5 ms·

Jamboard – The whiteboard reimagined for collaboration in the cloud

141 points by tempw 10y ago

Someone1234 10y ago
This is literally just a picture and a vague blurb. It is kind of unusual but in this specific case you may be better off with the Engadget article than the official site: https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/25/google-jamboard-digital-whiteboard/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/25/google-jamboard-digital-... Seems like it will cost "under" $6K. But since they're using $6K as their pinned price, I'm guessing over $5K.
- stevesearer 10y ago
  Here's the Google blog post detailing the product: https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/jamboard-whiteboard-reimagined-collaboration-cloud/ https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/jamboard-whiteboard...
  - sctb 10y ago
    Thanks, we've updated the link from https://gsuite.google.com/jamboard/ https://gsuite.google.com/jamboard/.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  Okay, so they're selling hardware here. It was hard to tell! I thought it might just be the overglorified collaborative whiteboard software, of which there is already much out there.
mmastrac 10y ago
If my old employer, SMART, hadn't been acquired by Foxconn, I imagine its stock would have plummeted on this news.
- simbas 10y ago
  Man, I use these SMART boards at work (teacher) and is it just me or the software sucks (especially the usb dongle with the software in it)
  - radiorental 10y ago
    the software sucks, hasn't been updated in years. Take a look at https://realtimeboard.com/ https://realtimeboard.com/ I don't know your workflow or requirements but it might suite. I'm not associated with them.
  - mmastrac 10y ago
    As someone who worked at SMART, I totally agree. I am pretty sure some of it was written in the mid 2000s and never updated. The company never cared about end-user experience until it was too late. They raked in the money when education budgets were high and every classroom could afford a SMART board and sat on their hands after they IPO'd. The people there are fantastic, but it just wasn't possible to steer the ship fast enough to kill the old culture.
  - jonathonf 10y ago
    Every "interactive whiteboard" (brand and design) I've ever used sucks. The best setup I've used so far is a standard whiteboard coupled with a projector (ideally with a second board to the side). It needs very regular cleaning to prevent a blurry display, but being able to write normally (being able to see what you're writing with zero lag) is a huge benefit. If you really need at-board interactivity (as opposed to keyboard+mouse at the PC, or wirelessly, or casting from a tablet, or...) then Epson do a projector with an IR "pen" that works with any old whiteboard.
pimterry 10y ago
This is one of the things where I think remote work can fall down: standing around a shared space to easily quickly scribble and share ideas. Video gets you close, and lots of tools have some kind of sharable space you can write on or draw on with a mouse, but none of them have ever been as effective as a whiteboard for me when you're trying to quickly explain a concept or structure. Actual product looks annoying though. It's a quite specific kind of team that wants to drop $5000+ per screen, and it's definitely not small fully remote startups (where doing that for everybody is both very expensive and super inconvenient), even though that's where this would be most awesome. Might try and have a go soon with just cheap graphics tablets and existing web tools though, or just normal android tablets. Almost the same experience, at a tiny fraction of the price.
basseq 10y ago
A 40-50" (diagonal) "whiteboard" is still very small. I have a 4'x10' whiteboard right behind me, and a 6'x4' to my immediate right, and I'm always running out of room.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 10y ago
  Being zoomable wouldn't help?
- jcomis 10y ago
  I'd imagine you can be more precise digitally. And hopefully can swipe around a larger canvas to make more room or something.
  - josephg 10y ago
    I picked up a wacom tablet + mischief[1] a couple years ago as a digital whiteboarding solution for classroom teaching. It supports arbitrary zooming and infinite panning - so you never have to delete anything, but can just keep moving around and 'finding' more fresh space to write in. I have a really hard time going back to normal whiteboards now given how limited they are. (And photos of the whiteboard after a meeting are really nowhere near as good as an editable source file you can pass around). Since moving back to engineering work I've started using it for talks, brainstorming and architecture reviews. Eg, this is what a solo few days of project planning & brainstorming looked like recently - https://josephg.com/mischief.png https://josephg.com/mischief.png . But in meetings it lacks multiplayer - only one person can hold the tablet at a time, and the interface is nowhere near as intuitive as a real whiteboard. The software is also kind of awful - it idles on 5% CPU usage for no apparent reason, and I've lost work on numerous occasions from it crashing without autosaving (!!). The mac version feels like a bad port of a windows program. The tool itself frustrates me enough that I'll probably end up writing a collaborative online version on top of sharejs, even if I'm the only person who uses it. (It'd be much easier to do now that pointer events[2] are being supported in more browsers. Safari developers - hate the API all you like, but we really need an interface for tablets somehow!) [1] https://www.madewithmischief.com/ https://www.madewithmischief.com/ [2] http://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer http://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer
honkhonkpants 10y ago
Does it come with a gallon of Windex?
vonklaus 10y ago
I can't be sure, but it seems like they are just going to release a big Wacom tablet and add real-time collaboration for the price of a 2013 SMART car. That isn't a fair comparison, as it is unlikely corporations will be comparing a fleet of used smart cars to collaboration workstations in their budget. WTF is the usecase for this? 10-11k for people to draw on the same canvas in different locations? I think it is actually quite cool, but the pricepoint is absurd and it is an open question how the real-time sync will work between >1 device. I am half serious when I say that this product seems to be exclusively marketed at apple engineers & designers to lazy to walk up the stairs to collaborate with each other.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  A big issue too is... how long will this be supported? When you migrate away from Google Apps, what is your $6,000 touchscreen good for? Is it open?
- ohstopitu 10y ago
