Jamie's Random Musings on Video IM
Having spent a good part of the last year struggling with a variety of video chat and IM programs, I have decided to write a few things down and see what other people have to say about them.
Friday 16 May 2008, 8:29 AM
Gizmo Adds Business Enhancements and More IM Networks
Gizmo5 (formerly The Gizmo Project) has been my preferred program for IM text chat and audio calls (including PSTN calls worldwide) for quite some time now. The chat interface is clean and easy to read, and it has an excellent history facility, so I can easily look back at something we were talking about several days or weeks ago. Gizmo has now made two additions which make it even better, one for business users and the other for social users.
The first is their new Gizmo5 Business account. This is a sort of an "umbrella" account, under which many individual Gizmo5 user accounts can be grouped. It is then possible to make a single payment for call-out credit to the business account, and distribute that credit to the employee accounts on an unlimited "as-needed" basis, or in limited amounts. In addition, call-in numbers can be purchased by the business account, and then freely assigned to any of the employee accounts. There is an administrative interface for the whole thing, of course, which provides information and controls for the employee accounts and the company account. Gizmo5 also interfaces with IP PBX software, such as Asterisk, Callweaver and the likes. All in all this should be very good news for businesses.
The second addition is integrating even more external IM networks to the Gizmo5 chat console. They were already the leader in this, and it just keeps getting better. As I have mentioned before, I already have my MSN and Yahoo accounts under Gizmo5, and its really nice to have only one program running instead of three. Their list of networks is now:
- MSN Live
- AIM
- Yahoo
- MySpace
- Jabber (includes Google Talk)
- QQ
- iChat
- ICQ
- Gadu Gadu
That's quite a list - the only thing of significance that is missing is Skype, and how I would love for them to be able to do that, so I could chat with the few remaining Skype contacts that I have without having to load the infernal Skype program.
There's another thing Gizmo has been working on, and improving, that I haven't mentioned for a while - off-line message delivery. If you try to send a text message to someone, and they are off-line (or even just "away"), if that person has a cell phone number and/or an email address registered with their account, you will be presented with a menu of options to deliver the message by SMS or email (as available), in addition to Gizmo just holding the message and delivering it by IM when it is possible. This is a nice touch, and makes for an easy way to try to contact someone quickly, even if they aren't currently active on Gizmo5. Of course, the cost of sending a message by SMS is charged to your Gizmo5 account balance; their SMS rates are very good.
On top of all this, Gizmo5 runs on an incredible array of platforms - Windows (2000, XP and Vista), MacOS, Linux, Nokia Tablets (N770, N800, N810), and a huge number of mobile phones - not just "smartphones" either, it runs just fine on my ordinary Nokia 6234!
The bottom line is, these guys are good - when it comes to IM text chat, audio calls and PSTN out/in calls, they are unbeatable. They put their heart and soul into this, and it shows. They work hard, and as a result Gizmo5 is continually improving. i like it, and I use it.
jw 16/5/2006
Wednesday 14 May 2008, 3:10 PM
New IM Application "Nimbuzz"
As my interest is primarily in video chat / IM programs, I generally don't pay much attention to announcements of products without video. However, the announcement for "Nimbuzz" caught my eye, and sounded rather interesting, so I've downloaded it to my PC and my Nokia 6234, and given it a try.
In a nutshell, Nimbuzz is an audio and text IM program, with file and picture transfer capability, which claims to unify your contacts from a variety of "Communities" in a single place. It currently supports import of contacts from:
- AIM
- Google Talk
- Hyves
- ICQ
- Jabber
- MSN
- Skype
- Yahoo
This seems very similar to the Gizmo Project, with a few more communities added, a few less features (for example SMS and email delivery of messages), and a lot less refined and polished.
The thing that caught my eye about it was that Skype was included in the communities it supported. I would really like to find a client that would allow me to chat with the few Skype contacts I have left, without having to load the buggy Skype program itself. So I downloaded and installed the PC version... and discovered that Skype wasn't in the community registration list. Hmmm. A little checking of the help and forums, and I found that the PC version doesn't include Skype support, only the mobile version does. This actually seems to be typical of Nibuzz, the mobile version seems much more complete and robust than the PC version.
