7 ms·
Show HN: Tampon - an open source Buffer app
- manaskarekar 14y ago"Tampon means Buffer in French :)" I guess the logo transfers as well.
- doktrin 14y agoYeah. It's pretty unambiguous, and the pun isn't really that funny IMHO. Maybe it's because I do this stuff for a living now, but I don't like the idea of using either "Tampon", "Douche" or "Suppository" in my products. On the flipside, I'm sure opting for a potentially inflammatory name has attracted attention that they otherwise wouldn't have received.
- petercooper 14y agoMaybe it's French flowchart notation for a buffer too ;-)
- cpdean 14y agoTweets are now menstrual blood. Tampon helps you stock up on them.
- yodx 14y agoLooks good... But why PHP ?
- julien_c 14y agoThere are only about 40 or so actual lines of PHP (just a simple REST API handler). The background daemon is based on PHP-Daemon too, which is actually surprisingly robust and efficient.
- sync 14y ago40 or so lines? I'm sorry, what? https://github.com/julien-c/Tampon/tree/master/api https://github.com/julien-c/Tampon/tree/master/api Also, I don't think this counts as security: if (strlen($id) == 24) { // Looks like a valid MongoId Edit: this looks bad too: $post = json_decode(file_get_contents('php://input'), true);
- julien_c 14y agoWait... why would it be bad?
- rhl 14y agoNoSQL injection ? If such a thing exists ?
- NathanKP 14y agoThere is nothing wrong with either of those two lines of code provided that they are not the only layers of security. Checking to see if an ID is of the right length is a good way to filter out miss formated ID's early. And the JSON decoding statement is a pretty standard way to get the JSON body out of the request and into an associative array. Of course you will need to validate that it has the right format now, probably using JSON Schema or something similar.
- sync 14y agoLooks to me like they just insert the JSON body directly into Mongo without any sort of further validation: $m->tampon->queue->insert($post);
- NathanKP 14y agoOoh yeah that isn't very good. They should really be using a JSON schema validation library to verify that someone isn't storing extra fields in the database, and that all the fields are of the right format and type.
- julien_c 14y agoYou're right. But the worst thing that can happen is someone POSTs large fake objects and tries to flood my server's hard drive. Which, given the max size of a POST's data will take quite some time :) The API only allows querying posts on the current user (with now user input) so there's no risk of "NoSQL injection": https://github.com/julien-c/Tampon/blob/master/api/posts.php https://github.com/julien-c/Tampon/blob/master/api/posts.php
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- trimbo 14y agoRename it.
- lignuist 14y agoWhy?
- astrodust 14y agoCarrie.
- cobrausn 14y agoAgreed. You wouldn't be the first - Enron's first logo apparently looked like an obscene gesture in Italy even though it was perfectly acceptable in the states, so they changed it. Also, apparently they were originally called 'Enteron', but that approximated a Greek word referring to the intestines. So, in short, if your market is global (and it is), try and go with a word that doesn't have any additional connotations in most languages, especially English, which a lot of your target audience will be using as a primary language. Why not take a page from 'Enteron' and shorten it... 'Tam' or 'Tamp'?
- greengirl512 14y agoThe logo makes it clear that the connotations are no accident...
- petercooper 14y agoNow I understand what it is, this seems like an interesting project. As a Buffer user, the way it's worded made me think it's an app for Buffer and I couldn't work out what it was adding ;-) (If anyone does want to build an extension for Buffer, I'd love something that let me schedule certain tweets to post on certain dates way off in the future.. but I don't want to sign up to Hootsuite or anything big like that.)
- julien_c 14y agoCalling it an open source Buffer app seemed more elegant than calling it an open source Buffer clone :)
- petercooper 14y agoI get your point, but I think the issue is terms like "Facebook app" and "Twitter app" have become popular and mean apps for those platforms. Not to dilute your efforts at all, but something like "Buffer-like app" or "Buffer-style app" or "Buffer-esque app" would be more precise. Anyway, congrats for doing this. Back when Buffer's pricing plan was horrible, I was almost tempted to do something similar. Since their reorganization, I've been happy with their pricing plan, but it's always great that open alternatives exist.
- joelg87 14y agoWe certainly see some confusion from the "app" in our domain. We think of our name as "Buffer" rather than "Buffer app". So I think "an open source Buffer" would make a lot of sense, and might remove this confusion of whether it's something built as an app for Buffer. Love the thinking here, by the way :-)
- julien_c 14y agoGot it. A "Buffer" is pretty generic in software though, so this wording might be confusing also. You could say RabbitMQ is an open source buffer as well :)
- rogerchucker 14y ago"Tampon"? Seriously? Trying to be edgy?
- julien_c 14y agoTampon is French for Buffer. I think this is funny.
- MartinCron 14y agoAnd "Douche" is French for shower. Both are, as far as humor attempts go, pretty lame.
- raganwald 14y ago"The Aristocrats" is a very funny joke. But that doesn't mean it's appropriate to tell in every circumstance. Tampon may or may not be funny, but being funny is not, in and of itself, the measure of whether a name is appropriate.
