Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> The real value is in the presentation.

This is true sometimes, but if it's a design discussion and you're whiteboarding how something should be laid out, or even steps of what's completed and what's left, just a snapshot of the final state of the whiteboard is tremendously useful. It prevents the need for another person jotting down everything that was written up on the board.



And though it's not the presentation, its an aide de memoir of it (for those present).

Better than one's own jotting, in that the specific lettering and diagram shapes are linked to the presentation (though the cognitive processing involved in one's own jotting is also valuable).


A time-lapse would be great as well.


seems like the onenote revision history (undo, redo, and version tracking) could be hacked to accomplish something similar.

a video/audio scrubber control that lets you go back and forth.

also another interesting thing about OneNote is that it can record audio, and embed a time index of the audio into everything that is being written,drawn or typed into a notebook. Currently it highlights what was done at that time index of the audio. but it could be used to show the exact state of page at any given time in the recording.

The Audio recording feature has been in onenote since 2003 SP1.


So a GIF (or PNG) of the time lapse, as well as a still image of the final frame?


I was thinking of something with a slider so you can find that diagram someone drew in the middle of a discussion last week.


You should see what Imgur has done in merging GIFs and WEBM videos. Every GIF has full video controls, including a slider and a play/pause button.

So basically if we just hosted the timelapse on Imgur...


We've made a board that can achieve the playback. Made a quick demo video of our first prototype. Would love any more ideas! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxmVtfF6pIo


Since the data on a whiteboard could be vector based, something like a diffed SVG could work better.

MS already has something like this in OneNote, but I'm not sure how frequent the snapshots are. It's more of a revision history than a "watch every letter be written", IIRC.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: