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"Tap the spacebar with your phone." - Bump unveils new photo uploader
- pazimzadeh 15y agoIt just works.. It's been good to seeing Bump innovate again over the past few months.
- jamwt 15y agoHeh--wait 'till you see what we've got up next. :-) And, of course, we're hiring. Come help us do this crazy stuff. Email me at jamie@bu.mp
- rplnt 15y agoTheir job openings if anyone is interested (as I was): http://bump.theresumator.com/apply/jobs/ http://bump.theresumator.com/apply/jobs/
- keen 15y agoI don't get why this is a good idea (or how it works*). Anyone care to explain? Edit: I'm wondering how it works in a technical sense.
- Ave 15y agoIt looks to be based on matching the location provided by your browser with the location of your phone. I don't know whether it's a good idea or not, but it's certainly a unique concept.
- Groxx 15y agoAccurate-enough (sub-second in my case) timing of events + physical proximity (both your browser and the app ask for your location) = a near guarantee that your browser session + your phone is a unique pair. It also asks for confirmation on both the phone and browser to pair the first time. There's no real chance of this being man-in-the-middled since you have to confirm on both devices. And they're being intelligent about it - I just tried it with two laptops at once, and you get "someone's device" instead of the name of your iThing, and your iThing says "please try again" like this: http://cl.ly/1O33430M0i2c0i2T0z2U http://cl.ly/1O33430M0i2c0i2T0z2U Once you've approved, they have a browser + app pair of cookies for future pairings (not really exploitable, as it runs over https), which strengthens the single-pair guarantee to the point where it's about as good as it gets in any security model.
- stcredzero 15y agoThere's no real chance of this being man-in-the-middled I'll need more convincing. Once you've approved, they have a browser + app pair of cookies Exactly what's keeping the cookie on the browser and the phone from being copied? You must be leaving out some details. This doesn't strike me as "good as it gets."
- Groxx 15y ago>* Exactly what's keeping the cookie on the browser and the phone from being copied?* SSL. Either you trust it or you don't. Similarly, either you trust the CAs to work (preventing a real MITM on https traffic) or you don't. Which makes this as secure as your banking site, except for the initial pairing, which I dare say they do more safely than any bank I've seen.
- DanBlake 15y agoI think this could be a cool hook to expand past photo uploads and be a full ios management tool. Give me a web interface to manage my bookmarks, sms messages, contacts, photos, notes, app third party data, etc.. - You could essentially create a web based ios/android manager. Something like http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/ http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/ but from the browser. Keep in mind, all of the above exists already. Its just the elegant method of not having to put a PIN on both the phone + browser doesnt. Cool logon method.
- stcredzero 15y agoCool logon method. An insecure login method does not a cool one make.
- blub 15y agoThis is a gimmick. On the other hand the whole app is a workaround for the neutered iPhone communication stack. Uploading something to a server just to share it with someone standing near you is ridiculous.
- softbuilder 15y agoYou mean like chat or email?
- dfc 15y agoYou /msg or email people standing next to you?
- mdonahoe 15y agoever work in an office?
- dfc 15y agoI have but I had a door so maybe that's what is different. But still I don't know why I would stand next to someone and chat / email them...
- mistercow 15y agoI do. When sending a link for example, this is the path of least resistance. Yes, I could read it out and have the other person type it (which would take ten times as long). And yes, if I wanted to use bandwidth optimally, I would make a direct connection to their device and send it that way. But up to a certain length of data, the overhead of making that specialized connection outweighs any inefficiency of communicating through a middleman.
- blub 15y agoYes, emailing/chatting is also ridiculous. And so is sending a package when you want to hand someone an object. Terribly inefficient.
- 15y ago
- dfc 15y agoIf I have already selected the photos I want to upload on my phone why would I want to use another device to complete the process? NB: This is not trollfood and I am not a hater. I don't use an iphone so I may be missing something obvious.
- jaredsohn 15y agoThis makes it easy to see what is on your iPhone on your computer. It lets you authenticate without having to enter a username/password (less typing!) or having credential information already saved on that computer (which is a typical case if using someone else's computer.)
- jrockway 15y agoWhy not just show a QR code on the screen and have the phone scan that. If it's been taking pictures, it can take one more :)
- rplnt 15y agoThis photo upload thingy is an extension to http://bu.mp/ http://bu.mp/ , phone to phone sharing service/app which is much better use case for the "bump technology".
