Show HN: Padka – Make your Zoom sessions more fun and engaging | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Padka – Make your Zoom sessions more fun and engaging

padka.com

44 pointssurihae9342 comments

Hi guys! Come and try out our app for your next Zoom sessions. It's for free and it's fun.

We build a simple set of tools that can be used with any video communication app or streaming platform (Zoom, Google Meeting, etc.), through a virtual audio device and virtual camera, sound and visual effects are injected directly into your streaming video. Our MVP requires macOS Big Sur 11.0 +

The app provides a reaction board (with memes and sound effects), collections of background music and transition videos, set of timers and dice, and a feature to share multimedia files directly on your streaming video.

The app can be download in our website https://www.padka.com/ or directly via this link https://padkaassets.s3.amazonaws.com/Padka.pkg

Please share with us your opinions and reach us out anytime especially if you find a bug, so we have a chance to win you back :P

Really appreciate your time. I'm Mai Lan and looking forward to connecting with you guys!

Who is this aimed at exactly?

I can't think of a single business-oriented use where this would be appropriate, so perhaps some sort of use in kids education or targeted at a teenage audience?

The language on the site definitely suggests this is aimed at education. The HN title however, is more ambiguous and suggests it could be used in a professional context.

You get it right! We aim at online teachers and online instructors, however some of our initial users have been using it business-oriented and suggested that there are quite some creative ways to use the app.

You're right! We aim at online teachers, online instructors and online course creators!

I think this would have greatly helped my youngest, 6 at the time, stay more engaged during virtual learning in last year's lockdown. His teachers, who did a better job than we had any right to expect, quickly figured out some little tricks from screen-sharing 3rd party websites with fun dancing animations for "brain breaks" but nothing integrated with their regular lesson video call like this.

I hope you're able to get this adopted by individual teachers who can lead the way. School district IT isn't the most cutting edge (though, again, ours did a great job of adapting fast and standardizing on some very good resources like Zearn).

Thank you for your kind words. Yes, actually that was one of the reasons we came up with the app, my co-founder has an 8 year old daughter and I remember she said "No kids want to be on Zoom". While Zoom is terrific for our remote team, we hope to bring something more for teaching and learning. Definitely when the time comes, we will approach schools districts and hopefully over the challenge of school district IT!

Seeing a well-dressed person dancing with the superimposed image of cat dancing and the text "PARTY" along with lots of bright colors and the word "FUN" made me reach for the little "x" button within seconds of opening your website.

Others may have different preferences.

Same here. I think these effects could get annoying super fast and turn many meetings into memetings.

Yeah, I can imagine...

I share the same sentiment, however I scrolled through and I feel this is the experience that we are heading towards in meetings. Excuse the memes there, but ability to blend multimedia in meetings can help a lot.

I conduct webinars every month and I would love to have the ability to play soft background music easily during intervals or fire up a PiP video from youtube or my file system through my webcam. The technology has always been there to virtualize cameras, just hidden behind complex tools like OBS. I hope this segment of tools evolves and becomes the norm.

So I hope you enjoy the tool!!! If you're open for us to connect and learn from your experience, it will be wonderful. My email is mailan@padka.com

The rest of the landing page seems squarely geared at educators giving lessons via video calls.

With that in mind I think the landing page set a good tone for what and who they're trying to sell to, and that doesn't include "meetings between peers in a professional context"

You get it just right! I guess the HN title I use is a bit confusing. Actually it's based on some of our initial users suggestions, they used the app as business-oriented and suggested that there are quite some creative ways to apply it.

HN may be generally curmudgeonly. But at least it comes with a sense of self awareness.

That’s a good thing. If you’re not the intended audience they save on their resources and your time.

I’d call that a win-win and not worthy of a critique.

Wish there were a "Like" button! haha

It looks like this is targeted at Zoom calls with students. I suspect they'll find this more appealing.

The six icons below your "try it now" button are broken in Firefox: https://i.imgur.com/jVmm6Vr.png

If that's not how they're supposed to look, then they're broken in Safari too, I guess.

Thanks so much for letting me know!!! First time seeing this...

They're fixed now as I tried from my side. Please let me know if you see them other way :)

ohhhh thank you Ennea for pointing this out. Our website is built in Wix, do you have any idea why this happens?

No clue, sorry. The SVG for the icons seems a bit wonky, though, since it doesn't render a hundred percent correctly inside Inkscape, either.

No worry. We made some changes after your comment. They look all good now from my side in Firefox and also Safari. You can have a look again if you have time Ennea :D

Nice looks like a useful product. It might be worth testing out a few landing pages for different audiences and solutions this provides.

Also, does this do a virtual green screen effect?

Also, unless I am in incognito mode I can't see the sign up form. Not sure if it is a conflict with one of my add-ons (like ad block).

Thank you for pointing this out, I will have a look at it now!

Thank you. That's actually a great idea testing out a few landing pages for different audiences. I will figure it out. The MVP doesn't do virtual background but we plan to make it soon!

Is it fair to summarize this product as a simplified OBS studio with features targeting the needs of educators?

Wow, yes, this is one interesting way to describe it. Thanks for the idea!

This looks cool. I don't see a Privacy Policy -- is any session info sent back to Padka? If so, what?

Thank you!! Looking forward to have you try it out and share your experience. Padka doesn't collect any data from user, our MVP doesn't come with any users management actually. When new version comes with any form of collecting information, we will keep users aware of :D

What's your profit model? How do you expect to make money with this product?

We thought about subscription (free and premium) for individual and corporation; also totally free with ads revenue is an option. To be honest, right now we are most focusing on developing the product and we haven't make decision about the business model yet. Please feel free to share your thought, I'd love to hear.

> also totally free with ads revenue is an option

Would that mean showing ads on stream during the meeting?

We actually aim at education and training, the app is kind of a simplified OBS studio with features targeting the needs of educators, normally a session there last for quite some time, and theme can be very divers. Ads revenue is one of the thoughts we have.

Install failed. OS X 10.14.6. Happy to help debug with you.

I'm sorry to hear that. Our MVP requires macOS Big Sur 11.0 or above. Hopefully we can get Catalina to work very soon!

By any mean, please feel free to reach out to me at mailan@padka.com if you want to share your thought,I will be happy to hear from you!

please do not invite me to cat party. I will stay here in burning world anti-vax surveillance state. I am not cat party person

This is so sweet, you stays long enough to know that was an invitation to cat party. No worry, next version no more cat!

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