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Ask HN: Need feedback on pivoting this abandoned project

2 points by amitamb ↗ HN
http://www.castbin.com/

It is a simple way to record your web browsing.

I have worked on that project for atleast 2-3 months. It does not look very good but it surely can be useful if put to right use.,

I have few options like

- Creating a reader through a browser extension specific to Wikipedia which will let users read long articles automatically

- Learning academy to let users create simple courses which will take subscribers of those courses through different online resources on the subject. For example Advanced Rails course which will take users through documentation and some blog posts relevant to advanced subjects in Rails

- Let website owners create Demos for their websites without a need to create video. They will be mute walk-through videos

What are your thoughts? What approach would be best?

7 comments

[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 32.3 ms ] thread
SoftwareMaven
Mute walk through videos aren't super-helpful, though having a "common tasks" or "hidden tricks" area in your website with auto-walk through could be helpful for complex tasks. If you could at least give some descriptive text so there is some narrative, I could see that being helpful for enterprise app support, where users are often required to move through dozens of screens to accomplish anything.

On the social side there are options, too. Allow people to share a browser tab and let others watch what they are doing (live, with chat [leverage Facebook!], would be best, but coming back to recorded sessions could be interesting, too). That could be used by companies doing remote training sessions (though FB probably isn't an option there [yet]).

amitamb
I think you are asking for annotations. I was working on it but I left it for something else.

On live streaming, I don't know if that is the path I want to take as there are other tools doing the same thing.

Thanks for your insights.

bkyan
This app is a macro builder?
amitamb
No. It just records your browsing (i.e. mouse movements, scrolling and keyboard inputs to the page) without a need for any download. All that happens using JavaScript. So playback is also simple in the sense that only HTML need to be downloaded not the video.
bkyan
Oh, that's sweet! Could this app be used to track what users are doing on (any) one of my webpages?
bkyan
Also, quick question -- what's the difference between the two different play buttons in this screenshot?

http://shadowcatcher.mindcast.com/clips/1327872538erq6k2sfdr...

amitamb
One will play whole recording while other will play single page.

It is useless when there is only one page, and now I think it is useless for first page but for sake of uniformity it is there.