- tomflack 15y agoBecause almost every single use of QR codes I've seen has been a terrible UX mistake. They're unwieldy, slow and annoying.
- citricsquid 15y agoWhoever designed this page: this is a clever idea, the ideal goal (I assume) is for it to be spread around ("hey, did you see this neat photo uploader thing?") in which case why doesn't it link me to the app for download? I don't have bump, I want to try this idea... so I have to work out what the site url is and then go and find the app myself. Why not a "don't have bump? download here!" link?
- dfc 15y ago"Hey did you see this photo uploader? I was trying to work/study and this dumb guy/girl behind me kept whacking their keyboard with an iphone. I asked her if something was wrong with her computer and she replied 'No, I am banging my keyboard with my phone so I can upload photos to a website.'"
- j_col 15y agoYeah, clever viral marketing (which is clearly working as we're talking about it here). I was a bit suspicious that they wanted to captured my geo location on that page too.
- jrockway 15y agoBump works by correlating the time the "bump" occurs and the location of the bumps. Of course, tracking your location is an added benefit for someone that might care about that sort of thing.
- j_col 15y agoI get that now after reading this thread. The problem is my first instinct was "why the hell does this website want my location?" when there was nothing on the page to explain why it was requesting this.
- brown9-2 15y agoIn addition the page doesn't really tell you what will happen or how it will work until you install Bump and try it out.
- jaredsohn 15y agoTotally irrelevant, but if you click on the Bump logo, it changes the background image.
- 89a 15y agoThey need to fire their UI team. Wasting time on dumb features like that when the mobile app UI and constant nagging is like dragging your nails over sandpaper.
- chetan51 15y agoMight be less than optimal compared to something like iCloud, but it's a pretty awesome example of technology that looks like magic. I'm thinking they're using both your phone and computer's location + timing of accelerometer activation and spacebar hit to identify the phone and computer being bumped together. Very neat.
- astrodust 15y agoIt could be key-down + key-up times to get two data-points for a match. The accelerometer would be able to compute the contact time.
- citricsquid 15y agoYou're half right, it's sockets + accelerometer. If you try hitting your phone against any hard surface and hitting the space bar at the same time it triggers the effect too. You can find the socket js in https://photos.bu.mp/static/js/bump.min.js https://photos.bu.mp/static/js/bump.min.js Space bar triggers POST (content:{"category":"Bump","action":"NoMatch","time":1334124838.48,"client_id":"a7g47710-e991-721f-8bb6-ea4013a22fb6","session_id":"1509c654180344aea5660a0349b0caaf"}).
- marcusf 15y agoThis just very cool in a very nerdy sort of way. I kinda wish it was less gimmicky, on the other hand I assume bump uses the time stamps of the shake and the key down to figure out which two devices are trying to talk. I wonder what the threshold for collision is? Anyway, very cool and I could actually see a use for this, sending photos of whiteboards to colleagues that don't run Mac/have an iPhone. Would have to compete with email/dropbox for ease of use, but it does seem very simple on the receiving end, just surfing to a web page.
- vailripper 15y agoIt's also using HTML5 browser location to narrow that tap down to a fairly small area. Pretty neat idea.
- marcusf 15y agoYeah, that's true. I thought I wrote that as well but seems I erased it :) From experience, the accuracy on my browser location can be quite low, but I guess if you have (x,y,t) on both devices and a relatively large distance in the vector between bumpers it really doesn't matter.
- stellar678 15y agoI didn't approve the request for browser location, and it still worked flawlessly.
- dfc 15y agoHow do you know what web page you are supposed to "surf to"?
- marcusf 15y agoI was thinking in the case I'm standing next to him and just want to give him the file (I just photographed a whiteboard, for example). There's a ton of different, valid ways to send that file, but this is certainly one.
- bherms 15y ago
- CaveTech 15y agoI can see how this would work well in isolated environments (at home or maybe work), but how would it perform if I was in a crowded area with lots of others using bump. My guess is experience would be miserable.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- EdisonW 15y agoThis is brilliant! I guess the next step of photo sharing is to it more FUN. I assume that when I tab on my phone, the client feels the shake and uploads the photo to Bump, and at the same time the browser gets the space keystroke from the keyboard so it would send the location and time to server, which would then match the photo that was uploaded with the best location and time. Matching/guessing the timestamp here is more important than location here I guess.
- Posibyte 15y agoThe idea seems novel, but I can't bring myself to download the thing in the off chance I might want to upload photos but I'm nowhere near my computer, or any computer for that matter. Besides that, the page lacks any kind of "Download here" link. I'm sure I could find it on the app store, but I appreciate the added convenience.
