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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.
Sorry, but I don't quite trust this service as they would be able to log every IM request that I send or receive.
4.1 Advertisers
Some of the services offered by Coceve are paid for by targeted advertising. As a result, Coceve may share aggregate demographic information about you and people like you with advertisers (including ad serving companies), allowing them to customize the ads that you might see. We will not release any personally identifiable information to them. However, if you click on an ad, sign up for an advertised product or service, or otherwise interact with an advertiser, the advertiser may separately record information about you or your computer, not subject to this Privacy Policy.
4.2 Contractors
Coceve may hire people or businesses to work with or for us on projects, such as performing security audits or providing customer support, in which they may require access to portions of your personally identifying information to do their job. Before we provide any such information to them, however, they must sign confidentiality agreements promising to protect that information, and if applicable, promise its return or destruction when the work is complete.
4.3 Compelled Disclosure
Coceve may be requested by subpoena, court order, or legal process, to disclose information about you. Coceve believes strongly in the privacy of its subscribers, and will attempt to notify you that your information has been requested, unless we are prohibited by law from doing so. If you are a Basic Subscriber, we will send notification to your email address. If you are a Premium Subscriber, we will send notice to both your email address, and your postal mailing address. We may be required by law to disclose your information if you do not challenge the disclosure request through appropriate legal channels.
4.4 Other Disclosure
Coceve may disclose information about you to comply with legal process served on Coceve, to protect Coceve rights or property, to investigate or report suspected illegal activities, or to take emergency action to protect the personal safety of users of Coceve services or the public.
Coceve may be acquired by or merged with another company. Before your information is shared with or transferred to that company, you will be notified via email, and via Coceve.com or IMSmarter.com, and provided the opportunity to agree to the transfer (including acceptance of any resulting privacy policy) or to erase your information and cease receiving services from Coceve.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
# Search your IM chat history...at work or at home!
:
# Discover when your friends update their blogs
# Blog as easily as sending an IM
# Remember the laundry you just put in the wash
# Recall web sites, phone numbers, and email addresses mentioned on IM
Ok, this is nice. But no software to install... this means that it has to store (or at least transmit) my IM chat history. To boot, it parse phone numbers, web sites and EMAIL ADRESSES. And their privacy policy say
4.2 Contractors
Coceve may hire people or businesses to work with or for us on projects, such as performing security audits or providing customer support, in which they may require access to portions of your personally identifying information to do their job. Before we provide any such information to them, however, they must sign confidentiality agreements promising to protect that information, and if applicable, promise its return or destruction when the work is complete.
Oh... they'll give my personal info to business who PROMISED they won't give it to others... right.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
"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."
RTFA...IMSmarter is free too.
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."
Finally an article I can post on! :) We host IMSmarter's many servers (yay, another Slashdotting for Simpli!) and David is a personal friend of mine. I've been using his service for a few weeks and I can offer you my feedback.
First, the thing about IMSmarter is not what it can do right now, but the platform it's enabling for the future. David has been working hard for the past year developing the backend things; it's just in the past month that he's really started to turn his focus to adding features. Some of the things he's been chewing on include:
1) To-do lists. These are mostly implemented now and are mentioned in the article. They are basically reminders without the cumbersome Outlook interface. "Remind me in 20 minutes to call my friend," you type to the proxy, and it dutifully does so. No more setting up calendar appointments for simple things.
2) Logging (and yes, for the paranoid out there, you can turn this off.) This is actually pretty useful as the logs are stored on a central server. I can't tell you how many times I've logged into my PC from home just to dig through chat logs; now I don't have to.
3) Website updates. This is the one I've been bugging David about. The service will automatically notify your friends when you update your personal website. I can't wait to use this one for my blog.
4) Fedex/UPS tracking. Notifies you when a package you've shipped has arrived, for instance.
Basically, David's vision for this (as I understand it) is to get rid of those hundreds of annoying emails we all get saying "Someone has replied to a thread you posted in" or "Your package has been shipped" or "XYZ updated his blog today." Those are things for which email is not as useful as IM is.
Knowing how motivated David is in this venture, I know we'll see great things from IMSmarter. It still needs maturation -- right now, the platform is there to build on, but not too many implementations have been built. He needs beta testers, and beta testing is pretty simple (you just set up a proxy on your IM client and sign up through their website.) Check it out and mark this one down as "one to watch."
