Show HN: Squawk – Walkie Talkie for Teams
Hooray! I have been holding out hope for more push-to-talk apps on desktop platforms. It's such a step up from always-on listening. As an audio engineer, I grit my teeth every time there is microphone feedback, echo, or other audio issues on group calls, and these generally don't occur on PTT apps because everyone tends to be muted most of the time. And if it does start happening, the user more easily realizes what they did wrong because they correlate it with the button press. In fact, even if the user does not realize what they did wrong, others on the call can identify the source because "it's only happening when Jane speaks." I can't tell you how many times I've been on a call with feedback where the person who is causing it is complaining about it to the group without realizing it's their own fault and others on the call don't necessarily know, either. This never happens on PTT calls. There's also the obvious privacy benefits, as it avoids the issue where people speak without realizing they are unmuted. PTT is better in nearly every respect. I'm very excited about this.
I do have some questions that the website doesn't answer for me:
1. What about screen sharing? Seeing the word "collaboration" implies to me that I should be able to do so, but it's unclear. In the screenshot of the app, I see an icon or two in the right-hand sidebar that might be relevant to this, but they seem kind of generic.
2. What about mobile devices? I routinely do Slack calls where one or two people are on their phone for various reasons. It would be useful to know if that is supported or will be at some point.
3. I want to know more about the encryption. As you're probably aware, there has been a lot of controversy over the security of Zoom. In particular, there is an ongoing lawsuit related to their false claims of end-to-end encryption. [1] I think any new product, especially a chat app, that claims to be end-to-end encrypted really needs to show us the details of its protocol and stack, and ideally open source as many parts of that as possible. Does it use the Signal protocol? The site says "Squawk groups are invite-only and end-to-end encrypted." But which parts are E2E encrypted? The group membership? The message content? The message metadata? Everything?
Lastly, it would be great if you could add the app to Homebrew Cask, as it's my preferred way to download and manage apps on macOS.
1: https://gizmodo.com/zoom-accused-of-misrepresenting-security...
So I'd have this running and then anyone from work can just start talking to me and I'd hear it straight away?
That sounds like a nightmare to be honest. How will you ever reach any level of concentration this way? Even the thought that someone could just start talking to you would probably ruin your chances at getting in any sort of flow.
Also, it feels like only a small step away from a form of work surveillance. "Where were you? I was talking to you on Squawk".
Unless my assumptions of what this is are completely wrong. There isn't much to go on on the page.
Hi all - open beta of a tool we created for ourselves during lockdown. We got sick of trying to replicate the effortless comms we had in the office, and hated managing a half dozen always-on Zoom/Slack/etc calls. So we built Squawk.
When I saw the capitalized Teams in the heading, I was excited for a minute, because this would be a great add-on for Microsoft Teams. Alas it appears to be 'yet another thing to install and run in the background'.
Any plans to provide the functionality as an add-on for other communications apps?
Sugestion: volume normalization, compression (as in audio effect, not as in zip). A lot of people have shitty mics or change their distance.
See also Zello.
It doesn't have the e2e stuff afaik, but works on all major platforms, including mobile. They also have a native desktop app (not Electron). As far as I know, it's used a lot, mostly by drivers for Uber or similar services. I haven't used it for a couple of years now, but it's worth giving it a go.
FYI Squawk team, there seems to be an issue with your main email. I tried to contact you can got this back:
> Hello,
> We're writing to let you know that the group you tried to contact (hello) may not exist, or you may not have permission to post messages to the group. A few more details on why you weren't able to post:
> * You might have spelled or formatted the group name incorrectly.
> * The owner of the group may have removed this group.
> * You may need to join the group before receiving permission to post.
> * This group may not be open to posting.
Looks like google apps group configuration issue.
Related support article:
https://support.google.com/a/zumaltd.com/bin/topic.py?topic=...
I wonder if a "dispatcher" model might be interesting for this, like an old style minicab/police service. Then people could use squawk-scanners for the channels they want to listen into.
It could get annoying if its on all day, SOMA FM provides an interesting police scanner with audio mix which is an oddly relaxing soundtrack https://somafm.com/scanner/
Are you going to add some jargon, the stuff that made CB radio kooky back in the day?
Cool! Might give this a spin for our live-ops response team.
You should fix your meta description tag on the landing page :) I just pasted it into slack and got a...less than useful preview.
I really like the idea. Push to talk is a proven concept when a lot of people work together and should stay informed (e.g. fire fighters). I see a huge potential for it...
Pricing?
Also: similar (from yesterday I think) https://www.walkie.chat/
This looks really good.
Is it possible to mark yourself as away? I could see it might encourage the expectation to always be present on the receiving end.
Reminds me of Pragli [1] but without the animated avatars.
How sustainable is this project? I see it's not open sourced, but there is no pricing page either?
Also, how are the connections made, P2P or through a central intermediate server?
Feedback: Where's the video demo? I don't want to install it to see it in action and decide if I want to install it.
What happens when you have incoming audio from two different groups?
Can you select a particular group to use PTT?
Just a heads up, but your header description appears to be from the template you used.
"Aptonic app landing page template helps you easily create websites for mobile apps, product landing, promotion and many more."
I linked to your landing page in Slack and that is what showed up
Is there a video of it in action?
Awesome! Great idea - if you are looking for feature requests, it would be great if you could also create only bi-directional channels on demand. Basically like a Star Trek communicator...
Great idea! Switching the model from idling in one channel to being in multiple groups at the same time is a good idea.
Do you have plans on releasing a binary for Linux?
How is this any different from a local Mumble server?
How does it compare against Mumble or TeamSpeak?
Hey @zumachase - was hoping to get in touch but the contact email on your homepage is bouncing. (hello@zumaltd.com)
interesting app for the "corridor conversations" that have been lost with everyone Working from Home. It definitely needs integration with other communications apps, as its important to know when to switch context from another medium to PTT. Seems like it becomes a feature for Slack, For Teams.
Why not mumble?
I look forward to an AppImage for Linux.
>... end-to-end encrypted...
How do you verify that you are connected to the person you think you are connected to?
How does this compare against Zello?
Website needs javascript to even display something -> ignored.
How does this compare to something like teamspeak?
I love it! Any plans to integrate it with Slack?
Finally, something better than Zoom.
looks good!
This is cool. I can't wait to try it out!
Crazy Feature request: One of the things I've wanted for years out of a software based walkie-talkie like this is manual audio spacial diversity control (a.k.a. 3D audio). That way I can have multiple simultaneous channels, but be able to change the position (left/right/forward/45deg/etc) and the volume of each feed so I can have situational awareness with all channels while being able to use my brain to separate and focus on a particular channel.
These kinds of systems are often marketed to dispatch agencies, mission control, government/military customers, etc, and are super expensive[0]. I've never seen a consumer-grade version of 3D audio like this, but that would be super beneficial to ad-hoc communicators in disasters, scanner enthusiasts, public event coordinators, county/city-level EOCs that can't afford expensive systems.
[0]:https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24741/new-3d-audio-wil...