- zbruhnke 15y agobeen using this since it hit its very early stage beta a few months ago ... all I can say is it is awesome ... truly wonderful when I need to pull a ton of pics off my phone
- armandososa 15y agoWow! Are you patenting this idea? I just thought of, like, one hundred uses for this same idea. So fast. Wow. Mind blown.
- dfc 15y agoIs this a joke / commentary on patent law or are you genuinely enthused?
- armandososa 15y agoIt's my genuine reaction. I really thought this is super cool and innovative.
- rplnt 15y agoI was about to write that there was an app for sharing between phones that used "bumping" but when I searched for the name... it's the same app :)
- raphman 15y agoWhile I have not previously seen an app that uses key input and accelerometer data like this one, there have been some academic publications that discuss pairing using similar accelerometer readings: Hinckley, 2003: http://depts.washington.edu/dmgftp/publications/uist04/uist_papers/Synchronous%20Gestures%20for%20Multiple%20Persons%20and%20Computers.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/dmgftp/publications/uist04/uist_... Mayrhofer, 2007: http://comp.eprints.lancs.ac.uk/2230/1/TMC-2008-07-0279-3.pdf http://comp.eprints.lancs.ac.uk/2230/1/TMC-2008-07-0279-3.pd...
- suhastech 15y agoWhoa! Just "bumped" into somebody else while testing this out. http://twitpic.com/98efxf http://twitpic.com/98efxf Gimmick?
- __alexs 15y agoSlightly disturbing that you don't get any confirmation to share on the mobile side, it just sends your data off to whoever it matched with immediately :-/ Generally very cool experience but I wonder how well the matching algorithm will scale though. You can't be getting all that many bits of uniqueness out of a single key press and a vague bit of browser location data right?
- rplnt 15y agoI think it can scale by bumping more times (1-3 is ok for people and it will triple your space). But even with this, the non-geo-located (or poorly located) browser will become unusable by oh-so-many conflicts when you have certain amount of users using it.
- suhastech 15y agoIf you think about it, it's a paradox. For this to be vaguely useful, lot of people must use it. When a lot of people start using it, the system breaks. NFC to the rescue?
- woodall 15y agoI wonder how often these types of collisions auctually occur.
- kapilkale 15y agoThis is cool. Something about the UX felt like magic- maybe it was the instantaneous response and the way my phone vibrated. Anyway, can the devs make this more shareable? I wanted to share on Facebook but the FB-markup link looks very nondescript (bad title, no description text, crappy icon). So, I'm not going to share it. Some Twitter / FB links on the webpage would be great.
- bishnu 15y agoWhat is Bump's business model? The app is free. These services are free.
- rplnt 15y agoAcquire users and sell out to facebook/google? But yeah, this would be interesting to know.
- yaix 15y agoSame as Fb or Twitter, collect user data and eventually have some great monatization idea. If nobody has a good idea, you can always put AdMob or something on it "this bump was sponsored by ..." something. The idea is good, the best way so far to say "Bluetooth sucks".
- bishnu 15y agoPerhaps. I considered this, but Bump data isn't exactly social. Apparently they licensed their technology to Paypal to build their money-exchanging app. Maybe that's the plan.
- minalecs 15y agoanyone have a video of how this works ?
- dfc 15y agoFrom what I have read it seems you need to have geolocation turned on in your browser and iphone. Have I been hiding under a tinfoil hat for so long that I am completely out of touch with the world? Do most HN readers have these on by default?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nickbarnwell 15y agoFirefox gives me a prompt like [1] on every site that uses HTML5 Geolocation APIs. My iPhone and Windows Phone do the same. [1] http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9061771/Screenshots/yebr_5sj_2ik.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9061771/Screenshots/yebr_5sj_2ik.png
- kennywinker 15y agoI just tried with geolocation on my phone, and off in my browser, and it worked perfectly. I tend to pick and choose on an app-by-app basis.
- Gmo 15y agoSame here, I tend to stay away from geolocation as often as possible (obvious exception is google maps on my phone)
- dclowd9901 15y agoMake it a platform and instantly solve one of the biggest hurdles in user-content sites.
- tricolon 15y agoI have been waiting all this time for Bump to be useful. It is finally useful, and I am happy.
- kennywinker 15y agoHad bump on my phone for nearly three years now. Have used it exactly three times. This time being the third one. It was impressive, and I'll likely show someone this tomorrow.
