Mobile is like that

Over the weekends, my friend Cheryl ask me on what are the video conferencing tools are available today. So here is an blog post on the video conferencing services available online.

Before any video conferencing can happen, you need a web camera, mic and speaker. Don’t forget about it!

What kind of web camera?
Depend on how good quality of video you like to be seen, buy a web camera that suits your needs. Nowadays, most laptop comes with a built-in web camera, good enough for one-to-one video conference. But if you like to show other things such as your hard copy drawings or more than 1 face, you are better of buying a web camera

What are the available online video conferencing available?
Well, my first advise was just use msn messenger video conference. No frills and the chances are the other party of the conference would likely know how to operate. I use it a few times when I was overseas to talk to my mother back home. She was able to see my handsome face and talk to me.

Here are more of online video conferencing tools that you can explore.

1. Skype
   Skype, the company that took free voice call over internet by storm actually has a video call features.
   
2. OoVoo
   Able to provide up to 6 people in a video call. Not personally tried this service yet as the Macintosh version is still in progress
   
3. Webex
   The leader in online conference services. Some might say that it is expensive but the service of webex is rather reliable. Oh, Webex is not free as the above tools but you can try out the services for a limit trial period.

There is actually no best video conferencing tools. The quality and speed of the video depends on where you and the other person is located and how good the internet access quality. Some of the online services also allow you to share your documents. So lets say you have a Autocad drawing and you would like to point out which part of the drawing requires attention, you can share out the document and the other party will be able to view which part of the document you are pointing at on your monitor.

So try it out and see which one fits your needs. Feel free to share your feedback on what you use

Tags: news, Online Services, video conference, Web Applications

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under Digital Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.