Yesterday Google announced that Gmail users can start both audio and video conversations from within the web-based mail interface. Naturally that got a lot of people excited because you don’t need to download any third-party program to get it running. You do, however, have to install a plugin on your computer though.
There’s something I thought was even more important that many other sites seem to have overlooked though. If you read the Gmail Blog they briefly mentioned something that really caught my attention. Did you see this sentence?
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.
That’s right. You’ll be able to chat with your friends while reading through your emails, and quite possibly do the same thing using your favorite third-party messenger application. I was going to once again complain that Google Talk is lagging even further behind Gmail Chat, but the fact that the video and audio capabilities are available to third party programs kinda makes up for that. Hopefully Digsby and Pidgin will start taking advantage of that technology soon!
P.S. Google also worked with Buy.com and Logitech to bring you 4 (supposedly nice) webcams at 30% the regular price. This deal is available until November 30th, 2008.
Wow what an amazing resource for online shopping !!
Thanks,
Sandra
You’re right, it does kind of make up for it, but i hope it comes to Google Talk too
(soon please!)
It is not available for Linux (yet) though
. I was on Fedora and was redirected straight away to the Google homepage when attempting to access Gmail Video & Audio Chat Homepage.
I’m sure they’ll release some kind of update for Google Talk. If they don’t they should just come right out and retire it.
Hopefully someone will be able to come up with a solution that will work. Given that they are using open standards it might actually be possible for a third-party to create something that will work with it.
“`that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat.”’
{{{ Sorry for lingo. }}}
It’s a kick right in the ass of Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger.
[en.wikipedia.org]
I tried it last night – 4 times it crashed and gave me an error message. The last time it totally froze my daughter’s computer at the other end of the connection, and forced a hard reboot. Not yet ready for prime time?
Hmmm… I tried it out for a short period of time and didn’t have any troubles. There will undoubtedly be kinks that they have to work out though. I’m surprised that it froze the entire computer though.