- petercooper 15y agoSince the topic has come up, one way to reduce collisions with all geolocation turned off would be to request the user tap a certain key (or even two keys in succession) with the phone instead of just the space bar.
- haydenchambers 15y agoThey should have put a css transition in there so that the photo 'falls out' of the top of the screen when loading
- tewks 15y agoWant to build magic like this into your own iOS or Android app? Try out our brand new, super fast APIs: https://github.com/bumptech/bump-api-ios https://github.com/bumptech/bump-api-ios https://github.com/bumptech/bump-api-android https://github.com/bumptech/bump-api-android Email me if you have any questions: tg@bu.mp
- potatolicious 15y agoSome feedback: I just filled out my virtual card with my contact info, and suddenly got an email from you guys in my inbox. I didn't sign up for an account or anything. IMO this is pretty shitty - I put this information into the app to send to other people, not so Bump can email me. And now I feel iffy putting other data into the app - Bump is not strictly the data exchange platform I thought it was. This is a violation of user trust - if you want to store/act on any information users put into the app you need to let them know first. This really, really rubbed me the wrong way - this is the first time any app of mine has ever intercepted a form field, sent it to the mothership without my consent, and used the data in a way that was never stated nor implied. App deleted. [edit] Oh hey look, the email addressed me by the name I put into the vCard. I guess now you have my phone number too.
- jsavimbi 15y agoYou are aware that your email address is currency on the Internet, right, and that people are going to design all sorts of honeypots to get it?
- wccrawford 15y agoThanks for the warning. I'm really wary of companies that don't understand basic issues like this.
- tewks 15y agoWe are a cloud based solution that takes privacy very seriously. We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want. Our privacy policy is available both in the app and online: http://bu.mp/privacy http://bu.mp/privacy
- morsch 15y agoWhy is the Bump Android app 2.74 megabytes large? That seems excessive. Huh, that doesn't seem to be a welcome comment. I'm not sure why. Bump doesn't strike me as an app that ought to require large media files. Does it contain any? If so, why? Is the binary itself that big? If so, why? Large dependencies? Either way, the size stopped me from checking it out: it takes up space on my device, it takes work to move it to the SD card and if it updates regularly that means more relatively large downloads.
- ga2arch 15y agocould it be because they're using scala ?
- vegashacker 15y agoIf you download it and get it in iTunes on your computer (either via syncing or downloading it there in the first place), then you can inspect the package yourself pretty easily. But in my experience, 2.74mb is not a large iOS app.
- DiabloD3 15y agoSo what stops me from feeding Bump false data and effectively hold the space bar down to steal ALL the photos?
- ceejayoz 15y agoI'd imagine they'll block your IP quickly if you're sending a spacebar event for dozens of different location points every second.
- hackermom 15y agoI like the idea a lot. It's brilliant. Regarding the removal of the app- and music sharing feature, I noticed that it was the number one complaint and reason for a 1-star review in the app store, and then I saw this on their website: Q. What happened to the music bumping feature? Listening to you and reviewing our usage data, it became clear that sharing music links wasn’t a great experience for you, our users. We have removed it for now to make the app simpler and easier to use. Q. Why can’t I bump apps anymore? Similar to music bumping, you made it clear that this was not a great feature and therefore, we have removed it to make the app simpler and easier to use. Marketing tip: don't lie to your users in order to smoothen out the folds and creases, because that always rubs people the wrong way and always makes a company and its product look suspicious. Just say it like it is, "Sorry, guys. Copyright and anti piracy laws forced us to remove these features."
- mistercow 15y agoIt's more complicated than that though. A few months back when they removed those features, they used that spin to turn it into some free publicity that made it sound like they were unconventionally responding to their users. Now they're stuck with that lie, which I'm sure rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but I'll bet it was worth it just to have their name in some memorable headlines.
- stcredzero 15y agoNow they're stuck with that lie, which I'm sure rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but I'll bet it was worth it just to have their name in some memorable headlines. Not only are they playing fast and loose with insecure passing of private data, they also tell their users lies? Maybe deleting their app was the right choice for me.
- MaxGabriel 15y agoThat's not a lie. I've read through several hundred bump reviews and their app had very poor ratings from users who expected full app/music sharing. It was misleading in the first place to not give indications of limitations on those features, though. Edit: I had looked after Bump 3.0 and they had tons of 1 star reviews for removing the features, but now they're up to 4.5 stars, whereas they had ~2.5 on Bump 2.0
- minikomi 15y agoNow, make it go the other way! Info off pc to mobile..
