
Official Google Blog: Talk face-to-face right from within Gmail - Anon84
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/talk-face-to-face-right-from-within.html
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paul9290
Im using it now and have for the past 3 hours connected to my friend.

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!

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zhyder
Why the installed plugin? Tokbox has a great Flash-based solution (which
Dabbleboard also uses). Maybe the plugin does P2P.

~~~
johns
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?

~~~
stillmotion
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.

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shadytrees
Soon, you'll be able to touch each other _also from within Gmail_.

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axod
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...

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unalone
That's pretty impressive. Google Talk is an underappreciated gem.

~~~
luckystrike
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.

~~~
unalone
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.

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tel
Oh man, it's nearly time to start investing in Transmittable Tableaux. I don't
think I'm _ever_ paying full attention in IMs.

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lunchbox
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.

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daveambrose
Seriously?

 _Unfortunately Gmail voice and video chat is not available for PowerPC Macs._

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tocomment
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.

~~~
lux
On the server side, you'll want to look at red5 (<http://osflash.org/red5>).
Client side you'll likely have to code custom though.

Anyone know a good webcam capturing flash or flex utility? I haven't found one
myself...

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tocomment
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.

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tomsaffell
Interestingly this is not far off the original inspiration for the webcam:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_room_coffee_pot>

Do any of these do the job?:
[http://www.download.com/1770-2001_4-0.html?query=webcam+publ...](http://www.download.com/1770-2001_4-0.html?query=webcam+publish&tag=srch&searchtype=downloads)

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)

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tocomment
I'm guessing that none of those you linked to do the job, because they'll just
send periodic snapshots. I want something that does streaming.

Worst case I'll install Skype but I won't be able to get the client in the
browser.

I just can't believe there's no open source streaming webcast software.

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SingAlong
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?

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bradgessler
Am I the only person that's annoyed that I can't turn off Google Chat in my
Gmail account? I want the widget _gone_, not just "signed out".

mmph.

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Anon84
there's probably a greasemonkey script for this...

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unalone
It's built directly into Gmail. Look at my response to his post.

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Anon84
I have it turned off and I still see it above the labels. I think the ideas is
to completely remove it from view.

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bradgessler
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.

Bastards.

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seren6ipity
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.

~~~
bradgessler
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.

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mleonhard
The most important part of this announcement: "The first time you use this
feature, you'll be prompted to download and install a small plugin."

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melito
Anyone been successful in getting this to work?

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redorb
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

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ph0rque
Hmm... I wonder if this is automatically available for Android users?

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enomar
I don't see how that would work.

1) The G1's camera and screen face different directions.

2) The G1 (and the iPhone) don't support video capture.

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stillmotion
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.

~~~
sito25
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

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edward
GoogleMail voice and video chat is not yet available for Linux.

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axod
Shame it requires a plugin, I'll just stick with skype thanks.

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unalone
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.

~~~
jodrellblank
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?!)

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Zaak
[http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/say-hello-to-gmail-
voi...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/say-hello-to-gmail-voice-and-
video-chat.html)

"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."

~~~
senko
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.

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sleet
Does anyone know what browsers are currently supported?

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utnick
grr no linux support

However, they released chrome on linux fairly soon after the main release so I
have hope.

~~~
aikiai
They did? I looked recently, and quickly again just now, and don't see
anything on the main chrome page...

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JesseAldridge
He's probably confusing it with that Crossover thing...

<http://www.codeweavers.com/services/ports/chromium/>

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aikiai
Thanks. I'm not going to install it today, but that's actually quite an
elegant solution on Google's part. Bravo!

