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AOL Tests Video Instant Messaging
An anonymous coward writes "AOL, which only last week asked the FCC to forget about some of those mandatory restrictions put into place in order to clear its merger with Time Warner, apparently isn't wasting any time. In a move that circumvents government-imposed limitations on "advanced" multimedia services, Instant Messaging Planet is reporting that AOL has already started beta testing video messaging services with "push-to-talk" and "record-and-forward" features."
If it has faster framerates and quality than Yahoo Messenger, I'm sold.
It seems most of the world uses AIM, though they stick with OTHER IM clients for their perks like videoconferencing.
*frown* Microsofts only real competition.
go visit goatse.cx, you tools!!! or are you not toolish enough to handle it, candy-ass bitch!
All they are attempting is a catch up with MSN messenger & yahoo. This doesnt look like a big money maker given the competition.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
Netmeeting and h323 video stuff is there from a lot of time but people still prefer using mirc or icq. I dont think most people is happy to show theit face (especially in the morning...).
When did AOL suddenly have the ability to forget what the FCC ruled?
Seriously, is the FCC a useless appendage to the government?
Look at how Radio has deteriorated in the last 20 years.
I still get interference between cordless phones, wireless videocameras, and 802.11 wireless.
Look at the way cursing is handled on tv.
SeXygrl4u:Hi, I'm Cindy and I just got a digital camera. I took some REALLY hot photos of myself. Come see my webcam at http://www.goatse.cx.com!!
Well, now imagine the IM of the future.....
(cue video of fat balding man in a blonde wig and a schoolgirl's outfit. (voice of man talking in heavy N.Y. accent)
SeXygrl4u:"Yo, I'm Cindy, and i just got a new camera to take some freakin pictures with. Check them out on my site OR ELSE! There's some really hot pictures of me playing with my girlfriends. Together, we are some of the hottest teens on the WEB!"
Innovation indeed..............
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I'll just get it out of the way...
1. Promise to do one thing.
2. Do your best to undo those promises.
3. Profit!
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
"Hi!! I'm a 14 y/o cheerleader lookin' to cyber. Wanna videochat?"
[Goatse guy comes on screen.]
"Ahhhh!"
AOL's gonna need a puke emoticon or two.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
The push to talk feature skirts the "No videoconferencing" rule since you're recording a short video clip and sending it over. It's not live really.
I think i'll have to pass... or at least wait until its fully tested and complete. AIM betas are notorious for causing a tremendous amount of crashes.
WANT INFO ON A COUNTRY?
Can anyone give me the name of a product that fits this criteria? Linux version?
____
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And a foothold among first adopters with fast connections and the telecoms will be sweating bullets. This is, after all, the killer app for communication.
I wonder if they're going to learn from the folly that was 'Microsoft Netmeeting'.
That degraded into a place of seeing countless people jerking off, flashing and other lude acts.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Ever since all the hype about video phones, I've been ready for this. I bought costumes and backdrops and everything. DAMN THE CONSUMERS FOR THERE SLOW ADAPTION OF CLEARLY SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY!
No, I'm serious I've been waiting for this.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
You can actually get the latest build of this beta software from Keyword: beta. Once you are accepted the code name of the application (AOL for BROADBAND / AOL PLUS / AOL SERVICE PACK 1 / AOL 9.0) is actually named Blue Hawaii. The GUI is all blue, And the service has totaly gone through a new face lift from the 8.0 version. I must say I do like the features they are implenting. As the question asked before about the video streams, if both users have broadband connections, the video is actually as good as MS Netmeeting. Its not always the speed of the service, but the frame rate of your camera. Cheaper the camera, slower the frame rate. This beta also includes the many of the fun features of AIM. File transfers, Direct Connect to send pictures, Voice Chat, and a new feature (Webcams). I'm also going to add the latest beta of AIM has resolved most of firewall issues people were having. There are 3 different ways to connect to someone now. It solved all of my issues with my home network firewall and my office firewall. Looks like AOL is on the right track to getitng its service going. The next major feature will be McAfee implenmented into the email service like msn and yahoo currently do. That beta test is going pretty smooth. I just cant wait till they start streaming movies. These large trailers they keep releasing (animatrix / matrix) Rumor is its just a test of what kind of bandwidth they will need. Start small, then go big I guess. Should be intresting how AOL begins the climb back to the top. and out of curiosity, I know we all love to hate it, how many of us actully DO USE AOL? steve
Agreed. Hopefully they do learn, and we get those features immediately rather than slowly degrading into it.
