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Show HN: Remotehour – Allows people to talk to you anytime you’re available
- jfries 7y agoNot sure if this app supports it or not, but it would be very useful with a 5 second warning before being thrown into a video call. I could see all kinds of embarrassing moments happening otherwise.
- omk 7y agoIt would be better to not have video running by default. People can drop in to talk over audio and request to switch over audio if necessary. I honestly prefer the push to talk approach for audio too. It is always better to have explicit user consent at every audio and/or video session. Accidents happen.
- shyamady 7y agoExactly, I'll try to make it more correct.
- sturza 7y agoJust tried it and got in the room with the founder. Great xp. Keep up the good work.
- shyamady 7y agoThank you for talking :) See you soon.
- petepete 7y agoThe gif under 'Talk Seamlessly' made me laugh :) Looks great, I aim to give it a try.
- shyamady 7y agoHaha, that's a real use case!
- NetOpWibby 7y agoWhy is there only a login for Google?
- s3nnyy 7y agosometimes it shows "online NaN seconds ago" rest very nice. good idea!
- shyamady 7y agoOh, sorry. I'll try to see it!
- niutech 7y agoThere is Jitsi (https://jitsi.org https://jitsi.org and https://meet.jit.si https://meet.jit.si) which does not need any login - this is really seamless.
- darkwater 7y agoJitsi shows a warning when using Firefox and recommends using Chrome or Chromium. Why? No, thanks.
- mgoetzke 7y agoWe setup a number of such servers ourselves and don't have any issues with Firefox. The public site at https://meet.jit.si/ https://meet.jit.si/ also does not show any issues like that right now.
- tmikaeld 7y agoIt doesn't happen any more, the firefox WebRTC API's are more mature now - either that, or you're using an older Firefox, which you really shouldn't.
- Vinnl 7y agoI'm using v74 and still get that warning. That said, it's working fine, and is one of the only ones to actually work in Firefox at that.
- 7y ago
- Yizahi 7y ago10x more seamless. Step 1 - register Google account... I suppose contact discovery is also through Google?
- shyamady 7y agoI'll try to add multiple authentications soon. Thanks!
- ihattendorf 7y agoHow about no authentication (guest mode)? That seems even more seamless.
- shyamady 7y agoA good idea! Thanks :)
- amitport 7y agoBTW about the "vs Zoom" part - Zoom does have a personal room url and a configuration option to open meeting on entry
- shyamady 7y agoHmm. Zoom is useful, I love it. This time, I wanna solve a problem that my clients want to see if I can call or not right now.
- randunel 7y agoWhen using linux, everything is "more seamless" than Zoom. This company hates linux users, everything is broken and requires root user to even start.
- shyamady 7y agoHmm, I see. I'm not a Linux user but I'll try to see it!
- daffy 7y agoPlease elaborate.
- dpacmittal 7y agoZoom works fine for me on KDE neon. No issues at all when running as a normal user.
- xioxox 7y agoZoom on linux isn't too bad. Unlike other companies, they provide a linux client. It has all the essential features in it (I haven't spotted anything missing). In addition, it doesn't depend on some ancient java stack. Yes, you have to install the package as root, but I don't see a lot of hate from zoom.
- palebluedot 7y agoThat is odd, one of the reasons I really like zoom is how well it works under Linux. It seems to "just work", and the Linux client doesn't feel like an after-thought. FWIW, running Fedora 31 with KDE/Plasma. I really like not having a browser-based video conferencing app, but a Linux native one.
- dugmartin 7y agoIt’s been working great for me for the last year and a half or so on my stock Dell XPS 15 with Ubuntu.
- camone 7y agoWe use Zoom and it's great for ad-hoc video calls or screen sharing and commenting. But last week we were wondering what would be a good remote alternative to sitting around at our desks and asking a quick question to the room. You know what works really well? Teamspeak. I hadn't used teamspeak in ages, but the simple fact that you can set a global push-to-talk button makes it perfect. Ask a quick question to someone in the room, they answer, if it becomes an actual convo you switch to a zoom call to not bother anyone else.
- moises_silva 7y agoDiscord is also good for that and seems to be taken over teamspeak in some teams I work with. I can't tell really if it's better though since I never used teamspeak.
- chairmanwow1 7y agoI hate the title. “10x”? How is this 10x more seamless? It is push to talk video...many alternatives exist.
- lloeki 7y ago> Sign on with Google Game over. Zoom requires no account to join a meeting and I just learned a couple of days ago it even works in the browser (toggle in the account settings of the one starting the meeting) I even plugged a Logitech c920 webcam in my Xbox One and did a meeting this way using Edge. Sadly the audio API seems unsupported in that Edge so I had to join the audio through another means. > VS Zoom > Don't have to fix a schedule. Remotehour enables you to connect when you're online on the app. Give someone your fixed Personal ID and they can call you anytime.
