Hi Vsnappers!  

Some people have been having audio issues when recording vsnaps on their Macs. The symptom is typically that there are bits of audio that drop out when you play back a vsnap you’ve  just recorded. Usually this is an easy-to-fix problems in one of three areas: Operating System Volume, Recorder Volume, or Chrome/Flash Problem. Our advice is try these fixes in the following order:

1. RAISE THE OPERATING SYSTEM VOLUME

Macs default to a lower operating system (OS) volume than PCs. Usually that’s about 50%. We’ve found that if you change this to about 75%, you should be fine. Here’s how to do that.

Click on the gear icon in your dock (bottom or side of your screen depending on how you set it).  

This will bring you to a window that looks like the one below. Click on Sound. 

On the sound page, take the following steps.

First make sure that the microphone you want to use is selected. For most people it’ll say - Name: Internal microphone / Type: Built-In.

Then make sure your input volume is up and test it out. You should see the input level go up as you speak.  

2. RAISE THE RECORDER VOLUME

On the record page (https://www.vsnap.com/vsnapMake/record when you’re logged in), perform the following steps.

First, make sure that the microphone you’re using is the one that’s selected at the top of the record screen. Most people use the Macbook’s microphone, so the option should be set to “Built-in Input”.

IMPORTANT: If you can’t see the the microphone selection, you may need to zoom out your browser. Hold down the command button (next to the spacebar) and 0 (zero) at the same time to reset the zoom.

Now make sure that the volume, in the bottom right corner of the recorder, is up. You may need to test this out once or twice because if the volume is too high, depending on your voice, the audio gets crackly.

Personally, I like to use my headphone mic instead of my computer mic since I’ve had hardware issues in the past (Tip #3 in this post: http://bit.ly/4k5tips).

3. RESOLVE A POSSIBLE CHROME / FLASH PROBLEM

If you’re using Chrome & can hear the audio in your vsnap but it’s garbled or out of sync, it’s probably an issue with Chrome’s version of Flash competing with your computer’s version of Flash. Click here to view a walkthrough of how to fix this.

If you have any other questions or feedback, feel free to email me directly (trish@vsnap.com) with your operating system, browser version, and version of Flash (check here if you don’t know). If you’re unsure of your recording environment, you can also go to our Help Center homepage: https://www.vsnap.com/about/help. We’ll detect your environment for you, just copy and paste the information under “Still having issues?”.

Happy vsnapping! 

Trish Fontanilla, VP of Community & Customer Experience at Vsnap

By Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder at Vsnap

Here at Vsnap, we have an amazing new partner – and we’re very excited about it! We’ve reached an agreement with Dr. Johnny Walker (www.healthfounders.com), a Dublin-based interventional radiologist and healthcare entrepreneur, whereby Dr. Walker will use a version of Vsnap’s code base to launch a new, independent company to pursue cutting-edge uses of video messaging in engaging and empowering patients. 

The new company, called HealthSnap, will be headquartered in Ireland. 

Here’s what Dr. Walker has to say about this:

“Vsnap has made video messaging simple, accessible and measurable. Now HealthSnap will customize a version of this powerful tool to help healthcare providers bring more human warmth and empathy into their patient interactions as a complement to the face-to-face consultation. This is important because we all know that better engagement drives better care and better, safer outcomes.”

Dr. Ronan Kavanagh, a prominent Irish rheumatologist and leading voice on the intersection of medicine and social media, affirmed Dr. Walker’s perspective. “I’m very excited about what HealthSnap will be doing,” Dr. Kavanagh said. “This kind of tool gives us the ability to humanise our interactions with patients, and that matters greatly to engagement levels and outcomes.”

For Dr. Walker, this will not be the first time he has broken new ground in patient care. In 1995, Dr. Walker launched a fully digital, personalized, mobile ultrasound scan service to small aboriginal communities in Western Australia literally out of the back of a truck. That effort grew into the highly disruptive and successful international teleradiology enterprise Global Diagnostics Ltd (www.globaldiagnostics.co.uk), a company that Dr. Walker exited last year. What does the HealthSnap agreement mean for Vsnap and the people using our application?

First, it won’t affect businesspeople using Vsnap at all. HealthSnap will be a separate company with a separate product, separate development team, etc. The Vsnap product will continue to have a laser focus on meeting the needs and requirements of folks in Sales, Support, Account Management and Employee Engagement.