  so you are saying there's a market for a 4k 55" collaborative device that recognizes pen, multi-touch, has a camera and hopefully software that does not suck and integrates with Hangouts / Skype for Business at a lower pricepoint? Seriously though...I have yet to see the Surface Hub used anywhere apart from MS offices.
  - extra88 10y ago
    I've seen the Surface Hub's predecessor, Perceptive Pixel, at Harvard once. I think that one was purchased. CS50 also has the 80" model that was "loaned" by Microsoft. I wonder if the "under $6,000" price for the Jamboard includes the wheeled stand. The 55" Hub's rolling stand alone is ~$2,350.
  - Spivak 10y ago
    I think his point is that there is a market for business collaboration tools since remote teams are becoming more common, but for all its technical merit, a large featureful interactive whiteboard doesn't really solve the problem -- and it's a very expensive way to not solve a problem.
smitty1110 10y ago
This is basically a Surface Hub, except it's later to market. Whatever, it's not like my remote team will ever buy either of them.
- chrismorgan 10y ago
  And cheaper (“under $6,000” vs. $8,999). Might cause the Surface Hub’s price to go down if we’re lucky.
radiorental 10y ago
We've been researching solutions in this space for quite a while. We have 6x 80" smartboards and have tried everything from Lync to Realtimeboard. While some solutions work better than others, no one has solved a fundamental problem... When you try to collaborate in real time with a remote person - all the human communication cues are lost. Collaboration is a dynamic and fluid process. We subconsciously read each other to gauge the reaction to a proposal, we interject and riff off of others. We try to pull introverts into the conversation and tame the extroverts. All of this is practically impossible when a colleague is elsewhere on the network.
- widowlark 10y ago
  Have you looked at The Surface Hub?
  - radiorental 10y ago
    Other than tighter integration with skype for business, how does it solve some of the issues I laid out above? I don't think our IT team got these specific devices in to test. The 20K for the 80" is a dealbreaker compared to the smartboards. Curious if there's something special about them compared to a smartboard on a win10 box?
    - extra88 10y ago
      The Surface Hub is the successor to Perceptive Pixel [0] which has some very smart people working on what makes multitouch work. Hardware-wise it's a capacitive screen vs. almost all other big touchable screens that use other technologies that are inferior. It will do nothing to address your concerns about the absence of body language, gaze direction, facial expressions, etc. It's a trade-off, you give up some of the bandwidth of meeting face-to-face for the benefit of including people not physically present (or expense of bringing remote people local). The technology used to bring in remote people can also add value by capturing/saving work more automatically and seamlessly than, say, someone stepping back and snapping a photo of a whiteboard. Some of the bandwidth loss can be compensated for by examining your processes, identifying what you value, and formalizing the valued communication in another form. Often the other form is saying things out loud; instead of looking for head nods, you ask people to say "yes" or "no." The technology can aid in this by providing other channels like up and down votes or "question" votes in place of confused looks (that are all to easy to overlook when you're in person anyway). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptive_Pixel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptive_Pixel
nmolo 10y ago
Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXwV5SlKLAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXwV5SlKLAE
stevesearer 10y ago
One of the similar products I've recently seen demonstrated recently is Bluescape from Haworth. It isn't really mobile, but it can also be up to 210": https://www.bluescape.com/ https://www.bluescape.com/ or http://haworth.com/products/technology/teamwork/bluescape http://haworth.com/products/technology/teamwork/bluescape Also of course, the Microsoft Surface Hub: http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-surface-hub/en-us/product-specs http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-surface-hub/en-us/product... If you're looking for a great portable markerboard, Watson's Etch is great: http://www.watsonfurniture.com/products/etch-markerboards http://www.watsonfurniture.com/products/etch-markerboards
PanosJee 10y ago
A product Google will kill in a few months
dizzydot 10y ago
limnu.com is a beautiful web-based solution. Highly recommend.
- pmontra 10y ago
  This is so much better. I don't understand why they have to sell the hw whiteboard when everybody could see everything on their tablets and laptops, plus the screen every meeting room already has. Especially since they target remote collaboration. Is there any app like limnu but without the paid service behind and save to any cloud or local storage?
  - sumo 10y ago
    Agreed. Collusion https://collusionapp.com https://collusionapp.com has free use (not trial), you can also download your work as a PDF/Image if you like without restriction.
askvictor 10y ago
I hope there is a software-only option, or a dongle option for those who already have an investment in interactive panels/projectors
jasonwilk 10y ago
Nothin wrong with a plain old WriteyBoard. Shameless plug, sorry guys. http://writeyboards.com/ http://writeyboards.com/
smoyer 10y ago
We built collaborative whiteboards into our distance learning classrooms in 1997 or 1998. Smartboards were around for several years before we started and we wrote custom drivers to capture the cursor position and send the pointer information to the remote sites.
sandman454 10y ago
I have been very interested in this seemingly similar software, and the projection hardware is much more conducive to this scenario. http://www.nureva.com/span-system http://www.nureva.com/span-system
sidcool 10y ago
This looks amazing
nav2u 10y ago
We run a startup and have been working on the remote-teamwork problem for a while now. Having dabbled with hardware and partnering with hardware vendors, mainly because we believe hardware is definitely a piece of the puzzle but, to frame the problem around the device first, is the pitfall that SMART/MS SurfaceHub have all fallen into. As others have pointed out, sinking thousands of dollars into a solution that will soon be replaced due to advancements in display technology, hardly seems worth it, especially for small to medium businesses. We designed our software so that anyone can pick it up and try it for free with their team, without worrying about needing new or fancy hardware. Ultimately Collaboration includes all of your devices, including your big touch screens, pc's, smaller devices and whatever else that may turn up in the future (VR?). Google's offering for drawing has always been lacklustre and its a shame there is nothing we can try and use from this announcement today. For those wondering, my startup is called Collusion (collusionapp.com).