-Erica
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
IMDumber
"So what do you say to all the people concerned about privacy as a close personal friend of this guy?"
;)
Well, first, IMSmarter allows you to turn logging off by sending the proxy a message. That's the first thing.
The second thing I would mention is that, since IMSmarter isn't selling your information to advertisers (and, as far as I know, has no plans to introduce this as a revenue stream), it's far less dangerous than even your standard webmail client. (What, you think Yahoo or AOL administrators can't read your webmail or IM chats?)
David will have to introduce more fine-grained logging controls in the future (i.e. never log conversations with xyz; always log conversations with abc; delete the last hour of logs with asdf.) This is all coming. You are seeing a project that is in its very early beta stage right now, and I think this Slashdotting should jump-start some of the things that IMSmarter needs to do. You and I both know, however, that people care more about features than privacy. If we all cared about privacy first and foremost, none of us would have a Gmail account.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
There really isn't anything to prevent them from using the logs in a similar fashion to the out of control cyber-vigilante web site Perverted Justice other than a privacy policy that seems to leave a lot of questions in my mind as to the security of the system.
According to their privacy policy:
"Access to your personal information other than your chat logs and buddy lists (which are protected according to Section 2.3) is limited to employees who reasonably require access to it in the course of doing their jobs, such as providing customer support to you. We require those employees to sign confidentiality agreements promising to safeguard your information."
There's been a few highly publicized cases of insiders stealing information. I've got to pass on IMSmarter.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
Yeah my knee jerk reaction to this was "never in a thousand years" too, don't forget that the person you are messaging may be using this service *and you'd never know*.
As if your privacy isn't of utmost concern, what about your friends'? So now, I could be targeted for advertising if a friend IMs me asking for my email. I type it in as one would expect, and now, instantly, this is logged on IMSmarter's servers. Next time a "contracter" "comes in" to perform some "service", I start getting SPAM. Wait a minute, I never agreed to receive SPAM from you!
I don't like this service simply because it doesn't require the other party's consent.
From here:
:)
:)
What if I forgot my password for the website?
Easy! Just type FORGOT to the service, and it will send you a link that you can use to log in again and reset your password! Try to remember your new password.
How do I get the service to bug me less often?
No problem. Just type BUG ME LESS to the service and it will send you a link that you can use to log in again and reset your password! Try to remember your new password.
Looks like someone got a little lazy.
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.
So this is what's really evil about Gator et al -- they make *actual* innovators look bad. David's a geek, a damn cool one, and he's genuinely trying to make a really useful service even better, through liberal application of mind-bogglingly cool hackery.
:)
This should be cool, right?
So I used to live with David. I'm a moderately well known packet hacker type, and around the time I was living with him, I put together this hack for SSH called Dynamic Forwarding. SSH has the ability to forward TCP-based services, like email and such. But you used to need to pre-specify all your forwards before connecting. Dynamic Forwarding put a SOCKS server in the SSH client, so any application that could speak SOCKS could gain access to the cryptographically encrypted channel.
David had a much more expansive vision -- rather than just encrypt the chat session, why not add new features to it? IM is this brutally efficient communications medium where all sorts of otherwise superfluous communication artifacts are dispensed with; perhaps this efficiency could be used as an appropriate channel to organize one's life?
So -- no joke, he marshalled his savings, quit his job, and became this total guru of instant messaging protocols so he could explore the potential of this (very good) idea. No VC's, no ulterior motives, and when he's talking about security engineers who some day might need to examine the system to validate his architecture -- well, that'd probably include me, and seriously, I don't want to know anything about your life thank you very much
Honestly, it's a bit ridiculous to talk about IMSmarter as creating any serious alteration to IM privacy. You're using an unencrypted channel to a centralized messaging clearing house that, in AOL's case, is located in Virginia. Ahem. I'm not saying privacy isn't important -- just that David's got way more interesting things to worry about than who you've got a crush on. Ultimately, his service isn't a very good place to spy from anyway, because he doesn't get all messages from all people, just those that are intentionally routed through him. And as anyone will tell you, global views trump self-selection any day of the week.
