In a really strange case, one of our editors, Elizabeth Crane, was represented as “Patricio Lavin.” I asked her later if she knew that name, and she didn’t. People can also be labeled with the wrong name, like the name of the person who pays the phone bill. For example, our video and graphics editor, Vjeran Pavic, lives in San Francisco but was represented in an UberConference call by his Boston-based 617 area code mobile number. On the downside, some of these representative tiles only show a phone number and a map of a location where that number is associated. I found this extremely handy, since our company has several new hires whose voices aren’t familiar to me. When someone talks on the call, UberConference indicates who is speaking by displaying a small speaker icon on that person’s tile. This means you won’t have to ask things like, “Is Jessica still on the call, or did she hang up earlier?” People are represented by tiles with names and images of themselves. My favorite thing about UberConference is that it lets you see a visual representation of everyone on the call via its Web page or app. Naturally, I used my colleagues as UberConference guinea pigs during calls over the past week. When this YouTube video making fun of conference calls came out, all of us simultaneously laughed out loud and cringed - it hit a little too close to home. Since our Re/code offices are spread across the country, in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and New York, conference calls are our most popular method for meeting with one another. But once I heard that awesome hold music I had to tell people.UberConference is a free service for up to 10 callers, but its best features - like letting everyone (not just the host) dial in without using a PIN - are available with a Pro account, which costs $10 a month. I wasn’t planning on writing a blog article about it and like I said, nobody asked me to. We’ve recorded half a dozen podcast episodes with this service and we’re pretty happy with it. ![]() Now this young man did not hang up the telephone and you guess what happened Yes, I have seen some long hold times in my day, yes I have, and this was one of the worst Now, maybe he had the time wrong and maybe he didn’t. Well, let me tell y’all a story about a man who was on hold all day. I don’t know where they are I don’t know why I’m still alone Well I’m holding on my phone yes I’m holding on the line Tell me where could they be while I’m waiting on this conference call Well I wonder where they are, yes I wonder where my friends have gone Well I’ve been sitting here all day, I’ve been sitting in this waiting roomĪnd I’ve been waiting on my friends, yes I’m waiting on this conference call I looked it up: the song is called “I’m on Hold” by a guy named Alex Cornell (who is one of the co-founders of UberConference). If you wait long enough, you realize that the song has lyrics and if you pay attention, they’re pretty funny. Rather than your typical generic boring hold music, you get a boppy little country-ish acoustic guitar tune. We’re happy with the free service, but one of the cool little free features you may never notice is the default hold music you get after you start a conference call but before anyone else joins. The basic service is free, but you can pay for an upgrade and get more features. This is not an ad, and nobody’s asked (or paid) me to talk about them, but I’ll get to that. The downside of not having video is that you don’t see which current or classic NLL jerseys we’re wearing and we won’t get any more cameos from Tyler’s cat, though we did have Melissa’s dogs make an audio appearance in one show.Īnyway, UberConference. We usually start recording around 10pm EST but if we’re starting late, I can record in my pyjamas – and I have. It also has the advantage of not being a video chat, so I don’t have to worry about cleaning up my office before we record. ![]() This is much easier than waiting for YouTube to process the video, downloading the multi-hundred megabyte video mp4 file, and then extracting the audio from it. It allows us to set up conference calls but we can use our computer (à la Skype) or a regular phone to join the call, and then we can download an MP3 (assuming one actually clicks the “record” button before we start…) immediately after we’re done. When recording the Addicted to Lacrosse podcast, we recently changed from using YouTube Live to a service called UberConference.
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