And this begs another question, if it requires an install, why not work it into a GTalk client update, and include it there and through the web interface?
I had no idea they still made the client. I think they're trying to push for a fully immersed web experience that no one has been able to offer as of yet. The only thing they're missing now is Gears in Gmail.
With the Flash 10 P2P video functionality, soon almost every other social network will be offering this kind of functionality.
Nobody will be able make money off it, it will simply be used to drive adoption.
In google's case there is a further motivation, by releasing ahead of the rush of flash based offerings they get people to install a proprietary plugin, giving them a hook into your desktop.
Not everyone seems to realize this, but the video chat is based on flash. So I'm not quite sure what everything the downloaded software is doing.
For one, it does let flash access your webcam and mic without the normal security promptings, but with a 5.6MB install, I would imagine its doing more then that...will explore more later
As soon as that happens expect a lot of Gmail sex-spam-bots feeling you up. They'll get you all excited then present a credit card payment screen to continue...
I agree. I happen to use instant messengers a lot (both for work and personal use), and absolutely love the 'lightness' of the GTalk client. The quality of voice chats is of the highest order, and if you throw in the browser based chat feature, plus this new video chat, the entire gamut is very impressive.
It is one of the few applications for which one might like to become paid customer wholeheartedly.
One feature that doesn't show up on either the downloadable or the GMail system - only on the Flash one - is the ability to post URLs to YouTube, Flickr, and Picasa and have them automatically embedded in the chat window. I think it's an incredibly useful feature - similarly to how Facebook does that for posts - and I wish more IM clients began adding embed support.
Is the voice/video being transmitted via the Jingle protocol? If so, then hopefully it will eventually be possible for Gmail users to have voice/video chat with non-Gmail users. That would help differentiate this service from the other video/VoIP solutions out there.
By the way, is there any free software for streaming video from a webcam so I can embed the result in a webpage? I'm putting a webcam on my iRobot create so I can watch it drive around.
red5 looks more like an API? I just need something I can install and run. It just needs to pull video from the webcam and provide me with a URL to view it in a browser.
Red5 & Flex would provide a way of doing this, but it would seem like overkill. (Red5 is an open source alternative to parts of Adobe's Flash Media Server product group)
Sounds like a product idea... ;) Seriously, if anyone knows of or makes something like this, please do tell. But I haven't been able to find anything that simple for this yet.
That might work, but I'm just running this over my wifi network from one computer to another. It would be wasteful for my streaming video to have to go across the internet.
Now what happens to Google Talk if all the features are being rolled into the GMail chat? Will they seem GTalk in the course of time and allow everything thru GMail Chat?
Yeah, that's the idea. I'm hoping that Google adopts a full widget architecture for Gmail so that I can replace "Chat" and "Invite" with "Google Calendar".
By the looks of Gmail Labs, that's where we are headed! Then again, iGoogle won't let you remove chat either.
You can click to hide "chat" and "invite" so they just appear as a single line item. They have two new lab features which may help you.
Google Calendar gadget - Adds a box in the left column which shows your Google Calendar.
Navbar drag and drop - Allows you to reorder the items in your navbar using drag and drop. With this you may even move chat and invite way to the bottom.
Yeah, that's what I was getting at in my post. My point is that Google is ramming this chat stuff down our throats and nobody seems to complain. If it was true "widget architecture", I would be able to remove "Chat" and "Invite" completely, not just collapse it.
guessing the plugin you install would consist of some sort of universal web cam software and screen capture, I wonder how small the plugin can actually be?
edit: probably some software for communicating with your web cam
Both the G1 and the iPhone support video capture. The problem is there is not software to support it. Qik and other applications like it have been able to develop video streaming from the iPhone, which means that any talented developer could ultimately create a video capture application.
Ok Can Someone Plz Come Out with The T Mobile G1 Phone Video capture applications I Hope It Doesnt be Like 20 sec Like The Damn Sk Lx Hopefully be Like 2 Mins maybe Its Update the Video Cam applications 4.0 or 4.5 pix
Yeah, it's annoying. But theoretically it's a more integrated experience, it's used by all Gmail users - no need for people to get Skype, which is good for people who don't like installing programs - and it's pretty impressive for an online implementation.
Or they could use an open standard protocol, as could Skype, which would be good for people who don't like vendor-locked-in proprietary technologies.
(Which seems to be very few people, unfortunately. By the way, I spent some fun fun fun minutes today trying to recover my broken Outlook NK2 file. A proprietary secret format to store a list of email addresses with names? Hello?!)
"And in the spirit of open communications, we designed this feature using Internet standards such as XMPP, RTP, and H.264, which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat."
What this blog post doesnt say, is that google completely ignored the perfectly valid current Jingle draft for RTP video (XEP-0167) and instead invented their own (and doing very weird things like signalling audio+video streams together, although they're different streams).
They also use a variant of H.264 that basically nobody else uses (H264/SVC), for which there are no free codecs available, and provide no fallback to some other codec for interoperability reasons.
Google might have the best intentions, but until they adress these issues (well, too late for the signalling, but the codec problem is more important), they can't seriously talk about the spirit of open communications.
The past 4 yrs we have used Skype. Thus far it beats Skype - no echo and or feedback with two parties using webcams!
Skype needs to integrate/sell its tech to Microsoft and Yahoo. Hopefully do something quick..they lost me and possibly thousands more today!