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Video Chat Via Transparent Desktop Overlay
Jason0x21 writes "Wired News has an article about UNC Comp. Sci. researchers developing a transparent desktop overlay for video conferencing, allowing remote coworkers to literally point and interact with things on your screen. The researchers say that Apple's Quartz graphics engine let them go from idea to prototype in 'about 45 minutes'. Windows versions predicted in the future."
What kills Windows is the inability to have a full motion graphics window go transparent. Normal windows can be transparent, but ones showing video cannot be.
Next time you use your favorite video conference program (or even any other application that plays full-motion video) on Windows, hit the [print screen] key and then open up Paint and paste the image you put on the clipboard. Notice that the rest of the screen caputres just fine, but you get a solid block instead of the video image. That's because the video is added into the screen after most of the other graphics routines, and too late to capture or do anything else fun with it.