jesselamb

Thanks for the heads up. We'll take a look.

EDIT: would you mind emailing me at jesse (at) dispatch.io with your account details so I can take a closer look?

Thanks for the sentiment! I'm one of the creators of dispatch.io, and I'm ecstatic with the response to our demo. I can't wait for us to clean things up and get dispatch.io out to real users. While the awards were handed out the presenters framed it as there being 4 winners and 2 other honorable mentions, with Gilt-ii also receiving a judge's award with extra distinction. I guess on those terms Gilt-ii won the most, but it doesn't take any of the joy out of it for me. :)

I have an invite if you still need one. Email's in my profile.

Really enjoyed the last PlusConf, and I'm impressed you put together another one so quickly. Great job Ben!

I've been to NYTM, and the booing for the "money" question seems to be all in good fun. More like an inside joke than a jeer. As andrewjshults said, it seems less about ignoring the the viability of the presenter's business and more about keeping the technology and novel aspects of the product front and center.

I love Doppler. Thanks for it! :)

When is comes to trademarks, there's really no such thing as an intrinsically generic term. A term can only be generic as it relates to a good or service. So the term "facebook" is generic as it relates to "a reference book or electronic directory made up of individuals' photographs and names," but not necessarily as it relates to other things, like the modern social network. Under the framework we use in the U.S., "facebook" is probably a suggestive mark as it relates to social networks, which means that it deserves instant and relatively strong protection.

I've described the framework here: http://notmylawyer.com/post/248307917/choosing-a-valid-trade...

Ha, I've been using CoolBook on my 15" MacBook Pro for a few weeks and it's been awesome. You can undervolt and underclock to keep the temp down. http://www.coolbook.se/CoolBook.html

Yeah, that's a big issue. You can actually specify a subfolder when you create the request. It's the last field on the page. We probably need to make that more obvious.

Thanks!

We made a FAQ page for AirDropper based on all the feedback everyone provided earlier in the week. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613574) You really helped us start to understand which benefits were important to emphasize. We'll definitely be keeping the feedback in mind as we work to improve AirDropper.

The FAQ is available here: http://www.airdropper.com/faq

Thanks everyone!

That's true, there might be opportunities beyond just supplementing Dropbox's service. Thanks!

That's certainly a risk, but it seems like a lot of Dropbox's resources are going into mobile, at least for the time being. We'll see though.

Thanks, we're looking into it.

We're definitely considering that once we're satisfied with how the current flow works.

Of course! Your feedback is gold. Thank you so much for it.

Yeah, we need to work on implementing multiple file support really soon. I like the idea of a "send another file" link. Maybe add an "allow multiple files" option to the request form. I'll see if I can convince my co-founder, he's stingy with form elements. :)

Thanks!

You make a fair point. I'd say though, putting the important issue of trust aside for a second, it's not that we don't solve any problem, but that we solve a problem for which there are already other solutions. And in practice those solutions have disadvantages.

Taking file encryption as an example, you can certainly encrypt a file before sending it, but that depends on the sophistication of the sender. They may not be familiar with how to encrypt a file. And if they are, it's kind of a hassle dealing with encrypted files on both ends. You have to transmit the password in some separate medium from the file itself, and now you have to decide whether to keep both the encrypted and unencrypted versions. It's friction that our solution obviates.

Likewise, you can send an email attachment for non-sensitive files, but every email provider has differing file size caps. We're still testing the limits of our service, but we've already successfully handled files more than double Gmail's size caps, which are among the highest in the industry. Right now most of the alternatives to attachments require a fair amount of setup for the sender. Ours just requires they visit a page and upload the file.

Coming back to the issue of trust, that's definitely going to be a challenge for us as a company just starting out. If you have any ideas about how we can develop that trust I'd welcome them.

Thanks for the awesome feedback. :)

I see what you mean. The vocabulary has been tricky for us so far. We'll keep working on it. Thanks!

Holy crap, that looks horrible! We'll work on it. Thank you so much for the screenshot.

Thanks. Yeah, we are definitely filling a gap, the same way a Twitter client supplements the Twitter platform or an email program supplements the email protocol. Dropbox has strong potential as a platform player over the next couple of years. It's the best cloud storage system there is, and we're hoping apps like ours and the efforts Dropbox is putting into mobile will make it more useful to more people.

Great idea. Yeah, we definitely need to make more obvious that the sender doesn't need a Dropbox account. That's a big value point.

Sceenshots and maybe a screencast is a great idea. I think we'll start with a FAQ since the implementation cost is so much cheaper and go from there.

Thanks for the feedback!

Do you mind sending me a screenshot at inquiries@gruntverk.com ? You're not the first to comment on the typeface. Just trying to see if we're failing on taste or tech. :)

Great point. Yeah, just like with Dropbox you can always bring your own file-level encryption.

Thanks!

Ha, thanks! Yeah, we're hoping to expand so that you can send files too, but we haven't finished thinking through how we can improve that workflow.

Thanks! Let me know if my response to jacobian covers all your questions.

I understand the concern. All traffic from your computer to AirDropper and from AirDropper to Dropbox is SSLed. We actually don't have full access to your Dropbox account, just a sandboxed folder we create called AirDropper. We don't plan on expanding beyond sandbox access. We don't keep any copies of files you send or receive, though we do technically have access to them as long as their stored in the AirDropper folder in your Dropbox. You can deauthorize the app anytime on Dropbox.com.

As far as who's behind AirDropper, my name is Jesse Lamb and my co-founder is Nick Stamas. I'm a Florida attorney that works with tech companies on business formations, contracts, and intellectual property. I also blog at http://www.notmylawyer.com, which has been on the front page of HN a few times. Nick is a designer/developer who just moved to NYC. We've known each other our whole lives and we've been on various teams together for the past 6 years. The name of our company is Gruntverk, LLC. We don't have a site for the company yet, but our information is on file with Florida's Division of Corporations.

A FAQ is a great idea, and I really appreciate you bringing these issues up.

Thanks!

good point, we'll try to make that more obvious. Thanks!

Yeah, sometimes it's signed documents but I also get client materials that are particularly sensitive.

I've been thinking through the signed documents problem, but I'm not sure the market is ready yet. We've had legislation in the U.S. that legitimizing electronic signature for about a decade, but there's a comfort to a signed physical copy that is hard for people to give up for big contracts. I'm wondering what user affordance will finally break through that mental barrier, but I haven't come up with anything yet.

Thanks for the feedback. We haven't built the billing piece yet, but we're planning a freemium model based on number of requests per week.