Piins Contact API - The data is the users'

We just don't agree that platforms have the right to claim possession over user data in terms of completely restricting them from accessing/deleting/editing all their data in the most efficient way. CAVEAT: "most efficient" does definitely not refer to the way some platforms (we don't want to point with fingers here) define "efficient", i.e. only via their own platform.

They might do a nice job to convince themselves that they are the best, and market valuation might suggest that they are, but all the data there is still the users'. We'd even go that far to say, that not only the direct data, but also all the inferred one is the users', although you can probably argue about that, so we'll cover that in another posting :)

Anyways, as part of our movement to make all data as accessible to their respective users, being extremely aware of privacy and data protection standards, we've released our little contact-import and message sending API.

If you are interested contact us anytime, we're happy to discuss how you can help users to access all their data as easily as possible (well at least, as our little Piin-brains can do, if we piin down the time :). We want to speak to you first to assure, that you are not going to misuse the API in any malicious or harmful way.

The link for the API is for testing only. WE DO NOT STORE ANY OF YOUR CONTACTS, NEITHER DO WE SPAM THEM. We hate spam ourselves and if we had a little bit more time, we'd be working on a giant fight-spam-forever project! This is why we disabled message sending via the Outlook upload as well. You will still be able to see the imported contacts directly after import from your Outlook CSV file, but not be able to send them messages.

P.S.: If your are interested in an internationalization library for PHP, we've developed one for Smarty in PHP. A tutorial for this library can be found here. We're planning to release many more APIs for the open source community and the startup community, so stay tuned with our blog.

Designing Piins - Object and Issues –

“ Design refers to the will to interpret the meaning of human life and existence through the process of making things”.

Kenya Hara

During Piin’s” stealth mode period” It is an interesting challenge to talk about the design of something without revealing the details of the actual object. But every design is based on interpreting how to make certain functionalities as easy to understand and accessible for their intended users. Talking about Piins’s ideas and philosophy is a good start for the conversation as it is the basis for every design decision made regarding the user interface and structure of the site itself.

We’ve decided to start by approaching this discussion by talking about few common user pains that Piins addresses - When Piins comes out of it’s stealth mode we’ll be able to reveal more details on the solutions we’ve come up with.


1) Frustration - “I like this site, how do I remember it and how can I comment on it?”-
When browsing the Internet you often find information that interests you, it might be a paragraph, a sentence, a photograph or just anything that you would like to remember, find again, comment on, share etc. while keeping it in the context of the original page. You can always bookmark the page but then it can still be a hassle finding it again within it.

We believe in helping the user gain that flexibility with the information he finds. We believe in convenience, being able to communicate, share and above all saving our precious lifetime not having to deal with repetition.

2) Limitedness - “I have 3 computers: at home, a laptop and at work… How can they share the same Internet data?”-
It’s a hassle having to export your bookmarks and reinstall them every time you change computers. There are a lot of sites out there that give you the chance to gather information such as bookmarks, favourite blogs etc. but users have to go to a specific website to access that content which breaks up the browsing experience. We like mobility and accessibility and assume so do most other people.

3) Perceived Privacy Threats - “Which of my private data is floating in the Web? How secure is it?”-
Big brother always feels to be standing right behind your shoulder, especially these days when we enter so much information about ourselves online. Even worse, this information is potentially trackable by “other users” We are becoming more paranoid about who is accessing our personal data. We don’t like privacy threats and we don’t’ like being watched.

4) Time - “I rather have the best search results rather than many!”-
The future of the Internet as we see it is about user helping user. It’s about being able to communicate with other users and being able to voice our opinions whatever they may be. Keeping those thoughts and ideas either private, for our own use or sharing them with others that might benefit from them. Having other users with similar interests to help us find what we are looking for would be ideal.

The design solutions for Piins called for simplicity. The elements involved had to be visible but not obtrusive. Their structures, colours and shapes should not compete with other visible elements but exist in harmony with the other content. There where many design challenges facing us when we started Piins and there are still many more to come, most required a whole new way of thinking.

We are creating something new and revolutionary but we have to make it comfortable for people to be able to use it straight away without having to learn something new. While sitting in the comfort of familiarity we can start browsing the unknown and have some new surprising, pleasurable experiences.

We are here to try to make life better and we hope you will enjoy.

be good

less evil is a proper wish
to be made by oh so many
but what they are prepared to give
is seldom worth a penny

For what? To stand, to fight, to live
in a period of upheaval
for one thing we cannot forgive:
being passive, by not being evil

Piins' "Hello World"

Over 2 years now have passed since the idea was first born. Unlike most births, it did not hurt very much but it rather was a feeling of complete freedom and happiness. It was a nice, maybe a little idealistic vision of being able to be more than "just not evil", it was a vision of actually "being good".

Over the years we built a nice little prototype, that we're soon going to release to a very special closed group. And no, although it sounds a little odd and 90-ies to be in "stealth-mode", experience from previous ventures just proves that the user is everything you've got in the Internet world. The user is the single most important thing, so you have to give them a chance to help you.

And as much as we think we can enrich the daily life of our users in the Internet, we are convinced that every individual out there enriches and challenges our vision on a daily basis allowing us not only just to "be good" but to even "be better". So stealth-mode is not just another odd marketing gag or a way to make people talk about us (although that could not do any harm), but to allow everyone to participate in that vision without diluting it.

One more thing: we know, that Piins is going to be quite disputed. What we're doing is, as we see it, the next step in Web-Development (yeah, sounds opaque and fuzzy again, but we're happy to discuss with everyone) and it is going to require a possibly yet unmet amount of trust from our users. We're convinced that not only our personalities, everyone in the team, but also our users aim for nothing else than "being good" - naive again? Well, we say it's worth a try!

In that sense, a warm "hello world!" to all you guys'n girls out there from the Piins team - let's go the next step in the Web together.