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Show HN: Awesometalk – Free video calling without the hassle

40 points by brendanib 13y ago

brendanib 13y ago
Hey, I'm one of the co-founders of Awesometalk. We started working on this 2 weeks ago and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.
- abengoam 13y ago
  Hey there, I just tried it and my experience was not very satisfactory. I imagine you are interested on the feedback so there it goes: video quality was low (super choppy, video was getting frozen at several points), voice quality was low (I could understand about 50% of what was said) and when a third person tried to join it got a message "This call is full right now" (which I don't know if it's a bug or by design - it's not clear if this is just a 1-to-1 service). Anyways, the concept is very cool and I hope you get to make it work. A reliable service like this would remove a lot of my communication headaches.
  - brendanib 13y ago
    Thanks for the feedback, sorry your first call didn't go well. When the connection is poor, as it sounds like it was in this case, would you be okay if we fell back to audio-only and explained why? This seems like a better experience than trying to fight through lag, but we want to be careful not to arbitrarily cut off your video feed.
    - rogerbinns 13y ago
      In Skype I have the option to show call technical info turned on. It is immensely helpful since it shows continually updated values for latency, packet loss (in both directions), codec in use, bitrates etc. From that I can easily tell what the issues are (latency spikes vs packet loss are hard to distinguish due to the same symptoms). That isn't helpful for the masses, but you can display some sort of connection quality indicator. You can also offer suggestions on seeing latency spikes or packet loss (try to work out of they are upstream or downstream). The usual solution to video is to reduce bitrate, resolution and framerate. Blocky video that is taking seconds to update is an obvious indicator of connection quality issues.
      - brendanib 13y ago
        Thanks Roger -- we really want to create a connection quality indicator like you describe, kind of like the number of bars on your cell connection. One of our biggest frustrations with existing services is that it's hard to tell why the call quality is poor - is it my connection, your connection, or the service's fault? Can I shoot you an email when we get a beta version of that indicator working? I'd love to get your feedback on it.
        toomuchtodo 13y ago
        Are you collecting network information/statistics from both sides of the call? That may assist in troubleshooting.
        brendanib 13y ago
        We are collecting anonymous data about the network, browser, etc. and tying it back to core metrics like call length, but there's always more we can do. I'm really hoping that more browsers start to support the network information API natively too: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAPI/Network_Information https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAPI/Network_Info...
        rogerbinns 13y ago
        > Can I shoot you an email when we get a beta version of that indicator working? Sure.
zachlatta 13y ago
How is this different than https://appear.in/ https://appear.in/?
- brendanib 13y ago
  Right now they're very similar, but we're working on getting Awesometalk onto more platforms than just the web. We want you to be able to send anyone an Awesometalk link, and no matter what device they're using, have a conversation.
  - zachlatta 13y ago
    Isn't that exactly what the web is good at though? Cross-platform? Right now I can send a friend an appear.in link and they can open it on their Android device and join the chat. I don't think Safari on iOS has WebRTC support yet, but I can't imagine that they're not working on it.
    - brendanib 13y ago
      Let's say you send a link to someone on an iOS device -- we can prompt them to install a native app, then as soon as they open the app, with no login, your call starts. Apple actually is refusing to add WebRTC to Safari, because if you have good HTML5 support and WebRTC, you can do much more outside of a native app, which hurts their ability to control the app ecosystem, and helps developers ship to Android and iOS on the same day. I hope this changes, but right now it doesn't seem promising.
    - ingridod 13y ago
      Don't know if the Safari team is working on it, but we are ;) https://twitter.com/appear_in/status/440485480723787777 https://twitter.com/appear_in/status/440485480723787777 (I'm Product manager of appear.in)
- nitrogen 13y ago
  Appear.in was incredibly convenient when I tried it, but it used an insane amount of CPU or GPU power (Firefox Linux on a 2012 Macbook Pro), causing my laptop fans to spin up to full speed. The fan noise became unbearable for the other participants in the conversation.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
superduper33 13y ago
Screenshare pls
mholt 13y ago
Awesome! I just tried it from a university campus to a business ISP (both very high bandwidth) and the quality was crystal-clear. Two immediate requests: 1) Screen sharing 2) Group chats Definitely loving that there's no other software or installations required. Looking forward to its further development. (Edit: Already got an email from the developers, and I understand the security limitations of easy screen sharing, so I guess just do what is possible; I'm not asking for the impossible. Just easier than installing some full-blown software, if possible, would be great.)
waldir 13y ago
This only seems to work for two people at the moment (i.e. no group calls), but for that use case, it seems promising. As it happens, for the past few days I've been trying out a lot of tools for online video/audio conferencing, and made a summary of their features here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C1gAWPBmAWsQEo78ysdsjdagwobtUX1zh_YCIb3fWIU/edit https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C1gAWPBmAWsQEo78ysds... (I didn't include Awesometalk because I'm only looking for group meeting tools, not one-to-one video chat)

