I first got into network chatting in 1992 during my first year in NTU. All students were given network accounts and Internet email address. Back then though those network accounts weren’t normallyused for studies. We used them mostly for leisure and social networking at the NTUVAX online forums, and chatting. Yep all the male students in Computer Engineering when bored with practical lessons would be chatting up the girls from Business and Accounting.:)
Internet chatting has come a long way. There was the whole IRC thing which is still very popular in certain circles today, then the wildly revolutionary ICQ in the mid to late 90s, and finally video chats.
I’m a late comer to video chats on account that it’s only semi-recently when I’m convinced that network latency issues have finally been ironed out. The video and audio feeds these days are amazingly good, due in good part to excellent data compression techniques, and also I’m guessing packet reconstruction and buffering at work. Most notebooks – even netbooks – come built in with web cams too, and if you’re using Windows Live Messenger, you don’t need additional software to get video chats.
Ling, Matt and I have been trying out the different video chats services for the last day or so, and they’ve included Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, and Skype. It’s largely on account of the fact that when I’m away for a couple of weeks in December, I’d like to be able to see Hannah still.:)
Of the three, the most convenient to get video chat going is Live Messenger, since so many of us are already using text chats on it. The video images suffered though from bad pixelation. The next we tried was Google Chat which worked better, but for some reason Matt couldn’t get audio though the video component worked just fine.
We tried Skype last, and that worked the best too: we saw enjoyed higher resolutions for the video, and audio had good fidelity. It’d mean though that we’d need to run the separate communication tool on top of the existing Live Messenger, but it’s a small inconvenience.
It’s a lot of fun either way. The first thing I told Matt was that I’m sending him a live video feed of roti pratas being eaten the next chance I get.:)
Hi Dr Foo, you can try oovoo, its an instant messenger with video conference as its main selling point. Supports up to 6 person video conferencing at the same time if I am not wrong, support mac and window too :D
Hmm; I’m trying to avoid using any more chat tools though since I’ve got too many of them already. But I’ll take a look at Oovoo nonetheless – thanks.:)