Skype Adds Video


Skype adds video - but not for you.

Have you used Skype? It's very neat. It's a VoIP client - in other words, it does iChat style voice calling - but it is cross-platform. Skype running on your Mac can call Skype running on your friend's PC. In fact, you can even get Skype for Pocket PCs, which means I can walk around my house with my WiFi enabled iMate JAM Pocket PC using it like a wireless phone. That is cool (although I know in a few years I'll look back and laugh at how clumsy that is). And Skype is free, which is good. And if you pay, you can all regular phones and regular phones can call you - so you can save money calling friends overseas. What with Skype, iChat and Vonage, my telephone bill has never been so low.

Anyway, Skype have teamed up with Dialcom to launch Video4Skype, which takes the form of a plug-in that adds video conferencing. The quality doesn't seem to quite be up to iChat's standard, but it looks better than MSN Instant Messenger, which up until now has been the best of the Windows based solutions.

There's no Mac version, but it's promising. If they add a video plug-in for Mac, it would be nicer than the very ropey iChat to AIM system that we're forced to use at the moment to talk to PC buddies.

See the ever-gadgedty Engadget for more details.

Posted: Sun - June 5, 2005 at 10:08 AM      

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