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Show HN: Couple, a shared diary for you and the one you love

25 points by kunle 14y ago

rgbrgb 14y ago
I'm a bit lost on why you would want to use this rather than regular sms/iMessage. There's clearly a market for this kind of thing (WhatsApp), but could somebody explain why?
- kunle 14y ago
  Ayo from Hipmob here. Apps like Pair serve a specific niche in that their private/undistracted, and in addition using an app format as well as data (rather than pure sms) allows you to do more interesting things (Pair for example has shared sketches, video chat and the "thumbkiss"). Our specific goal at Hipmob was to release something lots of developers can play with, that's pretty simple, so they could get comfortable writing chat/messaging apps with our libraries.
petenixey 14y ago
If I were running one of these apps I have to say I would be terrified of being hacked. There will be a lot of explicit pictures exchanged between couples, including teens and a lot of people who will spend a lot of effort to get those photos behind their paywall.
- fomojola 14y ago
  Femi from Hipmob here: security is indeed a concern. There was a recent chain of stories around issues with the authentication of a couple of mobile messenger apps. We've approached it from a couple of directions: we use TLS everywhere and we don't use any phone-specific identifying information (no IMEIs, phone numbers or anything of that nature). For advanced usage we also allow every single connection to the platform to be authenticated by the host application: if the user authenticates themselves to your servers you can generate a security token that you pass to the app and your app passes to our libraries. This verifies that you authorized the connection. We make that an option the developer can choose to use (or not): let us know if you think of any other scenarios that you think need additional care.
kunle 14y ago
Hey everyone - Ayo from Hipmob here. We released Couple as our first open-source chat project. The focus is to show any developer how to build a user-to-user messaging app using Hipmob's libraries - we'd love any comments, suggestions or feedback! (ayo at hipmob.com) - sorry this isn't reflected in the title.
- mst 14y ago
  Cute, apart from the part where ... sigh. The more software stops being stupid about what gender mixes you should have in relationships, the more it annoys me that nobody ever considers that not everybody is (or wants to be) part of a simple pair bond. Facebook hasn't figured this one out either; you'll find most poly/etc. people on there either have their status set to "single" or "it's complicated" (there was a fantastically funny day some years ago where all such people I know deleted our relationship statuses simultaneously, causing mass confusion to the people only casually following our existences). I feel like this isn't really useful feedback on a toy app but ... it would be nice if people wouldn't cast monogamous pairbonding as the only relationship type that "really" exists. I don't feel discriminated against, as such, but I do sometimes feel a little omitted :)
  - kunle 14y ago
    Ayo from Hipmob here. You make fair points (I've actually had a number of conversations specifically about this in the last couple of weeks) particularly in light of some recent political scandals. I have you thought through what an alternate (non poly) app/language set would look like? How would you describe it to the people who it's for? (Asking for my edification - such apps would be trivial to build on Hipmob, so if we're going to do it, I'd welcome some feedback on how - can discuss here or ping me at ayo at hipmob dot com.
  - egypturnash 14y ago
    Agreement. I was coming here to say much the same thing.
fluidcruft 14y ago
Is there a reasonable expectation of privacy when using these sorts of things? I think something like this could be fun, but it seems like a party line.
- fomojola 14y ago
  It is explicitly not a party line: conversations are between 2 people (unless it is a group chat, and even then the participants of the group chat are the only ones who see the messages) or between a single person and an operator. We provide a friend list construct that limits who a person can send messages to (so preventing spam) and user-to-user chats are not saved or visible anywhere (live support chats are saved to a per-chat transcript). All data is transmitted over TLS: let me know if there is another privacy angle you think we haven't covered.
  - fluidcruft 14y ago
    Mostly employees snooping and the types of warrentless government backdoors/fishing/cooperation that seems to be en vogue.
miriamrach 14y ago
I wish this worked with one partner on a smartphone and the other on a dumbphone.
- fomojola 14y ago
  Hmm: sounds like you're basically looking for SMS integration? Send me an email (my email is in my profile): we might be able to wrap something around Twilio's interface that could help you. The caveat there is that SMS has explicit per-message costs attached: we'd basically let you put in your Twilio account details but you'd have to pay them yourselves.
  - miriamrach 14y ago
    Thanks, that sounds like it could work really well. We both have unlimited text messaging, so the per-message costs wouldn't be a problem in our specific case. I am having trouble finding your email... could you be a little more specific about how I can find it? Thanks!

