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Audio/Video Conference with iChat and AIM
JHromadka writes "Apple and AOL released today new versions of their instant messaging software that allows audio and video conferencing between Mac iChat users and Windows AIM users. " Anyone else think we're nearing the end of the analog phone system?
If your running Linux and go to their site you'll see that they have a linux version and they keep it updated:) Wonder if it has these new features.
Regards,
Steve
Not quite yet. The analog phone system will persist until there is a replacement that is not only superior in cost and flexibility but also in ease of use. I can pick up my phone and dial a friend's number and be connected within seconds. If my computer is off or I am not logged into AIM, the process of connecting with them becomes slower and more complicated than dialing their digits.
"This is Zombo Com, and welcome to you who have come to Zombo Com" - www.zombo.com
I'm glad to see that I can finally video chat with my windows using friends too. Anyone have an estimate on how long it'll take the gaim folks to impliment this addition so EVERYONE can videoconfrence?
(Analog direct-connection) land lines are not very secure - IMHO it is less secure than splitting into packets sent different ways around the world - the analog line could be tapped anywhere on the journey, but the digital packets are only interceptable (meaningfully) at the terminal-to-exchange space.
Now quantum security is real security.
--
FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
i picked up a USB headset yesterday for my 11 year old sister, because a bunch of her friends have webcams and headsets. She immediately tried it out with her friends. From what I saw, the quality is still sketchy.
Until they get these messenger/aim/ichat systems up to par with VOIP or other standards, people will still use the telephone.
And, while slightly offtopic - why is it that we have so many different IM networks out there? Why cant we just have a simple single protocol allowing each of the different clients to interoperate. I'm stuck using trillian, lacking half the features of all the others, because i dont feel like running four (aim,icq,msn,yahoo) damn messenger clients.
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So can an iSight be used with the AOL software on a Windows PC?
I'm not trolling, I'm asking a serious question.
I use the official AOL version of AIM in Linux (for reasons I won't get into.) They haven't released an update for the linux client in nearly 2 years. When can we expect to see a new client for linux?
And video phones have been around (or at least technology capable of producing them) for decades. It's rare that someone wants to actually see who their talking to when they use the phone. No more answering the phone right out of the shower, for a start. Well, unless you're in to that. And certainly no phones while driving.
And this doesn't even begin to address the bandwidth issues for the many, many people who are still on dialup.
Actually, one of the main reasons for keeping an analog line is in case of natural disasters. I was living at 42nd St & 11th Ave in Manhattan on September 11, 2001 -- all of my friends who were in the city that day ended up at my place, since there was no reasonable way to get back to their respective boroughs. And while they were there, everybody was able to use our landline to make phone calls and let their families know they were OK; meanwhile, all of our cellphones were useful only as paperweighs, as the networks were thoroughly saturated with traffic.
I see some comments here saying that video-as-phone won't be useful. I beg to differ.
I'm deaf; and along with that comes the inability to use voice phones. Video phones, either through dedicated lines or on the computer, are a Godsend to people like us. We've been waiting a long time for this.
Being able to sign to a loved one or a friend, instead of using kludgy relay systems like this or others. In fact, there's a company called Sorenson (yes of the codec fame) that has a set-top box for televisions that allows a Deaf person to connect to either (1) any other set-top box or (2) the relay service or (3) another webcam -- all for video chat purposes.
For those that are wondering, by "Relay" I refer to the act of me typing to a person (paid by the government) that voices my message to an person at the other end of a phone number, and types back to me what that person says. Nifty but very very slow and time-consuming.
Before you knock a new technology (ew, I don't want to see Daddy on the toilet) or say its only for business purposes, think about it.
Analog will certainly not go away, but it's usefulness will be kept to certain areas such as where the relative security of a switched circuit (to the extent that those actually exist any more) is imortant. Also don't forget that most people in the world don't own computers or have connections capable of audio/video conferencing.
However, for small businesses, this is a great thing. I'd just like to see a system where linux users could a/v chat with windows/mac users without the other users having to be gurus. I've tried getting some people with home offices to work with me via a/v conferencing, but most of them find it excruciatingly difficult to install a plugin to their browser, much less set up an h323 application.
I'd like to hear from anyone successfully doing this with anyone other than another geek.
