How to Make a Whiteboard for $4 [video] | Hacker News Reader

How to Make a Whiteboard for $4 [video]

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65 pointstheschwa36 comments

Wow. This really did not need to be 7 minutes long. A short textual description (even a tweet) would have sufficed.

People in a hurry should add #t=5m58s to the youtube link, that is where he uses it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBMUI-Mj_YU#t=5m58s

http://rumkin.com/reference/whiteboard/surfaces.php

There is one missing: Glass. In one corporate office, we had glass walls. I taped a large sheet of white paper on the outside of the glass wall and used the inside as a whiteboard. Probably the most durable surface for that purpose.

And I have heard of mounting a piece of glass in front of a white wall to act as a whiteboard.

7th entry from the top.

That's exactly what we do at Fog Creek. Our whiteboards are just glass panels held about an inch in front of the wall by six special clasps. For those of us whose whiteboards are mounted on non-white walls, the back of the glass is painted white. They look spectacular and are incredibly durable--but they're also rather expensive, sadly.

Pictures?

Any sense if plexiglass is as good?

Ghosting issues.

I have used plexiglass. It is quite subject to scratching.

If you must use plastic, use "Lexan". Its harder and sturdier than regular plexi. It costs 4 times as much, but ghosts much less and resists scratching much better.

We created a sexy setup with plexiglass, glass fogging spray paint, and mirror hangers. We get lots of compliments.

It cost a hell of a lot more than $4, but it looks a lot better too.

Here's a few pics (pardon the sweet coloring from the iPhone camera): http://drp.ly/8Az8f

You can also get plexiglass pre-fogged, but it costs more. We liked the subtle background paint color showing through.

Not a bad idea, but really didn't need to be 7 minutes long.

A while ago, I bought a box of page protectors, slipped a sheet of white paper in each and put them in 3 ring binders. Now I have dry erase sketch pads.

http://www.amazon.com/Standard-Archival-Protectors-UNV21125-...

Damn clever.

I have a small whiteboard that fits in my laptop bag that I've used for sketching out things. I would then photograph the board and use Gimp to clean up the images for long-term saving (if I had something worth saving).

The page-protectors approach is so much more convenient.

Haha, it's an ad. I love how he fakes reading the name off of the product slowly, as if he's never read it before, then proceeds to repeat it, and the web address where you can buy it.

"I've discovered a product.." Discovered a product.

You really think this guy is pushing $4.00 cellophane wrap? I'm sure he's getting a huge cut of the "computer nerds who run to Michael's and buy cellophane wrap to stick it to their wall for a whiteboard" market.

Worse case scenario (if you consider promotion inherently evil) he's a business consultant or something and the YouTube video serves as buzz for this. Either way it's a cool hack.

Yes, I do think he is pushing it.

Your other two sentences are irrelevant to the fact that this video is a shitty ad.

Do you have some sort of evidence that he is working for Highlander or are you just making an accusation?

I assumed it was an ad for ibusinessmagazine.

Whoever used a bunch of accounts to vote some of my comments down, here and elsewhere: fuck you

Here's another one so you can hit my karma again

Why not just get some tileboard? It's $12 for a 4'x8' chunk at Home Depot: http://www.johnmurch.com/2007/10/20/diy-whiteboard-on-the-ch...

Two issues with the $12 tileboard:

(1) ghosting: they erase well when new, and when the ink hasn't been there for long, but over time they get murky.

(2) mounting: it's not easy to cut to size; it has enough thickness and weight that mounting tape or small tacks are iffy (and prone to failure sometime after installation).

The same issues come up for other surfaces short of fairly-expensive true glass.

If this 'clearphane' continues to be cleanly erasible after a while in use, or with ink that's been present for days/weeks, then this is a really neat idea I hadn't heard before. I'll definitely be trying it out.

Well, for ghosting, they're so damn cheap that replacing them isn't a cost concern for anyone but those where ramen profitability is a lofty goal :)

But perhaps you could combine the two? Tileboard for a solid white back and this cellophane for a covering to protect against ghosting. Sounds like a winner.

Nice idea. The problem I see with his demonstration is that He is going to be in big trouble with the clothes he hangs in that door at the side. (unless he wears all black) nobody noticed?

A very good idea. I made myself a blackboard of wood with a very expensive paint so I can use color chalks. I love it, but is bulky and heavy, and dusty.

I will try this need method.

Text version?

1. Get hold of some clear cellophane (the stuff used in the video is for gift-wrapping fruit baskets and the like)

2. Use pins/tacks to attach a top corner to a wall, unravel to desired width and pin/tack the far top-corner

3. Use a sharp blade to trim, then tack bottom corners

4. Tile surfaces and repeat for wider coverage

5. Use white-board pens and eraser as normal

Bingo!

It may require properties of the specific cellophane he's using. The thing that's interesting about the video is how clean the erase is. He calls it Clearphane by Highlander. They have a ridiculous website, http://www.highlandsupply.com/

How could they possibly think that is a good idea? I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when they decided they needed a EULA and a users address before they would them look at a list of products.

If their market is wholesalers, they probably have a sales team, and the goal here is to build their Leads list.

I know what you're saying, but I've been here before. Few years back. Company sold customized silicone products (ipod slips, bracelets, keychains, etc). The owner wanted it setup with a small form (like that one) before you saw pricing.

His argument was that people that clicked on pricing but wouldn't fill a small form wouldn't have bought anyway.

I argued against it. I was young. It was 2004 or so, so I had been developing software professionally for 2 years.

He agreed to an experiment. I devised my own little Google Website Optimizer. We showed three things: 1) Status Quo 2) a "No Thanks" button beside the "Submit" button and 3) Skipped form entirely.

Long short, he was right. Removing the form didn't increase sales over 3 months, not at all. And it arguably hurt things because we had less sales data about prospects.

After filling out their form all I got was an SQL Error. This must be some secret-ops-CIA-type of Company...

But if this thing works, it is exactly what I'v been looking for over the last years.

IdeaPaint got me hoping. Their idea: Paint your wall with whiteboard color. The Problem is: You can't enter the room with the painted wall for a couple of days until its dry. Some students foundet the company, because during their time on campus they felt whiteboards were rediculous expensive. So they dropped this product on the market, for the exact same amount of money per whiteboard-m²... but its so easy! Ah I forgot, you have to paint your wall...

"After filling out their form all I got was an SQL Error. This must be some secret-ops-CIA-type of Company..."

Weird. I filled it out using the same single character for every field and it worked fine. They apparently do zero validation of input.

Anyways, this may be handy:

http://www.highlandsupply.com/PDF/FilmSection.pdf

If it's not too specific (i.e. if any stiff cellophane in the dimensions of a roll of wrapping paper will do), I saw them selling another brand at the Target in Mountain View a few weeks ago.

instead of pins/tacks we can some plane stickers which have glue on both side

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