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Show HN: Faster access to Google hangouts

hang0ut.com

66 pointspyotrgalois48 comments

http://plus.google.com/hangouts/_

Exactly. And for those of us with multiple accounts:

First Id: https://plus.google.com Second Id: https://plus.google.com/u/1/ Third Id: https://plus.google.com/u/2/ ...etc

If you want a permanent, unique, hangout URL, set up a Google+ event which finishes in 100 years and make Hangout the location. Voila - the hangout URL persists even if no-one's in it.

I think this works better for me:

http://hangouts.google.com/start

It is better for me because, now that I've visited the URL, if I start typing 'hangout' in the address bar, this comes up first for me and I just hit enter (and it's easy to remember). It's the little things.

https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/meet/

It does not work: That links let's you open the google hangouts application, however it does not work when you want to invite people. Check that after opening the application, the link to invite other people is set to https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/meet/. If you send the link to somebody else it will try to create a new hangout (that will have the exact same issue).

Just go to https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_ -- It'll generate a new one and take you to it. I have this bookmarked on my address book too so it's just one click to make a new hangout.

Thanks! This link works fine. I was not aware of it existence. I has a too long URI but it is way better than having to go to google plus and go to the the bottom right corner so that start a hangout button appears.

I am going to replace my Start button created by hangouts js library with a link to this URI.

EDIT: I just replaced the google hangout button created via js with google's framework by a direct link :).

Nice, it amazes me how difficult it is to start a Hangout.

It is unbelievable. I created this website to deal with a very simple and common scenario. At work we use hipchat and sometimes I need to have a call with coworkers I do not have on my own gmail/hangouts contacts. Everytime I need to create a call to invite them I need to go to https://plus.google.com/, wait that the hangouts sidebar loads after 5 seconds, move the mouse to the bottom right corner, wait for the "Start a video Hangout" button to appear and finally click it so that the google hangouts application appears and I can copy the hangouts link.

I, too, am constantly amazed at the fact that there are so many different paths through the G+ UI for creating hangouts, and that they all seem to produce different, weirdly incompatible results that affect whether or not your intended recipient is actually going to be able to see/use the invitation. It is utterly bizarre that my company uses hangouts every single day, but we are reduced to: 1) hitting "refresh" on the browser in hopes of updating things so we see the invitation, and 2) saying "i sent it...do you see it? I'll try sending it again" ad infinitum. It's the 2014 version of "can you hear me now?" and google should be really, really embarrassed about it.

Same experience here. It is always a nightmare using it with everyone having to do weird things like go to every else's G+ page and click hi and weird stuff...

I don't understand, how is this faster? There is nothing on the page but a button that says Start. When I click it, it takes me to https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_ which then redirects to a page that says "Please wait" for about 5 seconds. After than I get another redirect to a google page asking me to install a plugin. Why do I need a plugin to use Hangouts? At the moment I just open my Gmail tab. What problem exactly are you trying to solve here?

He's trying to make a problem, and then solve it.

You got it

What I don't understand is why this got voted up. It is webpage with a link.

Probably because many of us had the same issue: no easy way to create google hangout with a link to share where anybody can join. After creating the page with the google hangout api somebody mentioned a link to resolve the issue I/we had. Since it is very likely that many do not know about the link or do not want to learn it, I think the webpage is useful. It is something very simple and stupid, but it is useful enought, at least for me.

As I said in other comments sometimes on hipchat I need to have a call with teammates that I do not have on gmail/hangouts. So I need to create a hangout with a link to share so that I can copy it into hipchat. There is no way to do that on gmail. You need to open google plus that takes a while to load, then you need to go to the bottom right corner and wait for the Start video chat button to appear and finally click it.

I was not aware that there was a link (https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_) that lets you create a hangout with a link to share so that other people can join it. So I created a simple landing page with a button created with google hangouts api. After learning about the link I mentioned before, I changed the google hangout button by a normal link.

It works really well on Chrome. Sadly, it does not work on Firefox.

Thanks for checking it out! It is working fine for me on Firefox. Could you provide more information of why it is not working well for you on Firefox?

Not working for me either. All I can see is the image and some text but nothing happens. Firefox 30 on Ubuntu 14.04

Strange. It is working fine on my linux, mac and windows pcs with Firefox 30. I don't think it is my code since it is really simple (10 lines of html and some css). It might be an issue google platform.js.

