Skype Gets A New Competitor: Amazon Announces Chime (geekwire.com)

Amazon has released new service to make voice and video calls and share screen. Called Chime, the service is aimed at business users. It directly competes with well-known players such as Skype, Google Hangouts, GoToMeeting, Zoom, and Cisco's WebEx, among others. From a report: Amazon Web Services today unveiled Chime, a new service that it says takes the "frustration out of meetings" by delivering video, voice, chat, and screen sharing. Instead of forcing participants to call one another on a dedicated line, Amazon Chime automatically calls all participants at the start of a meeting, so "joining a meeting is as easy as clicking a button in the app, no PIN required," the company said in a press release. Chime also shows a visual roster of participants, and allows participants to pinpoint who exactly on the call is creating annoying background noise.

Comments

Spyware

[Nocturrne]

It will be spyware just like skype. Don't install this on any machine near you.

Killer features?

[MMC Monster]

You want killer features for a conference calling app?

1 - Highlight on your screen all the people who are currently talking.
2 - Automatic transcription of calls with the individuals talking labeled.
3 - Ability to pass along a 'talking now' and 'request talking' tokens so that someone can "raise their hand" while someone else is talking. Also the ability to cede the talking now token to one of the other people talking (for when a lot of people are on a conference call)

Or do current apps have all of this?