What's New This Week?

It has been a tough but educational past week as we migrated our server code to handle the new load. Long story short, things are finally starting to stabilize as we iron out bugs, so thanks for sticking it out.

Features:

• Added a Voting option!
• You can now enable a 'Skip' button (see [Settings] in your rooms)
• You can use this button to vote and skip videos!

Misc:

• Added tooltips to buttons
• Many bug fixes

Upcoming:

• Easier way for large rooms to manage playlists
• Ideas for creative ways to reduce trolling

Shoutouts:

• Yaridovich & Filly rooms for the many bug reports
• animu room for testing vote when it was beta last week
• Thanks to all for reporting "Error 16". We are looking into it.

On a side note I wanted to thank you for writing feedback and e-mails. We read them all, but may not reply to all of them. Keep in mind we are a two person team that handles everything from coding new features, to design, to maintenance, and so on. :)

Cheers,
mrchess

Growth Help

Hi all.

As synchtube continues to grow, we start to tread into unknown web space.

Synchtube is one of the first of its kind to implement such an instant technology stack that lets you watch videos in real-time down to the second.

That being said, I know as much as you do about the future of our technology -- we are in brand new web space. I hear rumors of synchtube crashing sometimes, but unfortunately I am not there to see it. I visit often, and use the service, but sometimes these problems only show themselves when hundreds of people connect at once.

It would be of great help, when synchtube crashes (god forbid) and you think you notice a pattern with it crashing PLEASE post it here so I can fix it.

Thanks again!

Cheers,
mrchess

New YouTube Player & Fixed Loose Ends

Just upgraded the YouTube player to the latest version similar to what you see at YouTube.com! :D

Also fixed some things like ban, and some reconnection issues. There are a few other loose ends that shouldn't be very noticeable but will be fixed tonight when the server resets.

Chat should be speedy as ever, and syncing even more accurate thanks to some new algorithms.

I wanted to take a second to thank you all for reporting issues, especially the My Little Pony room. Your bug reports in the feedback have definitely revealed many issues that I might have missed otherwise.

We are now one giant step closer to permanent stability and speed.

Cheers guys!

~mrchess

Server Upgrade

Update 3/11/2011: Should be stable now. Please report any issues. We are now on an latest generation server!

Server upgrade today which should result in significant performance gain.

Known issues:

• You cannot take leader

We will be looking into this bug tomorrow. Getting late now, almost 3am! Sorry.

Cheers,

~Mrchess

Moderators!

Just added moderators. Now a room can have multiple people own it, meaning multiple people can have the power to take leader. This should resolve some issues in larger rooms where the leader would go AFK. In addition, Moderators are protected from Kick/Bans.

To add a moderator log into your account and go to the "My Room" section, and type in the username of the new moderator.

Also fixed a few exploits!

Cheers

~mrchess

Adjustable synch settings, server improvements, and such

Just uploaded a new change. Included some server improvements to help with speed, more specifically playlist speed, and now viewers (non-leaders) can adjust the synch mechanism with a new button called "Synch Settings". Hope this helps resolves issues for those with slower internet!

This past 3 weeks doubled once again in traffic and have more than 3000 users. Thanks all for supporting us. We think it may be time to refactor and start adding new features. If there has been anything on your mind please drop a line here and we can check it out.

Cheers

~mrchess

Speed, speed, SPEED!

Sorry for the long delay out. I'm sure you're not interested in personal details, so let me just say we are back in business for the new year.

We just migrated synchtube to a new back-end to make things faster. For the tech inclined we abandoned Haml for a faster front end layer, adopted head.js, upgraded to the latest versions of sinatra, and weeded through some old server code. Some minor interface tweaks were also done to handle the larger room sizes we have been seeing.

I'm also happy to see our daily traffic doubled during our time out. Thank you all for your support. Hopefully we can continue to improve your synchronized sharing experience as we try to scale up.

Cheers and Happy Holidays to all. Please report any issues in the comments below! :),

mrC