My YouTube video gives a nice overview of the benefits of a virtual whiteboard: http://youtu.be/MDEHFHG1l3Y
What does Hacker News think?
We often take a picture of the whiteboard at the end of the discussion -- being able to continue to edit that whiteboard at some point in the future would be very handy.
1) SmartBoard is a giant LCD. Never seen this in the wild, but it exists. ~$8k.
2) Control-surface-only SmartBoard with integrated specialized projector. It hangs off the top-front of the board about 2 feet into the room, and covers the SmartBoard frame perfectly. Alignment is less of an issue since it can't move relative to the board. ~$6.5k.
These can be installed on a wall (labor costs) or on a wheeled cart (parts cost).
3) Control-surface-only SmartBoard installed on a wall, projector permanently installed on the ceiling. You (most likely) need a contractor to make the VGA/DVI run, install the projector mount in the ceiling, buy a projector, put the projector on it, align it, get an electrician to run power to the ceiling, etc.
This is what I most commonly see in classrooms. I worked for a contractor one summer, and a team of three of us could do ~4 classrooms in a day.
The board itself is around $2k. Projector + installation probably brings it up to around $3.5k.
4) Control-surface-only SmartBoard installed on a wall, projector sitting on a tabletop or A/V cart. Standing in front of the board to use it casts a shadow. There's an art form to standing the right amount off to the side. Some teachers were good at it, some weren't.
Smart Board would still be around $2k, and you can buy a ~$700 projector that'll do the trick.
I don't know what it costs to wall-mount the board in any of these configurations. Presumably if you have a couple of guys and drills, you can do it yourself and it'll only cost time.
Uploading the entire canvas would far too inefficient - I simply upload the points.
The transfer between two clients uses a technique called 'long polling'. That is, the client sends an HTTP request to the server, and the server doesn't respond until it has received a message (ie. stroke) from another client.
The fit process could likely be done client-side, and could offer some subtle smoothing if wanted?
Anyhow, really nice execution!
A killer missing feature seems to be microphone support, which the video alludes to.
Really? I don't think running another app to get audio is a very user friendly solution, and you'll never be able to record a session. How about Opus and webRTC or similar?
Disclaimer: I work at Sococo
I understand it's not a solution for the Android tablet, but I also thought I wanted to draw on a tablet and I've been happy with my set up - I can sit up and look forward and it feels better that way, than it would if I looked down towards my drawing hand and the tablet screen.
Just a thought. I'm one of those people who would never buy a Wacom Cintiq because I see the decoupling of "object to draw on" and "object to look at while drawing" as an incredible advantage.
Disclaimer: I made unwhiteboard.com