My 100yr old grandma is using KOMP right now, and that's going very well. She can understand us better than on the phone. The device is on the expensive side, though, with 600 £.
Re:What Comes After Zoom?
by rhythmofrest on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @09:18AM
(#23613504)
Thank you for sharing this, I've never seen KOMP before and it looks wonderful.
Cisco, among others, already solved that problem years ago.
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collaboration-endpoin...
Yes but when was the last time you ran WebEx on Linux?
I attend WebEx, weekly, Linux(Gentoo) desktop, Chrome browser. It's alittle easier than Zoom where I have to ask three times before they provide the in-browser link.
How do you ask for the in-browser link? I managed to join a few times via the browser but as of late, i always get redirected to the app and never see the 'in browser' option anymore.
You have to pretend using the app (you get a download popup for a broken link with whatever non-existent protocol) and only after that, on the same page, appears a link that says something like "app doesn't work? try to join from your browser".
Or at least that's how it worked last time I tried a month ago or so.
Thanks, that's how i got it working too but that stopped working for me about 2 weeks ago :/
Google, Amazon, and Facebook all make devices that do exactly this. A big screen that sits on a side table, essentially a digital photo frame, that you can dial into. In the Amazon Echo case, you can even “Drop In” and connect with no need for grandma to even accept.
I've been using a Google Nest Hub Max for talking with my mother and it was tricky to set up, among other things because it assumes you have a smartphone, so I needed a workaround. Also it requires the user to train voice recognition, which was very scary for her. And entirely unnecessary.
We're glad we have it now, but getting it working wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't been staying over for a week. Google at least isn't thinking about this product the right way.
It exists, it's called a Facebook Portal. It's an outstanding piece of hardware and has been an absolute blessing for our elderly relatives in this pandemic. Of course, you are letting Facebook into your living room, which does give me the willies but not as many willies as the thought of our kids and their grandparents going 3 months without seeing each other.
> It would have to be a device that's as simple to use as a phone. Not a cell phone, a regular phone that sits on a desk, the old-fashioned kind.
Why? Smartphones are already ubiquitous and there are plenty of extremely capable dirt-cheap models thanks to economies of stale.
Just get your grandma a $100 smartphone.
Grandma has arthritis and bad eyes and has a hard time pushing "buttons" on the screen. She accidentally swipes the screen when trying to use it.
Older/differently abled folks have real issues with tech designed for the young and nimble.
Re:What Comes After Zoom?
by social_quotient on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @05:13AM
(#23611545)
My first thought was Alexa Show cause it has drop in feature and voice calling.
If everyone had a Peer to Peer optimized ISP and there was a national ID registry, it would be very easy to lookup someone via their national ID signature updated DNS entry. This could also carry other data.
I think you're distinctly overlooking the many problems that come with 'easy to look up someone'. There are already massive harassment and stalking issues for some people with decentralized platforms like Facebook, let alone a central government registry.
I believe there are multiple solutions from the various big tech companies. Most of them I would never trust, like Facebook's solution, but they all seem to fulfill what you're asking for.
It would have to be a device that's as simple to use as a phone. Not a cell phone, a regular phone that sits on a desk, the old-fashioned kind.
I bet a whole lot of people wish that they had something like that working during the pandemic.