25 points by kunle 14y ago

I'm a bit lost on why you would want to use this rather than regular sms/iMessage. There's clearly a market for this kind of thing (WhatsApp), but could somebody explain why?

kunle 14y ago
Ayo from Hipmob here. Apps like Pair serve a specific niche in that their private/undistracted, and in addition using an app format as well as data (rather than pure sms) allows you to do more interesting things (Pair for example has shared sketches, video chat and the "thumbkiss"). Our specific goal at Hipmob was to release something lots of developers can play with, that's pretty simple, so they could get comfortable writing chat/messaging apps with our libraries.

petenixey 14y ago

If I were running one of these apps I have to say I would be terrified of being hacked. There will be a lot of explicit pictures exchanged between couples, including teens and a lot of people who will spend a lot of effort to get those photos behind their paywall.

fomojola 14y ago
Femi from Hipmob here: security is indeed a concern. There was a recent chain of stories around issues with the authentication of a couple of mobile messenger apps. We've approached it from a couple of directions: we use TLS everywhere and we don't use any phone-specific identifying information (no IMEIs, phone numbers or anything of that nature). For advanced usage we also allow every single connection to the platform to be authenticated by the host application: if the user authenticates themselves to your servers you can generate a security token that you pass to the app and your app passes to our libraries. This verifies that you authorized the connection. We make that an option the developer can choose to use (or not): let us know if you think of any other scenarios that you think need additional care.

kunle 14y ago

Hey everyone - Ayo from Hipmob here. We released Couple as our first open-source chat project. The focus is to show any developer how to build a user-to-user messaging app using Hipmob's libraries - we'd love any comments, suggestions or feedback! (ayo at hipmob.com) - sorry this isn't reflected in the title.

mst 14y ago
Cute, apart from the part where ... sigh. The more software stops being stupid about what gender mixes you should have in relationships, the more it annoys me that nobody ever considers that not everybody is (or wants to be) part of a simple pair bond. Facebook hasn't figured this one out either; you'll find most poly/etc. people on there either have their status set to "single" or "it's complicated" (there was a fantastically funny day some years ago where all such people I know deleted our relationship statuses simultaneously, causing mass confusion to the people only casually following our existences). I feel like this isn't really useful feedback on a toy app but ... it would be nice if people wouldn't cast monogamous pairbonding as the only relationship type that "really" exists. I don't feel discriminated against, as such, but I do sometimes feel a little omitted :)
- kunle 14y ago
  Ayo from Hipmob here. You make fair points (I've actually had a number of conversations specifically about this in the last couple of weeks) particularly in light of some recent political scandals. I have you thought through what an alternate (non poly) app/language set would look like? How would you describe it to the people who it's for? (Asking for my edification - such apps would be trivial to build on Hipmob, so if we're going to do it, I'd welcome some feedback on how - can discuss here or ping me at ayo at hipmob dot com.
- egypturnash 14y ago
  Agreement. I was coming here to say much the same thing.

fluidcruft 14y ago

Is there a reasonable expectation of privacy when using these sorts of things? I think something like this could be fun, but it seems like a party line.

fomojola 14y ago
It is explicitly not a party line: conversations are between 2 people (unless it is a group chat, and even then the participants of the group chat are the only ones who see the messages) or between a single person and an operator. We provide a friend list construct that limits who a person can send messages to (so preventing spam) and user-to-user chats are not saved or visible anywhere (live support chats are saved to a per-chat transcript). All data is transmitted over TLS: let me know if there is another privacy angle you think we haven't covered.
- fluidcruft 14y ago
  Mostly employees snooping and the types of warrentless government backdoors/fishing/cooperation that seems to be en vogue.

miriamrach 14y ago

I wish this worked with one partner on a smartphone and the other on a dumbphone.

fomojola 14y ago
Hmm: sounds like you're basically looking for SMS integration? Send me an email (my email is in my profile): we might be able to wrap something around Twilio's interface that could help you. The caveat there is that SMS has explicit per-message costs attached: we'd basically let you put in your Twilio account details but you'd have to pay them yourselves.
- miriamrach 14y ago
  Thanks, that sounds like it could work really well. We both have unlimited text messaging, so the per-message costs wouldn't be a problem in our specific case. I am having trouble finding your email... could you be a little more specific about how I can find it? Thanks!