___
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Jessica Rose is a typical American kid. She loves to spend hours in front of the TV playing video games. She loves food that tastes good but isn't always good for her.
And, as CBS News Correspondent Bill Whitaker reports, Jessica, like a staggering one-in-four American youngsters -- twice as many as 20 years ago -- is overweight.
"I could lose weight and I would look better if I just lost at least 10 more pounds," said Jessica, age 9.
The psychological toll is obvious -- kids teasing. But far worse, doctors know overweight kids are likely to keep gaining weight, which is why America is in the throes of an epidemic of childhood obesity.
"It's critical that we look at obesity as a disease," says Dr. Robert Suskind, Finch University of Health Sciences/Chicago Medical School.
Why? Because doctors now see teens with clogged arteries, high blood pressure. Type 2 Diabetes, once called adult-onset diabetes, hits children too today and leads to blindness, kidney failure, heart disease.
"They die earlier," says Suskind.
In fact, this could be the first generation in a century with a shorter lifespan than its parents. With all the super-sized fast food, caloric intake is up while physical activity is down. Kids spend more hours in front of TVs and computers and at the same time schools are cutting gym to save money and have more time for academics.
"It's extremely shortsighted,'' says California-based physical education teacher Chad Fenwick.
Fenwick says gym classes today teach life-long fitness and nutrition, but it's reaching fewer kids.
"They're in terrible shape and we need to do something about it right now or we're going to have severe problems later on."
Some doctors say the problem is so dire now it requires drastic measures, even drugs. The University of Pennsylvania is testing the diet drug Meridia on kids, even though it is not recommended for children under 16.
Despite the risks, Suskind prescribes a near-starvation diet of 800 calories a day or less.
"But you have to have intervention so that children will lose weight and that's why we developed this fully integrated program of diet, exercise and behavior modification."
Remember Jessica, the typical American child? Well, in one important way she's atypical. She's doing something about her weight. She and her mother attend Kidshape, a Los Angeles program to help kids get control of their weight and food.
"And I'm asking my mom for apples and grapes in my lunch, so I don't have a lot of fattening foods."
Doctors say act early, like Jessica. Because it's clear, what we used to laugh off as baby fat is no laughing matter.
Mensa member since 1994
Have you looked at Jabber?
Opensource:
http://www.jabber.org
Commercial Support:
http://www.jabber.com
You can set up a Jabber server, connect securely to
it from Jabber IM clients, and (if you wish) have the
server translate out to AIM, MSN, Y!M, etc.
Translations to other services will not be secure, of
course, unless the external server supported such a
thing ( to my knowledge Y!, MS and AOL do not ).
Maybe I'll actualy enjoy receiving porno spam IMs.
Oh, baby.
Do any of these instant messaging systems/protocols support the exposure of a different online "status" to different groups of buddies?
For example, I use Messenger at work, and it would be useful to allow my colleagues to see me as "Online", whilst my friends outside of work see me as "Busy".
I think Buddy Groups would be easier than having to create a separate account (one for work and one for use with friends), and in particular if you have a large number of friends on IM you don't want to have to set your status to Busy for them individually.
Then at lunchtime, I can quickly set my "Friends" Buddy Group to show me as "Online"...
its amazing that AOL is circumventing the FCC rules, I was pretty disapointed when AOL IM protocol wasn't forced open during the merger but this is ridiculous. To brashlly declare it doesnt hold a dominant control over IM, have they forgotten about AOL IM & ICQ???
News.com article
"The petition argues that AOL's IM services, AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ, face more competition from Microsoft and Yahoo, both of which have launched video conferencing features on their respective IM clients. The petition also disputes the order's original argument that AOL's dominance would increase given the lack of interoperability, now that MSN and Yahoo have amassed millions of users as well.
"There is no longer any plausible reason to conclude either that AOL is dominant or that the market is in danger of 'tipping' to AOL," said Northwestern University professor William P. Rogerson, who provided an affidavit on behalf of AOL Time Warner. "
also alarming, William P. Rogerson is the Chief Economist of the FCC
>people still prefer using mirc or icq
most people aren't geeks. seriously. i kid you not. it's crazy.
They're supposed to not compete due to arbitrary restrictions set (in terms of Internet time) eons ago?
