GigaOM » google talk

TeliaSonera drops extra VoIP fees but raises rates

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 13:33:39 +0000

Swedish operator TeliaSonera has reversed its stance on charging for third-party VoIP network traffic from apps such as Skype and Google Talk. In Spain, the company charges 6 Euros ($7.77 US) for 100 MB of VoIP traffic, allowing for between five and ten hours of calls over data. The app-specific plan will not be expanded as originally planned, however, as TeliaSonera is simply raising its standard rates to account for lost voice traffic revenues.

According to the IP Carrier blog, TeliaSonera’s Chief Executive Lars Nyberg is concerned about the risk VoIP calls brings to traditional telecom revenues, saying ”If all our customers suddenly decided to switch over to VoIP, and we charged them only for the data traffic usage, we would lose about 70 percent of our revenue.”

The initial move to charge extra for VoIP was met with understandable consumer disappointment, with some suggesting that Skype would effectively be blocked in Sweden on mobiles for those not paying the extra fee. This situation in general is likely to only worsen as carriers lose revenues to OTT, or over the top, third-party services that replicate or expand upon what network operators offer. Might you one day pay for data based on the app that uses it? Quite possibly, but for now, at least one operator has backed down a little.

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Google Talk is silenced

Barb Darrow — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 14:08:50 +0000

If you’re looking to chat on Google Talk this morning, you’re out of luck. The popular instant messaging/video chat application is down for most users as of Thursday morning. So what do you do if you can’t spread the news via Gchat? You take to Twitter, where the news spread like wildfire.

According to the Google status page, the company started investigating reports of Google Talk problems at 6:40 a.m. PDT and ten minutes later reported:

We’re aware of a problem with Google Talk affecting a majority of users. The affected users are able to access Google Talk, but are seeing error messages and/or other unexpected behavior. We will provide an update by 7/26/12 7:50 AM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change.

Many of the tweet fleet took the outage in stride:

If they don't fix Google Talk soon I might have to use the 'phone' to 'talk' to a 'real human.' WHY WOULD YOU WANT ME TO DO THAT, GOOGLE?—
Overrated Outcast (@over_rated) July 26, 2012

People are only worried about Google talk outage because now they don't have anyway to show people that they are BUSY.—
dorkU (@Dorkstar) July 26, 2012

Google Talk is a popular instant messaging and video chat application — and this outage shows the downside of wide usage: Everybody knows when you’re down.

At a time when Google is trying to persuade customers to put real workloads on its shiny new Google Compute Engine cloud, news like this, and other reports today that Windows Azure is experiencing glitches in Europe, will cast a pall on some users who may look for excuses not to make a cloud computing move.

Update: As of 10:48 a.m. EDT, the GigaOM Google Talk account is at least partially up and running.

Update: At 11:25 a.m. EDT Google posted that:

The problem with Google Talk should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better. If you are still experiencing an issue, please contact us via the Google Help Center.

Stay tuned for more updates.

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Poll: Which mobile video chat service do you use?

Kevin C. Tofel — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 20:23:10 +0000

Many mainstream consumers were introduced to mobile video chat through the debut of Apple’s FaceTime service, but the fact is: Video calling on phones has been around for years. In Europe, many Nokia devices included front-facing cameras long before FaceTime existed. And video calls on these phones work on standard UMTS networks as seamlessly as a traditional voice call does.

The landscape has changed however. Instead of video calling services that act like regular phone calls on the same cellular networks, a number of video-specific services have cropped up before and after FaceTime: Skype, Google Talk, Qik, and Tango, just to name a few. As more handsets and tablets gain cameras for video chat, you’d think this activity would skyrocket. But it doesn’t seem to be, at least not when compared to other mobile activities such as apps, web browsing, messaging and social networking.

Why is that? I can think of a few reasons. First and possibly the biggest obstacle is that many of these services aren’t cross-platform. You can only use FaceTime with other FaceTime users, for example. Qik — recently purchased by Skype — and Tango are the exceptions here; indeed Tango now works across iOS, Android and Windows Phone handsets.

Connectivity is another potential issue, as some services only run over Wi-Fi networks. And those that do work on 3G or 4G mobile broadband networks could quickly eat up a user’s allotment of monthly data on a tiered or capped data plan. Lastly, it could be — at least in the U.S. — that consumers just aren’t used to video calling or feel the need to do so while mobile.

I suspect that will change over time as our communication will be a mixed recipe with text messaging, voice calls and video chats as the ingredients. I’ve embraced it as a richer experience with my son, who doesn’t live with me.

Regardless of the slow video calling uptake, I know that some of our readers are using such services. I’m curious as to which are most used, given the limitations of both networks and lack of cross-platform support in some. I’ve left room in the poll for those who don’t use mobile video calling, so in the comments, let me know why you don’t.

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Google Talk and Hangouts close to go native in Chrome

Janko Roettgers — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 18:12:10 +0000

Chrome users will soon be able to access Google Talk and Google+ Hangouts video chats through a native, open-source implementation based on the WebRTC protocol, as opposed to the proprietary plugin that’s currently bundled with the browser.