The Hangouts UI is a disgrace to Google. I can't count the # of times I've tried to get even technical people to join a Hangout and it took an extra 5-10 minutes to sort out. Finding the initiation button is horribly hard, the UI is clumsy and unintuitive for those used to Skype or other video calling tools, and even inviting a new person to a hangout is maddeningly hard, particularly if they've got multiple Google IDs.

Luckily, Hangouts is no longer the only usable vidchat system out there. There's also things like vLine[0] which I use to chat with loved ones, and numerous other services. It doesn't even require a login. WebRTC is awesome.

Apparently it's possible to do screen-sharing over WebRTC with a Chrome extension as well (and I assume a Firefox extension is possible), although I don't know of any services which provide that yet.

[0] https://vline.com/

vLine looks like it's really cool, but I don't see a way to "lock" a chat. That's a dealbreaker for me. =-(

By locking a chat, do you mean keep it open for the future? I think, but I'm not sure, that simply keeping the link around would work.

You'll probably never see this, but no -- I meant "keep other people out".

Pretty minimal page!

    <!DOCTYPE html>

    <html>
    <head>
      <meta name="generator" content=
      "HTML Tidy for Linux/x86 (vers 25 March 2009), see www.w3.org">
      <meta charset="UTF-8">

      <title>Hang0ut - Faster access to Google Hangouts</title>
      <link rel="stylesheet" href="/main.css" type="text/css">
      <link href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lato" rel="stylesheet" type=
      "text/css">
    </head>

    <body>
      <div id="content">
        <h1>hangout</h1><a href="https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_"></a>

        <div id="button">
          <span id="btn-txt">Start</span>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div id="name">
        <h2><a href="http://federicocarrone.com/">Federico Carrone</a></h2>
      </div>

      <div id="why">
        <p>Faster access to google hangouts</p>
      </div>
    </body>
    </html>

I like that the background image is almost 3 megs.

Copied from http://unsplash.com/. I just resized it. It has not yet been updated on amazon cloudfront. Check: http://hang0ut.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/

Here's 62kb for you: http://i.imgur.com/cuL7uX1.jpg :)

If you have Alfred, this is a great workflow for this problem: https://github.com/wallace/google_hangout_workflow

Here is a link to another Alfred workflow that I wrote. It opens a hangout session in a new window of your default browser and supports Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. https://github.com/codykimberling/alfred-workflow-google-han...

Not working for me on Chrome 37 OS X, interestingly enough. Error in console is 'Uncaught ReferenceError: gapi is not defined'. My bet is on an HTTP/HTTPS discrepancy, but I'm not sure.

I changed the google hangout button by a normal link. Check it out: http://hang0ut.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/. It should work now.

I just got image on Chrome as well. Based on the picture, I thought maybe this is a site urging people to .. like .. actually hangout with other people instead of google hangouts :) That would've been cool too.

Is there a way to do a minimal-click start to Google Hangouts on Air. I really like it for screencasting when I'm giving a lecture but it takes a few minutes to set up and get going.

https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_?hso=0

http://g.co/hangout

I don't use Google hangouts because I don't want a Google+ profile.

There is no problem, and this is no solution.

As I said in other comments sometimes on hipchat I need to have a call with teammates that I do not have on gmail/hangouts. So I need to create a hangout with a link to share so that I can copy it into hipchat and anybody can join it. There is no way to do that on gmail. You need to open google plus that takes a while to load, then you need to go to the bottom right corner and wait for the Start video chat button to appear and finally click it.

This works better for me:

1. Close laptop

2. Hangout with friends in person

I'm sure you don't find the idea of a group video chat so useless, so I guess that's what happens when you choose a "fancy" name for a product. I found it a ridiculous name when I first heard of it, and I still didn't change my mind; even if the product itself works very well for me.

A funny thing about its audio codec: my dogs don't recognize my wife's voice over skype, but they do over hangouts :-)

It's better than "facetime". I mean you can't really say, "I'm just going to facetime the wife" without a little chortle. Call me immature ('cos I sort of am).

Not so easy when they're in different countries...

Unknown command, Line 1.

Sure, I'll just take a day and a few hundred dollars to fly across the country every time we have a company meeting, that sounds reasonable.

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