Show HN: Lapface – live community of people working on laptops

by jiggity • 11 years ago

29 12 11 years ago

jiggity4• 11 years ago

Lapface was my weekend hack designed to give the feeling of working with other people. It takes a low resolution webcam shot every 3 seconds of you working. I made the image with slow fps to relieve you of the pressure that usually comes with broadcasting

It feels nice to have people working alongside you. I've had it described as a virtual coffeeshop where you see people in the ambient background

Let me know what you think!

honest_joe• 11 years ago

Can you comment on technologies it uses ?

jiggity4• 11 years ago

It uses memcache for everything. It exports out state data to a static file on a cdn

This was an experiment in seeing how far I could get without using a traditional database

fizzbatter2• 11 years ago

Interesting project!

My first thought is that i am oddly intrigued - enough to try this. Also, someone made the comment of showing people nearby - i like this idea quite a bit. Again, no idea why.

I'm mildly hesitant to broadcast "to the world", as i'm not sure i have a desire for that. I'd love to broadcast with my coworkers / peers of some sort. It would be interesting to find methods to group users. (though, i imagine that's hard to do atm, given the small userbase)

Small note, should the "discuss on hacker news" link point to here? Because currently it points to http://news.ycombinator.com/newest

jiggity4• 11 years ago

You're right, having a more closed group with people you personally know would be interesting. There's something special about knowing what people you care about are doing at the moment

Made the fix for the link! Let me know if you run across other issues

tommoor• 11 years ago

You should try Sqwiggle for this, pretty much what it's designed for :) https://www.sqwiggle.com

fizzbatter2• 11 years ago

There's something i like more about lapface, though. I'm not saying it's logical, just explaining my apparent preference.

I think it has to do with the low resolution cameras, and the slower update time.

I feel less of a sense of pressure.. less of a sense of being "on". Like, in a coffee shop i'm there, but i also don't expect people to be staring at me. With a good webcam stream, i have a sense of people staring (even if they're not)[1].

Lapface seems to be designed to inhibit this tension. Atleast, it does for me. Granted, i still have it, but not as bad. I'm excited to try it later today! _(who knows, maybe i'll have the same tension and end up hating it, haha)_

[1]: My coworkers and i sync up multiple times a week as a large group via audio, and some webcams. Sometimes i use my webcam, sometimes not - but when i do, i have that sense of being tense.

irremediable• 11 years ago

Nice idea! I like the no-database approach, too... I need to look into memcached.

m12k• 11 years ago

A system much like this was used as a plot device in a Danish crime novel written in 2000. In the book ("Mailstorm") the protagonist witnesses what appears to be a murder on the 'random webcam feed as a screensaver'-network. Later he realizes the internet connection was down at the time, so it must have been running on LAN...

arsenide2• 11 years ago

I am really enjoying this, and will probably be broadcasting here the rest of the day -- if not longer. However, and this may be solely my personal feeling, I wish there was some sort of IRC-style chat instead of the submission/comment system on the right side, as it is now.

jiggity4• 11 years ago

That's interesting! Is it the feeling of a more fluid conversational flow?

arsenide2• 11 years ago

Yes, exactly! It's difficult for me to motivate myself to post a topic for discussion, because I really don't want it to be a discussion topic. I just want the ability to casually throw some thoughts out there, like I may do if I wanted to mention something to someone in a coffeeshop.

Show HN: Lapface – live community of people working on laptops

Related Stories