My experience with airtime.
By : Khawar Nehal
Date : 7th June 2012.
The first time I found out about
airtime was from the financial times.
The article mentioned that celebrities
asked to try it out were disappointed with the results. The
application crashed. The developers said the demo was not on the
actual site and the site was much better.
Ok so I typed in airtime.com assuming
the domain to be that. The site seemed to work on my Linux + firefox
browser. Good.
The technology seemed tested enough to
work.
Used it on the 6th and 7th
of June 2012. It was launched on the 5th of June. I saw a
person with an android figire on the monitor at least 2 times in
maybe like 100 connections. So maybe there were not too many people
on at the time. There were only about 4000 likes on the facebook page
so my estimate is about 100 to 500 users on on the 6th of
June and maybe about 10,000 users on the 7th of June or
maybe even up to 30,000 but not likely.
Ok my take on the results. If the
software does peer to peer then expect this thing to take off like a
rocket. Because there are likely to be more than 1 million users by
the week 1 end. That is by 12 June 2012. If the software does not do
peer to peer and uses a central server to route the video then the
service is likely to crash or restrict usage severely. My guess is
that it is peer to peer routing. I have not checked it yet.
OK the good thing about it is that it
solves the boredom issue better than Facebook. You get to connect to
strangers on a video chat when we hardly ever chat on video without
FB friends.
Bad news. Shall be a waste of two weeks
per user average like IRC was when it got discovered by a user in the
1990s.
Personally I used up about 10 hours in
total so far on this new technology to find out what is likely to
happen.
Also the software seems to be updated
in realtime. 7Th June morning (Dubai time) the star button
vanished.
Afternoon 7th June the
automatic connect to another person stopped and expected someone to
press “talk to someone” after a few connections. Good for quality
control. Less blank cameras staring at empty chairs or walls shall be
the result.
OK that is my take on the airtime so
far. My prediction is that the media reaction may be by some that it
shall fail bt the product shall improve very fast to cater to a good
need for reducing loneliness and boredom over boundaries. As air time
connects people from opposite sides of the globe, expect more
understanding and cooperation. Inshallah also synergies to be
developed. The founder of this looks like he was the main FB
programmer or core fast developer. Air time code changes fast and
works while it is being changing.
Friday 8th June test. Met
the person wearing a Fox costume and turned out to be a student
studying business in the US. The topic became energy and I was
wondering. Here I am explaining the potential future of energy to a
person who I would never have met otherwise. Hopefully more people
shall use airtime to create connections to share their experience and
create a better future. There was one person who works in computers
repairing and he was giving lessons on air time 101. Explaining how
to change setting and buttons and how to use them. Learned at least 3
new functions in air time from him in less than 5 minutes of
discussion. Excellent learning tool if people are willing to share
their time on “air”.
OK if you want to comment or talk my
email is khawar@atrc.net.pk