The IM landscape isn't the same as it was a year ago or even two years ago. Thanks to cheap high spec PCs, USB webcams and cheap high speed internet, the once expensive realm of videoconfrencing is now a dime-a-dozen.
Why should they not be allowed to compete now that everything to do videoconfrencing is easy and ubiquitous?
mIRC is the most popular IRC client. So to most they would use mIRC. Just an FYI. KTHX FOAD
Is there any linux client that does icqphone, or similar in the other protocols? I hate going to windows everytime to speak to my friends.
Now I can figure out how "LOLOLOL!!!!!!11" is pronounced! Is it "lahlahlahl" or "ell oh ell oh ell oh ell"?
By using video cameras and incorporating it into the newly released AOL broadband, they are trying to apeal to a certain niche. I would think they would have studies to tell them that this is a horrible idea and it will not work becuase guys can't pretend to be girls and ugly girls can't pretend to be really hot. I'm sure I don't need to point out that short film - "The Parlor"
People just won't use it. Those that do and happen to be good looking will get so sick of people without webcam's spaming them with messages all day long they will just take it down.
SOrry AOL - not this time.
If you've found this diary, I'm probably dead.
My name is James Nicholson, and I am an anthropologist. That's what landed me in this situation. I'd specialized in primates: the great apes. So when I was offered the rare chance to actually study in the African jungles, observe in the natural habitat, I'd jumped at the chance.
But it took months of preparation and training before I actually got here. And years of studying under Dr. Sara Lomez before I had the opportunity to come out here on my own.
I've been here three and a half years, studying their reproductive cycles and mating habits. It took a long time for me to get the gorilla family to accept me - over a year and a half. The first six months they ran and hid. The next three or four, they tried to frighten me away. Somewhere around a year or so, they tolerated my being within viewing distance.
About this time, I gave up clothing and went to wearing skins. They seemed to like that better. But, it was really only after eighteen months that they begrudgingly shared their lives.
They began to let me follow along their trail or move on a parallel path. When they stopped to graze, I'd sit and eat. When they held up for the night, I'd sleep, too, knowing they'd alert me to any danger. I'd keep with them for three of four weeks at a time, until my supplies would run short, and then I'd return to my base camp to catch up on reports and call back to hear the news.
The male of the family was a hulking monster, standing more than seven feet and weighing 750-800 pounds. He had four females and numerous young to follow him around.
I envied his sex life. He'd corner and mount one of the females whenever the urge struck.
And during the season, it struck quite often. Even more, I envied Grey Back's equipment.
A female would squeal with fright when he approached with his monstrous penis fully erect.
She'd try to escape, but I never saw one of them get away. She'd scream when his twenty- two inches pierced her, but would soon be crooning, sighing, and aiding the movement.
He'd roar his climax which would last for a full three minutes! Then he'd pull out and lie down to slumber while she'd tenderly waddle away.
Watching this ritual three or four times a day always made me horny, and I'd want to beat off. But I'd have to go some distance away, because the scent of my male spunk would drive old Grey Back into a rage and make it dangerous for me to be near.
Another dangerous time to be too near was when a young male would decide to challenge Grey Back's authority to lead. He'd tolerate them as part of the family until they tried to mount one of his females. Then his true ferociousness came boiling to the surface, and he'd pummel the interloper until he'd run off to rove on his own.
These rogue adult males were my biggest concern. I'd keep back from the family and be intent on observing them, only to realize I was being stalked by one of them. I'd have to do some pretty fancy footwork to keep out of their grasp. If I hadn't known they are vegetarians, I'd think they had ideas of making me a luncheon item. I guess they just saw me as another male rival.
At any rate, there was that fateful day that I napped too long. The family had awakened and moved on, and I hadn't even heard them. Instead, I woke to find Bluebeard's face less than two feet from mine. I started in fear, and that made him jump back as well. We both stayed perfectly still and stared at each other. The tension got to me. I decided I'd try to inch away. Before making any move, I lowered my eyes in a sign of giving ground to a superior male.
And superior he was! I was startled to see his eighteen-inch prick hard and erect.
It frightened me even more as a sure sign of aggressive excitement. Slowly I began to back away. Carefully. Inch by inch. He didn't shift on his feet, so I began to have hope that he'd let me go.
Suddenly, I backed over the edge of a gorge, lost my footing, and plumm
I'm a frequent user of AIM, ICQ, IRC, Yahoo IM, and MSN Messenger.
