from Hacker News

Inventor of Google Voice now reinventing conference calls

by mp3jeep01 on 5/22/12, 3:58 AM with 15 comments

• by marquis on 5/22/12, 12:31 PM

  From the video: "we've invented a new feature called EarMuffs". It's rather dishonest to say a new feature has been invented, that has been around since the dawn of audio routing ('mix minus' in this case).

• by bmj1 on 5/22/12, 10:04 AM

  With an API - I could actually do a ton of things with this, for example:

  - Match up to my user base to handle the authentication of phone numbers

  - Automatically invite the right people to specific calls

  - Log attendance to calls back to my system - so we can build our own reports/handle no-shows

  - Sync the recordings back to our storage for streaming by users later

  Please build an API!

• by JoeAltmaier on 5/22/12, 12:15 PM

  Too little, too late. Conference calls suck, no matter how you attend them. Presence information is limited to conference invitees? How about the rest of your world? Scheduling, delays, rigid format, single talker - its all awful.

  I work at Sococo, and recommend Teamspace as a leap past conference calling.

• by omfut on 5/22/12, 5:45 AM

  I just saw the video, looks awesome. I have experience working on conferencing products and UberConference looks pretty sleek. Some of the pain points that they mention in the video are real. There are plenty of conference applications/products to choose from and not sure how UberConference is going to standout. Also some of the features supported by UberConfernce can be added to the existing conference application with some effort. Its not impossible to add these features as mentioned by craig in the video. Its a crowded market with big potential. All that said, Wish these guys great success.

• by walexander on 5/22/12, 5:43 AM

  How is this different from WebEx or any other conferencing service?

• by vibrunazo on 5/22/12, 8:32 AM

  > The organizer can instantly tell when one or more participants are causing feedback or noise, and mute them.

  Noise is the worse problem with current software and this is far from a great solution. Why can't the software just do smart noise canceling? Feedback is easy to detect on software, just keep the last 10sec or so on buffer, if current noise is similar to the buffer, just subtract. Why do current conference software just don't do proper noise cancelling? Am I missing something?

  I keep feeling that working remotely would be so much more efficient, less people would need to drive to the same physical location, less cars would be needed. If only conference software didn't suck so hard. This is so disappointing.

• by qznc on 5/22/12, 11:40 AM

  In my opinion the killer would be Etherpad integration [0]. The question is how to share a link via phone.

  http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/meeting.html

• by sparknlaunch12 on 5/22/12, 10:58 AM

  Noise and feedback are big pain points. There are already products on the market that do this, but most leverage existing phone infrastructure rather than internet (eg voip).

• by openczun on 5/22/12, 11:48 AM

  another killer feature idea : detect when someone puts the conference call on hold and auto-mute that line. Particularly useful for those with irritating hold-music.