This is a different Beeper. I don't want a personal CRM, I know everyone in my Beeper chats well enough that I don't need a sidebar to prompt me about where they live. Conversely, I need Signal and Facebook Messenger because that's where my loved ones are.
However I can absolutely see that some people would want this. CRM for email is a solved problem and many professionals use CRM tools, but it doesn't exist in the same way for chat, and maybe it should (although email feels like the bigger market). This is probably in desperate need for a LinkedIn connection though.
My advice to the Amber team: is this for work or personal use? Pick one, make it great for that, and don't try to force it to be the other.
These tools always fall short, not because the teams making them are bad, but because the underlying chat tools they build on are adversarial to the idea of a third-party UI replacing their UI. A new entrant might escape their ire for a while, of course.
Cool, I like to see more innovation in this space.
You obviously have different needs than what Beeper provides, but claiming it's better when you only support a fraction of the networks is a bit steep imo.
Curious what other networks you plan to support and what are your monetization plans?
I really like the addition of folders and CRM features compared to Beeper.
The networks I'm interested in are Telegram (you already got that), Signal, Instagram, Matrix, Threema, Slack and Teams (in that order).
Me too. Even if a lot of the innovation is what we already had with pidgin or trillian years ago. but i love that the walled gardens get torn down a bit. More, please.
AI feeding into a "private" database, so after the keylogger sends everything to OpenAI you can have a garbage summary!
Or if it uses a local model, enjoy the warmth and sound of your GPU while it consumes all of your system resources for instant messaging on, well, as you put it, three random services
> However, you can turn off the AI features if you're into full privacy. :)
I think marketing for AI should always start off with "Includes opt-in AI features should you want them" instead of just "HEY WE HAVE AI" I feel like it would make a lot of people close the browser tab much later than expected.
I'm one who loves some of the AI stuff after being a skeptic, but I see a LOT of immediate hatred for it, sadly even when it is purely opt-in (as it should be tbh).
Also the fact is that I don't need AI included into this software.
Its nice that it never touches your server but beeper is also moving forward in that direction and beeper is also open source and uses the matrix protocol so you can actually be free to use any matrix clients.
What about yours? As someone who uses beeper for talking with insta chats with my friends, I have no regrets picking beeper.
> Also the fact is that I don't need AI included into this software.
Yup, the fact that every new service now is AI-first is troubling... it's literally the first thing said about Amber when going on their website. My tab says "Amber — AI-enabled all-in-on...". It's like the only thing they want you to know about their service.
Screenshots and gifs or something like your Loom, you need a little trailer thing that showcases the app, and its top use cases with minimal noise (minimal chat windows for demo purposes). Heck, start with a few messages, then flood in, and showcase how it helps to keep you organized, that sort of thing.
> All messages are end-to-end encrypted and go straight from your device to the network of choice – never touching our servers.
Just because the messages themselves aren't proxied doesn't mean a service can't steal the content on the end device. I'm obviously not saying you _are_ doing that, but the trust issue is my biggest issue here.
Are there any open source clients for this out there? Also, if someone were to build that, what are the protocols one would even use to get these things talking to each other and reconciling the different accounts quirks
at least from talking to Eric at a meetup, I think some are still on remote implementations. I know texts definitely needs to do the iMessage implementation locally, but they're moving everything client-side, which to me as a thunderbird user, makes the most sense. I just wish we could have something like libpurple again that would allow me to finally get back to the everything-in-one-app paradigm
Besides Beeper, the only consumer bridge hosting service I'm aware of is Element One, but it's only barely maintained, so I'd definitely recommend self-hosting over that.
* What/how are you handling the different customer protection laws? What juristictions are you working in? Where's the data hosted?
* Where's the design description?
* What encryption are you actually using? If you rolled your own, then well.. good luck.
* How could you ensure end-to-end encryption over multiple protocols, without either completely reverse engineering said protocols? If your answer here would be that you're using a central server where messages get passed between services (and thus decrypted), it isn't end-to-end.
The site is also very flaky. Sometimes it loads, sometimes it doesn't.
There are so many questions, and zero answers.
- Yep. You can read our privacy policy here: https://dimadolgopolovn.notion.site/Amber-Privacy-Policy-256...
- Check out the demo in the original post.