What people sometimes miss is that most of the public just wants a phone that works when it is supposed to. An example is ATT Wireless' GSM network. High speed data and seamless international roaming is nice but coverage is horrible in many areas thus all the bells and whistles are wasted on people in areas where the GSM deployment is botched. ATT is losing a lot of GSM customers to other networks like Verizon or Nextel because their networks provide better coverage. (Yes in the case of Verizon they have nice wireless data goodies too)
IMO, mobile telephones will replace regular household phones in much larger numbers than PCs replacing phones ever will. Further, specialty devices like D-Link's video "phone" that can be connected to the TV (larger display) may be more popular with non-geeks who just want a computer for word processing and browsing the intarweb.
at least 5 years... that isn't a very long time. I think dialup will be around for another 15-20 years and that is based on the fact that a large part of the population is content with just dialing up and checking email and disconnecting.
Your companies niche is those small towns... maybe in 5 years they will have access for DSL, but the DSL price isn't for everyone.
From their website:
"Skype is the next phenomenon from the people who brought you KaZaA. Just like KaZaA, Skype uses P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to connect you to other users - not to share files this time, but to talk and chat with your friends."
Further on: "Works with all firewall, NAT and routers - nothing to configure!"
The more you know, the less you need. [Admin added: from me.]
This may or may not have happened, but wasn't one of the stipulations in an AOL antitrust settlement that they could keep their AIM protocol closed, provided they don't implement video conferencing? I'm pretty sure it had something to do with AIM, video conferencing, and the proprietariness of their AIM protocol. But then again I could be completely wrong, and it wouldn't be he first time.
What makes me nervous is when our network guys talk about IP telephony and the great advantages of IP based communications. I don't deny the features that they tout are attractive. i.e. Ability to take your phone anywhere on campus, integration of email, voicemail ...etc.
But my biggest concern would be realiability. My traditional analog office phone didn't stop working when My.Doom or Slammer worms/viruses are choking our IP based networks. When there was a blackout throughout the eastern seaboard region last fall, my analog phone was still working.
As for the news that iChatAV will now talk to PCs, I did forward it to our chairman this morning. We've been interested in distance learning using iChatAV a few months back and one of the biggest concerns was that it ONLY worked on the Mac OS platform. Now that concern has been addressed and we plan to continue to explore this new tool as a cost effective way to promote distance learning/tele-teaching.
There are other professional multi-cast video products we will be evaluating as well and here are the recommendations from our university Apple rep. (note: iChatAV is for point-to-point communtications)
-Diganta
The products I am aware of are Marratech Pro[1], Pixion[2] the other solution I am aware of is a one to many with feedback - caststream[3]. You should take a look at caststream & marratech if you haven't already. Especially join a professional presentation to see capabilities.
At Apple I have been attending a number of conferences that are utilizing Marratech. This works incredibly well over the public internet and yet allows for 128bit encryption end to end for all video/audio/chat. I have been using it and am very impressed. Additionally I use and love CastStream for presentations (one to many). Joe Bishop is a good contact for information on Marratech - bishop@mac.com - he worked for Apple and now is at Marratech
-John"
[1] http://www.marratech.com/
[2] http://www.pixion.com/
[2] http://www.caststream.com/
What I am hoping for is that it will allow one-way video, i.e. iChat user has camera, AIM user does not but gets to see video from iChat user anyways. It does not work this way right now for iChat-to-iChat usage, i.e. if only one of two iChat users has a camera, then no video or audio functions are allowed. However, the iChat menus have options for one-way video or audio, which has fostered my hope that this will be available one day.
Immediately after the Loma Prieta earthquake, you couldn't make a cell call anywhere near San Francisco. Why? Because the wireless companies equipment was programmed to give up after 30 seconds if it didn't get a dial tone, while the phones where so overloaded that it was taking over a minute to get a dial tone on a land line. In a simular fashion, VoIP simply has a lot more potential points of failure than POTS.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I see denying video as more of a problem then enabling it. Something tells me that people will get offended if you do not enable video access for them.
If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.
Kind of interesting that I went the exact opposite route. I was sick of carrying the little bastard around, sick of being tethered to it, sick of having to check my voice mail every five minutes or else get the inquisition from family members for failing to respond to their call. I'm not much of a fan of the phone, and the fact that I had no excuse to leave it behind bothered me even more. I'll stick with my land line, thanks, but I'd still prefer not to use it unless there's ane emergency.