40 points by brendanib 13y ago

Hey, I'm one of the co-founders of Awesometalk. We started working on this 2 weeks ago and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

abengoam 13y ago
Hey there, I just tried it and my experience was not very satisfactory. I imagine you are interested on the feedback so there it goes: video quality was low (super choppy, video was getting frozen at several points), voice quality was low (I could understand about 50% of what was said) and when a third person tried to join it got a message "This call is full right now" (which I don't know if it's a bug or by design - it's not clear if this is just a 1-to-1 service). Anyways, the concept is very cool and I hope you get to make it work. A reliable service like this would remove a lot of my communication headaches.
- brendanib 13y ago
  Thanks for the feedback, sorry your first call didn't go well. When the connection is poor, as it sounds like it was in this case, would you be okay if we fell back to audio-only and explained why? This seems like a better experience than trying to fight through lag, but we want to be careful not to arbitrarily cut off your video feed.
  - rogerbinns 13y ago
    In Skype I have the option to show call technical info turned on. It is immensely helpful since it shows continually updated values for latency, packet loss (in both directions), codec in use, bitrates etc. From that I can easily tell what the issues are (latency spikes vs packet loss are hard to distinguish due to the same symptoms). That isn't helpful for the masses, but you can display some sort of connection quality indicator. You can also offer suggestions on seeing latency spikes or packet loss (try to work out of they are upstream or downstream). The usual solution to video is to reduce bitrate, resolution and framerate. Blocky video that is taking seconds to update is an obvious indicator of connection quality issues.
    - brendanib 13y ago
      Thanks Roger -- we really want to create a connection quality indicator like you describe, kind of like the number of bars on your cell connection. One of our biggest frustrations with existing services is that it's hard to tell why the call quality is poor - is it my connection, your connection, or the service's fault? Can I shoot you an email when we get a beta version of that indicator working? I'd love to get your feedback on it.
      - toomuchtodo 13y ago
        Are you collecting network information/statistics from both sides of the call? That may assist in troubleshooting.
        brendanib 13y ago
        We are collecting anonymous data about the network, browser, etc. and tying it back to core metrics like call length, but there's always more we can do. I'm really hoping that more browsers start to support the network information API natively too: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAPI/Network_Information https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAPI/Network_Info...
      - rogerbinns 13y ago
        > Can I shoot you an email when we get a beta version of that indicator working? Sure.

zachlatta 13y ago

How is this different than https://appear.in/ https://appear.in/?

brendanib 13y ago
Right now they're very similar, but we're working on getting Awesometalk onto more platforms than just the web. We want you to be able to send anyone an Awesometalk link, and no matter what device they're using, have a conversation.
- zachlatta 13y ago
  Isn't that exactly what the web is good at though? Cross-platform? Right now I can send a friend an appear.in link and they can open it on their Android device and join the chat. I don't think Safari on iOS has WebRTC support yet, but I can't imagine that they're not working on it.
  - brendanib 13y ago
    Let's say you send a link to someone on an iOS device -- we can prompt them to install a native app, then as soon as they open the app, with no login, your call starts. Apple actually is refusing to add WebRTC to Safari, because if you have good HTML5 support and WebRTC, you can do much more outside of a native app, which hurts their ability to control the app ecosystem, and helps developers ship to Android and iOS on the same day. I hope this changes, but right now it doesn't seem promising.
  - ingridod 13y ago
    Don't know if the Safari team is working on it, but we are ;) https://twitter.com/appear_in/status/440485480723787777 https://twitter.com/appear_in/status/440485480723787777 (I'm Product manager of appear.in)
nitrogen 13y ago
Appear.in was incredibly convenient when I tried it, but it used an insane amount of CPU or GPU power (Firefox Linux on a 2012 Macbook Pro), causing my laptop fans to spin up to full speed. The fan noise became unbearable for the other participants in the conversation.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

superduper33 13y ago

Screenshare pls

mholt 13y ago

Awesome! I just tried it from a university campus to a business ISP (both very high bandwidth) and the quality was crystal-clear. Two immediate requests: 1) Screen sharing 2) Group chats Definitely loving that there's no other software or installations required. Looking forward to its further development. (Edit: Already got an email from the developers, and I understand the security limitations of easy screen sharing, so I guess just do what is possible; I'm not asking for the impossible. Just easier than installing some full-blown software, if possible, would be great.)

waldir 13y ago

This only seems to work for two people at the moment (i.e. no group calls), but for that use case, it seems promising. As it happens, for the past few days I've been trying out a lot of tools for online video/audio conferencing, and made a summary of their features here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C1gAWPBmAWsQEo78ysdsjdagwobtUX1zh_YCIb3fWIU/edit https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C1gAWPBmAWsQEo78ysds... (I didn't include Awesometalk because I'm only looking for group meeting tools, not one-to-one video chat)