Ask HN: Feedback on webapp, online meetings for group collaboration

by zhyder • 17 years ago

34 22 17 years ago

zhyder12• 17 years ago

There're still many rough edges but it's definitely time for HN feedback! Please check out the 2min tour and try out the service.

We realized that many folks who use Dabbleboard (whiteboard app, also launched on HN a yr ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=202798) use it in combination with Skype and -sometimes- desktop sharing services. So we decided to build the complete service for online meetings. Unlike WebEx et al which are more useful for 1->many presentations, the focus here is on _collaboration_ within small groups.

Would really appreciate any feedback.

pyroman• 17 years ago

It's good that you have a video showing the features, but it could use some more audio. The silent parts need a voiceover. It looks like there is enough stuff to talk about to fill up the whole time.

zhyder12• 17 years ago

Thanks! Yeah, it's a pretty poorly made video. There're also too many times where I'm confused what feature I want to show next and I just waste time in the video. I didn't edit the video because that would make our webcam streams look jarring.

Definitely intend to make a better one for the outside-HN launch. Will also need decent copy at that time.

bobbyi• 17 years ago

How is this different from dimdim?

zhyder12• 17 years ago

Dimdim, like WebEx, seems to be optimized for presentations. For instance, they only allow 1 or 2 people to share their webcams (I think they even pitch the 2 webcams as "2 people can present together...").

AlmostMeet is more for those intense collaborative discussions within a small group. So everyone's an equal participant, even with the webcam and desktop sharing. And then there's a whiteboard that's actually usable.

Because we use P2P, the voice chat should also be better. The caveat with P2P is that it can't scale to a large number of participants, which is okay, coz neither does our interface :).

tomsaffell3• 17 years ago

Looks nice, but then a screen-cast should - when do we get to play with it?

What technology are you using in the front end? I'm guessing Flash/Flex. Are you using FP10's P2P technology (Stratus?). What are you using for desktop sharing?

zhyder12• 17 years ago

You can use it now! Click the "Meet" link on the top. Signup isn't even needed, but helps if you want to build a library of files and drawings.

Yes, using FP10's P2P tech with Stratus, with a Java applet helping for desktop sharing.

tomsaffell3• 17 years ago

Ahhh - I see. I Had a play - looks nice. I'll test it for real next time a need a meeting. Few things I spotted:

1. The vertical height is a little over 100% (so I have a vertical scroll bar, but only for about 20px missing off the bottom)

2. The desktop sharing plug-in crashed my Flash Player. Chrome recovered, and the second time it seemed to work, but I didn't get any notification that it had worked.

3. I really like the freehand->geometric functionality.

4. I think the dialog box at the beginning Re. UDP is not a good user experience.

If you know anything about Adobe's plan for a commercial product to replace Stratus then I'd love to talk (or even if you just have some guesses, I'd love to hear them). Email: tango charlie sierra two two zero one at gmail

zhyder12• 17 years ago

Btw, the service IS live. Click "Meet" to give it a spin. The logs seem to show everyone's just checking out the video, which is unusual for HNers. No wonder there aren't any "<feature> is broken" comments.

davidalln• 17 years ago

Maybe it's just me, but it took me a good while to figure out what you guys do when looking at your homepage. I'd make sure to emphasize that you are a group remote conferencing application, even if you are still in private beta.

Your slogan "fully save time, money, and the earth" is great, but make sure that people know what you're doing! Based on that slogan, you could be almost any company doing almost anything.

So I'd simply work on the marketability of it. Otherwise, the application looks great!

zhyder12• 17 years ago

Thanks. You're right about the lack of marketing; definitely need to write a lot more copy.

I'm glad you liked the "fully save time, money & the earth" slogan. I'm still waiting for commenters here to say how much they hate the name of the service though; that's been all my friends' first reaction :).

thorax• 17 years ago

Yepyep, you did it. This is excellent.

I can't find anything that I wouldn't pay for-- this would help out our team if it turns out we can avoid firewall problems with the video streaming.

Seems like that part would be the most likely to cause issues, right?

I'll try it again when others on my team are awake to give it a shot.

Edit:

Ok, tried the voice and video-- a bit worse than other services. Kept cutting out the audio and video. Had to keep re-enabling it myself to get it to work again.

File uploads worked well there, as did images and drawings. Good stuff, but the video and audio aren't stable enough to use for a real conference. Usually it behaves fine with most services I use, but the others kept losing my video and audio in mid-sentence.

Desktop sharing seemed to work (or so it said) but it's really hard to tell what part of the screen it is showing as opposed to things like GoToMeeting.

zhyder12• 17 years ago

"I can't find anything that I wouldn't pay for". Had to read that a couple of times coz it sounded too good to be true :).

Most consumer firewalls won't block it, but most corporate ones will. Eventually we'll implement a server-based fall-back, but that would suck in a few ways.

Edit: That's really surprising that your voice and video are getting cut up. It usually either works very well or just doesn't (if it's a firewall issue). thorax, can you email zhyder AT dabbleboard DOT com?

As for the desktop sharing, we'll be releasing the feature to allow you to choose which rectangular region to share. But we probably won't have the ability to select specific applications to share though; limitation of a browser-based solution.

tomsaffell3• 17 years ago

>That's really surprising that your voice and video are getting cut up

It is strange. All the Flash P2P tests I have not had choppiness problems. Are you using the Speex Codec? What quality setting? I believe RTMPFP prioritizes low audio latency most highly, to prevent audio chop. Video doesn't get quite the same priority, being heavier, and less crucial in most scenarios. So video chop is a little less surprising.

quizbiz• 17 years ago

I think it would be wise to proudly feature a nice privacy policy.

paulbaumgart2• 17 years ago

Desktop sharing doesn't seem to work on my system (Thinkpad T60 w/ Ubuntu 8.10), and it makes my browser nearly unresponsive, even when it's the only Firefox tab. (It's a 1.83 GHz/core Centrino Duo w/ 3 GB RAM- what's your minimum system requirements?)

Also, I wasn't able to get other people to join me using the "invite" link- is there some sort of port forwarding I need to set up for this to work?

If everything worked, I'd definitely pay a reasonable monthly fee for it. So far, though, all I can do is scribble on the whiteboard.

(My contact info is linked in my profile.)

zhyder12• 17 years ago

Your HW should be more than enough. It could be an issue with the version of your Java plugin. Do you know if you have at least 1.5?

The invite link should just work; no other setup is needed. Can you email me the link?

paulbaumgart2• 17 years ago

I tried restarting Firefox, and desktop sharing works! I'm using the standard Java 1.6 plugin that comes with Ubuntu 8.10- anyway, glad it works now. We can continue this conversation via email.

Edit: Eh, it ended up making Firefox pretty unresponsive in the end, but I did see a screenshot of my desktop for a while, at least. :-)

zhyder12• 17 years ago

P.S. we're looking for a salesperson or general 'business guy'. http://www.dabbleboard.com/join has a somewhat generic description. Willing to consider arrangements ranging from market-level salary to cofounder levels of equity; ideally something in the middle.

Ask HN: Feedback on webapp, online meetings for group collaboration

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