- nextparadigms 15y agoBrilliant? I thought such words were not to be used on HN titles.
- Kiro 15y agoAm I the only one who doesn't understand what this is about? The site doesn't give me much information.
- RyanMcGreal 15y agoI've been getting this for a while: > Uh oh! > Sorry, there was an error connecting to the Bump service. Please try again later.
- glenntzke 15y ago3 hours after your attempts I got the same error. Looks like they aren't ready for this rush.
- 89a 15y agoWonderful idea. HORRIBLE APP: Nasty and painfully slow custom UI, I sent a photo then it asked me to rate it 5 stars on the app store. Then I browsed to send another photo and it asked me again to rate it after dismissing that it asked me a 3rd time with a fancy graphical popup. NO THANKS BUMP, deleted. Someone please feel free to implement this idea succinctly.
- Mystalic 15y agoA few months ago, I ran into the Bump team on Castro street in Mountain View. They were grabbing random people walking by their table, testing the user flow of this product with a demo. Two lessons from that: 1) Gather user feedback all the time, at any stage. Meet customers, send out surveys, interview users, whatever it takes to get the data. 2) Simplify! Your product needs to be as frictionless as possible (I think I repeated this like 7 times when I tried the demo). It's two steps to use the new Bump photo app -- that's easy for a user to understand.
- wavephorm 15y agoThis is a gimmick and there's no way around it. NFC, once widely supported, will make this obsolete.
- Lagged2Death 15y agoWould I have to own an iPhone to understand what this is offering? Why is there a step 2?
- tambourine_man 15y agoAnd yet I can't read the page on this iPhone. Probably a negative margin/overflow hidden thing.
- ebbv 15y agoThis isn't remotely brilliant. This seems completely unnecessary and gimmicky.
- dustin 15y agoYup 1) I don't get it, so I'm unlikely to think it's brilliant without trying. (So now I need a laptop to upload photos from my mobile?...) 2) I wouldn't download this to try Bump without some better explanation, especially given implicit data protection reputation of just about every big consumer-facing company these days (especially one that trades in contact details.) 3) The title is full of gratuitous editorialization, which is against HN guidelines.
- TazeTSchnitzel 15y agoGratuitous editorialization? It's a pretty simple description of the site.
- wingerlang 15y agoI find it brilliant. I usually email my photos to myself to get them from iPhone->laptop. That takes effort. Here I could just select and they show up on my screen almost instantly.
- 83457 15y agoI'm just viewing this as a proof of concept. If this works for uploading photos then it could work for anything tieing a bump profile to a website. For example now people use facebook to login to various sites. What if you could just bump your phone on spacebar to login or signup for an account on any site which uses their api even if you have not visited that site before, and provide them with information you selected on your phone. Could even be used for additional login verification of sorts. Sounds pretty cool and at least remotely brilliant to me.
- sopooneo 15y agoDang. Bump to login could be a killer. Good thought.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Splines 15y agoWho needs NFC when you could do this instead? Tap your smartphone on the iPad register, and you're done.
- koeselitz 15y agoWhat does this do? I know because I saw the headline here on HN, but if I went to the site without context, I'd have very little idea, and I'd have to do some detective work or deductive reasoning to find out. It's mostly obvious, but I think it'd really help to have a super-brief explanation of the function - like maybe instead of "Tap the spacebar with your phone," it could say "Tap the spacebar with your phone to upload photos."
- hammock 15y agoWhat is the benefit of this vs just pressing "upload photos" button on the phone itself? Why do I have to find a computer? I get the mobile-to-mobile bump application, but can someone illuminate me on this one.
- recursive 15y agoIt's amazing that I can't find any information on their site about what this does. Why would I need an app to hit my spacebar? I just use my thumbs for that, and it's working fine so far... I say this as someone who did follow the link from HN, and I still can't figure it out.
- sunsu 15y agoI can do this faster with the Dropbox App by uploading to my public dropbox folder.
- par 15y agoAnd to where does it upload the photos? I have no idea what I am even looking at.
- sopooneo 15y agoIf I'm going to chance onto a page with a list of steps, it should be like: (1) Do this (2) Do that And then this happens! However, the ultra simple two step instruction set on this page is neither preceded nor followed by a statement of what outcome is meant to occur. I mean, I figured it out, but it should be dead clear without thinking.