141 points by tempw 10y ago

This is literally just a picture and a vague blurb. It is kind of unusual but in this specific case you may be better off with the Engadget article than the official site: https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/25/google-jamboard-digital-whiteboard/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/25/google-jamboard-digital-... Seems like it will cost "under" $6K. But since they're using $6K as their pinned price, I'm guessing over $5K.

stevesearer 10y ago
Here's the Google blog post detailing the product: https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/jamboard-whiteboard-reimagined-collaboration-cloud/ https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/jamboard-whiteboard...
- sctb 10y ago
  Thanks, we've updated the link from https://gsuite.google.com/jamboard/ https://gsuite.google.com/jamboard/.
ocdtrekkie 10y ago
Okay, so they're selling hardware here. It was hard to tell! I thought it might just be the overglorified collaborative whiteboard software, of which there is already much out there.

mmastrac 10y ago

If my old employer, SMART, hadn't been acquired by Foxconn, I imagine its stock would have plummeted on this news.

simbas 10y ago
Man, I use these SMART boards at work (teacher) and is it just me or the software sucks (especially the usb dongle with the software in it)
- radiorental 10y ago
  the software sucks, hasn't been updated in years. Take a look at https://realtimeboard.com/ https://realtimeboard.com/ I don't know your workflow or requirements but it might suite. I'm not associated with them.
- mmastrac 10y ago
  As someone who worked at SMART, I totally agree. I am pretty sure some of it was written in the mid 2000s and never updated. The company never cared about end-user experience until it was too late. They raked in the money when education budgets were high and every classroom could afford a SMART board and sat on their hands after they IPO'd. The people there are fantastic, but it just wasn't possible to steer the ship fast enough to kill the old culture.
- jonathonf 10y ago
  Every "interactive whiteboard" (brand and design) I've ever used sucks. The best setup I've used so far is a standard whiteboard coupled with a projector (ideally with a second board to the side). It needs very regular cleaning to prevent a blurry display, but being able to write normally (being able to see what you're writing with zero lag) is a huge benefit. If you really need at-board interactivity (as opposed to keyboard+mouse at the PC, or wirelessly, or casting from a tablet, or...) then Epson do a projector with an IR "pen" that works with any old whiteboard.

