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Those of you following the progress of Skype's beta series for version 4.0 already know that the seminal VoIP caller has been striving to get people interested in--and even aware of--Skype other features by rearranging its program's interface in time for version 4.0.

On Thursday, Skype released Skype 4.0 beta 3 for Windows, the third--and as far as we know, final--beta in the development series.

(Credit: CNET)

In addition to Internet telephony, Skype wants to make it easier to switch among IM and phone conversations, to place calls to non-Skype users' mobile phones and landlines, and to jump on board its video chats, which, the company admitted, most users either weren't using or didn't know existed.

At each of the three stages, Skype has daubed on more features that build from its very rough first attempt. In version 4.0 beta 3, the ability to scroll and search through your history is the punchiest addition; you can also filter by activity type.

There's also a new download manager for file transfers, a subtle visual "chrome" treatment when you switch into compact view (from the View menu), and a bandwidth manager. To keep Skype stalkers at bay, the company has added the option to report blocked users as abusive. As always, use this feature with care.

Laying it out on the table

While Skype is still accepting feedback to influence the final design, the essentials haven't changed much from the beginning, and the next release will almost assuredly arrive as the final version. Yet, there are still some visual flaws and an empty storefront. Skype's engineers may run out of releases in which to test new functionality.

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Skype users, too, are calling for more visual personalization in the instant messenger, and are calling out against Skype's yanking of Skypcasts, which officially shut down in September 2008.

Beta number three is also missing birthday reminders and public chats, both slated for this release.

As seen from the air, Skype's 4.0 beta is shaping up into a communications tool that will fulfill its mission to streamline its app and make it more engaging on all fronts. Up close, however, the final release of 4.0 will need more cleanup if it's to really redefine how it's used.

Video phone calls just haven't caught on like all those cinematic depictions of the future said they would--kind of like flying cars. But a bunch of investors led by Bain Capital Ventures still believe. They've pumped a $10 million Series B round into TokBox, a video chat and calling site based in San Francisco. Existing investor Sequoia Capital also participated.

TokBox launched less than a year ago, but it has been working hard, appointing Nick Triantos as CEO, releasing a light desktop application based on Adobe AIR and building code to integrate its video chat into Facebook Chat.

"TokBox has an impressive, and very loyal and energetic user base," Scott Friend, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures who will be joining the start-up's board of directors, said in a statement. "The company is executing well, and its service offers consumers a variety of great features that strongly differentiate TokBox from competitors. We are excited to be investing with our partners at Seqouia in a company we believe has the potential to be the next 'big thing' in Web communication."

Cool! Now I'm just holding my breath for the Valley moneymen to start realizing how much we need flying cars.

Video chat tool TokBox on Thursday morning quietly slipped in a new feature called public feed, which lets anyone with a Web cam leave a message for others on the service to reply to. Until now, the service has been mainly a P2P chat service between people who know one another, but this new feature is turning it into a social network for budding Web cam enthusiasts.

TokBox's new public feed lets you post a message to the entire community.

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Seesmic, another video start-up, has had this as its main feature until recently, when it's gone toward blog owners to get them to use its video recording and threading for video comments.

One thing that separates this new feature from Seesmic's is that your replies don't show up underneath other people's videos. You can reply to anyone's public video directly, and even call that person, but others won't see your response, making the conversation a little one-sided. Still, it's a nice addition to viewing what other people are up to without instigating a live chat with them, and I can see publicized replies being added later on down the line.

The feature goes hand-in-hand with another people-finding tool that was recently introduced. If you're friends with another TokBox user and you two share similar friends, it'll pull up a listing of "people you may know" the same way Facebook does.

The service also recently introduced AIM and MSN integration, so you'll be able to pull in your buddy list from either of those services and chat with your buddies on the service's Webtop.

Facebook chat users have also not been left out in the dark, as the company quietly released a Firefox plug-in Wednesday that lets you add video chat to Facebook's chat service. Once installed, you get a new option in FB chat to send someone a video chat request which will send them a link to a special TokBox room where both of you can talk without leaving the page.

It's been a while since a major Skype release, and on Wednesday, the eBay-owned VoIP communication service will issue the first of several planned version 4.0 beta builds for Windows that are anticipated to drop over the next few months.

The biggest changes to come with Skype 4.0 beta (download) are visual and organizational. For the first time, the program contains complete prompts for running sound and Webcam checks within the program set-up. After two failed tests buffered by common troubleshooting suggestions, Skype will recommend hardware--like headsets and a Webcam--to reverse incompatibility errors.

(Credit: Skype)

Redesigned interface
Skype 4.0 beta's redesigned interface may also get you blinking. Compared with its stable cousin, the new Skype beta's GUI has overflowed its banks, replacing tabs in the once-narrow interface with a second pane tacked on to the right. Four or five functions are flattened into this single window in an effort to make communications other than the voice chat staple easier to find and use. To wit, there's an IM bar deposited at the bottom of the communications pane and large buttons that prompt voice and video calls. Video calls are large by default, filling the program's communication activity pane.

Skype Out, the service offering competitive international rates for Skype users calling contacts' landlines instead of their computers, has also been chiseled out, by a large call-to-action button on the navigation bar. The button just below it opens a directory for finding people, businesses, and chat rooms. The toggle bar tucked away at the top switches from saved chat conversations to the contacts view, and rounds out the new additions.

Some functionality, like Skype Prime, will arrive in later builds.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Still more to come
Though there may be a placeholder for it, not every function in this first beta is live. The shop for Skype-approved hardware, while available from Skype.com, will not be activated in this iteration, nor will be the service on real-time advice, called Skype Prime. Automatic redial, call transferring, video presentations, and integration with Outlook contacts are also scheduled for roll-out in later builds.

