6 ms·

Let's build a webinar tool that doesn't suck

26 points by alex_ka 12y ago

teemo_cute 12y ago
Okay. I filled-in the survey. Will be waiting for the beta.
- alex_ka 12y ago
  Thx! We'll keep you up to date!
barkingcat 12y ago
let's stop using the word webinar
- dexcs 12y ago
  Any better ideas?
  - jrockway 12y ago
    Semineb.
- chuckwnelson 12y ago
  I would love to stop using webinar. It reminds me of those web 2.0 buzzwords crap we all had to endure. Unfortunately the markets for webinars understands the term, therefor it remains alive.
reboog711 12y ago
Adobe Connect is a Webinar tool that doesn't suck.
- YL108 12y ago
  But the price sucks!
  - szimpl 12y ago
    Would you be able to offer something cheaper?
    - alex_ka 12y ago
      We will definitely be cheaper. We are also thinking about a freemium and revenue share model. What do you think?
      - fvryan 12y ago
        Startups perform best when they focus on making money in one specific way. The model you choose should be based on the economics of the software, for example how much it costs to support additional users.
- teemo_cute 12y ago
  It uses AIR right? Then... it kinda sucks. Ask any long-time League of Legends player about the client (made in Adobe AIR) you'll know what I mean.
  - duiker101 12y ago
    I am a long-time player and while yes, the client has problems I think it's not AIR's fault. AIR is fine, maybe not perfect but it's not a good enough reason to ditch all the apps that are made with it. It's like saying "I will not browse any website made with PHP".
  - chc 12y ago
    Would you like me to show you some terrible programs written in JavaScript? Any platform that has programs written for it has bad programs written for it. It is true that League of Legends players generally think Adobe AIR sucks. It's also true that League of Legends players generally think they deserve to be at least Gold I. In neither case are these beliefs rational.
  - reboog711 12y ago
    I do not believe Adobe Connect uses AIR. In a desktop browser; it uses Flash Player. I thought the mobile client was built natively (Objective-C) on iOS, but don't quote me on that.
selvan 12y ago
Here is similar one : Big Blue Button (http://bigbluebutton.org/ http://bigbluebutton.org/) is an open source web conferencing system for distance education.
- ekle 12y ago
  Tried it ?
  - selvan 12y ago
    Tried their demo setup, few months ago (around the time when they graduated from Mozilla WebFWD). Keen to try out getgrasp.
    - ffdixon1 12y ago
      I'm the project manager for BigBlueButton. Our goal is to provide remote students a high-quality on-line learning experience. Building an open source web conferencing system is no small task, but it is very satisfying. I noticed in their 'about us' they stated "That’s why we built dozeo". Funny, I thought they built dozeo using BigBlueButton :-). Want to try another demo? We're adding webRTC audio to BigBlueButton. Check out http://webrtc.blindsidenetworks.com/ http://webrtc.blindsidenetworks.com/.
      - TilmanGriesel 12y ago
        At the beginning we used BBB for our prototypes, but we have developed a completely new infrastructure and client over the last years.
        ffdixon1 12y ago
        Cool. I wish you all possible success in your project!
- Argorak 12y ago
  Ever had a close look at it? It is pretty much a mess tied together with duct tape. I've been sifting through it for a month and finally decided that you cannot use it to build a product on top of that.
lukedjn 12y ago
It's redirecting me to the German version (http://survey.getgrasp.io/de http://survey.getgrasp.io/de), not a great way to welcome traffic from The Netherlands... :)
- TilmanGriesel 12y ago
  It redirects you depending on your browser language... Maybe a bug! Here is the en version: http://survey.getgrasp.io/en http://survey.getgrasp.io/en
  - moondowner 12y ago
    Redirects me to the DE page as well (and it shouldn't), pretty strange bug.
    - TilmanGriesel 12y ago
      Where are you from? Maybe you can give me your browser lang code from http://aruljohn.com/lang.php http://aruljohn.com/lang.php That would be great :)
      - juriansluiman 12y ago
        You probably redirect based on the first found locale. Most Dutch users browser with an accept language similar to "nl,en-GB;q=0.8,en;q=0.6,en-US;q=0.4". If you only match on the first ("full") locale and not paying attention to the lower q-valued locales, you might think English is not accepted and you will redirect to your (default?) German site. It's a pretty common bug in locale detection systems (as I designed a few ones myself) :)
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jblok 12y ago
Tells me basically nothing about the product. Wants email address. I see this trend far too often.
- dexcs 12y ago
  They don't have a product. They want to build one. Thats the difference and pretty smart in that market.
- rip747 12y ago
  i'm with you are on this one as well. i'm tried of seeing these "startup" sites that basically show you nothing of the product yet want you to trust them with your email address. how do i know there is even a product behind this site? this could all be an elaborate attempt at email harvesting a niche group.
- TilmanGriesel 12y ago
  Maybe some "startups" using this technique to harvesting email addresses. But in this case, we need the email to inform about the current progress and select future beta users. We know the problem with this kind of landing pages, but this is a good way to proof the concept, acceptance, get feedback and work together with future customers.
  - duiker101 12y ago
    No offense but that is exactly what all those "startups" do... or say they do.
  - gbaygon 12y ago
    ...we need the email to inform about the current progress and select future beta users. So why don't you hint about it in the landing page? My process was: 1. Open the page 2. Saw "build your own webinar tool" 3. Saw email field 4. Saw join button and thought: "If I enter my email in this box this will give me access to some kind of personalizable webinar tool, but I don't know if I need this yet", then closed the page. You need to rework the landing page so the visitor knows what they are doing exactly when they click the "JOIN NOW!" button.
bluedino 12y ago
They never say what's wrong with existing products. I'm sure they aren't perfect but they do the following: Everyone is familiar with them They're reliable and scalable They're cheap for the presenter to use They have clients for Mac, PC, iDevices...
- Argorak 12y ago
  > Everyone is familiar with them I would say that "most people" never used "webinar" software, so everyone doesn't really cut it here. > They're reliable and scalable My last experiences where rather on the other side - Hangout often crashes on me and gotomeeting had problems with audio quality. > They're cheap for the presenter to use What is cheap, if they don't really work for me? Also, they mostly are general video calling solutions and rarely geared towards running e.g. a workshop. > They have clients for Mac, PC, iDevices... Yep, but there is always a plus to established players. In general, I think that the whole webinar space still has a lot of ground to cover, so new players are always welcome.
cjbprime 12y ago
I think you might need to come up with a different term, because my brain's finding it too hard to imagine "webinar" and "not suck" together. :)
- dexcs 12y ago
  Yeah that's what i thought too... But it's harder to find one than using a existing term that sucks :)
tckr 12y ago
There is a german startup around my corner that already delivers unsucky webinar tech: http://www.slidepresenter.com/en/ http://www.slidepresenter.com/en/ @alex_ka - maybe you should have a talk with them …

