Ismuser

[ismuser]

Ismuser updated to 0.4!

Once again Ismuser comes with some awesome features.

First of all, Ismuser's interface has been completely restyled because we wanted a smarter and prettier new one. Now the magic board and chat modules have a dark grey top bar and the second one has a green circle instead of the older "You have been connected" message and the bubbles were resized so they fit perfectly in the module. Furthermore, the font-style and the font-colour in our help messages and magic board footer have changed.

We also translated our demos to Spanish and now you can try Ismuser in both languages. Test it at http://ismuser.com/demo/1 and http://ismuser.es/demo/1

We also included other features we have written about in other posts as events, exceptions and users. We have some predefined exceptions to catch errors and created the object "user" to manage them in an easier way. In addition, there are events related with those users to take actions when something happens (Someone connects or disconnects i.e.).

Moreover, we analysed in depth the security of our product and we made some improvements about it.

Finally, we fixed some minor bugs.

[ismuser]

2nd place on the IncubeGC Demo Day.

On the 27th February IncubeGC organised an event called Demo Day where the nine projects participating in the accelerating plan were exposed on a 5 minutes pitch with a smart judge watching carefully and asking some questions.  The judge was composed by investors from Madrid, Barcelona and Gran Canaria, directors of enterprises and IncubeGC organizers.

The event started with Juan Domínguez, president of SPEGC and vice-president of Gran Canaria council presenting the event and the judge. Then, the pitches started with a huge impact on the audience. Ismuser was on the 7th turn of exposition and finally the time arrived.

Rubén started a very good pitch taking the attention of everyone in the room, while the other three members, Dan, Borja and Leo prepared a real time demonstration of Ismuser integrated on the New York Times website that was shown at the end of the presentation. When we finished, on the asking turn, the first thing an investor said was: "The idea is excellent..." and we felt really excited about it.

Later, when all the projects finished, three investors presented themselves and did an asking round for the audience to solve their questions about investing. Meanwhile, the organizers were calculating the judge results and then the final ranking came out from the 5th position to the 1st one.

We got and amazing second place and after a photo-shoot we had a nice lunch speaking with the investors, directors and audience.

On this five months we accelerated our project in many ways. First of all, we made an improvement on our technology, gathering new features we explained on older blog posts. Furthermore, we learned about entrepreneurship, making us easier to develop our business.

And finally, the most important thing we learned, working hard is the way to success.

[ismuser]

New demo and more documentation!

Ismuser keeps improving and comes again with new features. We have implemented a new liquid demo. The webcams size is adjusted as maximum as possible while the magic board and chat modules are hidden. Furthermore, when you open the magic board to watch your multimedia files, the webcams will be automatically resized to make you feel a comfortable experience.

We added a new section in the documentation one with tutorials and examples where we have some guidelines to make a demo like this new one. In this section we explain the new features. These ones are the exceptions in our client code, user events, the object "user" and how you monitor users.

Exceptions.

We want to grant you a better web app so we added some predefined exceptions to catch errors. Every exception has 5 parameters giving enough information to act consequently with the issues.

Events.

There are many events related with users, for example, when a user connects or disconnects to the room. This helps you a lot so you can make some things when an event occurs.

Users.

You can also manage users in your room easily with the "object User".  As we show in our last created demo you can change your nickname, but we have other management actions as changing data, kicking users,  muting microphones and more.

You can see how all these features working at  http://demo.ismuser.com/demo4.html

If you are interested in learning how to include this in your own website, take a look at: http://www.ismuser.com/docs/tutorials

Finally, if you find this hard, you can see an example of how to create a basic demo like our older demos.

[ismuser]

How not to look ugly on a webcam

We all know video conference is an awesome technology, something that makes easier our life and lets us to be more productive. But we all also hate how we look in front of a webcam. We usually look ugly, with pale skin. That's not exactly what we want to be watched by our clients or friends, thus Mixergy has created an infographic explaining how we can improve the way we look using video conference and how to avoid glitches in our meetings.

You can access to the original link by clicking here.

[ismuser]

Ismuser.es already available!

Ismuser keeps moving forward and the spanish version of our service is finally here! After some months working exclusively in English, we decided we could not ignore 410 million of Spanish native speakers around the world, so we translated our website and did all the necessary to start operating natively in Spanish.

From now, you can access Ismuser in Spanish through www.ismuser.es and there you will find the same as always, but now totally translated. If you already have an account from ismuser.com, you are able to keep using it in ismuser.es.