Honestly -- he's pulling some really cool protocol tricks, and I'm happy to see his wonky-as-hell hack actually become something my mom could use. I know there's alot of creepy corporate virus vendors who are doing some truly nasty things -- someday I want to find the guy who replaces people's TCP/IP stacks and replace a few of his vertebrae -- but David's not one of 'em. Good guy with cool code -- he deserves to be encouraged.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
It's not exactly the same as IMSmarter, but i've become a giant fan of bittlbee + irssi + screen.
2^5
Hi, everyone! I'm David, the author of IM Smarter. I'm glad that people are interested enough in the service to post about it. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to post this earlier, as I was in a (very long) meeting with some folks from the Chicago Beck Foundation to discuss different ways to promote literacy in the third world.
Anyhow, I'm here now, and I'd like to respond to some of the higher-order points that people have made. I think that it's correct that trust is a big issue here. This is part of the reason why we tried to create a privacy policy that would clearly hold your private data as sacred to us. This is also why we took the unusual step of making a privacy promise. The comments in this forum make it clear that we didn't do a good enough job in making it clear that your private data is yours alone. We would be delighted to work, with your constructive feedback, on a privacy policy that does a better job making it clear that your chats are for your eyes only. I actually did ask the EFF to edit and review my privacy policy, but they haven't set up a program for doing that. If any of you know of a consumer-rights organization that would be interested in working with a company on drafting a consumer-focused privacy policy, please do let me know about them.
Let me be very clear here: we will not scrape the content of your IM chats to deliver advertising to you. This is not GMail. We will not sell or otherwise disclose your personally identifiable information to third parties. We are here to use your information for you, not against you. If that makes it harder for me to rake in the big bucks as quickly, so be it. I am here to protect your privacy and improve your IM. (The last time I was on Slashdot, it was because my non-profit had successfully sued Diebold in federal court for infringing free speech rights. We won - thank you EFF!)
There was some concern that our intended deployment of Premium features would suddenly disable currently-available features. This is not true. There are a suite of kickass *new* features planned for Premium - the services that are currently offered as Free will continue to be offered without cost throughout the service's lifetime.
If you have any other questions or concerns about the service, I'd be happy to hear about them. Having launched less than two weeks age we frankly weren't ready for Slashdot with regards to our privacy messaging or site design (which, yes, totally blows but should be fixed in the next week or two). We've got a lot of great features yet to deploy - as I said on the Engadget interview, logging is really only the tip of the iceberg. Logging isn't the *point*. The point is having an agent who can work on your behalf to keep you in the loop about things you want to know about and who can keep away messages you don't want brought to you (at the moment because you're busy, or ever).
This is my baby, the fruit of my labors of a year. I realize my baby's pretty ugly and infantile right now, but my metric for going out of private beta was to launch at the point when I could imagine that at least one random person out there on the Internet could plausibly find the service interesting enough to use on a regular basis. I think we're at that point now, albeit not at the point where we're the service "everyone obviously should use". The service continues to make progress on a regular basis. I can only hope and pray that people will be patient with me as it creaks onwards towards becoming a great, genuinely useful service for people.
Have a great Saturday night, everyone.
Peace,
David E. Weekly
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for
Well, first of all there's only about 1.3 bits per byte of english text. So that 150TB/yr figure goes down to about 25TB.
:)
Second of all, my friend used to *run* the AOL datacenter. What was that he said? "We just passed a petabyte." That was in around '98 or '99. I don't think you understand how big AOL is...his exact words to me were, "We cache the web every two hours."
Third, AOL ain't the only big fish in Virginia. That's all I'm going to say about that, except maybe that it's relatively common knowledge that IRC's been logged for at least the last decade and probably longer.
There's this great quote: "If you think it, don't say it. If you say it, don't write it. If you write it, don't be surprised." Expressing yourself means that others will register your expression -- some for good, others not. The goal is that the positive aspects of being social will exceed the negatives aspects of it. You ask, why trust IMSmarter? I change that to -- why trust the dozen or so routers between you and AOL? Why trust AOL itself? Why communicate with anyone?
Because there's value in human communication. IMSmarter is being built by a very smart friend of mine who's working to increase that value. It's neat
--Dan