26 points by alex_ka 12y ago

teemo_cute 12y ago

Okay. I filled-in the survey. Will be waiting for the beta.

alex_ka 12y ago
Thx! We'll keep you up to date!

barkingcat 12y ago

let's stop using the word webinar

dexcs 12y ago
Any better ideas?
- jrockway 12y ago
  Semineb.
chuckwnelson 12y ago
I would love to stop using webinar. It reminds me of those web 2.0 buzzwords crap we all had to endure. Unfortunately the markets for webinars understands the term, therefor it remains alive.

reboog711 12y ago

Adobe Connect is a Webinar tool that doesn't suck.

YL108 12y ago
But the price sucks!
- szimpl 12y ago
  Would you be able to offer something cheaper?
  - alex_ka 12y ago
    We will definitely be cheaper. We are also thinking about a freemium and revenue share model. What do you think?
    - fvryan 12y ago
      Startups perform best when they focus on making money in one specific way. The model you choose should be based on the economics of the software, for example how much it costs to support additional users.
teemo_cute 12y ago
It uses AIR right? Then... it kinda sucks. Ask any long-time League of Legends player about the client (made in Adobe AIR) you'll know what I mean.
- duiker101 12y ago
  I am a long-time player and while yes, the client has problems I think it's not AIR's fault. AIR is fine, maybe not perfect but it's not a good enough reason to ditch all the apps that are made with it. It's like saying "I will not browse any website made with PHP".
- chc 12y ago
  Would you like me to show you some terrible programs written in JavaScript? Any platform that has programs written for it has bad programs written for it. It is true that League of Legends players generally think Adobe AIR sucks. It's also true that League of Legends players generally think they deserve to be at least Gold I. In neither case are these beliefs rational.
- reboog711 12y ago
  I do not believe Adobe Connect uses AIR. In a desktop browser; it uses Flash Player. I thought the mobile client was built natively (Objective-C) on iOS, but don't quote me on that.

selvan 12y ago

Here is similar one : Big Blue Button (http://bigbluebutton.org/ http://bigbluebutton.org/) is an open source web conferencing system for distance education.

