How launching Icecomm on HN created the most curious chat roulette ever

(and how you can too)

Alex Zai

Github: azai91

Quora:  Alex-Zai-1

Tony Rizko

Twitter: @tonyrizko

Github: trizko

Will Sentance

CTO at Codesmith.io

Twitter: @willsentance

Github: willsen

1. Launching Icecomm on Hacker News (or how we created the most curious Chat Roulette ever)

2. How to build your own video chat app [live coding]

3. Some ideas you can build with WebRTC

What is WebRTC?

P2P Video and data transfer

Video, audio chat in browser with no plugins

But it's worth it

So we created Icecomm

We launched at #2 on HN

"There was shirtless man sitting the chat when I joined. I think I just found developer chat roulette"

Now people are building awesome things like Virtual Karl

And CodeFriends

1. Launching Icecomm on Hacker News (or how we created the most curious Chat Roulette ever)

2. How to build your own video chat app [live coding]

3. Some ideas you can build with WebRTC

How to build your own (less risque) chat roulette

Getting started

Go to https://jsfiddle.net/TawnyOwl/j228hopd/

to start

And click fork if you want to build your own

The HTML

Adding Icecomm

Get your API key at icecomm.io

Get your local video stream

On the event 'local' that fires when you click to approve your video camera

Add your friend's stream

Listen for another client's connection 

Clean up videos

Listen for another client's disconnect event and remove their video stream

Connect to a room

You can choose any name

Prettifying

3. Some ideas you can build with WebRTC

1. Launching Icecomm on Hacker News (or how we created the most curious Chat Roulette ever)

2. How to build your own video chat app [live coding]

What to build into your existing apps

Customer support

• Contextual VA support (without plugins)

Marketplace apps

• Chat between clients for pitching/meeting

Education

• Broadcast content

Multiple applications

• Reduce server load with P2P

Appendix: it's complicated