Sqwiggle: Someone is watching you

http://www.chriskranky.com/sqwiggle-someone-is-watching-you/

by ericbieller • 13 years ago

17 22 13 years ago

chriskranky.com

MWil• 13 years ago

wouldn't a simple motion-detected: yes flag or motionLastDetected:XX:XX:XX be less invasive?

pdenya• 13 years ago

As the article states, it's helpful for others to see whether or not you're on a call or eating or whatever else.

ericbieller3• 13 years ago

There's also a personal element. It's nice to see the faces of the people you work with throughout the day. Certainly has helped to create a tighter social bond on our team.

seivan2• 13 years ago

This is slightly off topic - I get the impression Sqwiggle isn't "doge-fooding". Could be wrong, but that's the impression. I'm hoping to be wrong though.

ericbieller3• 13 years ago

Hmm what gave you this impression? In fact we've been using Sqwiggle daily since our very first prorotype :) Tbh I don't think we would get half as much done without it, we certainly wouldn't be as connected given that we're a distributed team.

seivan2• 13 years ago

Mostly because you're stating SF as a location for dev roles :) - I guess I was wrong. Thanks for clearing that up. Interesting...

tommoor3• 13 years ago

Unfortunately on Angellist it always shows the companies location, all of our positions are remote-only :)

bradleydwyer4• 13 years ago

I used Sqwiggle for a few months but a software update sometime late last year made it something I refused to use.

The changes meant that:

1. You can prevent somebody initiating a video call by setting your status to "busy".

2. The busy flag is removed when you are the only person in the chat room.

3. The camera indicator is disabled when nobody else is in the chat room.

4. You don't accept incoming video chats, they happen automatically.

Given that I mostly used Sqwiggle in a browser tab it was very easy for me to lose track of that fact it was running. It's one of many tabs and there is no indicator my camera is active if I'm alone. I typically have headphones in too but don't always wear them, so there is often no audio cue that a chat just initiated.

This is actually something that happened. I had an active call for 3.5 minutes that I was completely unaware of with video and audio streaming to the remote caller without my knowledge, after I had set the busy flag.

I work at home, and the ability for somebody to have a live audio/video stream into my house without my permission is unsettling. Especially as the only protection mechanism I have for that is to remember to terminate the application or close that browser tab every time I walk away from the computer or want to prevent video/audio sessions.

It's been a couple of months now since I last used Sqwiggle, so perhaps the clearing of the busy flag has reverted back to earlier behaviour, but ultimately I think unless I can change my profile to prevent automatic connection of video calls I'd never be comfortable with it.

ericbieller3• 13 years ago

Hey there, Eric here from Sqwiggle. Thanks for the detailed comment! Seems like you may have encountered a bug with busy mode. If you have it enabled, no one should be able to initiate a conversation with you. They can, however, "ping" you, which will allow you to choose to accept the connection. But it's possible I mis-understood what the exact issue was, if so, feel free to clarify :)

We definitely resonate with the general privacy concerns and are working on a mode which will allow you to turn the camera off, which we'll have completed very soon.

If you end up giving it another try, please let me know if you run into any issues or have any further feedback. Thanks!

bradleydwyer4• 13 years ago

Hi Eric,

I meant to drop you guys a message a while back, but just never found a moment to do it.

There was a redesign a few months ago, notably this was when the camera became inactive if you were alone in the chat room. The issue with the busy state is, prior to this software release/version the busy flag was never removed unless you removed it or initiated a chat (after you accept the ping).

After the redesign, the busy flag was removed when any of the following conditions occurred:

1. You manually removed the busy flag.

2. A video chat is initiated (you are pinged and accept the call)

3. You became the only person in a chat room.

As I mentioned, it's been about 2 months since I last used Sqwiggle, so I'm not sure if the above is still true.

overgard• 13 years ago

There's nothing weird about finding a camera in your home that you only have partial control of unsettling. If you think YOU get to decide when my webcam is active, then I am going to refuse to install your dumb software.

izolate• 13 years ago

My team and I tried to use Sqwiggle but kept running into problems with the video or audio track not loading. But these bugs can be ironed out.

I have one major gripe with the concept of capturing a photo on an interval. What if it catches me picking my nose? That could be embarrassing. Not picking my nose is not a solution. I am a primate with fingers and I like to pick my nose.

dudeguy• 13 years ago

An elegant solution might be a subtle visual or audio cue right before a picture is taken. Say cheese!

bradleydwyer4• 13 years ago

I'd say it caught every member of our team picking their nose at least once, obviously with a permanent record via screenshot for posterity ;-)

elwell• 13 years ago

Gesture recognition adds up to two 10 second delays per interval if recognized action belongs to set of embarrassing actions?

RaphiePS• 13 years ago

Would you pick your nose at the office?

arcameron• 13 years ago

If you're interested in this, you might also try https://echoplex.us

X4• 13 years ago

cool. thx for the link! Demo: https://chat.echoplex.us/

spectre256• 13 years ago

Both the author of this post and the commenters here are correct for taking note of the privacy implications of Sqwiggle, but to completely dismiss the entire product seems to be both silly, and missing the point.

Proclaiming "I won't use Sqwiggle because then people could see me" is exactly the same as saying "I won't work at my desk because people can see me". Both traditional offices and Sqwiggle allow one to achieve privacy if they'd like. For an office, you go into a conference room or something similar. To achieve the same effect with Sqwiggle, you simply close the program or browser tab.

Sqwiggle's stated goal is to replicate the ease of determining colocated team members' status/activity when you are not colocated. No one is insisting you run it 24/7, just like no one insists you live your life at your desk at work.

A very strange and dismissive article overall. The paragraph starting with "I don’t think Sqwiggle will be around long though" seemed especially cynical.

bradleydwyer4• 13 years ago

I read the article as positive and the "won't be around long" comment seemed more directed at an acquisition rather than a failure due to lack of demand.

I don't really see my comments as silly. I work for a startup and Sqwiggle was used exclusively while I was in my home. Apart from completely terminating the application/tab I had no way to prevent a live video and audio stream that happened to be able to look into my living room and pick up audio from anywhere in my house (it's a small house).

It wasn't 24/7 but the team did have a strong insistence that it be running while working and that is somewhere between 12 and 16 hours a day, 6 days a week.

That's not much private time in my home for me or the rest of my family. I liked the product and a few tweaks would probably make it acceptable to use.

Fix the busy flag clearing and allow my profile to disable auto video call connection. The other strategy that might solve it while keeping the spirit of instant chat would be to default to the busy state and have a timed non-busy state. e.g.:

/Here 3H

Which disables the busy state for 3 hours.

Sqwiggle: Someone is watching you

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