We are adding some final polish to ScreenMail before moving out of the beta stage. Based on user feedback, yesterday we relesed a collection of improvements, mostly related to two features.
We strive to make our product the best with the help of our users. Regular email will join the ancients at some point. (Picture:David Cooper, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
1. Users can now ScreenMail anyone with an email address. The feature was there before, but we have made the process more robust. If you need to send a ScreenMail to jane.doe@acme.com, you should simply go to https://screenmail.to/jane.doe@acme.com. If she is already a ScreenMail user, she will get the familiar email notification saying that a new ScreenMail has arrived.
However, if she does *not* have a ScreenMail account yet, she will get an email which informs her how she can get access to the video. The only thing the respondent (Jill) needs to do is to click on the link in the email and select a password for herself. After that, she will have a basic SreenMail account, and be able to receive ScreenMail in the normal way. We will continue to keep these basic ScreenMail accounts free, so there is no catch!
Note that you will be able to insert your sender-email and a personal message to the video also, and these will be shown to the respondent already in the email, so you can let her know that it is really you, and that she should check out your cool video!
2. Many users have mentioned issues with Java on recording page. We have added small but important improvements which hopefully will make it easier for the first-time users to get the recording to work. Most of the issues are related to browser-specific peculiarities in Java handling. Depending on your browser, you will now see helpful information on the recording page the first time you try it out.
Also, we added a bit of animation to the recording buttons because people tend not to always notice them, especially with large monitors. Apparently we did something right, since the proportion of newly registered users who succeed in their first attempt to record a video has increased 33%.
We will continue to improve this number, so as to make sure that your important contacts will succeed in ScreenMailing you, no matter the browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome or Firefox) or the person’s IT competence level.
Always remember that the person in the other end may not be as computer literate as you are! (Sometimes that is the very reason ScreenMails are so powerful for communication.)