The new Google Contacts - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.nl/2015/03/the-new-google-contacts-bringing.html

<comment><USER2> A few first impressions:

1\. Why oh why must we always shove everything into modal dialogs? In the "old" interface, each contact had its own separate page and individual URL. Now that every contact is a "card" that appears as a modal dialog, I can no longer link to it directly, and any card that I'm viewing is lost as soon as I close the tab or navigate away from the page. (Note that I don't necessarily believe that every possible application state should be represented by a URL, but something as discrete as a single contact seems pretty important to me.)

2\. The JS captures my Cmd-F / Ctrl-F shortcut and focuses the search bar in the header. To me, this is a huge no-no. Sometimes I just want to find some regular text on a page, not send my every keystroke to Google via a search box that gives me "helpful" page suggestions from Google+.

EDIT: Just noticed that you can still access the browser's built-in search by hitting Cmd-F twice. A bit odd, but at least it's not completely overridden.

3\. The show-checkbox-on-hover behavior[1] in the list looks like something's broken. It also doesn't look like a checkbox until you actually click on it[2], which kind of defeats the purpose of a checkbox.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/f3AVYdv.png](http://i.imgur.com/f3AVYdv.png)

[2] [http://i.imgur.com/aY5fPl7.png](http://i.imgur.com/aY5fPl7.png)

I don't mean to be super negative. I think there are a lot of nice improvements here too, just a few things that bother me as a "power user".

</comment><comment><USER3> It looks nice. It doesn't work very well, not for me at least. I hope they do a lot of work before making this version the default one.

Why does the search box search Google+ instead of my contacts? I don't even use Google+. This is either a _huge_ bug, or it is insanity. And I thought the Google+ creep was over already. (I can't even use Ctrl-F, because they hooked that to the - currently useless - search box.)

Every contact manager that I have ever used gives me the option to sort contacts by last name. I can't seem to find such a setting here. There are futher sorting issues: Ö should go after O, not Z.

The overview looks nice and clean. When I click a contact with lots of details, and when I click the Edit button, there is just one unstructured mess of a table, crammed into a tiny modal dialog on my 2560x1440 monitor. Compare this to the old Contacts, and you feel inclined to believe that they fired all their information designers, and replaced them with interaction designers exclusively.

Please don't read this as a criticism of Material Design. I really enjoy it on my Nexus, and I think Material enables elegant interactions. But interactions aren't everything. For a product like this, thoughtful information design should be the priority. And I don't even see traces of information design in this preview.

<comment><USER4> > There are futher sorting issues: Ö should go after O, not Z.

I'd just like to point out that this is not true in the two alphabets that I'm familiar with that use Ö, Icelandic and Swedish. For both of these, Ö is the last character of the alphabet. I don't know how it is for other languages which use Ö but at least for these two the sorting is correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _please be fast, please be fast_

Edit: also please let us archive contacts. I want to keep someone's number, but scrolling through hundreds of people just to call someone is not ideal.

<comment><USER6> If you are talking about for your phone. You can setup Android to only pull in contacts in a given group. Convenient if you have groups for different cities and whatnot that you might be in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My pre-coffee brain thought this would be contact lenses... I was so excited for a second.

<comment><USER8> Which also exists but is probably only exciting if you're diabetic: [http://googleblog.blogspot.ch/2014/01/introducing-our- smart-...](http://googleblog.blogspot.ch/2014/01/introducing-our-smart- contact-lens.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Finally a refresh to the contacts site. I always found this to be quite useful for managing my Android contacts.

It looks nice but there are definitely some improvements needed in terms of merging of G+ data with existing data. For example, some of my contacts have two birthday entries, one G+ (which might omit the year) and then one that I have manually added.

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://gmailblog.blogspot.nl/2015/03/the-new-google- contacts...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.nl/2015/03/the-new-google-contacts- bringing.html) has screenshots for the rest of us.

<comment><USER10> Thanks, we updated the submitted URL from [http://contacts.google.com](http://contacts.google.com).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Gmail accounts only; no Google Apps (yet?). Yet another roll-out (ahem, Inbox) where the paying customers get left behind. I realize businesses may want stability with new versions for training, etc. but it would be great at least to have the option by domain/account to be on the new products earlier.

<comment><USER12> As I said before, paid users get stabler products whereas us the free loaders are beta testers.

<comment><USER13> That's fine on paper, but the reality is that none of their "beta" products come with any real user risk.