Next I downloaded and installed the mobile version in my Nokia 6234 cell phone. Again, it seemed very similar to Gizmo5. Everything went smoothly, and this time I was able to add my Skype login info. Then the fun started - type Skype garbage. Nimbuzz said that my Skype contacts would appear in my contact list "in a few seconds", but after several minutes, they still didn't show up. They eventually did come up, after quite a long time, but I have no idea whether it was Nimbuzz that was being slow, of if it was the typical Skype contact update slowness. I sent a text message to one of my Skype contacts, and got a reply back - hooray! at least that works! Of course, through all of this the Skype that I had running on my test laptop here was showing that contact as being offline, but I am well used to Skype presence being so unreliable as to be useless. Next I added my MSN Live id, and the contacts from there came over almost immediately, as they should.
Although the mobile version of Nimbuzz seems significantly better than the PC version, it is important to remember that it will use the data connection on your handset, and if you don't have a fixed-cost data contract, that can add up fast. I am likely to be using it, at least for a while, to stay in touch with my Skype contacts (I'll try pretty much anything to avoid running Skype). There are a couple of more important things that I have to find out about it yet:
- it is also capable of making voice calls from the mobile handset. I believe that those calls also go over the data channel, but I want to be sure about that. Nimbuzz says that you can call any of your contacts for the price of a local call - hmmm, does that really mean a local voice call, so it is going over a voice connection, or do they really mean a local data connection?
- what is the overall data use of Nimbuzz for orindary start up and monitoring text chat activity? I know that Gizmo has put a lot of effort into minimizing data traffic, specifically so that it doesn't get too expensive for users who don't have a fixed price data contract. Nimbuzz says in several places that they recommend such a contract, does this imply that their typical data use is much higher?
In summary, Nimbuzz looks like an interesting addition to the field, but I think they have a long way to go before I would consider using it instead of Gizmo5. The only clear advantage that I see is having access to more communities, and I know that the people at Gizmo are working hard to add more all the time as well.
jw 14/5/2008
Wednesday 14 May 2008, 10:26 AM
New ooVoo Release (1.6)
A new release of ooVoo for Windows, 1.6.1.7, was made available yesterday. This is the first ooVoo release that is not designated as a "Beta", and it is the beginning of their move to a clearly defined "free" basic package and additional paid services on top of that. I consider it to be the "it's time to figure out how to pay the bills" release. This is definitely not a bad thing as far as I am concerned.
Before I get into the details of the new release, I would like to point out that one thing ooVoo has effectively done with this release is extend their "call any number in the U.S. or Canada for free" offer for one more month. You can download and install the 1.6 release, and choose either of the plans which included phone calls, and you get the next month for free before you have to decide if you are really willing to pay $5/month for it. This is still irrespective of where you are calling from, so wherever you are in the world, if you have friends or family in the U.S. or Canada that you want to talk to, get ooVoo now.
The first thing to be said is that I downloaded and installed the new release yesterday, and had my brother in Atlanta do the same, and we tested it (from the train) yesterday afternoon. It still looks and works the same as the beta releases, and if anything the video and audio quality looked slightly better than previous versions to me, but the cellular connection quality can vary so much that I can't be sure of that.
The more important and interesting part of the new release is the division of services into free and paid "options". The first piece of very good news is that they have left 3-way video chat in the FREE "Standard" package. The standard package also includes normal video, audio and text chat, file transfer, the ability to send video messages up to one minute in length, and a reduced version of the "video effects" feature that was introduced with their 1.5 release.
Their "Super" package, which will have a subscription price of $10 per month, adds up to 6-way video chat, extends video messages to five minutes each, adds the ability to record calls, and includes the full version of the "video effects" feature. It's going to be interesting to see what the interest in this package will be - I can easily imagine business users wanting/needing more than 3-way video and the ability to record calls, and although it may seem odd to include more video effects in this package, one of the "effects" is the ability to share your desktop in a video chat, and that too can be very interesting for business users.
On top of either of these packages, you can add the "Phone" option to get dial-out calls to the U.S. and Canada, for an additional $5 per month. The "Standard+Phone" package includes up to 500 minutes per month, and the "Super+Phone" package includes "unlimited" calls - up to a "fair usage" limit of 3,000 minutes per month. I haven't yet found how much any calls above these limits will cost, but I'm still looking and asking.
For users outside the U.S. and Canada who want or need to call there, these are excellent prices! They are significantly lower than Skype's much-ballyhooed recent announcement of "Unlimited" packages. Even better, they don't try to distinguish (and charge) based on where you are calling from, and they don't limit the calls to land-line phones only!
It is also worth noting that with ooVoo you can include any combination of video, audio and phone participants in a multi-way chat. This is a nice touch, and a rather "cool" feature to use - you can be viewing some participants in a conference, hearing others who don't have or can't use webcams, and even still including others who only have phone access!
