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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

Not exactly what you are asking for, but I'll throw it in here:

I run a fully remote company, and most of the objections I've heard from others we've found workaround for.

The biggest unsolved problem is whiteboarding - there is no good collaborative online whiteboarding solution that doesn't require a lot of expensive equipment to be deployed to everyone.

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Why do you need to whiteboard?

If you really must, give everybody a Wacom tablet + Paint + Screen sharing (or just a VNC server over the VPN so everybody can draw)

> The biggest unsolved problem is whiteboarding - there is no good collaborative online whiteboarding solution that doesn't require a lot of expensive equipment to be deployed to everyone.

Maybe my company is just weird, but we don't use whiteboards all that much. At least for code our preferred collaboration method is pairing, which isn't as hard over a network.

We write NLP software, and most of our whiteboard usage is for drawing out linguistic constructs and often involves only one person doing the drawing, which seems like an easy subset of whiteboarding to handle remotely.

We don't either, but it comes up occasionally. Sometimes when figuring out a large architecture, it's just easier to be able to draw it out. So far we've solved the problem by waiting until we see each other in person every few months, so it hasn't been a huge issue, just the main issue we can't seem to solve well.

Here: https://www.awwapp.com/

Discuss.IO has a pretty good whiteboard. (I made it)

Edit: I found another called deekit.com

That deekit looks promising, thanks!

for whiteboarding: onenote on surfaces? (which syncs almost real-time) This is what I use, for those kind of things, as someone working remotely

Not a bad idea, but it means deploying a surface to everyone, and frankly most people want to use Macs, so I'd have to give two devices to everyone, one of which would only get used for whiteboarding, which doesn't happen that often.

What about an equivalent IPad and app? Maybe something like (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/baiboard-collaborative-white...) (I haven't personally used it but ipad's would make more sense in the Apple world ...)

Looks like there are a few other options:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/groupboard-collaborative-whi...

https://syncpadapp.com/

Tablets can be slightly cheaper than houses near the office.

ah yeah, I actually use a macbook and surface pro 2 at the same time as pictured: (http://imgur.com/a/fqf3P) combined specs are actually similar to a new mb pro (combined 512 gb ssd, 16 gb ram, ~4.7 pounds), and cost is less, given that the sp2 was bought used so total ~ $1900.

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