Since I tutor him for $30 per hour, what if I couldn’t answer all his questions within that hour, and he really needs some more help? What if he asks me to help him over the internet via MSN or Skype or GoogleTalk or that sort of thing? Should I charge him?

Well, if it only takes me 10 minutes to solve the problem, I can be nice and do it for free. But when it comes to internet discussion, especially for a engineering problem, which involves a lot of drawing, math, and paper work, it is impossible to explain stuff clear by just typing and talking. You need to draw and show! Therefore, an easy 10-minute problem might take you 30 minutes or more to explain to someone who has difficulty with. Time consuming and money wasting!

What people normally do, and what I have done when we face situations like this, were that, we used to draw graphs on MSN painting tool (which was very hard to use and has very limited space), then send it to the other person so he can have a look at it, and draw back another picture on a completely new page, even he was only trying to make a tiny tiny modification on my graph to make a point. Kind of better solution, but doesn’t really help a lot.

Imagine solving an engineering problem, or having a graphic based discussion right next to your friend on a table, having a nice clean white paper in front of you. You can draw and make changes as immediate as you wish on the same piece of paper, without having to wait for your friend to complete his drawing even he was drawing a wrong graph, nor having to draw the heavy graph again on a completely new page when you only wanted to add or erase an arrow on a certain point.

We want to have the same experience over the internet, yes, we want to see continuous actions of your friend on the screen, not discrete ones! And we want to make modifications as immediate as we need to, as your friend is drawing or writing on a digital paper. Just like if we were sitting next to each other!

So, I want to develop this software, that I’m going to call it the “eBoard” for now. What is does, is that, it creates a virtual ‘white board’ between two or more computers over the internet, every computer is free to draw and write on the same board, and signals are sent to the other computers in a continuous manner (not exactly ‘contineous’ by electronic sense, just a lot more frequently). So that instead of having to hit ‘enter’ to send the message, every letter you write or point you draw is immediately shown on the other computers’ screen as you proceed.  And that, other computers are able to write and draw in the same manner on the same piece of virtual board! Therefore, you have a virtual white board right between you and your friends, and you can draw and scratch as if you were just sitting on a table next to each other!

Simple logic, but useful, and commercially potential!

P.S. I don’t really know if there is already this kind of product available.