Hi codenerdz....I'm CTO and co-founder of Hall. Our entire application is a single page application (no refreshing). That immediately makes our product more realtime than Yammer. This includes one-on-one messaging, file sharing, group chat, collaborative notepads, 3rd party integrations and friendship/contact management in multiple rooms and multiple networks. While Yammer may have elements that are RT, our entire world is RT.
Hi cal5k....CTO of Hall here. We apologize for the inconvenience. We're constantly trying to optimize the way we send network invitations. We're still working out the kinks and finding the right balance for notifications. You can contact me at ron @ hall-inc.com or if you're on hall, https://hall.com/ron if you'd like us to take a look at your specific case.
Hi darklajid, I'm CTO of Hall. Let me know if you have any additional technical questions about the app. As Brett said, it's probably time to start doing some more technical blog postings.
Hey,
I'll forward that internally (it seems we are going to introduce a solution like yours/yammers in the near future, based on the "I want this!!" face I saw today).
But yeah, more technical information would be nice. I would _guess_ (wildly, with little information..) that your standard target customer is the management type - at least that's what the website shows me right now (and 'six times faster than some unknown enterprise solutions' is really .. weird).
If you go for more technical details or really just more "Look, this is why we're doing cool stuff" posts: I'd be interested to learn more.
stokanic, we started with adobe air which was a quick way to test our hypothesis early on that a desktop app would increase retention. We have since moved on to building native experience w xcode.
Wow, thanks mmatants. I like your eye for detail re: our logo. I'd love to hear more about your feelings about the app itself. (I'm CTO of Hall btw.) Thanks for checking it out!
The ENTIRE homepage at the bottom of every article page seems pretty extreme and creates a bit of a janky scrolling experience. Wonder why they didn't just make the whole thing a single-page application and prevent the user from loading _all_ of that content when viewing the article page.
Focusing on creating the single page app and forgetting the pretty factor really was a key to increased retention. I feel like that was a huge learning for us. Form follows function.
You're shackling yourselves to a platform from a vendor widely known for bloated and buggy products. You can expect the strangest and most bizarre bugs ever. Here's an example from today: I updated flash to its latest version and now youtube videos have their red and blue channel swapped. But only when using hardware video acceleration. Or how about Machinarium - it's also based on flash and is unplayably slow, but only when run fullscreen. When run in a window, it's perfect.
You should really sit back and think hard whether you can replace Air with something like python+qt+... or perhaps java (well, the jvm+libraries, you can still write in jython or clojure or whatever's hot these days). I'm sure there must be a platform to suit your needs that isn't Air.
In the short term, Adobe Air provides you with the shortest time to get you product to market, but I agree that it should/cannot be a longterm solution, anything short of writing you app in native code IMHO is making yourself held hostage to these runtime environments and their quirks.
At work we use one of your competitors, HipChat. They also have supposed Linux support via Adobe Air. Air just flat won't work with 64-bit Ubuntu(1). There are mystical voodoo rituals documented by lay practitioners (with names like UbutnuFan2732) which, surprisingly, don't work. The truth is that Adobe doesn't support it, so if you're lucky enough to get an Air App running on Linux it probably won't last.
(1) I would imagine 64-bit Ubuntu is not rare. What are you Air app developers testing on?
Politely: I won't install an Adobe Air app unless forced to by me employer. Maybe that's how this will work, but Air is always a drag in my personal experience.
Because it's Yet Another Runtime that I Don't Want to Have to Install and Maintain.
I have yet to see an AIR application that is truly cross-platform functional. They run, but that doesn't mean that I want to spend time in them.
I hadn't heard of hall.com before this post, but while I appreciate that (a) you've done this out of response to your users (good) and (b) you've done this because it's faster than doing something else, (c) I don't install AIR.
These days, I only want .apps that include everything I need inside of the app bundle and don't require external installations. (I say this as someone shipping a USB stick with an app that, to apply an update of the app on the stick from the Mac, you have to have a driver installed. I don't want that driver, but I have to. Can't stand it.)
I'm working with Brett right now at Hall.com and am loving it. I worked at an extremely small startup before joining Yahoo! and found that both experiences were invaluable. My time at Y! helped me learn about massive scale while my time at the small startup provided me with an understanding of running a business. Although I loved my time at Y!....especially the people.....it feels great to back with a small team and taking a greater degree of control over the creative process.
