Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Vlipping Out

by alec on March 28, 2007

The folks at SightSpeed have just released a pretty cool, and pretty quirky website.  Vlip.com lets you quickly record video clips, or Vlips.  You can post them, watch other people’s Vlips, and reply as well. Billed as video blogging for the rest of us, it has the feel of Speakers Corner translated for the internet age; a democratization of the television camera, if you will.

Here’s what a Vlip looks like:

Interestingly enough, there are a number of these instant video sites out there today. For instance, the folks at Blogtv.ca have been pitching me on their site for several months now. Their concept? You can record your own live show and broadcast it to the net. There’s a pretty reasonable selection of videos there now, including some unusual ones like the woman who has recorded the whole process of getting a tattoo. Like Vlip, Blogtv.ca shows are easily recorded and uploaded using your webcam.

Neat stuff. It’s certainly easier than recording video using a camcorder, although you forego any post production to gain that ease-of-use.

I wish Peter Csathy and the Sightspeed team luck with this.

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Gobsmacked over Skype Beta 3.2

by alec on March 28, 2007

Wow. 

I just finished a Skype call with Jim Courtney using the new Skype Beta 3.2.  The sound quality is stunning.  Using only the PC microphone and speakers, there was no echo, full duplex sound, and excellent quality audio.  Moreover, the new codecs are super CPU efficient.  Even while running Windows Update, and an Outlook email download, there was no discernable loss of quality.

I am gobsmacked.  The biggest feature in Skype Beta 3.2 isn't payments or any of that other stuff.  It's sound quality. 

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AT&T's double standard definition of termination

March 28, 2007

FreeConferenceCall and others like it may become a relic of the past, it seems.  AT&T is now blocking access to FreeConference's 712 area code numbers, claiming that terminating a call on a bridge is not call termination.  Utterly bogus.  If the call was being made on an INWATS or a 900 line, they would be Johnny-on-the-spot [...]

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Aswath's Modest Proposal

March 28, 2007

While I was on vacation, Aswath Rao published a pretty interesting piece titled OpenID Negates the Need for P2PSip. Here's what he's proposing: I can store the IP address and the port number on which my SIP client will listen for incoming calls in a web page and my partner can visit that page before [...]

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Good News for Truphone Subscribers

March 28, 2007

Truphone has exended their North American price promotion through to the end of June.  That's free phone calls to landlines, including internationally.

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