Archive → November 16th, 2008
ooVoo
Wow! This weekend I was watching This Week in Tech (TWiT) online and they were talking about a communications program called ooVoo and I had never heard of it. As usual, I had to find out about this program. To be honest I was not expecting much as there are so many programs like this out there. I installed it on two of our computers so I could call each other. I was pretty amazed at the ability to call more than one person at a time with video. I could not believe how clear the video and audio was. The amazing thing was when I later connected three people and set the video quality to high while streaming an HD podcast on my wife’s computer. Another person in our conversation also connected his computer up to the same HD podcast ensuring his bandwidth was being taxed.
In addition to all this was that we were running the Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) streaming audio on our Linux computer. With all this going on simultaneously we maintained a three way conversation for more than an hour with out a single choppy moment in the video and audio. It was pretty impressive and I am convinced this will be a keeper. The audio quality was every bit as good as Skype and that is saying something. This ooVoo also had chat and file sending capability built in. I have decided that I will keep this program though I am sure it will be hard to get people to try it. There have been so many instant messaging programs available that it is difficult to get people to try out new programs. I even had a difficult time trying to get people to try Skype and you know how good that is. The laptop has a camera built in while my desktop has a Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000 that cost me $39.99 at Best Buy.
I heard on TWiT that the ooVoo logo is supposed to represent two sets of eyes connected by the “V” representing video. It is a cute way to symbolize the video communications. If you have not tried this program lately you would be surprised at the quality of service and it is free. You have nothing to lose when the program is free. If you do not like it you can always open the Windows control panel and run the Add/Remove programs function. I know I am always anxious to try new things but I can get tell you that this is an amazing program. Give it a try.