I think it's more of a "test drive" scenario for google. It's fully baked but they want to see how it changes behavior on a wider scale where people make choices independent of the organization.

<comment><USER14> That's not true. Google has hosed large enterprise customers many times by rolling out new features or changes to existing products with zero warning, and they have adopted a phased deployment process and a formal trusted tester program to help mitigate it. Contacts is a waaaaaaay bigger deal for businesses than individuals, and there are tons of edge cases Google has to deal with re: Apps customers.

<comment><USER13> I honestly don't know of any google apps that have hosed enterprise customers. Can you point me at some articles or something?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ok, after mixing the birthdays the random people I follow on google+ into my calendar they now mix the contact details of those people into my contacts list. :(

<comment><USER3> Things like these were my top reasons for leaving Google+ very quickly. If I follow Linus Torvalds in the stream, that doesn't mean that I want him everywhere in my PIM suite (Gmail, Calender, Contacts).

But yeah, Unified Experience matters, blah blah. They were probably thinking: If not for the Unified Experience, why else would anyone use Google+ instead of any other social network?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I got really excited about this, and then was immediately disappointed when merging contacts in this interface didn't seem to sync to my Android phone. I hate that I have to merge contacts separately on every device. Is it just me?

</comment><comment><USER6> The one thing I have yet to find on any online contacts program (not that I have checked that many...) is the ability to mark some numbers as "previous number|address" for folk. This can be very convenient when someone moves.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is there any easy to way to grab some contacts off my Google Apps account (i.e. work) to add to my personal Gmail contacts? When adding contacts on my phone, I often forget to attach them to the right account.

<comment><USER18> You can export them into a file and reimport them into Contacts. [https://support.google.com/mail/answer/24911?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/24911?hl=en)

(Disclaimer: I haven't tried this with the new Contacts).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like the new design, but it seems impossible to merge contacts that aren't automatically detected as duplicates by their less-than-perfect algorithm.

<comment><USER20> I had that thought at first, but I figured out how to do it.

Check the box on the left for two contacts, and then in the upper right you can click the merge icon, two arrows coming together.

<comment><USER19> ... OH THOSE ARE CHECKBOXES?!

FFS, I have 2.5k pixels of horizontal space, and they're saving up space this way? This isn't even a good idea on mobile where there is no such concept as hover.

The UX designer in me is enraged right now.

<comment><USER21> It's probably more a matter of simplifying the look, having portraits first.

If we're trying to one-up Google at design, here's my probably-lame attempt, using the bevel to have the cake and eat it too, hopefully. [http://i.imgur.com/X4LQD03.png](http://i.imgur.com/X4LQD03.png) (I changed the names)

I guess it's still less pretty, I don't know.

<comment><USER19> I don't dislike the idea but it'd need more work graphically. Like this it's barely visible. Making it obvious to the user that this part of the screen is there for your to click on should be priority #1 when you design a nonstandard checkbox.

Edit: And remember, something doesn't necessarily _have_ to be a checkbox for you to select it, it can just be a bevel of some kind. You don't even have to require clicking as an action: You can square-select items (like you would in a file manager), you can long-press (like you would on mobile) etc.

<comment><USER21> It's possible my monitor brightness is wrong (nevermind, you're right, I see it now), and thanks for the feedback and sharing tips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can I edit the phonetic reading of my contacts name? I have a lot of Japanese friends and believe it or not, you cannot read how their names are pronounced from just reading the name. 井上 could be inoue or iue or ikami or a lot of different things.

This is usually solved by adding a phonetic field to the names field, and while I can do it on my iPhone, I haven't figured out hot to do it on Google contacts, which I sync with.

<comment><USER23> Not sure it's new feature or not. When you edit it in the new version, click "Show All Fields", and you will find phonetic fields.

My problem is that I added phonetic names on my Mac and synced to Google, but the fields are missing on the web. Nor could be synced to my iPhone. Wired thing is that my old phonetic data is synced. I suppose that they have some compatibility bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Was giving a loading error for me yesterday. Finally works now.

When you expand the groups or circles on the left, if there are too many to fit on your screen, you're out of luck--no scrollbar appears.

All the same, if I no longer have to worry about Google Voice contacts being somehow distinct from Google Contacts, it's an improvement.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wish Google would force app settings to comply to a framework / interface such that you could manage the configuration of all your apps via a single website (appsettings.google.com/devicename) as well.

