Well, we tried to tape our first episode of Invalid Argument today, but a clusterf— of Google+ Hangout and YouTube bugs messed that one up pretty thoroughly. Google tells us that three different bugs combined today for a perfect storm. Anyone who tried to tune in live (we love you) got a totally blank screen, and it sounds like lots of Hangouts went the same way today. It was awesome. We promise.
We did a dry run yesterday, and that didn’t work, so this time we came prepared to back it up, at least. But, unsurprisingly, this backup looks and sounds like complete crap. But I’m going to post it anyway. We’ll call it Episode 0. It proves that this show will rock once the technical difficulties are worked out.
People using Hangouts On Air right now are beta testers, so all these bugs are par for the course. We know and expect that. It’s really pretty cool of Google to provide the ability for multiple people around the world to hang out face to face and broadcast live to all of Earth for free. We don’t have much room to complain. Once this stuff is a little more reliable, Invalid Argument is going to be great.
Our guests for Episode 0 were the best I could have asked for. We had a fifth lined up and ready to go, but try as I might, I wasn’t able to find his name to invite him to the Hangout. That may have been a Google+ issue, it may have been the fault of one or both of us. Regardless, I hope all of these brilliant people will join me again once we’ve got the hang of Hangouts On Air.
The guests today were:
David Barnard (@drbarnard)
David Barnard is the owner of App Cubby, an iOS app company. Prior to founding App Cubby, David spent most of his time as a freelance recording engineer in the Austin, Texas area. Shorter and more frequent ramblings can be found on Twitter: @drbarnard
ReadWriteWeb: Launch Center’s Curious Quest to Fix the iPhone
Leah Culver (@leahculver)
“I’m the founder of Grove (grove.io), hosted IRC servers for companies. I’m also a well-known Django/Python and iPhone developer with a passion for open source. I’ve previously founded Pownce (acquired by Six Apart) and Convore (funded by Y Combinator).”
ReadWriteHack: Grove.io: Hosted, Searchable IRC Chat For Teams
Luke Connolly (@lconnolly)
“I make websites, but I also love designing pretty much anything someone will let me. I’ve done UI/app design, custom CMS development (WordPress, ExpressionEngine), and branding/identity. I like creating beautiful, useful things.”
ReadWriteWeb: Whimventory Wishlists Solve The Shopping Problem
Randall Leeds (@tilgovi)
“I work on open source software, currently as a contributor to Apache CouchDB and the popular Python web server, Gunicorn. Most recently, I worked as an engineer at Meebo making contributions to backend architectures but left in December to lead development at Hypothes.is. In 2011 I was recognized by the White House as a Champion of Change for the Open211 social services directory.”
ReadWriteWeb: Hypothes.is: A Peer-Review Layer for the Whole Internet
Thanks once more to the fantastic guests.
And hey, here’s the video. Like I said, it looks and sounds pretty bad, but it proves we had fun:
If you or anyone you know would like to be a future guest on Invalid Argument (you know, once the kinks are smoothed out), apply here: http://j.mp/RWWia
