

Show HN: Fast, free online meetings - use code "hackernews" to play - aresant
http://www.meetingburner.com/

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dmounce
I'm just going to hit the bad parts, so forgive the apparent pessimism. :)

The signup process is miserable. There's no reason to have it broken into so
many steps. And damnit, after that many steps, why do I have to confirm my
account via email _and_ click a "Oh, gee, thanks. Now continue to your real
account." No confirmation at all. Take me straight to my account.

Do you really need my phone number for registration ? Not a real question.
Answer: NO.

Password length restriction ? Seriously ? My password isn't even _that_ secure
and I had to trim it for your guys' site. That's absurd and there's no valid
excuse, no matter how plausible.

Six steps to schedule a meeting ? Not to mention the processes of each
individual step -- the time selector is severely irritating; why do I have to
make three conscious decisions per hour I want to select ? (First, what I
click. Second, the hour. [and there's a moment of wait, is this AM/PM where
maybe I cancel the click, change the AM/PM, then back] And finally, choosing
AM/PM if I haven't already done so.) Just make it one nice big long list.
Maybe if you want, select the hour and minutes separately.

Basically what I feel is that the UI is trying to present ALL of the features
you provide without a clear understanding of how they're broken down. In your
video, you present the tremendously arrogant tone of "everything else sucks,
and damnit, we kick their ass" -- which is awesome!- but then I get into the
product and it _feels_ boring, bloated. Feels like a some old strung-out dude
wearing ripped skinnies and a deep v-neck.

Ok, actually, it's nothing like that. That was a lie -- just that last part I
mean. Skinnies rock. You should all wear skinnies.

I'll keep an eye on the product because I'm interested. Just try to embrace
consistently the attitude you put forward in the video. Make sure the product
truly fits that because then you've got something pretty cool. :)

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rmason
Folks read the terms. Repeat read the terms. You are granting them the right
in perpetuity to anything you broadcast. They can resell it without
compensating you. You are waving any privacy for anything you do in a meeting.

Thanks, but no thanks.

~~~
mentat
Please specify which term you think means this. I just scanned through and
didn't see anything.

~~~
mattdeboard
He's probably referring to 4(d) of the ToS.

"You automatically grant the Site and its affiliates, contractors, and
partners, a world-wide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable license to use,
modify, publicly display, reproduce and distribute the content in order for
the Site to provide You the Service. If you object to any content on the Site,
Your sole remedy is to cease using the Site."

------
mentat
The narration on the video is pretty funny. It didn't come across as exactly
"professional" and at some point ought to be less trash talk, more demo.
Nonetheless, amusing.

~~~
mentat
Just used it. Very smooth process for signing up, though I didn't really like
giving my phone number. What are you thinking the pricing will be?

~~~
vlokshin
Isn't the whole preach that it's free?

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lostbit
Maybe your competitor will be join.me. Do you know how it compares to them?

I created an account. It's a very neat interface. I'll try to use it in a
meeting soon.

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randall
Chat! Please? I've done a few gotomeetings with people who were in a noisy
environment and could only do text chats.

~~~
aresant
Going on the list - that was one of the top requests from beta release today -
expect that in the next couple of weeks and thanks for trying it out!

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justinph
Based on the URL/name, I am disappointed this isn't some new way to goof of
during boring webinars.

I was expecting some kind of racing game in canvas or destroying elements in
the DOM, something like that...

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rzeligzon
You crushed it with your video. The voice over is killer. Hilarious. One of
the best videos on a startup I've seen so far. You made me signed up because
of humor and the product.

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fourspace
Why do you require that passwords only contain letters and numbers? This never
makes sense to me.

~~~
edoloughlin
And can't be longer than 12 characters? Seriously?

~~~
aresant
It's not a bug, it's a feature :)

When I pinged our CTO his tounge in cheek response: "we are software
engineers. we like to irritate people."

This is the kind of fun stuff we get to learn in beta - will see about getting
that fixed!

~~~
mattdeboard
While searching for a recent HN-featured story on the strength of passwords
with spaces, I ran across a relevant comment from about a year ago:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1419231>

------
aresant
We've been working on MeetingBurner for just over 9 months - fully capable
online meeting / webinar platform built in the cloud (EC2 & Joyent backup) so
we could offer a truly free product (with a freemium vers of course!).

Expect to see more on the build process, the tech, how we made it into LAUNCH
at the last minute, etc in the future here - appreciate all the HN support and
please send any and all feedback here or through the feedback list once you
log in.

~~~
asnyder
I just signed up to MeetingBurner, it looks promising. As someone that used
WebEx and is a currently a paying subscriber of GoToMeeting, this can
potentially make our lives a bit easier, especially with Linux users.

Personally, I didn't like the video all too much, I felt the comparison was
somewhat deceptive. As a GoToMeeting subscriber I can usually start a meeting
in less than 5 seconds, since I already have the client installed. Clearly, if
I don't have the client, then it's a longer process with website -> download
-> run/install, as such the video, for me, takes something away from your
product. While the speed comparison is nice, and something that should be
emphasized, I believe the other aspects of MeetingBurner stand on their own.

I feel that the one-touch recording, the no-client download, online access to
your recordings, shareable links, and clear reporting to your past meetings
already goes beyond what your competitors offer.

I really like GoToMeeting as it's clean, robust, has recording and numerous
other niceties, however, it is lacking in certain areas and having a full web
solution like MeetingBurner would be ideal.

I will definitely try it out in GoToMeeting's place over the next couple of
days and provide whatever additional feedback I can.

[edit: grammar]

~~~
aresant
Well said and good points.

We struggled with what to highlight, and in a future blog post we'll address
why we focused on that screen record.

Looking forward to your additional comments - submit via the MB helpdesk (feel
free to repost here too) to make sure we see everything.

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notajith
I like this alot. Is it just me, or is the recording missing audio?

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Jaeger
How about a Google Translate plug-in?

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asadsalm
Useless password requirements

