Friday, June 8, 2012

My experience with airtime.com on the launch.


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

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