- petercooper 14y ago"The Aristocrats" is a very funny joke. But that doesn't mean it's appropriate to tell in every circumstance. Aha! This might explain why I haven't been invited to any family events this year..
- cpdean 14y agoSure, sure. But the logo is of a Tampon, the feminine hygiene product, so the connotation is in English.
- rogerchucker 14y agoI guess Tampon in French also means "look we're gonna make an offensive joke for the English world and then point to the French language when criticized for it". Either that or the French engineers live in an alternate Francophone universe.
- 14y ago
- rhl 14y agoLooks interesting. You can fork it here : https://github.com/julien-c/Tampon/ https://github.com/julien-c/Tampon/
- kevinconroy 14y agoAnd people joked that Apple was hinting at feminine hygiene products when it first announced the "iPad"
- manuscreationis 14y agoMy first thought was "With a name like that, won't people be a little embarrassed to say they're using it?" Then I realized I need to grow up, as I wouldn't have batted an eye if it were called Jock Strap or something inherently male in nature. Bit of a disconnect between the "meaning" of the name and the logo, but again, part of this may boil down to my own level of discomfort/unfamiliarity with products that women make use of on a day to day basis. Or maybe the person who made it is intentionally going for something that will cause discomfort and discussion, to further spread awareness of his product. tl;dr; Things that initially make us uncomfortable may end up revealing a little something about ourselves.
- trimbo 14y agoI doubt people are outraged. I know for myself, I don't care what he wants to do. I just think he should rename it if he wants to be taken seriously.
- julien_c 14y agoWell, it's an open source project, not a whole company, right?
- MartinCron 14y agoI wouldn't have batted an eye if it were called Jock Strap or something inherently male in nature Really? I would totally cringe at something called "Jock Strap" or "scrotum" or "foreskin". Tampon isn't just a feminine word like "flower" or "butterfly", it's biological and personal. "Anal Probe" is gender-neutral neutral term that also feels inappropriate because of its personal and biological nature.
- vincentsan 14y agoTampon ? Is the service also disposable ?
- mmahemoff 14y agoTwitter.com stopped showing the user-agent last week. This project turns that into a positive.
- k-mcgrady 14y agoTerrible name, you should definitely change it. It might get you attention and have some shock value at the start but it's going to look stupid eventually (if it doesn't already). Same goes for the logo. I understand it's 'buffer' in French but major companies go out of their way to ensure their product name translates well in the major languages. You should too. Apart from that, it seems like a good product. EDIT: Another reason to rename - If I'm on a shared computer I don't want 'tampon' all over the internet history.
- julien_c 14y agoAs stated some place else: it's an open source project, so let's just have fun with names! :)
- loumf 14y agoYou have a right to name it what you want. If you have goals related to other people using, forking, improving, etc, then this name will make that harder. For example, in Showing to HN, you probably wanted some frank feedback. Your name is working against that as all you are getting is discussion of the name. If that's what you wanted -- well, mission accomplished.
- rhl 14y agoAs a meta-comment, the obvious should be pointed out: by creating shock value, the name creates discussions, which create upvotes, which drives more traffic to the post hence leads to more feedback. Call it "growth hacking" if you want, but the name is quite smart in that respect.
- loumf 14y agoI only see evidence of one kind of feedback, which, I hope, was expected, so it's not very useful. It's not growth hacking if you don't grow something you care about (e.g. users not "naming" discussions).
- 14y ago
- dkroy 14y agoWhat is sad is the fact that this is a pretty useful app, yet most of the discussion is about the name. I would like to see more discussion about the app itself, but that could be just me.
- fogus 14y agoI personally couldn't care less what people name the projects that they work on during their free time. However, when you choose to name your project something ridiculous like Tampon, then there should be little surprise when people focus on the ridiculous name. That's how people are. There's always the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the name is the most interesting part about the project.
- loumf 14y agoSure, it's useful -- in fact, I really need to schedule tweets, but have been procrastinating in finding one. This post made me do the 3 second google search and I chose http://twuffer.com http://twuffer.com -- not a great name, but free, easy and has the features I need. There are a ton of products (free and commercial) that do this -- but only one had a name that made me not even want to find out if it would be useful to me. No comment on this page discussed anything about whether it was good (in fact the non-name comments I see are negative) -- my guess is that, like me, no one is really giving it a serious look. I think it's legitimate to factor this reaction into your naming strategy.
- mvkel 14y agoTerrible name, and a service built on Twitter, which has already come out and said they're going to squash essentially any service that infringes on their trademarks.
- julien_c 14y agoWhich trademarks are you refering to here?
- adorable 14y agoGreat app, happy to see there are people writing useful open source software in their spare time. Let's move on, enough talk on the name, let's dig into the actual code.
- julien_c 14y agoThanks
- vacipr 14y agoTo be honest I started using this just because it looked simple and it was open source. I will keep using it.Great work and thank you for this service. Also kudos on the name.
- scumola 14y agoI made a 'buffer' app too: https://github.com/scumola/php-buffer https://github.com/scumola/php-buffer It's not hard to do.