Second, since this partnership represents a new royalty-based revenue stream for Vsnap, it means we’re going to have more resources to invest in our product. We are committed to making Vsnap an essential resource for customer-centric companies in today’s multi-media, multi-device business environment.

Third, HealthSnap’s investment represents an important validation. It’s an example of the fact that, as the number of personal video screens skyrockets worldwide, more industries are exploring new ways to use video to solve persistent problems well beyond the Marketing department. 

We are thrilled to have found such a passionate, mission-driven partner in Dr. Walker, and we look forward to working with him and his team as they move forward. For more information, you can reach out to myself, Dr. Walker or Jim Joyce, Vsnap’s Dublin-based Co-Founder and CEO of Point of Care, a clinical healthcare company.  

Dr. Walker: @jwglobal7 or johnny@healthfounders.com

Dave McLaughlin: @davemacboston or dave@vsnap.com

Jim Joyce: @jimbojoyce or jim@pointofcare.ie

Note: for press and bloggers working on deadlines in European time zones, Dr. Walker and Jim Joyce are both based in Dublin. For American journalists working on deadline, Dave McLaughlin is based in Boston.

by Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder at Vsnap

The Biomnis Healthcare Innovation Awards, held every year in Dublin, Ireland, recognize and celebrate initiatives that find a fresh way to attack persistent problems across several categories. This year, a small Irish company called Point of Care, was recognized with an award in the Patient Support category for its use of Vsnap to more effectively engage and help their patients.

Full disclosure: Point of Care CEO was my partner in founding Vsnap, and he is a shareholder in our company. 

In the pilot program that the award celebrated, Point of Care nurses vsnapped patients either before or after clinical visits. The team wanted to create personal connections with patients, with the goals of encouraging patient questions and diminishing the anxiety that many people feel when it’s time for a vaccination or other medical procedure. 

Basically, Point of Care believes that improving engagement will improve patient compliance and patient outcomes. And Vsnap is a way for them to improve engagement. 

I want to congratulate the Point of Care team for thinking outside the box in terms of how they help their customers – people like you and I who are receiving important medical attention. 

Their initiative is ongoing, so the company was not able to share final data with me. But we see more and more companies in a range of industries adopting this common sense belief – that sending simple, warm, one-to-one video messages makes your customer feel valued, and that how your customer feels has a direct bearing on what that customer does. 

Across industries, we consistently see three benefits: people you vsnap take action more than folks you engage via email; they tell their friends more; and they stay loyal longer.

We are excited about the possible applications for using Vsnap or other feeling-focused video tools to engage patients in ways that are warmer and more human. At this point, our technology is not actually HIPAA compliant, but we’ll have more news on this coming soon.

By Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder at Vsnap

Vsnap’s customer base includes many business leaders who do not come from an engineering background, but who are eager to unleash the power of technology to help them grow. This post is intended as a resource for those folks, who often struggle to effectively scope technical tasks and engage engineers.

Myself, I was an English major in college. Most of my career was spent in creative/business roles, not in engineering. I believe I draw great advantages from my prior experiences, but that doesn’t mean I can be complacent regarding my capabilities as a technical leader. In fact, I believe that improving my capability as a technical leader is the most critical action I can take to accelerate Vsnap’s growth.  

The first reason that being conversant in technical language, framework concepts and best practices in process is so critical is because it impacts your confidence in setting direction and in how you guide your development team. This is about you being able to dive into the details and ask the right questions – and doing that with conviction. Leaders need conviction, and you can’t let a lack of knowledge undermine that.  

Model a Culture of Learning

The world is changing pretty darn fast. We better be building learning cultures in our companies, or we’re destined to be left in the dust. Well there’s no better way to create that culture than having the company leaders model it. Be the Chief Learner in your company. Make the necessary investment to understand the language of technology. That sends a clear signal top to bottom that this is a place where learning is valued, where curiosity is supported, and where questions are welcomed.

Oh and by the way, if you don’t do this then you’ll send an equally clear signal, just a different one.

Practice Process

Get away from the idea that from time-to-time you will make a foray into the world of technology. That’s the wrong mental model. Whether you grow avocados or write APIs, your company exists in a constant context of technology. So it’s time to start thinking about each technology-related task that you take on as an opportunity to establish a replicable process. So, for instance, when you go looking for an email marketing tool, codify a little process for doing this. This will give you better results, and it will make it easier to take on the next technology task, because your process can be re-used and refined. Think of this as building little pieces of infrastructure for your business.