If you find any kind of glitch, don't hesitate to report it using http://ismuser.es/bugs or just by [email protected].

[ismuser]

Support and status pages now available!

We know problems may occur in every different way when dealing with code. Problems are something usual and they show up when you don’t expect them. We think they must be solved as soon as possible and keeping that in mind, we decided to improve our documentation adding explanatory images, segmenting and clarifying the whole document and finally adding a support page in where, we bring together a bunch of services fully dedicated to solve your problems.

The support page collects important information that probably might help when you get stucked or just get lost playing around with Ismuser. For instance, with the release notes you can check every update made on each Ismuser service or look for your doubts in our FAQ, where we’re trying to collect the most important issues from users.

We have even set up a mailbox where you can send us your problems and questions to get your issues fixed ([email protected]). Besides, we're starting to offer premium services related to extra support for critical businesses or for embedding Ismuser in third-party projects if you don’t want to get your hands dirty. If you are interested in either of the both services, just contact us by email.

Last but not least, we've also created a status page where you can check the current status of all our services or even if there is some maintenance in progress or scheduled. This page is meant to work every time, no matter what happens in our main infrastructure. Remind its existence when you got connection problems with our servers.

Support: http://ismuser.com/support

Status: http://status.ismuser.com

[ismuser]

Ismuser reaches version 0.3

It’s finally here! We’re so glad to announce we have updated our website and released the last version of our service. But wait, let’s break this down.

From now on, you are able to register and start using Ismuser on your own website. The service is totally available and ready for everyone. We have developed an amazing dashboard that will let you manage every service aspect and indeed, watching out your service’s usage.

Currently the service is running version 0.3 and working under open beta, so for the time being it is free. You will find all the necessary information in the documentation page.

Here it is a summarized changelog with the most important improvements or changes made to the service:

- Magic Board’s visual redesign, improved ux.

- More secure authentication.

- Video app now works and synchronized better.

- Error messages for developers in debug mode.

- Added PHP SDK for creating rooms on the fly (see GitHub page or documentation)

- SDKs improved with properties to customize every room.

- Magic Board’s moderation depends on a unique user and it changes when user disconnects.

- Chat now inform to user when message is delivered (or not).

- Added username field in JavaScript init function to change the user’s nickname.

- Magic Board and Chat modules turned into iframes for a better adaptation to any web.

- Added emoticons to Chat.

- Rooms are cleaned when last user disconnects.

- A lot of bugs fixed.

[ismuser]

Ismuser rocking on Pecha Kucha Las Palmas vol. 10

Last Friday, we took the chance for attending to Pecha Kucha Night Las Palmas, an international event where people are able to put into words their projects facing a big excited crowd. Perhaps you may have heard it before, because it has been organized around the world in 600 cities for 10 years.

Pecha Kucha is originally a different and fresh way to show an idea or project. All the speakers have 20 slides which are automatically changed every 20 seconds, so the speaker has to take a deep care of timing.

Ismuser was there introducing itself and how videoconference can change the way a company works with its clients. We tried to focus in the fact that some current videoconference solutions are not enough for the most of the companies. And indeed what it is the most important thing, how companies are currently dealing with its clients when they use videoconference solutions that ruin the user experience, because they compel users to get registered, to download, to install, to log in, to call, etc. A bunch of steps that can be totally avoided.

We explained Ismuser is offering a way of communication in which “simple” is the most important word for the companies that are meant to use it, for the developers that are meant to embed it and finally for those users that are hopefully meant to enjoy it.

If you couldn’t attend Pecha Kucha last Friday and are curious about what we showed, just try it out in our live demos in http://demo.ismuser.com.

[ismuser]

Incube, a nice way for moving forward

We're near, pretty near from the final release of our new API iteration. An iteration that even brings you a new web along with a new awesome dashboard to manage your API usage. But right now that's not the big announcement.

In this case, we're excited to tell you about our involvement in Incube, a great initiative from SPEGC for creating a big space where new startups may share knowledge and pushing them to get their goals. This is an amazing chance for us and we're focused to take the most out of it while we'll be working here.

We'll be participating in Incube for around 5 months, and in the meantime we'll place our headquarters into the new building that was built precisely for that purpose. It looks quite nice and we've already started to work there.

Incube is offering us the chance to get the right training for a wide range of startup topics such as corporate finance, marketing, product design and many more. Besides, we'll be mentored by Raul del Pozo who is meant to be a great support and an advisor for Ismuser.