I recently started using DigitalOcean's new app platform. It's new and still has some kinks, but they've integrated all of Heroku's open source build packs, so migrated from Heroku (if that's what you're doing) is pretty painless.
I wanted to share Strikr, a simple online tool for doing live technical interviews remotely. I actually built this tool earlier this year as part of a larger project, but due to COVID and other reasons, I never moved forward with it. I decided to strip everything down to just the interviewing platform and make it available at a super low price to make it accessible to anyone hiring right now.
The IDE is built with Monaco, which is the underlying editor powering VS Code which gives a great experience. The interviewer and candidate can see everything typed and executed in real time, and code execution is supported in 13 different languages. I'll also be adding video chat by integrating the WebRTC tech I built for another app, Water Cooler (https://watercooler.work), but that isn't quite ready for prime time.
I'm primarily just putting it out there to gauge if there's enough interest to keep moving forward with the project. Are there more fully featured options out there? Absolutely, but the hope is that with the low price point it'll be an attractive option for employers that don't need all of the extra bells and whistles of the more expensive and mature products.
Sort of a similar use case. I think they go a little too heavy on tracking your open windows/URLs and broadcasting it, but that’s just me.
Remote Hour looks really cool for the freelancer use case. Nice job on winning Pioneer! I was able to crack the top 25 with my last project but was always passed over on the review.
FWIW, I’m a pretty shy person and actually find the idea of Water Cooler less stressful than having to call someone, wonder if they’re going to answer, and then worry about when they might call later. But that’s me haha
I actually did discuss the security aspect in my first comment, although that’s a bit lost in the mix right now.
Essentially, we use WebRTC for the voice/video and everything is encrypted on the wire. Goal is to roll out E2E later this year/early next year via insertable streams. That will be available to everyone, not just the paying customers.
I would note though that currently none of the big meeting software offers E2E encryption, except Webex I believe. Discord included, they only offer encryption on the wire.
I think the long term answer to the Discord question though is that many large organizations are 1) not going to trust a consumer product and 2) we’ll eventually offer the user administration you need to really handle 100’s if employees that Discord doesn’t have. Discord could be great for small teams here and there, but it’s still a consumer product first.
On the subject of synchronous communication, the plan is to add the ability to send video/screen sharing messages to teammates that can be watched later. I eventually want it to be able to handle both sides of that issue you’re talking about, but for the moment, I think you have a lot of teams moving to longer term WFH and they’re trying to replace the office with Zoom. Water Cooler gives them a way to talk without needing to feel like they have to fill an entire meeting block. Additionally, with most recent people using video on Zoom, there’s a huge draw to stare at it all day. We leave video off by default and offer the ability to create voice only rooms, so you can stick it in the background while talking to someone without feeling weird about it.
Overall though, I think the amount of satisfaction (or frustration) you get out of any work place communication app is largely dependent on your management and work environment. If they’re that concerned about you needing to stay logged into an app all day (be it Slack, Water Cooler, etc.) and not about your work output, then it might be time to reconsider your options.
Thank you! At present time, you get an environment that is designed specifically for the workplace -- more private by nature because everything is scoped to and only available to your organization, higher quality video chat, and higher quality screen sharing (at least when compared directly to the free version of Discord).
Long term, we'll be adding in more enterprise features like user permissions, multiple teams within an organization, SSO, and a live broadcast feature that lets you do an all-hands with your entire organization.
In the next week or two I'm rolling out direct calls. If you don't need to do external meetings, then this could definitely nix Zoom. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it would replace Slack because most teams still need that text communication option, but long term that is an area I want Water Cooler to tackle.
Thanks! The design is still relatively simple, but that will be changing soon as I build out more of the features. There's a 7 day free trial where you get full access to Water Cooler, and after that you're downgraded to the free tier.
With that said, we're actually still finishing up the billing system so anyone signing up right now gets an extended free trial until then. I'll make a note to further advertise the initial free trial though because it's easy to miss at the moment.
Thanks, excited for you to try it! Long term, there will be an additional paid tier once we have the feature set to necessitate it.
However, even at the current $8/month price it's still highly profitable as far as the infrastructure goes. The voice/video servers run on Digital Ocean, so the servers themselves are pretty affordable and the bandwidth is dirt cheap. Additionally, most of our users have kept it audio only (the default setting) so far which obviously requires less resources to process.
I'm Ricky, the founder of Water Cooler. I built Water Cooler to help bridge the gap between async written communication (Slack, email, etc) and live meetings.
As many companies suddenly shifted to remote work, I noticed a growing trend of leaving a Zoom meeting on in the background all day. In other cases, teams are scheduling constant back to back meetings. The reason for this is because teams suddenly needed to find a way to recreate the more informal, spontaneous conversation that you normally get from people being in the same physical location. The issue with this is they were using software designed for meetings to recreate something that happens almost exclusively outside of meetings.
The hope is that Water Cooler's always available rooms will offer distributed teams a more natural way to communicate. And all are voice only by default, so there's less of a draw to stare at our app all day (we want people to work, not stare at Water Cooler non-stop).
A bit about our security in light of everything happening with Zoom: All voice and video data is transmitted via WebRTC and is encrypted on the wire. We use Janus for our SFU (https://janus.conf.meetecho.com/index.html) which is open source and plan on enabling end to end encryption (for everyone, not just the paid users) later this year/early next year via insertable streams. Obviously, we'll be limited to offering this in our desktop app and newer versions of Chrome for the time being, but hopefully that won't be the case for long.
We opened up Water Cooler to anyone without an invite two weeks ago and currently have about 35 teams using it. Would love to know what you guys think!