- receiving appointment info at a doctor's office (in lieu of a physical appointment card)
- exchanging links/addresses/numbers with strangers in any kind of conversational interaction ("call this number", "go to this address", "here's a brochure" etc.) without divulging personal identifiers
Phone-to-phone, anonymous, exchange-and-forget type interactions. Can use bluetooth, wifi, or data connections (or even just qrcodes). I've always thought that there would be usefulness for something like this (key being simplicity and anonymity).
Is there a libre alternative?
I would also prefer a libre alternative, but I could never find one. Some file managers have transfer, but none use Wifi direct or provide a simple way to connect, from what I've tried.
It is honest, but the developer is the one who put the "annoying" ads in in the first place.
That feels like a real slap in the face.
It does still suck, and once every few years I feel that. But that's a problem. Solving a minor, "kinda" pain point that people experience once in a while isn't that big of a win. I'm sure that other people want to do this more often than I do, but I'm also sure that this case is a small subset of the need to share stuff with others generally. I.e., you're always needing to share stuff, with people in Boston, LA, or Singapore, or your manager on another floor of the building, or wherever. You know how to do that. So while it seems silly that you can't share something more easily with someone sitting across the table from you, the methods you already use do work.
I don't see how the act of physically bumping phones together to share content adds any value at all.
It's disturbing that the founder would then go on and write an article about the whole experience. This represents everything that's wrong with startup accelerators.
Not sure why you're picking on the accelerators.
I can guarantee 100% that if Bump was not associated with Y Combinator, they would not have been mentioned by Apple. It has more to do with business connections and network effects than actual usefulness to the consumer.
>> Not sure why you're picking on the accelerators.
Because often they create hype around products which aren't actually useful. In doing so, they take attention and funding away from other products that are actually useful.
1. Instant Messaging Apps work for photos and contacts, but it's stupid that you need to transfer things via cloud (makes everything hellish slow when the network isn't fast)
2. Airdrop works only between Apple Devices, and when the stars are aligned just right. Other devices might appear, or they might not. If it works, it's fast.
3. USB drives are still the easiest way to share anything between computers. (SMB / AFS / NFS / SCP / rsync are all annoying to set up and always seem to fail for hard to debug reasons)
I think the opportunity for something like Bump is still there, but it seems that most people just don't care enough about the inconvenience....