There are a couple of minor disappointments for me in this new release and the related announcements. First, I would like to see the phone options include world-wide calls, rather than only the U.S. and Canada. I assume this is coming in later releases, so I don't consider it to be a major issue. Second, I wish that they had left 6-way video (or even 4-way video) in the free version. That's probably just me being selfish, though - if their intention was to get business users to pay for ooVoo, this was probably a very smart decision, and at least leaving in 3-way video for the free version was a good thing for the rest of us.
Finally, I should also mention that the Mac version of ooVoo is still in beta release. It does not yet include phone out capability, video call recording or video effects. I'm sure ooVoo is working on adding these, and when the full release of the Mac version comes (hopefully soon), some or all of them will be included as well.
jw 14/5/2008
Tuesday 13 May 2008, 12:49 PM
Windows Driver Updates
Because of my recent adventures with Windows Vista on my Lifebook, I've had to learn about and deal with the differences between Vista and XP in third-party device driver distribution and updates. Windows XP is very "laissez-faire" about such updates; I have occasionally seen one show up in Windows Update for XP under "Optional Updates", but I don't recall ever having seen one as a mandatory or automatic update. Vista, on the other hand, is very aggressive about distributing such updates. I have seen a number of them included in the mandatory/automatic section of Windows Update for Vista. This difference in approach extends even to locating drivers for newly installed devices. Windows XP will always ask when a new device is connected whether you want to search on the internet for the latest driver - and even when you say "yes", it seems to me that it most often fails to find anything. Vista, however, will always search the internet for drivers, and seems to find what it needs the majority of the time. In fact, some device manufacturers appear to be taking advantage of this fact - the last time I went to download the driver for a Philips webcam, I found a note on the Philips web page saying that for Vista systems it was not necessary to download the driver because the latest version would be found automatically by Windows Update.
While this does relieve the user of having to check for updates from time to time, it is not a universally good thing. There are situations where someone might not need or even want to install an updated driver. The Logitech QuickCam software comes to mind; there have been numerous cases of compatibility problems with specific versions of Logitech camera drivers or QuickCam softare, and once you find a version which works properly, you probably wouldn't want Vista to turn around and install a "newer" version on top of it. Similar situations have been known with display drivers and audio drivers from various suppliers.
Even the automatic download and installation of the latest drivers when new hardware is connected can cause a problem. Once again webcams are a good example of this. Many webcams today are compatible with the generic Microsoft USB Video Device (UVC) driver; with Windows XP, the simplest way to get that driver installed was to just connect the device without pre-loading the camera suppliers' device drivers. When XP was unable to find drivers specific to the camera, and it saw that the camera was UVC compatible, it would load the UVC drivers for it. Try the same thing with Vista, however, and it will download and install the latest device-specific drivers from the internet.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. I'll be writing a lot more in the next few days about responsibilities and conflicts over driver and software updates.
jw 13/5/2008
Wednesday 7 May 2008, 4:45 PM
Video Chat on the Move!
I've just had a fascinating and pleasing experience. I had a 15-minute video chat on ooVoo while riding on a bus through the Swiss countryside! First the summary - the quality was good, in fact on my end it was generally excellent, with a few minor pauses as the cellular modem changed towers or technology. The call was never dropped, in spite of those pauses. For those who want to investigate the details, I was on a bus from Solothurn to Herzogenbuchsee.
Now the details. I have a Sierra Wireless AirCard, which I have written about previously, which I use on the Swisscom cellular network. Swisscom has always done a good job in providing high quality cellular service, and they obviously are still doing so. I checked the speed after the call (on speakeasy.net/speedtest), and it was a stunning 835kbps down and 800kbps up! Now, I know that HSPA can theoretically go up to 1.8 Mbps, but I have never seen anything like these speeds before. The last time I checked it, a couple of months ago, I got around 256k each way, so Swisscom is obviously improving their service.
I used ooVoo 1.5.1.97, the latest version, and I was really impressed with the quality of the audio and video, and the fact that it did a good job of keeping up through the cellular tower changes - it was buffering the data and then played it back at high speed when the connection came up again, which probably made me look and sound like Alvin the Chipmunk on speed, but I still find that better than just tossing the data, or even worse just dropping the connection. Another thing I noticed was that even though the connection quality was obviously varying, ooVoo wasn't spending a lot of time, and causing a lot of distraction, by continually trying to adjust the video frame rate and/or resolution.
Of course, I was using my Fujitsu Lifebook S6510, still running Windows XP (SP3), with the built-in Logitech camera, and a Logitech Premium Notebook headset, connected to the built-in audio jacks (not USB).
It's SO nice when it all comes together and works well!
jw 7/5/2008
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