pimterry 10y ago

This is one of the things where I think remote work can fall down: standing around a shared space to easily quickly scribble and share ideas. Video gets you close, and lots of tools have some kind of sharable space you can write on or draw on with a mouse, but none of them have ever been as effective as a whiteboard for me when you're trying to quickly explain a concept or structure. Actual product looks annoying though. It's a quite specific kind of team that wants to drop $5000+ per screen, and it's definitely not small fully remote startups (where doing that for everybody is both very expensive and super inconvenient), even though that's where this would be most awesome. Might try and have a go soon with just cheap graphics tablets and existing web tools though, or just normal android tablets. Almost the same experience, at a tiny fraction of the price.

basseq 10y ago

A 40-50" (diagonal) "whiteboard" is still very small. I have a 4'x10' whiteboard right behind me, and a 6'x4' to my immediate right, and I'm always running out of room.

SparkyMcUnicorn 10y ago
Being zoomable wouldn't help?
jcomis 10y ago
I'd imagine you can be more precise digitally. And hopefully can swipe around a larger canvas to make more room or something.
- josephg 10y ago
  I picked up a wacom tablet + mischief[1] a couple years ago as a digital whiteboarding solution for classroom teaching. It supports arbitrary zooming and infinite panning - so you never have to delete anything, but can just keep moving around and 'finding' more fresh space to write in. I have a really hard time going back to normal whiteboards now given how limited they are. (And photos of the whiteboard after a meeting are really nowhere near as good as an editable source file you can pass around). Since moving back to engineering work I've started using it for talks, brainstorming and architecture reviews. Eg, this is what a solo few days of project planning & brainstorming looked like recently - https://josephg.com/mischief.png https://josephg.com/mischief.png . But in meetings it lacks multiplayer - only one person can hold the tablet at a time, and the interface is nowhere near as intuitive as a real whiteboard. The software is also kind of awful - it idles on 5% CPU usage for no apparent reason, and I've lost work on numerous occasions from it crashing without autosaving (!!). The mac version feels like a bad port of a windows program. The tool itself frustrates me enough that I'll probably end up writing a collaborative online version on top of sharejs, even if I'm the only person who uses it. (It'd be much easier to do now that pointer events[2] are being supported in more browsers. Safari developers - hate the API all you like, but we really need an interface for tablets somehow!) [1] https://www.madewithmischief.com/ https://www.madewithmischief.com/ [2] http://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer http://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer

honkhonkpants 10y ago

Does it come with a gallon of Windex?

vonklaus 10y ago

I can't be sure, but it seems like they are just going to release a big Wacom tablet and add real-time collaboration for the price of a 2013 SMART car. That isn't a fair comparison, as it is unlikely corporations will be comparing a fleet of used smart cars to collaboration workstations in their budget. WTF is the usecase for this? 10-11k for people to draw on the same canvas in different locations? I think it is actually quite cool, but the pricepoint is absurd and it is an open question how the real-time sync will work between >1 device. I am half serious when I say that this product seems to be exclusively marketed at apple engineers & designers to lazy to walk up the stairs to collaborate with each other.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
A big issue too is... how long will this be supported? When you migrate away from Google Apps, what is your $6,000 touchscreen good for? Is it open?
ohstopitu 10y ago
so you are saying there's a market for a 4k 55" collaborative device that recognizes pen, multi-touch, has a camera and hopefully software that does not suck and integrates with Hangouts / Skype for Business at a lower pricepoint? Seriously though...I have yet to see the Surface Hub used anywhere apart from MS offices.
- extra88 10y ago
  I've seen the Surface Hub's predecessor, Perceptive Pixel, at Harvard once. I think that one was purchased. CS50 also has the 80" model that was "loaned" by Microsoft. I wonder if the "under $6,000" price for the Jamboard includes the wheeled stand. The 55" Hub's rolling stand alone is ~$2,350.
- Spivak 10y ago
  I think his point is that there is a market for business collaboration tools since remote teams are becoming more common, but for all its technical merit, a large featureful interactive whiteboard doesn't really solve the problem -- and it's a very expensive way to not solve a problem.

smitty1110 10y ago

This is basically a Surface Hub, except it's later to market. Whatever, it's not like my remote team will ever buy either of them.

chrismorgan 10y ago
And cheaper (“under $6,000” vs. $8,999). Might cause the Surface Hub’s price to go down if we’re lucky.