</comment><comment><USER26> Meta-feedback: I just submitted a bug report, and the "Send feedback" feature is damned spiffy. If you're into such things give it a look.

(I don't know if it's new or specific to Contacts though.)

</comment><comment><USER27> I get this on my personal Google account, but our work Google Apps account doesn't show the change. I'd guess it's rolling out gradually, presumably with GA work customers getting it last.

</comment><comment> stephane-klein Is it possible to share contact group between different gmail user ?

</comment><comment><USER28> Previously posted: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9140626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9140626)

</comment><comment><USER29> As usual, Google Apps is late to the party.

</comment><comment><USER30> Automatic contact merging works for about 10% of my duplicates :/

</comment><comment><USER31> Holy whitespace Batman.

<comment><USER32> Hey - you've gotta make it so that a 27" screen only shows as much information as an iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is there?

<comment><USER34> It's at [https://contacts.google.com/preview](https://contacts.google.com/preview)

<comment><USER27> 404 on my work Google Apps account.

<comment><USER28> Not yet availble for GApps users.

Because Google hates us :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Nice, not a revolution though

</comment><comment><USER36> About time!</comment>


Why Early Stage Venture Investments Fail - <AUTHOR> http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2007/11/why_early_stage.html

<comment><USER2> Key quote:

``Most venture backed investments fail because the venture capital is used to scale the business before the correct business plan is discovered. That scale/burn rate becomes the cancer that kills the business.''

If you don't have time to read the whole article, at least read the last three paragraphs.

<comment><USER3> Translation: Expenditures outpaced income. I don't get what this article has to do with early-stage investments in particular, except that early-stage usually means _no income yet_.

I guess investing only in proven businesses is a lot safer, but every business was "early-stage" at one point.

<comment><USER2> "Expenditures outpaced income" is an oversimplification. Every new business's expenditures outpace income. This essay describes a two-part problem. The high burn rate makes you die faster; that's one part. The other part is that scaling up to a larger business makes you less adaptable.

<comment><USER3> _"Most venture backed investments fail because the venture capital is used to scale the business before the correct business plan is discovered."_

Read: Scale up before they have the income level to justify it.

Being "nimble" or "adaptable" in this case is simply another way to say "didn't run out of money before they started making enough income".

Being large doesn't necessarily make you less adaptable. Think of how many directions Google can explore _because_ it is large. They are far more adaptable than most small companies.

Companies that are composed of only two or three founders don't have the skillsets available to them that larger companies have; Google has a bagful of tricks _because_ it has bought up _so many_ of these one-trick ponies. A lot of them probably were in the category of not having monetized their startup even to the point of self-sufficiency yet -- let alone to the point of making a profit -- and being acquired by a large company was the way to stay alive.

Before ViaWeb was bought by Yahoo they almost ran out of money; they had to borrow a conference room at Yahoo _in the middle of negotiations_ to get enough money from another investor to stay alive. Would you say they weren't nimble or adaptable if they hadn't gotten that last-minute financing? Are they nimble and adaptable _just because_ they got that financing? Or is it that _despite_ how quickly you can change directions, you eventually have to PICK _some_ direction to keep going in if you want to get anything accomplished?

It doesn't matter how adaptable you are, you can only explore so many directions before you run out of money. Some people _don't_ change their idea, but they are able to keep pushing and pushing until they finally make it. Some people get lucky and succeed on the first try.

Paul says, "When startups die, the official cause of death is always either running out of money or a critical founder bailing. Often the two occur simultaneously."

Thus, "If you can just avoid dying, you get rich."

<http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html>

<comment><USER4> Income is not the important factor. The problem is scaling up before they have traction.

Read pmarca's blog posts on "product/market fit" to understand.

<comment><USER3> > _Income is not the important factor._

Screw income, businesses can run on fairy dust, Tink!

> _Read pmarca's blog posts on "product/market fit" to understand._

I read that when it was first posted, and it's nothing new, it's the same "make something people want". Which comes down to the same thing, income. "Product/market fit" is determined by exactly one thing, making money. It can be garbage, as long as you can get people to pay for it.

"Scaling up" translates to "increasing expenditures". And what is "traction", if not having an established customer base, i.e. people to make money off of?

Even if you're considering the case of startups which _don't_ have a user base -- e.g. they are working on some cool technology in-house, as opposed to something with simple technology but a lot of users ala social news sites -- there's still a customer there: Google or Yahoo or whoever is doing the acquiring. Then you're finding one BIG customer instead of thousands of individual customers.

