Hey... it's Thanksgiving! But not here in the UK, where Marc E is checking out what the New York Times has to say in a couple of articles entitled "Waving Hello, From a Distance" and a companion shopping list entitled "Videoconferencing Enters the Home and Saves People the Drive" (free subscription required to read these, at least if you get there quickly enough).
The first article describes how videoconferencing, for keeping in touch with family and friends, has really come of age with increasing broadband deployment, new codecs such as H.264, and robust services from the high-end to the low-end, from the likes of PolyCom, Packet8, and PalTalk. The second article delves into some more product descriptions, covering some technical details and pricing plans relevant to the same three: PolyCom, Packet8, and PalTalk. Plus there's a cameo mention of the very-high-end CallerVision.
Just for kicks, I thought I'd better re-visit PalTalk, which I hadn't checked out for a long time. That's when my day started turning sour...
I downloaded the latest version of PalTalk, and the registration button immediately locked me into an endless loop: it took me to a page that re-directed me to a front door page that asked me to register, which in turn took me to the registration page that took me back to the front door. And the app itself had a registration button that not only drove me back into this loop, but then caused the app to disappear, requiring me to CTRL-ALT-DEL / Task Manager / End Process, which I duly did, and then promptly uninstalled the whole thing from my machine. My tester at the other end believes that since his version launched fine with a quick registration step and he was located in the USA, there may have been a geolocation trap or glitch that prevented me from doing this from an IP address outside the USA. But I'm never gonna find out: they've lost me as a curious potential user, having over-reached my 3-minute curiosity threshold.
So why does my title call this a NY Times 'Goof'? Surely it's not the fault of the Times reviewer! Well, my beef is with the selection of products. Two pretty high-end products and a freebie that not only didn't work, but even if it had it still requires a subscription to get beyond vanilla audio + photos. I don't mind subscription-based products, because the suppliers are entitled to earn a living, but I minded the hurdles, the indirectness of the approach, and the detective work required by the readers of the NY Times article. Moreover, the article failed to mention numerous other products in this space. And no, I'm not talking about my own labs' vastly superior idiot-proof multi-party zero-download zero-install one-click-launch FlashMeeting either!!
For a quick sweep through some low end alternatives, there is relevant PC Magazine feature entitled "Videoconferenincing: Look Again" that, although somewhat older (December 2003), contains a performance shootout among 7 alternatives to the three mentioned above: iChat AV, iSpQ VideoChat 6.2, MSN Messenger 6.0, SightSpeed, Vibe Phone 1.6, VidiTel, and Yahoo! Messenger. Go straight to the performance analysis in that PCMag article and scroll down to the bottom where it says "Click here to view the Scorecard results."
And hey, let's not forget about one of the grand-daddies in this space: CUWorld, inheritor of the mantle from originator CUSeeMe, offering multiparty video chat in both free and subscription variants. Last time I tried, there were some 'issues' about the Sun vs Microsoft versions of the Java Virtual Machine, but my understanding is that these are resolved. And let's not forget that there are many other comparable tools in the business space that I haven't even begun to characterise. So, maybe 'Goof' is too strong a word, but I was nonetheless disappointed by the NY Times feature for short-changing the many players in this space. I've only had time to list 9 (count 'em) alternatives above... but hey, it's Thanksgiving, and we should be enjoying ourselves, right?