radiorental 10y ago

We've been researching solutions in this space for quite a while. We have 6x 80" smartboards and have tried everything from Lync to Realtimeboard. While some solutions work better than others, no one has solved a fundamental problem... When you try to collaborate in real time with a remote person - all the human communication cues are lost. Collaboration is a dynamic and fluid process. We subconsciously read each other to gauge the reaction to a proposal, we interject and riff off of others. We try to pull introverts into the conversation and tame the extroverts. All of this is practically impossible when a colleague is elsewhere on the network.

widowlark 10y ago
Have you looked at The Surface Hub?
- radiorental 10y ago
  Other than tighter integration with skype for business, how does it solve some of the issues I laid out above? I don't think our IT team got these specific devices in to test. The 20K for the 80" is a dealbreaker compared to the smartboards. Curious if there's something special about them compared to a smartboard on a win10 box?
  - extra88 10y ago
    The Surface Hub is the successor to Perceptive Pixel [0] which has some very smart people working on what makes multitouch work. Hardware-wise it's a capacitive screen vs. almost all other big touchable screens that use other technologies that are inferior. It will do nothing to address your concerns about the absence of body language, gaze direction, facial expressions, etc. It's a trade-off, you give up some of the bandwidth of meeting face-to-face for the benefit of including people not physically present (or expense of bringing remote people local). The technology used to bring in remote people can also add value by capturing/saving work more automatically and seamlessly than, say, someone stepping back and snapping a photo of a whiteboard. Some of the bandwidth loss can be compensated for by examining your processes, identifying what you value, and formalizing the valued communication in another form. Often the other form is saying things out loud; instead of looking for head nods, you ask people to say "yes" or "no." The technology can aid in this by providing other channels like up and down votes or "question" votes in place of confused looks (that are all to easy to overlook when you're in person anyway). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptive_Pixel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptive_Pixel

nmolo 10y ago

Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXwV5SlKLAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXwV5SlKLAE

stevesearer 10y ago

One of the similar products I've recently seen demonstrated recently is Bluescape from Haworth. It isn't really mobile, but it can also be up to 210": https://www.bluescape.com/ https://www.bluescape.com/ or http://haworth.com/products/technology/teamwork/bluescape http://haworth.com/products/technology/teamwork/bluescape Also of course, the Microsoft Surface Hub: http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-surface-hub/en-us/product-specs http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-surface-hub/en-us/product... If you're looking for a great portable markerboard, Watson's Etch is great: http://www.watsonfurniture.com/products/etch-markerboards http://www.watsonfurniture.com/products/etch-markerboards

PanosJee 10y ago

A product Google will kill in a few months

dizzydot 10y ago

limnu.com is a beautiful web-based solution. Highly recommend.

pmontra 10y ago
This is so much better. I don't understand why they have to sell the hw whiteboard when everybody could see everything on their tablets and laptops, plus the screen every meeting room already has. Especially since they target remote collaboration. Is there any app like limnu but without the paid service behind and save to any cloud or local storage?
- sumo 10y ago
  Agreed. Collusion https://collusionapp.com https://collusionapp.com has free use (not trial), you can also download your work as a PDF/Image if you like without restriction.

askvictor 10y ago

I hope there is a software-only option, or a dongle option for those who already have an investment in interactive panels/projectors

jasonwilk 10y ago

Nothin wrong with a plain old WriteyBoard. Shameless plug, sorry guys. http://writeyboards.com/ http://writeyboards.com/

smoyer 10y ago

We built collaborative whiteboards into our distance learning classrooms in 1997 or 1998. Smartboards were around for several years before we started and we wrote custom drivers to capture the cursor position and send the pointer information to the remote sites.

sandman454 10y ago

I have been very interested in this seemingly similar software, and the projection hardware is much more conducive to this scenario. http://www.nureva.com/span-system http://www.nureva.com/span-system

sidcool 10y ago

This looks amazing

nav2u 10y ago

We run a startup and have been working on the remote-teamwork problem for a while now. Having dabbled with hardware and partnering with hardware vendors, mainly because we believe hardware is definitely a piece of the puzzle but, to frame the problem around the device first, is the pitfall that SMART/MS SurfaceHub have all fallen into. As others have pointed out, sinking thousands of dollars into a solution that will soon be replaced due to advancements in display technology, hardly seems worth it, especially for small to medium businesses. We designed our software so that anyone can pick it up and try it for free with their team, without worrying about needing new or fancy hardware. Ultimately Collaboration includes all of your devices, including your big touch screens, pc's, smaller devices and whatever else that may turn up in the future (VR?). Google's offering for drawing has always been lacklustre and its a shame there is nothing we can try and use from this announcement today. For those wondering, my startup is called Collusion (collusionapp.com).