Official Google Blog: Talk face-to-face right from within Gmail | Hacker News Reader

Official Google Blog: Talk face-to-face right from within Gmail

googleblog.blogspot.com

62 pointsAnon8455 comments

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!

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

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.

yeah, pretty lame. because the decided to go with a new plugin this will be way less useful.

Yeah, installing software is so difficult. Nobody uses Flash because that's a plugin too.

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

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.

Soon, you'll be able to touch each other also from within Gmail.

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...

Soon, you'll be able to TEACH each other also from within Gmail.

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

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.

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

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.

Seriously?

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

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.

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...

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.

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.

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...

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)

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.

justin.tv

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?

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

If you want it out of your way, look at the very bottom of the page:

Gmail view: standard | turn off chat | basic HTML Learn more

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."

Anyone been successful in getting this to work?

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

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

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.

1) Mirror ?

http://gizmodo.com/5015395/apple-introduces-iphone-3g-videoc...

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

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

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

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?!)

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/say-hello-to-gmail-voi...

"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.

Does anyone know what browsers are currently supported?

grr no linux support

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

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

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

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

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

Nevermind this arstechnica article confused me: http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/09/02/google-...

I don't think chrome on linux is functional yet.

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