devoted the same efforts to bluetooth, I am sure they could make their app just as nice. And they can also use bumping to initiate bluetooth transfer too. It seems that they are eerily insistent on transferring the data through their servers.

Tichy 17y ago
That's disappointing, I had expected them to analyze the vibrations of the bump on the two devices. Maybe that would be too much black magic after all.
sethg 17y ago
Bluetooth connects devices that are close to each other, but your phone’s Bluetooth driver can’t tell the difference between a device that is touching the phone and a device that is ten feet away. So in order to establish a Bluetooth connection between two devices, they need to go through a mutual authentication handshake before anything else happens. You wouldn’t want some stranger on the bus to accidentally get a message on his phone saying hristov wants to send you $100, right? I think there are some folks at the MIT Media Lab who were experimenting with using touch as a way to establish relationships between devices (e.g., you touch a light-switch panel to a lamp, then stick it anywhere on the wall, and that switch will control the lamp it was bound to), but obviously current cellphone technology doesn’t support that. The alternative to mutual authentication is to have a trusted third party, and that’s what the Bump server provides. Using the server to create the illusion that information has passed from phone to phone by osmosis is, IMHO, a neat hack.

jeff18 17y ago

You're seriously scared about destroying your phone by lightly tapping fists?