ekle 12y ago
Tried it ?
- selvan 12y ago
  Tried their demo setup, few months ago (around the time when they graduated from Mozilla WebFWD). Keen to try out getgrasp.
  - ffdixon1 12y ago
    I'm the project manager for BigBlueButton. Our goal is to provide remote students a high-quality on-line learning experience. Building an open source web conferencing system is no small task, but it is very satisfying. I noticed in their 'about us' they stated "That’s why we built dozeo". Funny, I thought they built dozeo using BigBlueButton :-). Want to try another demo? We're adding webRTC audio to BigBlueButton. Check out http://webrtc.blindsidenetworks.com/ http://webrtc.blindsidenetworks.com/.
    - TilmanGriesel 12y ago
      At the beginning we used BBB for our prototypes, but we have developed a completely new infrastructure and client over the last years.
      - ffdixon1 12y ago
        Cool. I wish you all possible success in your project!
Argorak 12y ago
Ever had a close look at it? It is pretty much a mess tied together with duct tape. I've been sifting through it for a month and finally decided that you cannot use it to build a product on top of that.

lukedjn 12y ago

It's redirecting me to the German version (http://survey.getgrasp.io/de http://survey.getgrasp.io/de), not a great way to welcome traffic from The Netherlands... :)

TilmanGriesel 12y ago
It redirects you depending on your browser language... Maybe a bug! Here is the en version: http://survey.getgrasp.io/en http://survey.getgrasp.io/en
- moondowner 12y ago
  Redirects me to the DE page as well (and it shouldn't), pretty strange bug.
  - TilmanGriesel 12y ago
    Where are you from? Maybe you can give me your browser lang code from http://aruljohn.com/lang.php http://aruljohn.com/lang.php That would be great :)
    - juriansluiman 12y ago
      You probably redirect based on the first found locale. Most Dutch users browser with an accept language similar to "nl,en-GB;q=0.8,en;q=0.6,en-US;q=0.4". If you only match on the first ("full") locale and not paying attention to the lower q-valued locales, you might think English is not accepted and you will redirect to your (default?) German site. It's a pretty common bug in locale detection systems (as I designed a few ones myself) :)

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jblok 12y ago

Tells me basically nothing about the product. Wants email address. I see this trend far too often.

dexcs 12y ago
They don't have a product. They want to build one. Thats the difference and pretty smart in that market.
rip747 12y ago
i'm with you are on this one as well. i'm tried of seeing these "startup" sites that basically show you nothing of the product yet want you to trust them with your email address. how do i know there is even a product behind this site? this could all be an elaborate attempt at email harvesting a niche group.
TilmanGriesel 12y ago
Maybe some "startups" using this technique to harvesting email addresses. But in this case, we need the email to inform about the current progress and select future beta users. We know the problem with this kind of landing pages, but this is a good way to proof the concept, acceptance, get feedback and work together with future customers.
- duiker101 12y ago
  No offense but that is exactly what all those "startups" do... or say they do.
- gbaygon 12y ago
  ...we need the email to inform about the current progress and select future beta users. So why don't you hint about it in the landing page? My process was: 1. Open the page 2. Saw "build your own webinar tool" 3. Saw email field 4. Saw join button and thought: "If I enter my email in this box this will give me access to some kind of personalizable webinar tool, but I don't know if I need this yet", then closed the page. You need to rework the landing page so the visitor knows what they are doing exactly when they click the "JOIN NOW!" button.

bluedino 12y ago

They never say what's wrong with existing products. I'm sure they aren't perfect but they do the following: Everyone is familiar with them They're reliable and scalable They're cheap for the presenter to use They have clients for Mac, PC, iDevices...

Argorak 12y ago
> Everyone is familiar with them I would say that "most people" never used "webinar" software, so everyone doesn't really cut it here. > They're reliable and scalable My last experiences where rather on the other side - Hangout often crashes on me and gotomeeting had problems with audio quality. > They're cheap for the presenter to use What is cheap, if they don't really work for me? Also, they mostly are general video calling solutions and rarely geared towards running e.g. a workshop. > They have clients for Mac, PC, iDevices... Yep, but there is always a plus to established players. In general, I think that the whole webinar space still has a lot of ground to cover, so new players are always welcome.

cjbprime 12y ago

I think you might need to come up with a different term, because my brain's finding it too hard to imagine "webinar" and "not suck" together. :)

dexcs 12y ago
Yeah that's what i thought too... But it's harder to find one than using a existing term that sucks :)

tckr 12y ago

There is a german startup around my corner that already delivers unsucky webinar tech: http://www.slidepresenter.com/en/ http://www.slidepresenter.com/en/ @alex_ka - maybe you should have a talk with them …