The spread-out interface of Skype 4.0 beta for Windows will definitely take some getting used to, especially as it abandons the client's traditionally nimble, IM-styled build. However, it does succeed in calling out a wider array of communication services. This may give the Luxembourg-headquartered company a chance to deemphasize VoIP as its core competency and mark out new territory in Internet video, collaboration tools, and entertainment services.

As ambitious as Skype's new look and capabilities are, Mike Bartlett, the program's Windows product manager, confessed during our briefing that this design and the newly introduced features will be closely monitored for user backlash. It's likely that strong feedback from Skype's 309 million registered users will leave an impression on Skype 4.0 beta continues to take shape in the upcoming months.

Orgoo, one of my favorite communication aggregation services, quietly launched a new video-chat service yesterday. It lets anyone create a text chat room with four spots for Web cam video and audio without any sort of registration or software besides Adobe's Flash plug-in. I gave it a spin earlier today and came away impressed.

Like the company's multiclient e-mail and chat mashup, which I checked out back in September, it's been designed with simplicity in mind and setup is about as easy as it gets. Users can privatize chat rooms simply by providing a password and can brand the room with a logo or photo from their hard drives.

After a room has been created, it will remain live even after all the members have left--all you need is the permalink and password to return to it later. The implementation reminds me a lot of MeBeam, an instant video-chat service we played with internally but never wrote about.

In terms of integration with Orgoo's core service, which will likely open up from its current private beta later this month at the Under the Radar conference, the video chat simply takes up a new tab in between the e-mail and regular text-chat buddy list. It also inherits the right-click contextual menus that are often an overlooked, yet satisfying addition to Flash-based applications.

The video-chat app joins a slew of others including the aforementioned MeBeam, Tokbox, and ooVoo, along with the recently released Yahoo Live.

[via TechCrunch]

Chat with as many people as you'd like, and video chat with up to four people at the same time, all in the same place with Orgoo chat.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Remember ooVoo, that iChat-like video conferencing and chat tool we took a look at back in June? Today they've launched a new version that has got a handful of useful, powerful tools that make it a viable alternative for small workgroups using conference calls and screen-sharing applications, such as WebEx.

First up is a new recording feature that lets users tape video chats with other participants. Since the video and audio are being recorded to the hard drive, the only time limit is how much free space the computer has. In testing, I managed to get a nearly 15 minute, four-way video conversation down to 95 MB file. The application took about 10 minutes to convert my conversation into workable FLV file that was at a full 1MB/S quality. It can also step it down to 256kb/s or 512kb/s if the file needs to be smaller.

Recorded video files can take up a surprisingly small amount of space. This one is just under 100MB and it's 15 minutes long at full quality. Setting the quality level down another two steps cuts down to just a quarter of the size.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The other really useful feature is a new conference calling tool that gives host and participants a landline number to call. Other ooVoo users who call this conference line get plugged right into the audio that's a part of the video chat, and just like the video recordings, this audio gets archived too. The new call in lines support up to six people, meaning users can have up to a dozen participants--including those on the video side. The call in service is free this month, but it is moving to a by-the-minute model in March.

Besides the video recording, the other new feature that I think people are going to like is an optional piece of software that's a companion for ooVoo's video player. The companion has two main uses. The first is a screen sharing application that lets users show off an entire screen, or certain zoom levels, to other video chat participants. Users can also drop media files, such as music, pictures, or video into the stream for other users to view. Secondly, it's got a built-in facial overlay tool, like Fix8, that applies digital overlays either to users faces or to replace backgrounds. It's great fun.

ooVoo is a free, standalone desktop chat application that has both a text and video chat capabilities. Its official launch is next week, but the beta has been available since mid April. I took it for a spin this morning and came away impressed.

There are a ton of chat clients out there, so one of the things it has done to differentiate itself is multiperson video chat. ooVoo can handle as many as six people in one video conference, which is two more than what iChat is capable of. Users can drop in and out of conversations, and the video windows will scale with a similar effect to iChat's "swoop." Along with video, users can chat among themselves with their computer's microphone or a headset. There are volume controls for both speakers and the microphone right in the chat window, a handy addition.

Users can embed this 'call me' button on their blogs or social networking profiles.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

I found the video and audio to be fairly clear, even when topped off at six users. ooVoo's creators tell me that when running full six-user video, it will take up only half the bandwidth on a low-end DSL connection. Assuming you're not downloading or uploading large files in the background, your connection shouldn't drag to a halt.

In addition to live video and text chat, ooVoo doubles as a video e-mail service. Users can send each other video messages as long as a minute in length that are available right in the app or via e-mail. Users who get the e-mail are also provided a link that takes them to a live flash version of the video, so they can access it while away from their home machine.

For people interested in adding a quick way to be reached on their social networking profile or Web site, ooVoo gives users the option to embed a quick contact button that will automatically launch an ooVoo conversation if installed. I've posted an example image of this on the left side of this post.

ooVoo is not alone in the multiperson video chat space; competitor SightSpeed also offers a free video and text chat service. The main difference is that SightSpeed is aimed at businesses and limits video chat to four users at a time with a monthly subscription fee.

ooVoo is currently available only for Windows users, although the team is releasing a beta for Macs in about six weeks. Users on both platforms will be able to chat with one another using the same client.

You can download ooVoo over at CNET's Download.com. For more shots of the service, keep reading.

Six-person video chat in action. Users can also freeze their live video feed at any time.

(Credit: CNET Networks)