We do plan to allow users to merge sessions together so they can flip between the whiteboards in the same room, although right now that's not yet implemented. Since we filter out all the "noise" from the whiteboard, we should be able to detect which whiteboard is currently being updated and bring that one into focus automatically.
At this time, we're only planning to support phones/tablets. There are 2 reasons for that:
1. Stack: it's much easier to concentrate on a single platform, especially as a startup (in fact, at this time we only support iOS, but do plan an Android app in the future). For the app to work well, we make use of several components of the phone (GPU processing, gyroscope, etc.) that would be a pain to scale to a generic platform with unknown hardware.
1. Cellphones tend to have better cameras than a typical webcam you'd see at home. A high-resolution office camera may in fact be better, but trying to explain to users why their laptop camera isn't good enough may prove to be an exercise in futility.
This is admittedly the Achilles heel of solutions that allow the use of a regular whiteboard rather than a tablet/projector. Ours is no exception, but there are 2 methods we allow for handling this, each with their own drawbacks, but between the two users should hopefully have enough power to do what they want.
1. Set up a phone aimed at a board on each end. The drawback is that the whiteboards are not shared (you write on one, but look on the other). Moreover, having boards in more than 4 locations may get cumbersome.
2. We allow the viewers to draw on the shared whiteboard session (sort of like MS Paint overlaid on top of the presentation). These temporary doodles can be seen by others watching the session online, but obviously don't make it back to the original board.
Good question. We've actually already been approached by a financial institution asking for this. This would obviously have a high upfront cost, and require us to determine which features should be locked down or replaced (i.e. sharing to intranet sharepoint instead of dropbox/evernote). I'm not at liberty to speak on the delivery or cost of such solution at this point yet, however, but we do plan on it since there is already a demand for this.
It's not set in stone yet, but we'll probably have a freemium model, where sharing it with 5 or fewer people will be free and having more than 5 viewers would require a subscription (i.e. $5/month).
Our startup in Boston ( http://www.rocketboard.it/ ) is actually working exactly on the product you describe, in our previous jobs we've encountered exactly the same problem running scrums, which gave us this idea. We're currently going through a private beta but plan to open it up to the general public in the next few months. The app runs on your phone and detects + processes any board it's pointed at. By processing I mean fixing aspect ratio, removing shadows, glare, presenter, and enhancing the colors. The app streams the content in real time to anyone with a browser (and access to the url). After the presentation, the app creates a slide deck that you can share with those who weren't present at the meeting. You can also view a demo on the Rocketboard website.
Slashdot Mirror
We do plan to allow users to merge sessions together so they can flip between the whiteboards in the same room, although right now that's not yet implemented. Since we filter out all the "noise" from the whiteboard, we should be able to detect which whiteboard is currently being updated and bring that one into focus automatically.
At this time, we're only planning to support phones/tablets. There are 2 reasons for that:
1. Stack: it's much easier to concentrate on a single platform, especially as a startup (in fact, at this time we only support iOS, but do plan an Android app in the future). For the app to work well, we make use of several components of the phone (GPU processing, gyroscope, etc.) that would be a pain to scale to a generic platform with unknown hardware.
1. Cellphones tend to have better cameras than a typical webcam you'd see at home. A high-resolution office camera may in fact be better, but trying to explain to users why their laptop camera isn't good enough may prove to be an exercise in futility.
This is admittedly the Achilles heel of solutions that allow the use of a regular whiteboard rather than a tablet/projector. Ours is no exception, but there are 2 methods we allow for handling this, each with their own drawbacks, but between the two users should hopefully have enough power to do what they want.
1. Set up a phone aimed at a board on each end. The drawback is that the whiteboards are not shared (you write on one, but look on the other). Moreover, having boards in more than 4 locations may get cumbersome.
2. We allow the viewers to draw on the shared whiteboard session (sort of like MS Paint overlaid on top of the presentation). These temporary doodles can be seen by others watching the session online, but obviously don't make it back to the original board.
Good question. We've actually already been approached by a financial institution asking for this. This would obviously have a high upfront cost, and require us to determine which features should be locked down or replaced (i.e. sharing to intranet sharepoint instead of dropbox/evernote). I'm not at liberty to speak on the delivery or cost of such solution at this point yet, however, but we do plan on it since there is already a demand for this.
It's not set in stone yet, but we'll probably have a freemium model, where sharing it with 5 or fewer people will be free and having more than 5 viewers would require a subscription (i.e. $5/month).
Our startup in Boston ( http://www.rocketboard.it/ ) is actually working exactly on the product you describe, in our previous jobs we've encountered exactly the same problem running scrums, which gave us this idea. We're currently going through a private beta but plan to open it up to the general public in the next few months. The app runs on your phone and detects + processes any board it's pointed at. By processing I mean fixing aspect ratio, removing shadows, glare, presenter, and enhancing the colors. The app streams the content in real time to anyone with a browser (and access to the url). After the presentation, the app creates a slide deck that you can share with those who weren't present at the meeting. You can also view a demo on the Rocketboard website.