This change also means Hangouts and Google Talk will be replacing the H.264 video codec with Google’s open-source WebM video format.

Google has been using proprietary technology licensed from Vidyo to facilitate voice and video chat within Google Talk as well as Google+ Hangouts until now. However, work has been underway for a while to replace the plugin with an open-source implementation based on WebRTC, a framework for real-time voice and video communications that Google open-sourced in May.

Now it looks like this work will soon pay off: WebRTC Group Product Manager Serge Lachapelle wrote Tuesday morning that his team is “heads down” working on Webkit patches to bring a WebRTC enabled version of Chrome to the public. He added: “You’ll notice the brilliant work by Ericsson, whom have [sic] been helping out a ton in driving this.”

The WebRTC group also recently announced its work to the wider Webkit developer community. The exact timing of the Chrome release with WebRTC is unclear, but Lachapelle hinted at more upcoming news in his post:

“Hopefully our next post will be soon, and will include a more useful URL :)”

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3 reasons the Nexus S is coming to AT&T: N, F and C

Kevin C. Tofel — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:13:31 +0000

Google is bringing the Samsung Nexus S smartphone to AT&T’s network on July 24, for $99 with a two-year contract. Until now, the Google-designed handset was only available in the U.S. for T-Mobile and Sprint. Google says that Best Buy will sell the phone this Sunday, but it can be preordered today at Best Buy’s website and in stores. The Samsung Nexus S doesn’t have the latest and greatest hardware, but it does have several unique features, including support for wireless payments through an integrated near-field communications (NFC) chip.

As the owner of a Google Nexus One handset since launch day, I considered upgrading to the Nexus S when it debuted in December. Google stayed with a 1 GHz single-core processor and 800×480 resolution screen, so I decided to pass. However, Samsung’s Super AMOLED display is a nice upgrade, with bolder, vivid colors and better outdoor viewing. The same screen technology is used on the AT&T Infuse 4G that I recently showed off on video. The Nexus S was also one of the first Android handsets to gain a front-facing camera, which can now be used for Google Talk video chat. And because it’s a Nexus phone, the handset is easier to root and install custom software, plus it should see Android updates faster than other phones.

But I think the real reason for the Nexus S appearing with support for AT&T is the NFC chip inside. In May, Google announced its Wallet service, a method to pay for goods by tapping a smartphone on a payment terminal. NFC payments have long been promised but haven’t yet been delivered in the U.S., and Google Wallet sounds like it has all the right pieces in place. Except there’s currently only one handset on one carrier that supports it, and that carrier is No. 3, Sprint, which has the Nexus S 4G.

At the Wallet launch, Google said it planned to expand support to more phones, and I suspect the Nexus S for AT&T is the next Wallet-capable handset. For $99 on a much larger carrier, Google can increase the Wallet user base much more quickly than it can through Sprint. Of course, releasing an AT&T version of the Nexus S only adds more potential to Google Wallet. But it doesn’t guarantee a large uptake for one key reason: Compared to the latest and greatest handsets with speedy dual-core processors, the Nexus S is already looking long in the tooth.

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The technology behind Google+ Hangouts

Janko Roettgers — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 18:55:07 +0000

Ever since Google started to roll out its Google+ project on Tuesday, many of its users have been particularly excited about its group video chat service Hangouts. I agree, but not just because it’s fun and easy to use. The real kicker is the technology that powers the service. Even in its infancy, Hangouts is an interesting cloud service. But in the not-so-distant future, it could evolve into a standards-based video conferencing solution that runs natively in many browsers and on a whole range of devices.

Google has been quiet about its plans for Hangouts, and hasn’t revealed all that much about some of the components powering the service either. However, there have been some key developments in recent months that indicate what makes Hangouts work and where things are going:

The cloud

Making video chat work at scale can require a lot of resources, which is why there has been a movement towards peer-to-peer (P2P) solutions to offload video and signaling traffic between the clients involved. Skype makes use of P2P for that very reason, as does Chatroulette. However, P2P can introduce latency, which can be especially bothersome if you chat with 10 people at a time. That’s why Google went down a different route for Hangout.

“To support Hangouts, we built an all-new standards-based cloud video conferencing platform,” explained Google Real-time Communications Tech Lead Justin Uberti in a blog post on Tuesday. He added that Hangouts uses a client-server model which “leverages the power of Google’s infrastructure.”

Browser integration

Hangouts currently requires you to download the same plugin that also powers video chat within Google Talk. However, Google is working on making both Hangouts and Google Talk itself work in the browser, without the need for any plugins. This will be done in part through a new framework for realtime communications (read: text, voice and video chat) dubbed WebRTC that the company open-sourced in May. WebRTC is supported by Mozilla and Opera, and Google started to integrate the framework into its Chrome browser earlier this month. “Work has started to move Google Talk completely to WebRTC,” it says on the project’s web site.

