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Gmail gets voice and video chat capabilities

When I was younger, I always thought that one of the coolest future technologies I had to look forward to was video phones. You'd be able to see people when you talked to them! How awesome! Well, the tech has been available for a while now, but it just hasn't caught on. Maybe it's because there's no real benefit to seeing who you're talking to or maybe it's because people like sounding professional while they're actually in their underwear, but for whatever reason it just hasn't done much.

But Google is looking to make it a little more mainstream by adding video (and voice!) chat to its popular Gmail chat application. All you need is a webcam and a decent internet connection and you'll be videochatting like you're in Back to the Future Part II. Awesome?

Via Gmail Blog

 
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(6) Comments

Stop Smoking:
This is great! And video chat does not get any easier than that....More »


Comments

By DELINQ at 5:47 PM ON 11/11/08

I won't be satisfied until i can do a video chat on my android-powered mobile device.

By Kubiak at 6:04 PM ON 11/11/08

The problem with this catching on in my opinion is the fact that the video is usually not great and if you are doing anything else you it gets worse. The bandwidth required to do this and anything else at the same time just doesn't work out. IF I could keep an app like this running while I am working and not get lag on my other apps, then I would definitely use it.

By Tweed at 7:38 PM ON 11/11/08

when is this going to be available....I want to try it!

By Sachin at 4:03 AM ON 11/12/08

Its a great news. Google is slowly and steadily sweeping the whole ground and the is not far when Google will quietly reach miles ahead of its competitors.

By scorpionof1 at 4:24 PM ON 11/13/08

big deal, skype has been doing this for a while.

By Stop Smoking at 5:21 PM ON 11/17/08

This is great! And video chat does not get any easier than that.


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