The wave of new applications

While various arguments about the deep inter workings on WebRTC are ongoing, others are busy doing.

The folks at Comoyo let a handful of summer interns loose to develop a WebRTC application which is now public at appear.in. This is a classic video/web collaboration application. Yes we’ve seen this type of application before (talky.io for example). However, no it doesn’t have file sharing or chat. But it’s usable and works (I liked how the little side panel could be minimized). However, that’s beside the point.

The point is, for those missing the first sentence of the second paragraph, summer interns developed this. Meaning relatively new programmers working for a few short weeks in summer hatched this. They developed a usable WebRTC application and got it live. This is exactly the type of spirit & energy that WebRTC is supposed to unleash (I get excited easily).

The scary part is what kind of applications will be forthcoming as more time is invested and developers get more experienced?

Another new entrant is OneKilkstreet, in the same played theme of video and web collab (unfortunately) and supporting chat & file share.  Their take is that multi-part video conferencing will be difficult to mesh and thus they’re offering effectively a hosted MCU (for free at the moment).

Not all of these will be a monetary success and some will simply go lights out, but from each burning candle, another will be lit and these applications will get better and more tuned.

While standards are important, it’s easy to get wrapped up in heated discussion. The primary question of “what” needs to be answered before the never ending “how” element. I’m not sure anyone has nailed the interface for whatever the new version of web collab should be, but the ease of code update with WebRTC/HTML5 mean initial innovators shouldn’t hesitate to keep innovating.