- We use native API or reverse-engineer a solution depending on the platform. This approach maintains the security standard as high as the original app. Everything is done locally on your computer.
could you please link to stuff like the demo and the privacy policy on the site? i only found this thread by chance and would have missed it otherwise ^^;
In context of instant messaging E2EE usually means that service providers servers don't ever see the plaintext with messages stored on device. Just the transport encryption is already an expectation for all networking.
Something is weird about the javascript or CSS on the site. When I first scroll down, many things didn't animate and didn't show. When I scroll up and then scroll back down again, then they animated in.
i have never seen a messenger app made by anyone that was capable of migrating all the existing users and their chats from another platform instantly. the day someone makes this, its gonna get traction by a mile compared to anything else out there. imagine clicking "import from messenger" and boom all users and chats from messenger added and clicking "import from whatsapp", "import from wechat" you get the idea
I'm most interested in the CRM. I'm a Linux and Android user, so there's currently nothing for me to try, but a page dedicated to the CRM features might get my email address on your mailing list.
Monica CRM is one too, it sits abandoned on my still powered on raspi zero w because I don't have a queue habit set up to cause me to go check it, but it was nice as a digital personal Rolodex with more automation than just contacts app that's barely more than a vcard
This is a different Beeper. I don't want a personal CRM, I know everyone in my Beeper chats well enough that I don't need a sidebar to prompt me about where they live. Conversely, I need Signal and Facebook Messenger because that's where my loved ones are.
However I can absolutely see that some people would want this. CRM for email is a solved problem and many professionals use CRM tools, but it doesn't exist in the same way for chat, and maybe it should (although email feels like the bigger market). This is probably in desperate need for a LinkedIn connection though.
My advice to the Amber team: is this for work or personal use? Pick one, make it great for that, and don't try to force it to be the other.
You obviously have different needs than what Beeper provides, but claiming it's better when you only support a fraction of the networks is a bit steep imo.
Curious what other networks you plan to support and what are your monetization plans?
I really like the addition of folders and CRM features compared to Beeper.
The networks I'm interested in are Telegram (you already got that), Signal, Instagram, Matrix, Threema, Slack and Teams (in that order).
> Secure Connection Failed
> An error occurred during a connection to useamber.app. PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR
Seems like a DNS issue. Are you using VPN? We used Framer to host the site.
Pidgin at least supports service plugins and many more protocols, and doesn't have AI, which is a big plus when we're talking about private messaging.
Or if it uses a local model, enjoy the warmth and sound of your GPU while it consumes all of your system resources for instant messaging on, well, as you put it, three random services
but you know he tried Beeper!!!
However, you can turn off the AI features if you're into full privacy. :)
I think marketing for AI should always start off with "Includes opt-in AI features should you want them" instead of just "HEY WE HAVE AI" I feel like it would make a lot of people close the browser tab much later than expected.
I like to think myself, not have AI do it for me ;)
If it's not open source it's a trap.
Also the fact is that I don't need AI included into this software.
Its nice that it never touches your server but beeper is also moving forward in that direction and beeper is also open source and uses the matrix protocol so you can actually be free to use any matrix clients.
What about yours? As someone who uses beeper for talking with insta chats with my friends, I have no regrets picking beeper.
Yup, the fact that every new service now is AI-first is troubling... it's literally the first thing said about Amber when going on their website. My tab says "Amber — AI-enabled all-in-on...". It's like the only thing they want you to know about their service.
Just because the messages themselves aren't proxied doesn't mean a service can't steal the content on the end device. I'm obviously not saying you _are_ doing that, but the trust issue is my biggest issue here.
with that being said, good luck!
Besides Beeper, the only consumer bridge hosting service I'm aware of is Element One, but it's only barely maintained, so I'd definitely recommend self-hosting over that.
* Where's your privacy policy?
* What/how are you handling the different customer protection laws? What juristictions are you working in? Where's the data hosted?
* Where's the design description?
* What encryption are you actually using? If you rolled your own, then well.. good luck.
* How could you ensure end-to-end encryption over multiple protocols, without either completely reverse engineering said protocols? If your answer here would be that you're using a central server where messages get passed between services (and thus decrypted), it isn't end-to-end.
The site is also very flaky. Sometimes it loads, sometimes it doesn't. There are so many questions, and zero answers.
- Signal: E2EE
- Telegram: by default, nah
- Discord, nah
That's probably the HN front page effect to be fair.
Good luck!
Interesting to hear I'm not the only one who's found the need to write something like this.
I first thought to share Clay (https://clay.earth) but I see they were acquired by Automattic recently.