As a simple example, Nelly Yusupova, who runs the TechSpeak for Entrepreneurs bootcamp, offers this simple process for selecting SaaS vendors.

1. Make a list of all the features you need.

2. Assign a number to each one reflecting how important it is. (Maybe “low cost” is a 10 for essential and “customizable templates” is a 6, or a nice-to-have).

3. Look at at least three vendors and assign a number to how well each of them meets the features you need.

4. Compare the vendor ratings at a feature level in order to see who really satisfies your most essential needs. If there’s a tie, then you can make the decision based on your nice-to-haves.

Take Time for Your Tech Plan

This stuff is complex and fast-moving, so make sure you write down what decisions you’ve made and why. Make sure you keep an accessible document with this information. Remember, it’s never a good practice to have all of your key information in only one person’s hands.

I’ve made it my mission to be a great technology leader. For me, that mission is informed by my experience as a filmmaker and in business. But that’s not enough. It also means understanding the language and the framework concepts. I’m using that understanding to enhance my ability to brainstorm solutions to customer problems, and to better support our developers.

I believe I owe that to them. In fact, I believe I owe that to everybody in or around Vsnap – our team, our investors, our customers. And myself.

I totally recommend TechSpeak as an amazing resource (and fyi I do not benefit in any way from that recommendation) – and I’d like to hear what resources other people suggest. I hope you’ll add your thoughts in the comments.

By Dave McLaughlin, Co-Founder & CEO of Vsnap

This morning we released v 1.4.0, which introduces the ability to bring individual Vsnap user accounts into a common corporate or organizational account. Up until now, each individual Vsnap account has been its own silo. 

Today’s release represents a key step toward providing shared billing and premium features, such as greater customization of branding and richer reporting on user activity and recipient behavior. Thanks to all of you who helped us understand your companies’ needs here!

How This Works

In the near future this will be self-serve, but for now companies that want the benefits of an organization account can just email Trish Fontanilla or me. You let us know who on your team you want to serve as the Admin Member, and we’ll give that person the ability to invite individual user accounts into your team’s Organization.

Once you do this, your Admin Member will notice the following specific features:

Organization Data Dashboard

The Admin Member now sees a simple snapshot of aggregate Vsnap activity from all members of the organization. This includes total vsnaps recorded, view rate, type of share, and an overview of recipient feeling indicators (Helpful, Thoughtful, Amazing).

Administrative Oversight

The designated Admin Member now has access to all vsnaps created by individual Organization members and has the power to delete vsnaps from any member. This provides an important safeguard for the Organization. 

Organization Ownership

If you are an individual Vsnapper and you accept an invitation to have your account become part of an Organization, then the vsnaps you create from this point forward will belong to the Organization. This means that individual members cannot delete any vsnaps they record once they become part of an Organization.

A few more things worth noting…

This Will Become a Paid Feature

The ability to link accounts in an Organization is intended to be a paid feature. We are absolutely going to continue to offer a killer free account, but it will be for individuals and not for organizations. Having said that, we’re happy to let you use it for free for the next month or so while we complete some other important premium features for businesses.  

Discount Pricing this Month

If you’d like to take advantage of special pre-launch pricing, let me know  or sign up for our premium mailing list to be updated. This month we’re offering 40% off pricing on annual subscriptions for early Organization subscribers. This will give the upcoming premium features to all members of your Organization, and it will allow us to “turn on” new features for your whole team as soon as those features become available. 

Mobile vsnaps

Although these Organization features are currently visible only in Vsnap’s web interface, they do affect vsnaps created on the mobile apps. For example, a vsnap created on the mobile app of an Organization Member now can be deleted by the Admin Member and not by the individual who created it. 

Nothing Changes for Non-Organization Accounts

If you have a free individual Vsnap account and don’t create or become part of an Organization, then nothing will change for you. You will still have free use of business features for the time-being, like the logo feature and the SMTP feature. And you’ll still own your own vsnaps.

Video Improvements

Actually there is one change that affects everybody – we improved how we handle the video file to ensure that your vsnaps play perfectly behind enterprise firewalls. This is good news for anyone using our application inside a large corporation, or to engage clients at large corporations. We’re now seeing a perfect performance on playing vsnaps in those environments.

That’s it for now. There will be much more in the coming weeks for the companies that are using Vsnap to make customers feel appreciated. Stay tuned!