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Show HN: Chime - A Notification Center for the Web
- trq_ 14y agoJust launched 5 days ago! Over 100k notifications served. We're completely client side, so there are no privacy concerns.
- chime 14y agoThis works very nicely. This is probably the most refined and well designed Chrome extension I've ever seen. Great job! You may want to gray/hide 'Clear all' when nothing new is showing up. Does it also do reddit's http://www.reddit.com/message/moderator/ http://www.reddit.com/message/moderator/ mail? Will it ping Gmail a lot? I stopping using any Gmail extensions because Google treats frequent queries as bots and blocks the originating IP for hours. Also, nice name :) For well over a decade, I've been doing things under the name 'chime' so it's a bit weird when I see someone else create apps with that name.
- gurumx 14y agoHey chime (god this is weird): we had that problem months ago, but we decreased the ping frequency and there haven't been any issues. It doesn't currently do moderator mail, but I'll add it to the issue tracker. Thanks!
- chime 14y agoAnother thing you may want to do is stop pinging Gmail if it returns a couple of failures. I noticed that when Gmail signed off automatically for any reason, any additional pings caused the account to be locked. This is purely anecdotal so dig into it yourself if you have some time. Last thing you want to do is cause Gmail to block your users' mailboxes.
- fananta 14y agoThanks for the heads up! Gmail was the first service we implemented and have been testing thoroughly so we had some time to settle on an optimal ping frequency. As for now, we're confident this will not block your Gmail.
- aam1r 14y agoCongrats on the initial success! If you are completely client side, how are you tracking the total number of notifications served? I would assume you would have to send some data back to the server to keep track?
- muyuu 14y agoCongrats! If it's completely client side, how do you count the notifications? I guess something needs to be sent home, right?
- fananta 14y agoThanks! If you mean for analytics, then we're just using Google Analytics to count notifications served.
- floydpink 14y agoJust curious: if there is no server-side stuff how would you know you have served over 100k notifications?
- fananta 14y agoOnly Google Analytics :-)
- bluetidepro 14y agoWow, this is a slick interface. I love the Windows Metro look and feel. Great job with this, I'm excited to use this and not have to worry about keeping a bunch of tabs open! How often does it check for new notifications? It would be nice if you could set a variable to check for new notifications every 1 min, 5 mins, 15 mins, etc. Do you have a donate link or something? I would love to say "thank you" with a little money gift to thank you guys for your hard work! :)
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- gurumx 14y agoWe added a small donation link to the bottom of our Help page: http://chimeapp.com/help http://chimeapp.com/help Great to hear that you like Chime! The frequency is different for every service, and is also based on a few other metrics. It'll pick up notifications within a few minutes, usually.
- martius 14y agoExclusively for Google Chro(Ctrl+W). (But I liked the screenshot).
- the1 14y agocan I have Microsoft Exchange OWA integration?
- slajax 14y agoWould love to have this on my iPhone lock screen with intelliscreen.
- fananta 14y agoWe would love to be on your iPhone's lock screen. That would mean a different type of app for us though, with a server and all.
- josscrowcroft 14y agoBeautiful, thanks very much. Is it possible to not receive popups when new notifications arrive? I prefer notifications to be totally silent until I decide to look at them..
- fananta 14y agoThanks! Of course, click on the Chime pop-up ==> Settings ==> turn off desktop notifications.
- edparry 14y agoAlways the simple products that come through. Quick question: I'm logged into multiple Gmail accounts - will it grab from both, or just the active account?
- fananta 14y agoCurrently, just the active one. We're definitely working on multiple gmail accounts, so hold tight!
- floydpink 14y agoGreat work. Really love the well refined interface. Not that I care about it much, but as a feedback, I am not able to get LinkedIn to work.
- fananta 14y agoThanks! Can you send us an email at support@chimeapp.com describing the issue that you're having. Are you logged-in to LinkedIn?
- Swizec 14y agoThis looks really cool, but one thing I'd love to see/know before I install. Do you send me a notification whenever something happens, or can you pool them together and only interrupt me every few hours? Hint: I want the latter.
- fananta 14y agoThanks! You can turn off desktop notifications and just check when you feel like being interrupted. The pooling together is something we're working on down the road.
