I'm looking at a cell phone screen and four faces are looking back. It's CTIA 2008, the biggest wireless and cell phone trade show of the year, and the CEO of iVisit, a multiparty video conferencing app for PCs, Macs, and mobile phones, is demoing the product, iVisit Teleport. I must say, the slick, feature-rich app looks pretty cool on Orang Diamaleh's large-screen smartphone.
iVisit Teleport's feature-rich app manages to avoid distraction.
The simplest way to think about iVisit Teleport is as a P2P social network that lets you call, chat, video conference, and transfer multimedia for up to 8 contacts at a time. You sign up for an account and can start adding any contact who has also registered with the service. Conferencing starts when you enter a room, after which you have an array of controls to launch multimedia sharing functions with a one-button click; that is, tap or click the interface to chat, start a video conference using the phone's camera as the lens, send a file, and see a buddy's GPS location on a map.
I like the glossy black interface, which packs in a lot of features without making the app feel overcrowded. The video quality wasn't too shabby either, and definitely an improvement over other video software I've seen, but a lot of that input will depend on the capabilities of the phone itself. On mobile phones, iVisit Teleport supports 120x160, 320x240 video. It will be interesting to see how iVisit Teleport plays out on an actual conference call when the app's beta release goes live in April on Windows Mobile phones, and if the pricing will appeal more to consumers or small businesses. In the meantime, anyone can pre-register for the iVisit Teleport private beta or iVisit desktop for Windows and Mac.
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.
... Read more
I've been playing around with a pretty cool service this afternoon called SeeToo. It's targeted toward people who want to share a private video with someone else but don't want the rest of the world to see it or for it to sit on some server farm out of their control. Unlike other services that have played around with the idea of multiple users watching the same video at the same time (see Lycos Mix, YouTube Streams, and Meebo's rooms) SeeToo handles video links like one-time conference sessions. You can only get in if the video holder has their browser window open and has given you a private URL. SeeToo then streams the content to one person only, who can interact with the host using a simplified chat window that sits just below the player.
Baby mind control is a powerful drug. Using SeeToo you can share this video with one person, and one person only.
(Credit: CNET Networks)SeeToo doesn't rely on server farms to transcode and optimize the video streams. Instead, it works entirely on the client side, requiring the video host to download and install a small desktop plug-in that sits in the Windows taskbar. It's essentially like Orb, which lets you stream and repurpose desktop data to other devices. There are positives and negatives to this. The good is that your viewers don't need to install anything (assuming they have Flash), and videos begin playing almost instantly. There's also a pretty big cap on video sizes (500 MB), which means you're probably not going to have to shrink down a video before you share. The bad is that you're going to need a capable (Windows) machine to both host and crunch the data. On my month-old Core 2 Duo machine, playing a video was sucking up about half of my processing power, which is about what I expected considering the files were large and encoded in H.264.
The service has some pretty basic upload requirements at 100kb/s, which should be fine for anyone with a cable modem or decent DSL package. Users who have good speeds on both ends get the added benefit of improved quality. SeeToo's creators tell me they'd like to move toward providing higher resolutions almost to the quality of the original video. I'm giving SeeToo a bit of a pass in this department since they're brand-new, but just with interoffice testing, the video got a little choppy and pixelated from time to time.
SeeToo is currently in private beta with plans to open up its doors to everyone soon. You can sign up to be a beta tester here.
[Originally spotted on the Museum of Modern Betas]
We saw a lot of work and business tools for conferencing and collaboration come out of Under the Radar last week, but what about when you want to have fun? YouCams is a slick little embeddable video, voice, and text-chatting tool that's a mix of fun and business. The entire app runs in Flash, and users can jump in and join a discussion without the need for registration. The tool is aimed at social network users (mainly the MySpace crowd) as a way to communicate and interact with one another. Something that will likely get them blocked from the service, like what happened to competitor Stickam.
If you've used Stickam before, the Webcam functionality is a little similar. And by a little I'm being generous, because YouCams is much more full featured. There are two tiers of service, both free and paid. Basic registration is fairly generous, giving you voice, text, and video broadcasting privileges. Upgrading to the premium level turns YouCams into a full-on conferencing tool, allowing you to video chat with three other users at the same time, and own a personalized URL with the option to host your own conferencing room.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
An interesting addition to YouCams is integration with YouTube, and a large variety of widgets. These float around on the interface, and require no extra installation. It feels a little bit like YourMinis. The Space Invaders widget in particular nearly kept me from finishing this post. Likewise the YouTube integration is well done. Video links pop up in a conversation bubble, and won't start until you click on them. Like the widgets, they float around and can be resized on an ad-hoc basis.
There's also a social networking component integrated in the service. Users trade 'stars,' which act as credits to buy into various features. It's an interesting take on user involvement, although I'm not sure it'll catch on until users have a real reason to get involved. Maybe giving them access to premium content like music or movie downloads would be a good hook. In the meantime, casual chatters will likely get a kick out of YouCams for its slick interface and ease of use.
I've embedded a YouCams module after the jump. It might not run if you're using Firefox. We've been in contact with the YouCams team about this, and they're on it.
... Read more- prev
- 1
- next
