Show HN: Painless, free conference calls
swiftcall.co
swiftcall.co
0) The use of a set of different phone numbers instead of different conference rooms.
I don't like:
1) Why only a US number, when people are used to freeconferencecall.com, which has access numbers in many countries?
2) Why make someone visit a web site to set up a call? Isn't the user's calendar (e.g. on their mobile) the natural place for them to set up virtual meetings?
3) Why do I have to enter the PIN manually? RFC2806 defined pause and wait characters for URLs, back in the year 2000: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2806.txt
Also:
4) The link on the bottom-right of the page leads to https://emerge.cisco.com/ but that server is refusing connections on port 443. I can connect with plain http.
Right now this is product is just in a pilot phase, but we are absolutely looking into more international options in the future.
To your second point, what we think about a lot is an API developers could use to build this functionality into their apps or websites. So while you're in your calendar app, or in your task management app, you could easily accomplish the same thing (quickly scheduling a call and having a number provisioned). Would love your thoughts/feedback on this.
And thanks for catching that protocol mismatch!
That being said, the issue with conference calls has never been about the interface or the cost; people will learn and companies will pay. The issue has always been the network. Dropped calls, bad reception, bad internet, etc. I don't see anything in SwiftCall that addresses that.
What we think we’re seeing is a trend of more powerful networks becoming available as platforms. For developers and companies to use through things like APIs. And if that is the case, we were interested in experimenting with a simple interface to those platforms.
Swiftcall, for example, is built on top of Tropo, which is a cloud communications API that has features like multi-party conferences and add advanced features including recording and SIP.
We’re definitely keeping track of feedback about the quality of the calls and network performance, though. Because if that is poor, that’s a much more impactful and memorable bad user experience then the scheduling of the call in the first place. Agree with you there.
Thanks for taking the time to check the project out and for your thoughts!
I've been working at Sococo for a few years. We designed a communications platform for groups that takes it to the next plane - always connected, frictionless collaboration. You don't have codes and conferences and schedules. You click in and out of zones on a map. Folks are organized in teams, in pre-authenticated groups so no passcodes ever to start talking. Connection times are in milliseconds. You can tell who's communicating with whom at a glance. You can bring someone into a meeting with a click.
Alexander Graham is long dead; lets please escape the 'phone call' straightjacket!