That being said, I used to use IRC all the time. I had a lot of friends there and it seemed like the place to be. Unfortunately, the packet kiddies have made it extrordinarily unreliable.
ICQ was the next place I frequented. Unfortunately, it's a haven for spammers. It's the only IM service I get spam from. It's pretty reliable, but most of the people that are relatively new to the internet don't have ICQ numbers. So it's not particularly useful anymore, although a few years ago, it too was the place to be.
I've used Yahoo IM, but unfortunately it seems rather pointless to me. I don't know why, I've just never been a fan of it. Yahoo's official client seems rather slow and I have problems connecting to the service rather often. I also find people I know just don't use it that much.
That brings me to the two I use a lot now, those being AIM and MSN Messenger.
I like AIM. I really do. Its client for Linux is rather lacking, but a lot of people have it. It doesn't seem as bloated as ICQ, but it still has a lot of features. And you can bet just about anyone online has an AIM SN. The service is rather reliable, too, I've found.
As for MSN Messenger, it's really become my favorite IM service. I know I'll probably get modded down for being pro-Microsoft, but it does everything I need it to do and aside from the few times it's gone down for maintainence, it's also rather reliable of late. I like it more than AIM just because it doesn't have the rather stupid features like warnings. I've never really understood that or the rate limiting feature. I mean, I know how they work but I don't get the point of them. I've never seen warnings used against obscene or harassing users. I only see them used when someone is mad at someone else and does it as a way to get back at them. MSN doesn't have these stupid features. That's why I like it. And most people I know have MSN Messenger, too.
As for Netmeeting, as an op in some teen channels, I see lots of requests to chat on Netmeeting. I get sick of seeing the requests. It's a home for perverts. Yahoo is turning into that, too. Video chats are nice, but with a low quality webcam and an upstream that just sucks (128 kbit) and lots of friends on dialup, it's rather pointless. And no amount of compression will make it much better without making the quality thoroughly suck. Forget it.
I'll still use AIM, but it's just another pointless feature I'll never use.
THis is a good article in Spanish on the future of Instant Messaging, includes some interesting speculation on video messaging and more.
Article on IM
Lucks like the gaim/kopete guys have got to do some more reverse engineering on the protocols...
Ciryon
The Grub project is a distributed method of crawling the internet. You download the client and you help Looksmart( their search engine wisenut is pretty good but not the best ) crawl the web.a a2b3b639ab6f4b92965e132a1418df9
In my opinion it is better to help contribute your spare bandwith and cpu to help make sure more of the internet is crawled and more frequently instead of something more pie in the sky like SETI. Grub has a more down to earth use. Help make sure all of cyberspace can be crawled.
Download the grub client:
http://www.grub.org/html/downloads.php?PHPSESSID=
There is a linux version. Get crawling, forget seti, helping crawl all the internet is more of an attainable goal.
People on dial up (making up 80% of the internet population last I heard, but companys making video-on-demand and video confrencing always seem to forget this) will find this far to slow, many broadband users paying overspriced telco fees for their bandwidth will find it to expensive, people wont buy webcams if no one else has them so it will end up no one has a camera to use, and prehaps most importantly of all, most people on the internet arnt going to want people they talk to see them, even if they are like me and only talk to people they see in person alot anyway.
The audio over internet to phone phase seemed to work but being free the companies didn't survive.
Why not just audio chat. The bandwidth would be much lower. The jerky video that modem users have would make this useless.
There is an "Instant Messaging Planet" web page. Now I'm off to search for that elusive technology reporting website, "POTS Handset World"!
Look on the bright side, if this catches on people won't lie about their age (unless theyre the mass percentage that doesn't have a webcam, doesn't want one, or cant put it on their computer)
just my 2 cents worth...
They're probably going to co-opt the term "vim." Time to break out the rabid lawyers. Or maybe not... the vim coders have no money for that. The only people who have gotten money because of vim are the kids in Uganda.
No, I'm serious I've been waiting for this. :-D
When I hear of video phones, once again I think of the Simpsons. Lisa's future, getting married, talking to Mom, who keeps crossing her fingers when she talks and Lisa has to keep reminding her that she can her, its a video phone. Harder to lie to the boss when you call in sick and he sees you with your sunglasses on, and baseball tickets in hand. oops!
