

Ask HN: Need feedback on pivoting this abandoned project - amitamb

http://www.castbin.com/<p>It is a simple way to record your web browsing.<p>I have worked on that project for atleast 2-3 months. It does not look very good but it surely can be useful if put to right use.,<p>I have few options like<p>- Creating a reader through a browser extension specific to Wikipedia which will let users read long articles automatically<p>- Learning academy to let users create simple courses which will take subscribers of those courses through different online resources on the subject.
For example Advanced Rails course which will take users through documentation and some blog posts relevant to advanced subjects in Rails<p>- Let website owners create Demos for their websites without a need to create video. They will be mute walk-through videos<p>What are your thoughts? What approach would be best?
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SoftwareMaven
Mute walk through videos aren't super-helpful, though having a "common tasks"
or "hidden tricks" area in your website with auto-walk through could be
helpful for complex tasks. If you could at least give some descriptive text so
there is _some_ narrative, I could see that being helpful for enterprise app
support, where users are often required to move through dozens of screens to
accomplish anything.

On the social side there are options, too. Allow people to share a browser tab
and let others watch what they are doing (live, with chat [leverage
Facebook!], would be best, but coming back to recorded sessions could be
interesting, too). That could be used by companies doing remote training
sessions (though FB probably isn't an option there [yet]).

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amitamb
I think you are asking for annotations. I was working on it but I left it for
something else.

On live streaming, I don't know if that is the path I want to take as there
are other tools doing the same thing.

Thanks for your insights.

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bkyan
Also, quick question -- what's the difference between the two different play
buttons in this screenshot?

[http://shadowcatcher.mindcast.com/clips/1327872538erq6k2sfdr...](http://shadowcatcher.mindcast.com/clips/1327872538erq6k2sfdr.png)

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amitamb
One will play whole recording while other will play single page.

It is useless when there is only one page, and now I think it is useless for
first page but for sake of uniformity it is there.

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bkyan
This app is a macro builder?

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amitamb
No. It just records your browsing (i.e. mouse movements, scrolling and
keyboard inputs to the page) without a need for any download. All that happens
using JavaScript. So playback is also simple in the sense that only HTML need
to be downloaded not the video.

~~~
bkyan
Oh, that's sweet! Could this app be used to track what users are doing on
(any) one of my webpages?

