the internets are ringing…

Online voice/video conferencing is probably as synonymous as blogging these days. But up until a couple of years ago, people were left with IM clients to do the deed. Now there’s nothing really wrong about going this route, but if you want the ideal video/voice chat experience you’d be better off going the Skype route.

Skype literally brings the phone to your Internet connection – and a video phone at that. And it’s here where Skype shines, it seems to prioritize bandwidth quite well ensuring a good quality video/voice conversation. Signing up for SkypeIn and SkypeOut even provides you a fully functioning voip line. But not everything is perfect. For one thing, Skype limits video conversation to two participants – attempting a group conference will disable any video, and limit it to an audio conversation. Another problem I’ve come across is the difficulty in recording Skype conversations. I guess most of the people reading this would probably see no need in recording their chats, but for those entering the world of podcasting it’s totally another story. I mean there are ways to do it – mainly through third party software – but an integrated one-click record would’ve been ideal. 

Enter ooVoo. A relatively new product that appears to be a viable Skype alternative. It seems to do, or at least offer everything its counterpart does minus the call-in feature. I haven’t gotten in-depth with the client, but I haven’t noticed this option. But it does allow you to make calls to land/mobile lines through a subscription service. The two features that sold me were – 6-way live video chats, and unlimited recording of video calls. Sadly, for $10/month. But the free option does better Skype, by allowing 3-way video chat. And looking at the standard account feature list, it limits call recording to 1 minute. I took advantage of their free 30-day “super account” trial so I’m still not clear on whether local recording is indeed capped to a minute. Another interesting feature ooVoo provides is online storage for said recordings, even giving you the ability to stream them on the webs.

I currently have both clients installed, but given the expiry of my free ooVoo trial, have found no compelling reason to go away from Skype. Primarily given its widespread popularity, and cross-platform support. ooVoo’s mac support is crippled, and linux isn’t even an option. But those on a windows box and are heavy into the online conferencing should definitely give ooVoo a try, especially with the trial they have going on. With Skype 4.0 in the early beta stages, I can only hope that it develops the features that makes ooVoo an appealing alternative.