- gurumx 14y agoRight now we send a notification as soon as it happens. We're looking at implementing a pause mode, so you wouldn't get interrupted by notifications when you need to focus. Pooling notifications is interesting, we'll definitely be looking at that in the future!
- bmuon 14y agoWhy Chrome only? This looks like something that could work just as well on Firefox
- fananta 14y agoYup, we built Chime for Chrome just to get the product out in the hands of our users. We've realized the response for Firefox/Safari is overwhelming so we'll be looking into support for those browsers as well.
- bmuon 14y agoAh ok. Sounds great then! I was just surprised to read "exclusively for Google Chrome"
- Erwin 14y agoI read that as "Crime" for a moment, thought it would be some kind of real-time notification centre for when a crime is happening near you. I suppose police radios are encrypted these days, otherwise it could be interesting to recognize location from the calls, and show a pin on google map say: "bank robbery in progress 2.1 miles north of you; adam-4 responding". Then you can also add a social element: like foodspotting... but for criminals.
- cheez 14y agoAny plans to add other "social" source code hosting services?
- gurumx 14y agoHey cheez, do you have any examples? Github should count =)
- cheez 14y agoBitbucket was the one I was thinking about :)
- fananta 14y agoWe have Github already, but have had an overwhelming amount of requests for Bitbucket. So it's on our radar!
- cheez 14y agoExcellent, that was the one I had in mind.
- jmduke 14y agoThis looks awesome. What plans do you have for other services (off the top of my head, I'd love Dribbble and Tumblr)?
- fananta 14y agoWe're looking at adding some of the most requested services (like multiple Gmail accounts) first. We'll definitely add any requests to our backlog, so I'll put your requests on there as well.
- slajax 14y agoSweet! I just asked this! That's probably the most pressing feature I can see so far. +1
- Zarel 14y agoI've been trying to find a replacement for One Number, a Chrome extension that notifies for Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Voice. Google Voice notifications aren't a big deal since I get them in e-mail anyway, but having Google Reader notifications would be really nice.
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- Yzupnick 14y agoThis looks great, congratulations. 1) Do you have any plans to allow arbitrary RSS as notifications, or integrating with ITTT? This could allow people to create notifications for services that you don't support. 2) While I don't believe everything has to be monetized, I was wondering if you do have a plan to make money, and if you do, would you mind sharing?
- fananta 14y agoThanks and great questions! 1. We're currently looking at creative options to support personalized notifications. One possibility is something similar to what Rapportive did and provide sites with a way to deliver notifications. 2. We honestly did this because it was a need we had. We're looking at a number of strategies. The most likely is a set of premium features for a one-time fee. That said, we might just leave it free too.
- victoknight 14y agoWhat about limiting the number of services for the free version; say the first five are free, then a one time fee to unlock additional.
- fananta 14y agoThis is certainly one option and we're still thinking. Our main goal is to make cool stuff that people love, and then we'll focus on monetization. :-)
- k3n 14y agoThat's the only way to go about it, IMO. It seems that in today's world, too many companies get a hair-brained idea from some executive that thinks they've got it all figured out, spend 100's of thousands building it, and millions to market it... only to discover that nobody actually likes it and/or will ever use it. I don't want to name names (as I'm not looking to start a flamewar), but off the top-of-my-head I can think of several very prominent, very successful (historically) corporations that seem to use such a marketing-driven approach: instead of letting users fall in love with the product by their own devices, instead the corp tries to make the product and only then do they try to sell the user on why they should love it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but when it doesn't it can be a costly mistake. When you have a compelling product or service, marketing is minimal; word-of-mouth is king! Cheers, your service looks very cool.
- filipmares 14y agoThis is awesome Fahd!
- fananta 14y agoThanks Fil!
- binarymax 14y agoThis is so awesome. Any chance of yahoo mail?
- fananta 14y agoYou're the second person to mention this (the first was my dad), so we'll definitely look into it.. :-)
- slajax 14y agoI didn't realize how little was going on in my extended internet life until I installed this app.
- fananta 14y agoI felt the same way... Thanks for the comment though!
- will_work4tears 14y agoLooks pretty amazing so far. I've gone through a couple Google mail extensions, and using Chrome for Linux and Chromium for Linux with my google sync setup, I've had trouble finding one that works properly. This seems to work great for Chromium on Ubuntu.
