How has Teamspeak worked out for you? We're actually building a similar product that's specifically for teams. I'd be curious to hear your feedback on it as it may be helpful for you. Here's a quick walkthrough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV7HBXuhT7Q Let me know if you have any thoughts / ideas.
Yes, currently we are OSX only, but that's for this initial private beta. We'll be expanding to other platforms very soon. If you think it could be helpful for your team I'd love to reach back out when we support other platforms :)
One of the big downsides of Mumble, Teamspeak and Ventrillo is that they aren't made for business. This means they are really hard to get up and running, which is especially annoying when you are just just trying them out. We're actually working on something similar to these tools but built for business.
We're currently in private beta and I'd be interested to get your input on what we're building. We've got a quick walkthrough here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV7HBXuhT7Q and you can signup for the private beta at http://speak.io
There's also a personal element. It's nice to see the faces of the people you work with throughout the day. Certainly has helped to create a tighter social bond on our team.
Hmm what gave you this impression? In fact we've been using Sqwiggle daily since our very first prorotype :) Tbh I don't think we would get half as much done without it, we certainly wouldn't be as connected given that we're a distributed team.
Hey there, Eric here from Sqwiggle. Thanks for the detailed comment! Seems like you may have encountered a bug with busy mode. If you have it enabled, no one should be able to initiate a conversation with you. They can, however, "ping" you, which will allow you to choose to accept the connection. But it's possible I mis-understood what the exact issue was, if so, feel free to clarify :)
We definitely resonate with the general privacy concerns and are working on a mode which will allow you to turn the camera off, which we'll have completed very soon.
If you end up giving it another try, please let me know if you run into any issues or have any further feedback. Thanks!
Thanks for trying out Sqwiggle! Solid feedback, we're working hard to make the experience more seamless with the OS. Would love to hear if you have any other thoughts or ideas. Let us know at howdy at sqwiggle dot com.
I love it too! I think you hit on a really important point. Working from home drastically improves quality of life since you're able to interact more with people you care about. It also helps you develop more of a passion for your work when you're not being micromanaged. Helps you to feel more free and in control.
Great that you're trying out Sqwiggle. I'm actually one of the co-founders so please let me know if there's anything we can do to improve your experience. Also any feedback you have is super helpful!
Thanks a ton! Indeed having an interesting product helps, but what good is an interesting product if your email gets chucked straight into the trash because it's too long, or seems too arrogant? ;)
I've actually gained several very valuable contacts from this method, not just one ;) So it's actually worked out for me several times in the past, which is why I still do it.
In either case there's no harm in sending the email. Of course your conversion rate is going to be low. But if you can send 10 well written emails and get 1 valuable response, that certainly seems worth it to me!
Thanks for the input. I agree with this not being a sure fire way to get noticed. Again, it comes down to how you write the email, what your goal is and what your product is. But I don't agree that this is a 'once in a blue moon' type of thing.
We actually got quite a few responses from very influential people, not just Naval. The reality is, a lot of them spend hours on email a day. If you give them something worth responding to, they will respond!
Hah definitely valid concerns. I actually prefer working in my underwear as well ;) We are actually working on some really intuitive privacy features which will hopefully make Sqwiggle an even better option for remote workers like us. Thanks a lot for the feedback!
very cool idea.. yep, you definitely catch people in awkward positions sometimes hah but we use Sqwiggle every day and it certainly becomes a non-issue very quickly, you just become alright with it.. Naturally we will be building in some extra privacy features but, as-is, it really isn't as intrusive as one might think! Love the idea of picking more flattering stills, thanks for the input!
nice, glad you like the idea. We are actually trying to build the product for teams which work together in a physical office as well, definitely some benefits there :)
Regarding away status, in the future Sqwiggle will automatically know when you are away or at your computer by monitoring input... good point about the status message though.. I bet there's a cool way to work that in ;)
We've actually had many conversations surrounding this exact thing. Currently users can join any open conversation but we have plans to add some very simple privacy options so that some conversations won't be intruded on.
Great feedback, thanks! Our stream is actually more geared towards media. We found out that, during a conversation, it was always necessary to share links, code, images, etc. Using a separate app for greatly interrupted the flow so we felt the stream was a very valuable addition. Thanks again.. Very open to any other thoughts you have!
Legit concerns! We use it ourselves though and we actually don't look at the app too often, mainly when we want to see if the other is there or are in a conversation..
We'll also be building in some privacy options very soon that will make using the app a bit more comfortable :)