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Non-obvious remote work techniques

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Re: Non-obvious remote work techniques

#51

Post by wcarss »

robotkad wrote: post #2

Does anyone have any suggestions on a platform to facilitate Tip #4: Idling in a Videoconference Room? Zoom is the obvious choice, but wonder if anyone has built something better for this use case?

I'm working on a product to help with this exact type of use.

I would love to find anyone interested in trying out a tool for this -- contact me at carss.w@gmail.com or drop a name/email into the form at https://heysync.chat if that's you! I will have a simple version ready to try within a few weeks.

The idea is make asynchronous audio chat easy, in a context similar to slack. You can send audio easily in place of text and whoever you sent it to can listen to it live or later. Then they can get back to you the same way. Imagine a chat room with 5 people talking, where you can replay the whole thing and chime in later if you were busy. It's chat across time.

Again, if you're interested, please reach out!

Re: Non-obvious remote work techniques

#53

Post by ghthor »

alonmower wrote: post #49
PinkMilkshake wrote: post #47

> makes the mute button easier to find It's odd this is still an issue. I'm not sure why the mute button is not featured more prominently on videochat apps. It's almost the primary feature during a call that makes things go smoothly. Also, there's always one guy who has to say every bloody time, "are you there, have you forgot to unmute?" if you fail to unmute and start talking <100ms after your name has been mention…

With Zoom (as long as Zoom has focus) you can hold down spacebar to temporarily unmute yourself. It's been a real lifesaver

Back in my day we called that, push-to-talk. Everything old is new again.

Re: Non-obvious remote work techniques

#54

Post by donclark »

renewiltord wrote: post #3
robotkad wrote: post #2

Does anyone have any suggestions on a platform to facilitate Tip #4: Idling in a Videoconference Room? Zoom is the obvious choice, but wonder if anyone has built something better for this use case?

I have friends who ran a startup full remote. They sat on Discord together all day. Video off most of the time.

I think this will work - but only for people (groups) that can communicate GREAT.

Re: Non-obvious remote work techniques

#55

Post by CarbyAu »

spurgu wrote: post #41
CarbyAu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to host your own, Jitsi Meet Server. It doesn't take much CPU or RAM. Bandwidth is king. Uses browser or ios/android apps for clients. I am light on with webtech and linux but I followed their "few commands and a shell script" install notes to get something working with LetsEncrypt https. If you host the video centre, and everything is https out from there, it should be somewhat secure. For business secur…

This is cool, thanks for the tip! How is performance compared to meet.jit.si?

I used meet.jit.si once but my own server mostly and I couldn't tell you the difference in user experience. Seemed exactly the same.

Video: The default install sets up for 720p. It seems to start notably worse and then scale up to 720p within a minute, often much less. Some congestion control thing I expect.

You can set 1080p or other (lower too) resolution limits if you like. I tried 1080p but at ~6-7Mbit per connection outgoing my home internet 18MBit upload got saturated pretty quick! The default 720p has worked ok for up to 6 people for a few hours at a time. 1 of the people was Europe-to-Australia and seemed like anyone else. No huge lag times but some lag as you'd expect from that distance.

Audio: I note this separately as it seems to be handled separately by Jitsi. We've noticed it seems to tick along pretty well the same the whole time, whether the video is going up or down in resolution due to congestion or not. Audio quality seems fine. The mic makes more difference in quality than the audio codec.

Apps: Have a requirement to go into setting and put the URL for your own server. Otherwise it defaults to the public one. Bit awkward. It seems to suck down a lot of battery but I haven't benchmarked it against anything else. Maybe this is normal for camera/compression/decompression/display/network all at the same time?!

Other niceties: can share desktop/application, has a text chat side option too, has "hand up" indicator if someone wants to indicate they wish to speak - not that we've ever used it.

All in all, it works well for home personal use with 6 people so far. Definitely handy to have and I intend to keep one running for the future. Being able to send a link to my friends and show them my desktop, or vice versa, is handy if nothing else.

Edit - added App section

Re: Non-obvious remote work techniques

#56

Post by nefitty »

peterwwillis wrote: post #20
robotkad wrote: post #2

Does anyone have any suggestions on a platform to facilitate Tip #4: Idling in a Videoconference Room? Zoom is the obvious choice, but wonder if anyone has built something better for this use case?

I can tell you it won't work with Zoom. For some reason it takes over all of your sound, so if I play quiet music I can't hear it. This would also be incredibly wasteful of bandwidth and CPU. Bandwidth is not unlimited, and if everyone in the Zoomy world kept a silent conference on in the background all day, the internet pipes [Zoom's especially] would be quite a bit more full, and my CPU would continue to churn unne…

One of the worst Zoom things is that it doesn’t allow you to control the volume of meetings...

Re: Non-obvious remote work techniques

#57

Post by dorkwood »

ktal wrote: post #9

#3 - Holy hell I hate it when someone sends me a message with just "Hi". Just tell me what you want!

I normally just write back "hello", and know that I'll be receiving a question from them in the next 10 minutes.

I've tried ignoring it, but it's the sort of thing that sits simmering in the back of my mind. It's only one guy that does it. He's also the sort of guy who wouldn't understand what I meant if I tried to explain why I didn't want him to do it.

Re: Non-obvious remote work techniques

#58

Post by dorkwood »

bsder wrote: post #27
just-juan-post wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want them to use the chat program like e-mail?

Um, yes? Email WORKS JUST FINE . You know what else works fine? A PHONE . I know that actually calling someone on the phone seems to be traumatic for anyone under 35, but hey. If it's really important--call. If it's not that important--why am I being interrupted? Send me email. Chat--all the expressiveness of text with the interruptiveness of a phone call.

What industry do you work in, exactly? I think it would be a very odd thing if I were to ask my co-workers for their phone numbers. They'd probably ask why I needed it, and I'd say "so that I can call you if there's a problem". They'd say "why don't we just use Google Meet, like we do for everything else? Is there something wrong with your mic? I don't understand."

Re: Non-obvious remote work techniques

#59

Post by colanderman »

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #47

> makes the mute button easier to find It's odd this is still an issue. I'm not sure why the mute button is not featured more prominently on videochat apps. It's almost the primary feature during a call that makes things go smoothly. Also, there's always one guy who has to say every bloody time, "are you there, have you forgot to unmute?" if you fail to unmute and start talking <100ms after your name has been mention…

Hangouts is the worst in this regard. It hides in a bar off the bottom of the window that only stays visible if your mouse is in the exact correct position. It takes 5 seconds of chasing it to be able to catch it and click it. Why can't it just stay visible??

Re: Non-obvious remote work techniques

#60

Post by cmehdy »

ghthor wrote: post #53
alonmower wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Zoom (as long as Zoom has focus) you can hold down spacebar to temporarily unmute yourself. It's been a real lifesaver

Back in my day we called that, push-to-talk. Everything old is new again.

Teamspeak guild, assemble!
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