This 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/ 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.
Another 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.
Thanks 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.
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?
Wow, 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! :)
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.
Beautiful, 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..
This 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.
Thanks! 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.
Right 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!
Yup, 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.
I 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.
We'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.
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?
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.
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!
I dislike this sort of limit. The best freemium schemes provide a full enough featured service for free users and fee-based services that obviously make sense for a segment of customers willing and able to pay. Limiting the number of services severely cripples the basic service.
Looks 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.
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?
Thanks! 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.
There 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.
Thanks! 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.
That'd be nice. Is there a way to be notified when such a thing goes live (mailing list)? That'd be a shame if you didn't, seeing all the coverage you're having!
I'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.
I 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. :-)
It'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!
It 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 :-)
Clear 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.
119 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadWe're completely client side, so there are no privacy concerns.
Does it also do reddit's 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.
It doesn't currently do moderator mail, but I'll add it to the issue tracker. Thanks!
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?
If it's completely client side, how do you count the notifications? I guess something needs to be sent home, right?
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! :)
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.
(But I liked the screenshot).
Quick question: I'm logged into multiple Gmail accounts - will it grab from both, or just the active account?
Not that I care about it much, but as a feedback, I am not able to get LinkedIn to work.
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.
Pooling notifications is interesting, we'll definitely be looking at that in the future!
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.
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?
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.
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.
This seems to work great for Chromium on Ubuntu.
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?
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.
[1] http://crossrider.com/ [2] http://docs.trigger.io/en/v1.4/modules/browser/index.html
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).
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.
Perhaps we should change it to "Hide All"...