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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?
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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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.
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 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.