Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Chris Rivers

Announcing guest access and video chat

By Chris Rivers | 7 days ago | View Comments |

We’re excited to announce a pair of features that we’ve had lots of requests for: guest access for chat rooms and video calling for one-to-one chats.

Guest Access

With guest access, you’re now able to invite people outside your company to chat without requiring them to sign up for an account. You just check the guest access toggle, give them the URL, and they can enter their name and start chatting with you in a matter of seconds.

There are lots of uses for guest access – from chatting with contractors and clients to offering an easy solution for live chat support. Please give it a try and send us your feedback. We’re always looking for ways to make HipChat even better. Guest access is available for Plus, Premium, and Ultimate plans.

Here’s a quick demo:

Video Chat

Also in this release, we present video chat for one-to-one conversations. Now, when you want to have a quick back and forth with someone without having to type everything out, you can just start up video chat and talk with them face-to-face:

Video chat with voice

Video chat with voice

Video chat is available for all plans.

Pete Curley

Does your web service need a desktop app?

By Pete Curley | 1 week ago | View Comments |

Most “influencers” out there will tell you to stay away from making desktop apps. They’re hard to program, a pain to update, and just aren’t as sexy as web apps. We agree with that advice most of the time (we love Gmail and despise Outlook). But at some point the benefits of desktop apps are undeniable and laziness of influencers becomes apparent. We set out to build the best instant messaging and group chat service and our desktop app is a big part of that equation.

The benefits of a desktop app

  • Notifications – We used web-based instant messaging at previous companies and we missed a LOT of messages. This leads to an email or even worse…the tap on the shoulder. “Hey, you get my message?”
  • Runs when you start your computer - We typically don’t like apps that invite themselves to the restart party but imagine trying to get 60 people at your company to keep one web page open, all day, and you can’t message them if they close it.
  • Speed – Web apps have to do more work to communicate with the server (at least until all browsers support HTML5 WebSockets). Everything is slower as a result.
  • Consistency – With Adobe AIR, we know our app will run almost exactly the same on Windows, Mac, and Linux (notifications are handled differently on each OS).
  • Drag and drop file sharing – A real timesaver, now available in some browsers with HTML5.
  • Clipboard paste - Designers rejoice! Take a screenshot (or layers from Photoshop) and paste directly into HipChat. We convert it to a file to be shared in seconds.

Why do you also have a web app?

When we launched HipChat in January, to my surprise, the loudest feedback we got was about the lack of web app. We banged out a near clone web version of our desktop app in a few weeks to a happy crowd. Based on the loudness of the outrage I predicted that HipChat users on the desktop app would be 50% and 50% on the web. I’m glad I was wrong. 93% of HipChatters use the desktop app. These numbers could also be because our desktop app is seriously amazing, or conversely, that our web-app is seriously terrible (which it isn’t ;) ). Most people use the web version when they’re out of the office or if their workplace doesn’t allow them to install software.

I hope this gives you a little more courage to wander into the realm of desktop apps. But remember, don’t build one just because you can.