Since I fixed this, it seems OpenMeetings is stable. It has been running for at least 10 hours, with at some point 8 people in there, all streaming video. There have been a few notes in the chat which I'll address publically:
I'm not sure if it's a good idea to redirect people here if tinychat is still better until this gets done correctly
Agreed. The redirection today was only for stresstesting it. If it's not stable, putting further effort in it is useless. It turns out it's stable though, so I'll hack some more at it, and see what I can make of it.
is there a way to make the chat part larger?
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bah, this chat window should be nr1 priority to fix
I'll have to edit the source code for it. I haven't been in the source code so far. Difficulty: Easy
I signed up with a username. Why is it not displayed?
It uses the First & Last name as display names. I intend to gut the entire registration form to just ask for username & password, and use the username as a display name. Difficulty: Easy
hm I dont think I can make public rooms
Indeed, only the admin can. However, you can make personal rooms, and then give someone else an invitation link. I can make a few more public rooms, if there's demand for that?
I don't like that the no [chat] notifications part, though
Agreed. I don't know if it's supported. If it's not, I, or the devs, will need to add it. Don't know how difficult that will be.
it is making my computer work a lot harder [compared to tinychat] though
I don't know if that's because there was an unusually large amount of people there, or because the video quality is higher than tinychat. I can put a limit on the video resolution you can select, if people want that. Difficulty: Easy
Confusing webcam selection screen
I mentioned that to the devs 2 days ago, they fixed it the same day, and put out a new release candidate. However, running it, it doesn’t work for me. I’ve just notified them, I expect this to be fixed soon.
Right now, the user experience delta to tinychat is: Login form. Manual resizing of every single video required. Loads of buttons and options to get lost in.
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The barrier to entry is much higher than tinychat.
Login form will be gutted, I'll cap video resolution, and the webcam selection will be simpler. That should get the barrier to entry on a similar level as tinychat, while retaining the potential of multiple public rooms and such.
Login form: Gutted
Video resolution: Capped
Chat area height: Increased
Webcam selection: Eh. The devs changed it, it's a bit better, but not quite there yet. Maybe they'll work on it more after the weekend. Edit: It's fixed! :)
Chat notifications: Haven't looked into it yet. Edit: Have looked into it, but haven't figured it out yet.
I'll have it running most of the time. Feel free to look around!
For the programmers, patches are available here: ftp://lesswrong:openmeetings@forecast.student.utwente.nl
We've had considerable interest and uptake on the Less Wrong Study Hall, especially with informal timed Pomodoro sessions for everyone to synchronize on. Working together with a number of other visible faces, and your own face visible to them, does seem effective. Keeping the social chat to the 5 off minutes prevents this from turning into just another chatroom.
We've been using this Tinychat room, and implementing everything Pomodoro-related with manual typing. Is there anyone out there who's interested in taking this to the next level with some custom code, possibly via the Google Hangouts API (Javascript), so we can have the following nice features?
This doesn't "seem" very complicated from a programming perspective (yes, we all know about things that don't seem complicated). The Google Hangouts API (possibly OpenMeetings) seems like it should provide almost all of the basics already. But unless some particular programmer steps up to do it, it won't get done. If interested, comment below or email shannon.friedman@positivevector.com, and please mention your relevant Javascript experience.