Hands On With The New And Improved Screenhero (YC W13) | Hacker News Reader

Hands On With The New And Improved Screenhero (YC W13)

techcrunch.com

35 pointsjsherwani12 comments

Being following for a while, looks very interesting. Key thing is what the pricing structure is will be. We've had the Enterprise Teamviewer for some time, I like it, but I'm very open to finding an alternative, for various reasons.

I need to test this out, also. I'm wondering how it compares against having real-time collaboration natively in web applications. From the video it looks like other cursors are disabled while text editing is in progress, i.e. one at a time editing. Although, it's not the same as everyone being able to edit concurrently, having people edit at the same time as you is pretty off-putting, this looks like it might actually be a better solution in that regard.

The advantage is, of course, is if it works OK it's a generic solution to giving all web applications real-time collaboration.

At a technical level I wonder whether it'll be able to properly detect when to disable the other cursors correctly for applications more complex than text editing, maybe an API is needed to signal the correct behaviour where the sharing couldn't realistically work it out for itself.

The nice thing about having a native client is that we (Screenhero) have full control over latency (well, outside of network issues of course!) and responsiveness, as well as those deep hooks into the hardware to make the multi-mouse magic happen. Our goal is to make /any/ app collaborative, without requiring developers hook into our API. I am curious what kind of apps you have in mind that might need to give hints to Screenhero? Give it a try, we think you'll find our active-cursor algorithm quite good—and if you don't, we want to hear your feedback!

Huge huge fan of Screenhero. We use it all the time to help our devs debug issues. When trying to help someone fix a bug in their code remotely nothing compares.

We've been loving screenhero. When pair programming many of us can use vim and tmux but for those developers who use an GUI editor nothing beats sharing the screen this way.

We've even taken to using it when sitting side by side with laptops to reduce craning your neck or backseat coding.

We use it inside the Screenhero office quite a lot too—Aside from eating our own dogfood, it lets us point without physically jabbing our fingers at the screen, which is actually pretty powerful!

Screenhero has been a fantastic tool for me to help my parents with their computers. Simple. Useful. Currently free. I hope there is a pricing structure that would allow me to pay for it and still be able to help my parents without requiring them to pay for copies also.

In the video they said they were looking at a monthly subscription model which would be a deal killer for me.

This trend of getting users on subscription sucks.

Jemm, speaking for Screenhero, we take your concerns seriously (many certainly share them), so don't freak out just yet! We're trying to think of the right pricing scheme that doesn't scare off our individual users, and we are certainly open to feedback and suggestions on this front.

Does Screenhero perform a peer to peer connection or is there a relay server in the middle the whole time? I imagine a relay server would necessitate a subscription to keep the lights on.

We use a peer-to-peer connection for the streaming video, but most of the rest is mediated by our servers. And future fancy features will require additional server resources, including video transcoding. So you are right, this is exactly why we are pursuing a subscription model.

Same here, if they were ever to charge monthly, I'd stop using them immediately. It's a great service, but not that compelling that I wouldn't switch to other cheaper alternatives.

We use this working remotely but we use it just as much sitting side by side in the office. Love this app.

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