Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by hugs | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

hugs

I agree we're overdue for a Skype killer. The technology that's going to power it is called "WebRTC".

http://www.webrtc.org/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webrtc/basics/

Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8C8ouiXHHk

You can play with WebRTC now in Google Chrome. Enable the chrome://flags: http://www.webrtc.org/running-the-demos

Then play with this demo: https://webrtc-demos.appspot.com/html/gum1.html

Then play with the source code: http://code.google.com/p/webrtc-samples/source/browse/#svn%2...

Have fun!

View on HN

Please don't build another 'You should "upgrade" your browser to Chrome' service.

WebRTC might be cool, the demo looks cool, but the official site says that it might break or go away anytime and - please, please, please never ignore this - only one single browser seems to support that tech.

Fool around with it, but this can _never_ be part of a Skype killer until everyone can use it.

Someone could (and should!) take the webrtc c++ libraries and use those to create their own native client app -- which would not be dependent on the Chrome browser.

You are aware that Skype requires the Skype client, even less standards-based than Chrome, and everyone can use it? You can use Chrome and Skype alongside your web browser of choice. Chrome is spritually like the Mozilla/XUL of old -- it's a platform for apps, not just a web browser.

I betting Opera and Firefox will implement it. They already have the getUserMedia api for the mic and camera.

http://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/04/webrtc-efforts-underway-at-...

Sure beats a "you should install our binary" service. WebRTC is also an open standard backed by the W3C and will have support in other browsers soon (FireFox/Opera/IE, no word yet from Apple).

Support is already being added in Firefox. Skype posted a position a while back about a WebRTC hire. I'm not sure why people act like it's some fringe thing. It's already not.

_never_ really?

step 1 - download dev version of chrome into a separate folder

step 2 - enable webrtc in flags://

step 3 - put a shortcut on your Desktop that points to this and says "Skype-NG" or something like that.

How is that different now than going and clicking on Skype from running and launching point of view. Bonus points, can also browse the web if you want.

Skype also might break or might go away anytime too. Or, rather, more likely will interrupt your video stream every 5 minutes to show you adds about dating sites and Nigerian scams.

how about:

1. download some 1MB binary. No depends or 3rd lib runtime or shit.

2. BAM! Voice and video group chat. S2S federated with all other XMPPs.

So both are pretty easy and neither is unrealistically impossible as the grandparent suggested...

I'm currently building support for this into Candy, a multiuser javascript based xmpp client:

http://candy-chat.github.com/candy-webrtc/

If everything works, candy should be able to connect to gTalk as well, at some point. (Uses Jingle for transferring SDP to the participant).

I think that multiple peer connection support has landed in Chrome. Time to integrate the ROAP over JSEP and fix my code up and I should have a basic multi-peer p2p video chat demo working.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com