I am not sure that I want people to see me in my natural habitat (underwear, no shower til 3), and more importantly, I am not sure they want to see me, anyway.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The whole point of Instant Messenger is that ugly losers want to talk, but they don't want to look at each other.
I suggest you read Slashdot
AOL has petitioned the FCC to lift the restriction on advanced IM services even though it has not opened its IM network to competitors.
The FCC should deny AOL's petition so as to ensure that instant messaging systems are as interoperable as email systems. Pointing to the growth of rebadged versions of their own service (such as that provided by Apple) or the growth of competitors' services (which is primarily the result of people running multiple clients/services to keep in touch with their friends) does not justify keeping their current service closed or thwarting clients such as Trillian which attempt to unify all services with one front end.
I don't want to have to sign up for different proprietary services or use separate clients for each service just to keep in contact with my friends. Just like email, I want to have one instance, preferrably on a server run by me (so as to reduce privacy invasions), wherein any permitted individual can instant message/SMS me regardless of their client or instant messaging server.
AOL has never seriously attempted to open their service, specifically, to allow their users to contact and by contacted by any other service's user, regardless of client. They shouldn't be rewarded by the FCC now for their stalling tactics.
Can you imagine what the Goatsex, and anal cavern people are going to do with this technology?!?!?!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
People take turns talking, there's a "hand" icon to note who's next in line, each room has a "manager" who keeps order, and most of the room are music-oriented: people will start talking, say hi to their friends and a bit of background, then play a song.
Listening to the music there, and then going to Kazaa, she has gotten several CDs worth of music she wouldn't be exposed to otherwise. Obviously it would be nice if there was a way to pay the musician without having to buy the CD (and few of these are local bands, so she can't go to their shows), but it's broadening her musical tastes and also helping her learn English.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
I take it you haven't tried Trillian then. Besides being a universal solution to the major IM formats, it supports using "Secure IM"(128bit Blowfish) encryption to other Trillian clients over AIM and ICQ seemlessly. It's an entire point-to-point encryption method, so unlike Jabber, there isn't any weak-point to grab the IM. It isn't open-source, but it is free as in beer, so it's worth giving a try.
So, what I guess this means for the online world is that, now, 15 year olds will have to find a way of saying "Lol LOLz! ROFLMAO" in a video world? Plus, most of the time when I use an IM client, I don't want people to look at me - just rolled out of bed or something. Nah, it's not gonna work.
An idea whose time shouldn't come. What a complete and total waste of bandwidth. If you were talking about multiple people in a video conference for work, maybe but just like a video phone has not caught on most people DON'T want to have to be seen to take a call or answer a quick message, the way IM's were supposed to be used. On top of all of it AOL and every other broadband company is cutting your upload to a trickle making this seem even more foolish. It is like the cable companies using downloading music as a selling point then filtering mp3's out.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
If you have the Blue Hawaii betas, you'll notice that they're using QuickTime for the video-IM service. Given that, it's only logical to assume that iChat interoperability is underway, and was quite possibly the reason they chose QT in the first place.
By NanoCom (www.buddyvision.com)
"Times may change, but standards must remain the same." - George Carlin.
already has this.. AOL is behind the times in the "features" category regarding im. At least the features they think people want/need.
One thing helping contribute to all the spam on ICQ is their lack of concern for ensuring that users of the system are really valid users.
Back when ICQ was brand new, I recall creating a user account which I've long since forgotten the password to. If I do a search in their directory for myself, I can find that old account in their system to this day!
It appears they almost never delete inactive accounts, and are more than happy to let people create as many new ones as they like. (I imagine they do this to get bragging rights about the HUGE number of users on their system when they want to sell advertising.)
If they did a little more pruning of old accounts and made it tougher to create multiple/new ones, they'd eliminate some of the people running automated spam scripts on their service.
A long, long time ago, a lot of people used Cu-SeeMe for Internet videoconferencing. Then it was no longer available for free, and the world of NAT (i.e. most people with broadband routers) blotted out most H.323 options.
You may remeber QVIX, which has now become SightSpeed, which has a solution for NAT. It is more "IM-like".
I just downloaded Yahoo! IM today to checkout it's videochatting capability. I noticed it has a "Super Webcam" mode where the resolution is double and framerates can go as high as 20fps.
Take time to reflect on all the things you have, not as a result of your
merit or hard work or because God or chance or the efforts of other people
have given them to you.
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