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Orgoo adds video chat to repertoire

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 … Read more

'i-Buddy' brings IM emoticons to life

It should have been obvious that the "Nabaztag" was having some emotional problems when it turned to graffiti, let alone self-defacement. The Wi-Fi rabbit had apparently grown quickly from its innocent beginnings into precocious adolescence, perhaps accelerated by instant fame.

Yet it's not too late to set it straight: All it needs is some positive companionship to avoid following Britney to UCLA Med Center. And that's where "i-Buddy" comes in.

It would seem to be a perfect match for the troubled bunny, recognizing specific acquaintances when they sign onto MSN Messenger and then reacting to certain emoticons … Read more

Google Talk chatback: So bad even Google doesn't use it

Google yesterday announced in its Talkabout product blog that there's a new way to connect your site or social page visitors directly to you: a Google Talk chatback widget that instantly connects the visitor to your GTalk or Jabber IM client.

I like giving my readers a chance to connect with me directly in real-time, so I'm all about products like this. But the implementation of this little product is so lightweight and so lacking, that I understand perfectly why even the Google blog post announcing it shows only a picture of the widget instead of a live … Read more

IM photos and videos from phone to phone

If IMing friends from mobile to mobile is faster and cheaper than sending SMS messages, then IMing photos, videos, and music clips is even better.

Fring announced this week an update to its Symbian 9.1 and Symbian 9.2 offerings (sorry, Windows Mobile) that lets registered members swap files. This is the first I've heard of file-sharing from any mobile IM service, though saving the best perks for members is common to others, like EQO, that have far grander ambitions than simple all-in-one chat.

Much like file-sharing from desktop chat apps, fring (it really is lower-case) files ride … Read more

Meebo announces new features and partners

The Web IM and chat company, Meebo, just rolled out some very interesting new features. First off, they have introduced a developer API for their Meebo Rooms product. This will allow people to integrate a Meebo Room into their own Web site. Meebo has said that this API will "...further accelerate the widespread adoption of Meebo rooms." Meebo is hoping that Web site owners will take this as an opportunity to build a community around their site.

Meebo also announced a big win for their new Meebo Network chat and advertising platform. They have signed five major partners, … Read more

Simkl and IM History: Two services that spy on your IM conversations (for you)

The move to archive nearly everything we do online has been spearheaded mainly by Google in both Gmail as well as Google Web history. The same thing is happening in the chat space with Meebo and Google Talk, as well as desktop chat clients that have had integrated chat logging for years now. The one thing missing has been a way to take those locally saved conversations and make them available for search and reading while away from your home machine. IM History and Simkl are two companies have jumped on the task in an attempt to let people archive … Read more

Bits from Beyond Binary--Dec. 13, 2007

Activision sued over 'Guitar Hero' for Wii--Suit follows admission by Activision that the Wii version of Guitar Hero III was outputting mono, rather than the advertised stereo sound. Office 2007 SP1 autoinstalls confuse Vista, XP users--While most users won't get the Office service pack automatically for some time, beta testers of Vista Service Pack 1 are having the update pushed automatically. Microsoft's Ministry of Truth--Blogger Long Zheng noted last week that Microsoft is hiring for a Director of Windows Client Disclosure, a position designed to making sure there are "zero surprises," when it … Read more

Bits from Beyond Binary--Dec. 12, 2007

Here's a collection of links from the "Stuff I'm reading" section. To see these as they post, come back to the Beyond Binary blog and check out the right-hand column. I recommend doing it ten times a day, but, the digest below is here for those that have other things to do:

Are Microsoft-served ads slowing down Web sites?--Blogger Long Zheng noticed that his recent visits to Digg had been slowed by ad requests to MSN. He did some more, well digging, and found that some other sites with MSN-served ads are also sluggish. (istartedsomething) … Read more

Yahoo Messenger for Vista preview available

Yahoo is set to release a preview of Yahoo Messenger for Vista on Thursday.

It's just a preview, or a very early version, so it doesn't have all the features other versions of Yahoo Messenger do, such as voice, Webcam, chat rooms, text messaging to mobile phones, easy photo sharing and conferencing. Those features will come later.

What it does have is a new interface, and it lets you organize conversations into tabs and drag and drop tabs out to create a new window. You can also keep favorite contacts by dragging them into the Windows Sidebar gadget, … Read more