Too bad that a majority of my friends who use AIM won't show up as online in iChat. Fire up any other AIM client and there they are. I have seen many others who have this same problem, yet have uncovered no solution. :-/
I don't think that the analog phone system will go away anytime soon since there really needs to be an economic reason for the system to go away. Once the system no longer is profitable for the phone companies (since maintenance and upgrades are expensive) they will stop supporting it, unless the government steps in and subsidizes it enough for them to keep providing the service.
If another technology comes about that supplants the analog phone base then the utility companies will probably switch to that technology. The POTS is still compelling because you can pretty much attach a cheap ($5 dollar phone) to a land line and pay for a cheap service. There are other advantages as others have pointed out that the other technologies have not overcome such as availability during a power outage, emergency services, and almost instant availability.
Until the level of service can match most POTS at this point and be profitable at about the same level, no other technology will probably supplant it.
-- Wolfpup
"A man whose circumstances went beyond his control." -- Styx
Points two and three are no longer necessarily true. The analogue phone network is the single most complex network on the face of the earth. The Internet is evolving and will most likely overtake the POTS but today the intricacy of the phone network is boggling. Think about it: You can pick up a phone anywhere in the world and call anyone else anywhere and have a near real time conversation. And this was achieved over half a century ago! The problem today is that the older people who originally designed and implemented these systems are now almost all retired and left in its place are those people who are now more technicians than designers and don't understand the intricacies of the network. And the network is overloaded now, in a way that can cause failures due to very tiny and subtle problems. As more and more of these old guards are forced into retirement--the ones that understood both the scale and the complexity and had been a part of the jury-rigging of the structure as it began to balloon-- I think we're going to see a huge drop in the dependancy of the phone service, both through reliability and quality of service in the near future. With our current rate of growth I see it happening within the decade. And this is when digital/internet phone will just be becoming viable. I think the phone companies have a lot to worry about right now.
Why?
Dude, it was on Dr. Phil not too long ago. Millions of Oprah watching Dr. Phil fanatics will go "Oh, WOW!" and order themselves an iMac. I have a relative that called me and asked me about it after seeing Dr. Phil talk to that "Dr. Phil Family" using an iSight.
Product placement really is an amazing thing.
Ah, right, the iSight. (Yeah, I hate the bloody iName thing too.)
The iSight seems basically like the iPod: it's just about the most expensive offering in its niche, but it gets enough small things right that many people find it to be worthwhile.
I've purchased three of them, and I'm happier with them than any of the previous camera I'd owned, which go back through the original QuickCam.
Does anyone know of a H.323 solution that works on Mac? We use Polycom hardware to communicate for a variety of reasons. The only bad thing is that they are windows only.
Are you smoking crack? Do yo not realise that the quality wireless networks in the Eastern hemisphere because they don't have the same ubiquitous, affordable, reliable PSTN that we enjoy here? See, the U.S. spent load of time and money investing in public infrastructure like the PSTN, and cable networks, and highway systems. In turn, we created a situation where the services are so good, we're having trouble progressing past them. In regions where this infrastructure wasn't created, you see greater broadband penetration than we do. You see better wireless phone networks than we get.
Earth scientists have used squidcam to communicate between windows and mac for some time now, although it isn't based on an existing instant messaging service. Squidcam also allows for multiple connections at once, something iChatAV/AIM cannot. Read this review on web-cams.
You've got it wrong - that iChat camera (iSight) is actually REALLY NICE and not that bad a deal. It really does outperform existing firewire webcams quite handily for picture and sound, the industrial design is LEAGUES better, and the price reasonable. I currently use a firewire equpped Sony camcorder for my iChat needs, but having demo'd the iSight, I may just buy one. Really impressive product IMHO.
That was classic intercourse!
This is excellent news. I've been retransmitting live TV shows off my satellite TV subscription trough iChat with all my (no extended cable or satellite having) Mac friends using an analogue video to DV bridge box since iChat became available. Now, I will finally be able to share shows with my Windows using buddies as well. Quality has been surprisingly good, with shows perfectly watchable over my 256kbit upstream cable connection, and the recipient's similar cable connection. Now, even those poor souls who don't get Comedy Central can just get their Daily Show fix from their video chat buddies. Much more useful than actual 2-way videoconferencing.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)