The folks at SightSpeed have just released a pretty cool, and pretty quirky website. Vlip.com lets you quickly record video clips, or Vlips. You can post them, watch other people’s Vlips, and reply as well. Billed as video blogging for the rest of us, it has the feel of Speakers Corner translated for the internet age; a democratization of the television camera, if you will.
Here’s what a Vlip looks like:
Interestingly enough, there are a number of these instant video sites out there today. For instance, the folks at Blogtv.ca have been pitching me on their site for several months now. Their concept? You can record your own live show and broadcast it to the net. There’s a pretty reasonable selection of videos there now, including some unusual ones like the woman who has recorded the whole process of getting a tattoo. Like Vlip, Blogtv.ca shows are easily recorded and uploaded using your webcam.
Neat stuff. It’s certainly easier than recording video using a camcorder, although you forego any post production to gain that ease-of-use.
I wish Peter Csathy and the Sightspeed team luck with this.
I just finished a Skype call with Jim Courtney using the new Skype Beta 3.2. The sound quality is stunning. Using only the PC microphone and speakers, there was no echo, full duplex sound, and excellent quality audio. Moreover, the new codecs are super CPU efficient. Even while running Windows Update, and an Outlook email download, there was no discernable loss of quality.
I am gobsmacked. The biggest feature in Skype Beta 3.2 isn't payments or any of that other stuff. It's sound quality.
Utterly bogus. If the call was being made on an INWATS or a 900 line, they would be Johnny-on-the-spot to claim a share of that termination revenue. You can't suck and blow at the same time, Ed.
The real impact, however, is going to be to drive users of these services to free or low cost VoIP-based services instead. Expect more conference calls on Skype, Jajah, and others as a result.
While I was on vacation, Aswath Rao published a pretty interesting piece titled OpenID Negates the Need for P2PSip. Here's what he's proposing:
I can store the IP address and the port number on which my SIP client will listen for incoming calls in a web page and my partner can visit that page before initiating a session request. This simple directory service almost eliminates the need for SIP proxies. Of course the problem is not fully solved because of the pesky NAT/FW traversal. If I am being served by a UPnP enabled router then the SIP client can establish the mapping rule; otherwise the web server can be used as the relaying point without requiring any SIP capabilities at all.
But with OpenID one can achieve something more. The web site can now provide the mapped IP address and port number by taking into account the OpenID of the initiator, just like Relevance Engine from iotum will do. What I mean is that the resultant mapping will be my SIP client for my family members and that of a voice mail server for business contacts, if the request is made on a weekend. I hope that after reading this Dean changes his mind regarding his remark about SIP not requiring the services of OpenID.
Very lightweight, and simple. He says that there will be an implementation available shortly. Cool!
