Slashdot Mirror
Enhanced Instant Messaging with IMSmarter
Zanek writes "Engadget has an article about David Weekly who has created IMsmarter. What is IMSmarter? David describes it as a 'secretary that helps you out by sitting between you and the rest of the world, letting you know about things that are interesting and taking notes'. Works on all computers, no software to install." Gaim and other clients have good logging and search capabilities, but this goes a few steps beyond that.
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One thing I wish the interviewer had covered was the privacy aspect of the IMSmarter. What prevents others from accessing your chats and collections of notes through the service? How is it protected from malicious intruders? Why should I trust David to hold onto my stuff? All of which, of course, is not going to stop me from trying it out. If I have something important to say, I don't say it via instant message. It's just an aspect I'd like to see covered in the interview. It is covered in the sites privacy policy, but I'd like to hear a little more from the creator on that front.
And you think that your IM service cant?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
A lot of people have logging turned off specifically for the reason "Whatever happens in the box, stays in the box".
this proxy is a nice idea, if you don't value your privacy.
"secretary that helps you out by sitting between you and the rest of the world, letting you know about things that are interesting and taking notes."
Isn't this what the irritating green parrot, and later purple fuzzy monkey-thing, were supposed to do? We all know how effective and well-loved those things were. Cute for a week, then you wanted to strangle them, and never once did I get a useful suggestion.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
So, in essence, this takes a bunch of simple functions most people already have access to, and in exchange for not having to go through the arduous task of opening multiple apps or contextual menus, you hand over as much personal info as you could ever hope to cram into a single app to a company who states that their express purpose for this is to give it to advertisers. Also, let's say you actually use their features and become reliant on them. What happens when, all of a sudden, they decide to charge premium usage fees for access to, say, your online chat logs? Never trust data you may want or need some day to a host you can't rely on having indefinite free access to.
How is this newsworthy?
From their FAQ: "Using IM Smarter is pretty cool"
Like "Quality food", "Exciting sale opportunity", and "Innovative new features", if you have to say it, it probably isn't.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
I really like OneNote for TODO lists. Is IMSmarter better than that? The one thing OneNote doesn't do is notifications (or, I haven't figured out how to do that, anyway), but I don't need to be notified. I wrote the stuff in my TODO list, I know I need to do it. The list just acts as a reminder of all the things that need to be done.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't think I've ever had an IM conversation where I found myself going back through the logs at some later point. To me, IM is like a face-to-face conversation. If I need to take away something important, I'll write it down (in OneNote :). If I don't, the conversation happens and then vanishes into the ether.
My friends would kill me if I sent them all notifications whenever I update my web site. Similarly, I would kill them if they did that to me. Push models suck. If you want your friends to know when you've updated your website, tell them to get an RSS reader, and publish your site changes in an RSS feed. That way, the friends that care about your update can find out about it, and those that don't, won't. And they won't be bothered in the middle of an important meeting with a note that you just updated your personal website.
For those times when the doorbell just isn't enough, eh? Sure, if you're away from home when the delivery happens, the doorbell won't be much use. On the other hand, if you're away from home when the delivery happens, why do you need to be notified the moment it shows up? If you're doing the shipping, UPS and FedEx both allow you to receive tracking notifications via email, so why not use that?
I'm sure David is a smart guy, but this looks like it might find a niche market at best. This is going to be one of those things that you read about on Slashdot, say to yourself, "That's kinda neat, if only it did/didn't do this/that/the other," maybe you try it out once or twice, and then you completely forget about it a week later. It just doesn't seem like it offers anything new that you can't get elsewhere, in an unattractive package (I use IM for IM; my day does not center around my IM client) with an unattractive business model (this is going to collect a lot of personally identifiable information, and that's not something I would trust to an ad-supported company -- it's too easy to decide that you have a real goldmine of user information at your fingertips and start selling it off
Those all strike me as things for which e-mail is vastly superior to IM. I don't want to be interrupted by an asynchronous notification of a low-priority event that doesn't require an immediate response.
David, please take this as constructive criticism. There is very little a privacy policy (no matter how well crafted and no matter who reviews it) can do to alleviate people's privacy concerns. What people on here are asking for is a technical solution to make absolutely sure that you couldn't invade our privacy whether your wanted to or not (not trying to say we don't trust you but you know...). The only way I can think of to do this is encryption. Remember, legal promises never stopped anybody from breaking the contract if they wanted to, but encryption would.
So in summary, the control over our privacy needs to be in our hands, not yours.
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