Comments on: Want Tempo’s new calendar assistant? You’ll have to wait for its AI to catch up http://gigaom.com/2013/02/19/want-tempos-new-calendar-assistant-youll-have-to-wait-for-its-ai-to-catch-up/ Sat, 18 May 2013 14:20:01 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: NoThanks http://gigaom.com/2013/02/19/want-tempos-new-calendar-assistant-youll-have-to-wait-for-its-ai-to-catch-up/#comment-1318494 Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:17:46 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=611770#comment-1318494 Amen.

I waited patiently for a month, watching the reservation line tick SLOWLY to 800 only to find my place in line had jumped to 14K this morning.

If these people can’t even manage a line, why would ANYONE trust them with their data?

]]> By: Tempo AI http://gigaom.com/2013/02/19/want-tempos-new-calendar-assistant-youll-have-to-wait-for-its-ai-to-catch-up/#comment-1314238 Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:01:02 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=611770#comment-1314238 This is putting my non-Tempo hat on. I think the problem w/ iOS is you can’t really do an invitation system. Unlike Android, where you can distribute a link (and not list it in the App Store), on iOS, you have to distribute via the App Store and so regardless of whether you do an invitation system, the app will still be in the store, downloaded and 1-star’ed b/c a user doesn’t have an invite. I think the reservation system is the new invite model (eg App Launchrock) for mobile and I’m actually surprised companies don’t yet offer this as an SDK ;) It would have certainly helped us as opposed to engineering from scratch!

]]> By: pankaj garg http://gigaom.com/2013/02/19/want-tempos-new-calendar-assistant-youll-have-to-wait-for-its-ai-to-catch-up/#comment-1313840 Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:18:06 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=611770#comment-1313840 crap crap crap! i would never share all my accounts with anyone to make sense out of it.. its like inviting the trouble!

it will be hard for me to believe if they claim they have any serious customer..but maybe its a good news that i cant think like people who are not serious :)

]]> By: Thefutureme http://gigaom.com/2013/02/19/want-tempos-new-calendar-assistant-youll-have-to-wait-for-its-ai-to-catch-up/#comment-1313790 Wed, 20 Feb 2013 03:47:45 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=611770#comment-1313790 Um, in case you haven’t noticed, people are out of patience. Spare us the half-assed apology and get your sh*t together before hyping this app.

]]> By: H. M http://gigaom.com/2013/02/19/want-tempos-new-calendar-assistant-youll-have-to-wait-for-its-ai-to-catch-up/#comment-1313718 Tue, 19 Feb 2013 22:35:23 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=611770#comment-1313718 Reservations will be the next new annoyance that appears on the App Store until something is done. Mailbox may have created the monster but I suspect others will try to leverage this hype machine generator that “reservations” are becoming.

Downloading a non-functional app should be banned from the store. If developers want to do a reservation system they should do that on their own website.

]]> By: Tempo AI http://gigaom.com/2013/02/19/want-tempos-new-calendar-assistant-youll-have-to-wait-for-its-ai-to-catch-up/#comment-1313637 Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:18:06 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=611770#comment-1313637 Tempo reservations are now live! Please update your Tempo to claim your spot in line: http://tempo.ai/blog/reservationslive
Thx again for all of your patience!

]]> By: Kevin Fitchard http://gigaom.com/2013/02/19/want-tempos-new-calendar-assistant-youll-have-to-wait-for-its-ai-to-catch-up/#comment-1313626 Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:00:30 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=611770#comment-1313626 Hey John,

Actually a lot of startups and even huge companies limit the number of activations for a new service. There’s Pinterest on one end and Gmail on the other. I think we can forgive Tempo for wanting to control how they scale. But I do agree with you that they could have planned for this contingency a little better by having the reservation safeguard in place a tlaunch. I originally tested out the app on an iPad. When I tried to activate it on my iPhone this weekend, all I received was “we’re not taking new registrations” message and that’s it. Not exactly what you want to see if you’ve just gone through the bother of downloading the app.

The reservation system is now live, btw. There are already well over 21,000 people in the queue already.

]]> By: Robert Scoble http://gigaom.com/2013/02/19/want-tempos-new-calendar-assistant-youll-have-to-wait-for-its-ai-to-catch-up/#comment-1313590 Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:00:16 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=611770#comment-1313590 I was involved in the PR push. Tempo had many times more users than even their wildest dreams indicated would show up. This is a common problem with startups. Most don’t get many users at all, but when something really is highly valuable (as it is in Tempo’s case) it goes viral.

Part of my job at Rackspace is to find companies that potentially could go highly viral and make sure our internal teams are ready to act if they are customers. Unfortunately in this case there’s nothing we can do because they are on Amazon, but there’s a lot we can do if they are on Rackspace Cloud and we have many programs to help startups at http://rackspacestartups.com/

That said, scaling is very difficult. Remember all the problems Twitter had for its first four years of life? It’s very hard for small teams to plan for every possible outcome.

]]> By: John S. Wilson http://gigaom.com/2013/02/19/want-tempos-new-calendar-assistant-youll-have-to-wait-for-its-ai-to-catch-up/#comment-1313579 Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:41:36 +0000 http://gigaom.com/?p=611770#comment-1313579 I think this is silly and shows poor planning. For one, if they could only handle so many downloads than they either shouldn’t have engineered a huge PR push or they should have priced the app so they could afford more AWS time. Can’t have it both ways. If the PR is 100% then the backend needs to be prepared for the onslaught.

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