- shyamady 7y agoThank you so much for your feedback :)
- lloeki 7y agoYou’re welcome. You could mandate the "meeting creator" to have an account, then have a (constant or ephemeral) ID/password that people can use to join without an account. Also, Zoom IDs being digits has the advantage that they’re super easy to communicate to attendees and don’t expose your account/email/whatever.
- mhensley 7y agoZoom in the browser is limited to 360p unfortunately :/
- lloeki 7y agoDidn't look like so in my testing, it looked like at least 720p.
- Vinnl 7y ago> it even works in the browser Only in Chrome, unfortunately, and it's severely limited at that. The most limiting factor is that you can only see one other participant at a time. Additionally, Zoom's past attempt to prevent you from uninstalling part of their software is extra reason to only use the Chrome version, if any: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20407233 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20407233
- pistoriusp 7y agoPeople use Zoom because it's really reliable, not because it's "seamless." I've been in the middle of nowhere in South Africa and could use a 3G connection on my phone to speak to people in Germany and the United States at the same time and it was reliable and useable.
- shyamady 7y agoThank you for your feedback. Yeah, Zoom is cool.
- mmvs 7y agoI fully agree with this. Zoom has done a huge amount of work optimizing its transfer protocols to make it that reliable. Is it possible to offer same reliability using WebRTC in a browser when 50 participants are connected? I am not sure. Even https://whereby.com/ https://whereby.com/ offers only up to 12 people on their highest plan. I think videoconferencing software like Remotehour serves a different purpose - seamlessly jump to a videocall without any software required to install until zoom releases a web client.
- beshrkayali 7y agoNot that I like Zoom, but how's this '10x more seamless than Zoom' calculated?
- jimueller 7y agoHey, I like the idea of trying to make remote more seamless, it's certainly a need. Looks like nice work so far. I do agree with some of the other comments that some folks would like a "knock" type feature to give a warning, clearly you get the concern from your gif. Keep it up and personally I think it's great to see more options for this.
- shyamady 7y agoThank you so much for your feedback. "knock" type sounds really interesting. I'll try to add this feature soon :)
- michaelmior 7y agoIn person, I have an open door policy with my students. If my door is open, it generally means I'm available to talk with them. Since all of our instruction has moved online, I'm adopting a virtual open door policy. I have a camera pointed at my door. If that door is open, students know I am there and if they announce themselves, I "let them in" by turning the camera around. When I'm in a meeting, I mute the audio and close the door so they know I'm not currently available. To be determined how effective this will be.
- shyamady 7y agoThank you for your comment :) Hope it helps for your use case.
- ivanhoe 7y agoFrankly I'd be really worried about forgetting to mute the stream.
- michaelmior 7y agoI am concerned about that as well. I may switch to mute by default as soon as I connect and whenever I'm done talking to someone. I've been using Google Meet and I wish there was a way to persistently show the muted state. Fortunately, there's a ding when someone enters so even if I've forgotten to mute, I'll likely notice if someone starts listening.
- edoceo 7y agoI use a room with my team that auto-mutes everyone on a timer, so you have to un-mute explicitly to talk. So we can leave the audio on all the time. Also, one can use an external mic, w/physical switch and lamp indicator. Auto-mute has saved me many times tho.
- shyamady 7y agoNo worry. You can set up a room default-mute-off on the setting on the app :)
- Angelwings93 7y ago> Sign in with Google Pass. I hope others find it useful, though
- shyamady 7y agoHmm. Okay, I'm building other authentication now.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- adv0r 7y agohow is it better than whereby? (ex appear.in)
- shyamady 7y agoThe appear.in is for a meeting, this app is for coworking. You can show your status like online, offline, etc...
- potatopolis 7y agoI'm so sorry that everyone's bleating about a bit of text in the header text rather than the actual product you've created. Sometimes HN is all about finding any hole to nitpick over.
- gregsadetsky 7y agoI'm not affiliated, just someone who recently started using it daily, but another "always on" video conference alternative is https://tandem.chat/ https://tandem.chat/ . It integrates well with Slack, and keeping it open while working with colleagues feels very natural. It's the closest I've seen to recreate a coworking environment -- we even have a #lunch channel where we "eat together" at noon (that was a bit depressing to write... we're doing what we can to keep up the illusion of normalcy).
- jujodi 7y agoBased on the comments, you can tell that trying to pit yourself against zoom is not going to work. Zoom users are loyal for a reason. You need to be clear if you solve a different problem.
- wilshiredetroit 7y agoI just tried this.. and it worked amazingly well. It was smooth and seemless
- shyamady 7y agoI've added a multiple authentication :)