- fananta 14y agoThanks! The three of us working on it are all using different platforms and we've had awesome beta users who have helped us out a lot!
- dylangs1030 14y agoThis looks fantastic. Just one bit. Are you proudly developing this only for Chrome, or is that just a support limitation right now? I ask this because you didn't write something along the lines of expecting it to be released elsewhere soon - you wrote "exclusively" for Chrome. I ask this because I currently use Firefox most frequently (although I installed Chime on my Chrome installation to test it). It might be a bit of a market limitation later when you try to monetize this if you only develop on Chrome. And also, do you have any plans to allow independent hackers to write in their own notifications? Will I be able to write in notifications for platforms too obscure or unpopular to make a mainstream update for? EDIT: I forgot one thing. Would you consider doing this for desktop applications as well, like Growl on Mac?
- fananta 14y agoThanks! We developed Chime for Chrome first just to get it out in the hands of our users. Based on the responses in the first week since launch, we're already looking at support for Firefox/Safari. I also mentioned this elsewhere in this thread, but we're hoping to create a way for other sites to deliver notifications through Chime. Haven't considered independent hackers just yet, but it is something we'll keep in mind.
- ricardobeat 14y agoThere are platforms like CrossRider[1] or trigger.io[2] that allow you to deploy cross-browser add-ons, should be easy to port to since it's already in javascript. [1] http://crossrider.com/ http://crossrider.com/ [2] http://docs.trigger.io/en/v1.4/modules/browser/index.html http://docs.trigger.io/en/v1.4/modules/browser/index.html
- pioul 14y agoThis definitely looks like a great piece of software. However, I believe different services, hence different types of information, should have their own way of being displayed. For example, seeing a one-line summary of an email doesn't appeal to me that much. That's why I always prefer using the web app itself (or a dedicated extension in the case of Gmail).
- fananta 14y agoThanks! We tried to cater to the way users interact with different services. We can look into adding more options to customize notifications down the road.
- notatoad 14y agoFor people who don't want to be productive ever again. Sorry, I shouldn't be so negative, it looks like a great app. I just know that's the effect it would have on me.
- trq_ 14y agoWe're working on giving you a mute button. We want to make it _easier_ for you to manage your notifications.
- fananta 14y agoThanks for your input! You can always turn off desktop notifications and just check when you want.
- Zak 14y agoI've actually found that having instant notifications about events on distracting sites keeps me from checking those distracting sites and coming across other distractions on them. Net win.
- fananta 14y agoI agree with you. Having my FB notifications delivered through Chime, I rarely have to actually go on Facebook now. That said, everyone has a different preference for their notifications. :-)
- mehrzad 14y agoThis supports the only browser thats ruining the Internet. Oh well. It looks nice though.
- gurumx 14y agoHmm, why do you think that it's ruining the Internet?
- mehrzad 14y agoIt's creating a Google monopoly over the web. Chrome's not open source. Chrome has light to moderate tracking issues. Developers are starting to only support one or two browsers (talking about websites not extensions) , which I think is absurd and it reduces competition. I think Firefox is a better browser than Chrome/ium in a few ways and vice versa. You're the developer I'm assuming. You've made a great product for a popular browser, so there's nothing to worry about for you, but I think if people switched to Firefox, the Internet would be a better place. Good luck!
- mehrzad 14y agoWhoa, sorry for all the super short sentences, I can't seem to figure out linebreaks, I don't comment often.
- dailyrorschach 14y agoAnyone else seeing the error: "Download was not a CRX"
- fananta 14y agoIt means you're not signed into Chrome on the webstore, which Google requires. Are you sure you're running the most updated version of Chrome? If you're still having trouble send us a note support@chimeapp.com :-)
- dailyrorschach 14y agoThanks, never saw that before. Was logged in to Google Account on the browser sync, but apparently not the store.
- ricardobeat 14y agoThe "Clear All" button is not working for me.
- ne0phyte 14y agoI did a "Clear All" and the notifications just disappeared from the extension, my Gmail mails are still unread.
- ricardobeat 14y agoI had 49 notifications upon installing it (my inbox has ~200 unread e-mails), maybe that triggered a bug. I disabled Gmail an it works now.
