Sqwiggle Makes Working Remotely Less Lonely, More Awesome

I wouldn't use this.<p>One of the secret joys of working from home is being able to work in my boxers (or less) and not get in trouble. Some days I jump out of the shower and just don't bother to do my hair until I need to go out of the house, and if I don't style it I almost look like Lloyd Christmas from Dumb and Dumber. I move around, I nap, I eat like the 7 Habits of Highly Obese People is my bible, and I swear liberally; even if you can't hear it, you'd know it's happening. However, when I'm around other people, you'd never guess. Using this app would take out the best part of working by myself: no judgement!<p>(This comment's gonna come back to haunt me one day.)

Having a camera pointed on your 8 hours a day? Yuck.<p>I can't imagine being concious of that all day long. You can't even scratch your nose!

I'm not sure how I feel about this. One of the biggest problems I had with working in an office was precisely how easy it was for people to bother me for just a quick question, killing my flow. I much prefer having passive indicators and queries, as you get with IM (which you can ignore until you're ready) and a bug tracker (which also forces people to keep their process rigorous and documented, as they have to work through these systems to communicate at all; too easy to let bug trackers and the like get out of sync with reality if people are just quickly verbally telling people about problems).<p>I can see how this would work well for people who work on many short tasks, though, as opposed to work like mine that often benefits from focusing for hours at a time with no interruptions.

I thought one of the biggest benefits of remote work was NOT having to look at the same people all day, every day.<p>If i'm lonely I'd go hang out with my actual friends. And since I'm remote, those friends can be anywhere I can travel to.

This look awesome and I can't wait to try it out. Hell, I think we'd even use it in our office (a large open room with 8+ people working, meaning we are all often wearing headphones to stay focused).<p>Feature suggestion: Have an "away" feature. I hit a button to say I'm going away, type a message (brb, out for lunch, etc), and that's what is displayed in my window while I'm gone. Adding a time stamp + optional field for when you'll be back would be nifty as well. This feature could just be an extension of "privacy mode" as well.

I was secretly hoping there was a Chatroulette-like component where you got to hang out with other crazy freelancers so you had some kind of human contact. Oh well.

Hm. Maybe that's why I don't particularly enjoy working remotely as much as some people. I don't feel like I'm a part of any kind of team, just a guy hiding in his room clicking his keyboard.

I like the whole video thing. Clever way to not have the video "always on" with their black and white picture every x seconds.<p>However why re invent the wheel with their "streamer"? Can't we just have a normal chat + a "link/media' history that we can browser and search like on jaconda or other group chat tool?

No joke - years ago I had a rodent friend named Sqwiggle (named by my girlfriend). Thanks for the inadvertent trip down memory lane. :)

Interesting take. It sounds like they've sniffed out a few features that will go from pipeline to production quickly (fingers crossed).

I really <i>want</i> to use this.<p>Particularly like the idea of always-on for remote workers.. and the click-to-talk idea.

Isn't this basically a virtual panopticon?<p>With all the distractions and unnecessary meetings to make certain staff feel functional?<p>This is basically all the disadvantages of working in an office projected on home working.<p>A management dream!<p>EDIT: perhaps I'm just cynical and an isolationist :)