

Inventor of Google Voice now reinventing conference calls - mp3jeep01
http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/21/inventor-of-google-voice-now-reinventing-conference-calls/

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marquis
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).

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bmj1
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!

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JoeAltmaier
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.

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omfut
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.

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gnaffle
Both Asterisk and FreeSWITCH, both open source IP PBX projects, have
conference bridges that support noise cancelling and speaker detection, and I
think several conferencing services do this already.

Of course, building a nice web interface that is better than the competition
is a nice way to stand out. Unfortunately, you're often competing with free
(as in FreeConferenceCall) so I guess you have to make something really
compelling to make a difference worth paying for.

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

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brk
For starters, it's hopefully not horribly clunky and over-priced.

I use Webex frequently, but hardly consider it an optimal product.

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vibrunazo
> 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.

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qznc
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>

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sparknlaunch12
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).

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sureshv
Most (largish) companies switched to voip a long time ago for interoffice
conference calls.

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openczun
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.