So it's still back to the same thing, money out vs. money in. I don't know why people like to mystify it with tales of startup lore.

Even PG's "If you can just avoid dying, you get rich" doesn't specify a timeframe; of course if you have an _unlimited_ amount of time and resources, you can eventually "succeed" -- except if you already have such staggering financial resources available to you, you're already rich, so it's a wash.

In any realistic consideration, it's possible that you keep changing your approach into one of the _many_ other directions that _also_ won't work, instead of one of the few that will. E.g. after 6 tries, you don't hit on a PayPal, but on failure #7. Then you run out of money. Oops, you didn't successfully implement the "don't die" principle.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Writer for iPad: First Reactions - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/writer-for-ipad-first-reactions/

<comment><USER2> I don't know about how that font looks on the iPad, but my first reaction looking at it on my laptop was that it looks extremely awkward with those thick character-wide serifs. I know this is a bikesheddy thing to bitch about, but I'd personally be less distracted if Writer stuck with a familiar monospace font like Vera, Monaco, or Consolas...or if, as drcode mentioned, it used a proportional font.

</comment><comment><USER3> Am i the only one that finds it ironic that they basically recreated a typewriter?

<comment><USER4> It's not ironic, it's conscious. The typewriter was the blue print for the app. It was supposed to be called writing machine (from German Schreibmaschine = typewriter).

<comment><USER3> ok, so that's super informative. In my life, i've had a few trysts with writing and ended up buying an Olivetti when i was in college. that's been a good investment and it has also had the effect (which i find positive) of slowing down the speed that i type at and making me more thoughtful about how i write (i have a two color, non-correcting ribbon). My love for that flawed device is probably similar to model m keyboard affection.

Writer seems, conceptually, like using an old ibm word processor (remember those with the one/four line text display that would then typewrite that onto the page?) It seems like a sophisticated version of that. maybe with the new printing in ios 4.2, you could make a usb-teletype that would print out the document you had just written. (aside: i would love a usb-teletype printer)

still, props to y'all for making that leap. i don't have an ipad, otherwise i'd probably have some other comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So far I like it, but I definitely miss Elements-style autosyncing. Switching to my main computer and then having to switch back in order to manually sync my work is sub-optimal.

<comment><USER6> I've become very partial to PlainText myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love monospace fonts when I'm coding... but writing regular English text in monospace sound excruciatingly tedious.

<comment><USER4> What's the difference between coding and writing a careful solid consistent text?

<comment><USER8> Reading monospace text sucks.

It's only good for coding for alignment issues. But reading monospace characters for long blocks of text is hard on the eyes. (Not to mention that proportional spacing is more efficient -- you can get more text on a line with roughly the same letter forms.)

<comment><USER4> It's not about reading, it's about writing. Many measures in writer came from studying coding programs.

<comment><USER8> I dunno about you, but I barely type when I'm coding. I'd guess about 90% of my day is reading and thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really like the concept and the unique focus features. However, I don't have an iPad (yet) so I hope they come out with a web app or desktop application version.

<comment><USER4> Yes, we will. Hopefully before Christmas. BTW: We're looking for Cocoa developers... <http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/work-ia/></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I find remote work? - <AUTHOR> I'd like to relocate to some low cost of living area (maybe Asia or somewhere in Europe) and work from there for developed world salary. Where do I find remote job offers?<p>I'm not asking about elance or freealancer or other site like that. I'd like to have full time work with real company just working from home with zero need to see people face to face ot commute. <comment><USER2> Have you tried weworkremotely.com Also you can look for stackoverflow.com for remote jobs.

</comment><comment><USER3> This thread might help you : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12843590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12843590)</comment>


Show HN: A tea discovery and deals site - <AUTHOR> http://puretea.co <comment><USER2> Overall, the site does not seem to be built to meet my needs as a tea drinker. The first thing I 'discovered' was a quiz that presented itself as mandatory. Bypassing it to the Tea of the Day was not an overwhelming experience. It lacked detailed information and informed opinion. Mostly it was a link to buy.

In general the site does not seem to be built around _my_ goals and there is not a sense in which the company is interested in aligning its goals with mine. I did not come to the site to take a quiz.

Clicking on the link to the Tea of the Day takes me to Amazon where buying three of the product is about 25% greater unit cost.

It appears that , Amazon is running in a frame served over HTTP. Including the login page. Clearly that's not in my interest.</comment>