- gurumx 14y agoClear all will just hide all notifications from Chime. Marking them as read is too undo-able, we wouldn't want users to accidentally mark a ton of important emails as read. Perhaps we should change it to "Hide All"...
- ne0phyte 14y agoAll my Gmail notfications are 43 years old. I'm in europe so maybe it can't handle the 24h time format? Apart from that it's really great! Would love to see some common forums supported (but that would be tricky as you would need access to many different domains).
- fananta 14y agoThanks! This is something we've had a few reports about this morning so we're working hard to fix it right away.
- extesy 14y agoI get this error on Chrome 26.0.1403.0: "Could not install package: 'COULD_NOT_GET_TEMP_DIRECTORY'"
- fananta 14y agoPlease ensure you're logged into Google Chrome as this is enforced by Google. This may also be due to the instability of the nightly build for Chrome Dev.
- swlkr 14y agoThis is really cool, nice job!
- fananta 14y agoThanks!
- factorialboy 14y agoIs it open source? Can I see the code? Edit: Specifically I want to validate the claim "all my data stays on my browser"
- fananta 14y agoIt's not open source. You can verify this by the fact you have no login for Chime, so if you switch computers there's no "user profile" for you following you around. Beyond that, I'm not sure how else you want to verify this claim.
- trq_ 14y agoFeel free to inspect the background page and look at the network requests we're making. We're doing requests to Google Analytics to store counts (e.g. how many installs we have, how many notifications are clicked, etc.) but there is absolutely no data from the notifications or any personally identifying information about you.
- Meai 14y agoNot sure how this would work, but if I want notifications from everywhere, this would need to include IRC chat when people ping me with my name.
- k3n 14y agoOne feature that I can see possibly being valuable here is the ability to filer, prioritize, or otherwise throttle the notifications. An example would be my usage of Google Reader; there's a Chrome app[1] that shows notifications for new items, but I haven't been under 1000 new items in years ("1000+" is as high as it tracks). Yes, I have many feeds I need to prune out, but even then, I may get upwards of 100 new items a day in my reader and I sure as heck don't care about them all. I really just care about items from a few select sources, but without a way to filter out the noise it's useless. I'm not sure if that use-case would be very common for your app, although there's times when I make a popular FB post that I tend to ignore the notifications once they get past about 10. 1. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-reader-notifier-by/apflmjolhbonpkbkooiamcnenbmbjcbf?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-reader-noti...
- fananta 14y agoHmm.. this is interesting, something we'll look into for the future of Chime. For now, we only have filtering by sites.
- gingerlime 14y agoLooks really neat and professional. Any chance to get notified about HN comments/karma changes?
- fananta 14y agoThanks! HN is something we would want too, so we're looking into it as well.
- gurumx 14y agoHey gingerlime, unfortunately hn doesn't offer notifications itself, so that would be difficult to implement, and outside the scope of Chime. I'm definitely feeling your pain right now, though =P
- wamatt 14y agoColor me impressed gentlemen. A useful idea with great execution. Now how about: 1) Ability to sleep/snooze on notifications. The use case would be when we are working in the browser and require focus. Some of us feel overly compelled to click little red notification badges, which can be distracting. Yes shame on us! :) 2) Make coffee and walk the dog
- fananta 14y agoThanks! 1. This is definitely in the works. 2. Uhh... yes, we'll put that on our "backlog" :-)
- bitskits 14y agoLove this idea and execution. Any plans to add rich notifications for G+? It would be great to see info about the notification (and ideally interact with it) from the extension (vs a notification page or redirect to plus.google.com).
- fananta 14y agoSo we spent a good deal of time trying to do this. Google explicitly does not provide notification details for G+[1] so our hands are bit tied here. Chime does its best still convey your new G+ notifications with that limitation. [1] http://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?id=96 http://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?...
- est 14y agoReminds me of Friendfeed. Few quick mashups could do the same in the good ol' Web 2.0 way.
- CWIZO 14y agoI like this! One problem though: if I click a notification for gmail (probably others too) it opens a new tab. I already have gmail opened (I have it pinned), can you please use my existing tab to open the email in (or make it configurable)?
- fananta 14y agoThanks! We've heard this feedback from a few others and probably will add a few different configurations in the next update :-)