Google have announced a new feature for Gmail (Google Talk to be exact): free voice and video chat.
The plu-gin (which according to PC World) is a proprietary, non-Flash based system and supports Chrome, Firefox 2.0+, Internet Explorer 7.0, and Safari 3.0. The technology apparently comes from a company called Marratech which Google acquired last year.
The plu-gin (which according to PC World) is a proprietary, non-Flash based system and supports Chrome, Firefox 2.0+, Internet Explorer 7.0, and Safari 3.0. The technology apparently comes from a company called Marratech which Google acquired last year.
While the encoding is obviously handled by a proprietary plug-in, it was reported that the client to view the video is in fact Flash. This is interesting, since it would suggest RTMP being used as the protocol. The Google blog however mentions only XMPP, RTP and H.264 as the technologies used... Hmm interesting. I'm sure some folks will dig deeper and report back with their findings. I have installed the plug-in but got nobody to call since I never use Google Talk. Help, I need friends.
Footnote: US folks can order some very good webcams with fairly big discounts.
I have the QC Pro for Notebooks they have listed and it's a pretty decent little camera and has never given me any problems.
I'm really interested in seeing the image quality of the Google/Vidyo product in a low to medium bandwidth environment (200-500kbps)