At that point, users won’t need a plugin anymore to use Google Talk, and the same should eventually be true for Hangouts. Here’s what a Google spokesperson told me via email about the connection bewteen the Google+ video chat service and the framework: “A lot of the technology in Hangouts feeds into the WebRTC, and we contribute a lot of feedback to help shape the WebRTC interface. At this point though, our plug-in and the protocol are different efforts.” He refused to reveal any future plans, but trust me, the writing is on the wall…

Open codecs

Google Talk and Hangouts currently use technology Google is licensing from Vidyo to facilitate video chats. Video is transmitted in H.264/SVC, with H.264/AVC and H.263 being used as fallback solutions. However, there are strong signs Google will eventually switch to open codecs.

Google open-sourced its VP8 video codec last year as part of the new WebM video format, and real-time communications were one of the big issues that VP8’s programmers wanted to improve with the codec from the onset. In fact, VP8 is already being used by Skype for its group video calling feature, and Google’s WebM project manager John Luther wrote in February that VP8 is an “exceptionally good codec for real-time applications like videoconferencing.”

So when will Hangouts be switching from H.264 to WebM? Google+ Project Lead Bradley Horowitz indicated on This Week in Google on Wednesday that his team is already testing alternatives to the current codec. A Google spokesperson didn’t want to discuss any future plans for Hangouts when I asked about the codec issue, but here’s a clue: WebRTC is based on the VP8 codec, which means that H.264 could get displaced as the default codec for Hangouts as soon as the video chat service rolls out its native browser integration.

Device integration

This is where things get really interesting: Hangout’s cloud-based architecture and its upcoming browser integration will eventually make it possible to deliver an optimized group video chat experience to a whole range of devices. Desktop users will get to view full HD video, users on mobile devices will receive optimized streams to deal with bandwidth issues. And Google TV users could see Hangouts appear on their TV sets sooner than they think, because Google TV comes with a full-blown Chrome browser.

A few companies have started to bring multi-person video chat to mobile devices, but cross-device video conferencing is still in its infancy, and Google could have a good chance here to capture the market early on. Of course, the company didn’t want to comment on the specifics of bringing Hangouts to mobile devices, but what Google’s spokesperson told me wasn’t exactly a denial either:

“Again, we can’t comment on future product plans. However, Google Plus heavily invests in mobile products as we believe you should be able to share and communicate, whether you are on the web, tablet, or phone.”

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What do you use for Mac and iOS video chat?

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:05:09 +0000

A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video will save you even more typing. There are lots of video chat options out there now for both Mac and iOS, and the field is growing more competitive. Which is your go-to client on either platform, and why?

Apple is now putting FaceTime HD cameras in new Macs, which provides better video quality for Mac-to-Mac and Mac-to-iOS calling, but of course, FaceTime has a limited reach because it only works on Apple hardware. iChat, Apple’s IM client, supports video chat with other iChat users, and with those using the AOL Instant Messenger network, too, so it’s actually a little more flexible. Google Talk lets you make video calls from Gmail to other Google users, but it doesn’t have a native Mac app, which might be a problem for some. Skype works across different devices, but the recent Mac overhaul has left some unimpressed. Each has benefits and downsides, but which is usually your first choice?

You have nearly as many options when it comes to iOS video chat. Skype has a solid iPhone client, and an iPad version is supposed to be arriving in the very near future. Fring just updated its app to allow users to make 4-way group video calls with an iPad-optimized interface, and it also offers group video calling on the iPhone. FaceTime keeps extending its reach, and has the benefit of being pre-loaded on all current generation iOS devices, and requiring very minimal setup. Which are you using to stay in touch?

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Vtok Launches Google Video Chat App for More Android Phones

Ryan Lawler — Mon, 02 May 2011 17:11:37 +0000

Google made big headlines last week when it finally made its popular video chat service available for Android mobile phones — or at least one Android mobile phone. Official Google Talk functionality was introduced on Android version 2.3.4, launching first on the Google Nexus S handset. Well now there’s a Google video chat option for the rest of the Android ecosystem, as tiny startup SkyMobius has issued the latest version of its Vtok app — making Google Talk available on Android devices version 2.1 or above.

SkyMobius had previously introduced its Vtok Google Talk mobile video chat app for the iPhone, and later optimized that app to take advantage of the iPad 2′s larger screen and front-facing video camera. Next up for the company was building an app for Android, but Google beat Vtok to the punch last week.

Google’s own app, however, is limited to the Google Nexus S for now and future Android devices that will use Android version 2.3.4, just a tiny portion of the overall Android user base. Vtok, in comparison, can be installed on all Android devices version 2.1 or above. That opens up the possibility of Google Talk mobile video chat on more than 90 percent of all Android devices, according to the most recent Android market share data.

That said, there are still some issues trying to get all phones with front-facing cameras to work due to Android fragmentation. Right now, it’s verified to work on the HTC Evo 4G, Google Nexus S, Google Nexus One and all devices using Android OS 2.3. But it’s still working out the kinks on others. In an email, SkyMobius founder Manpreet Singh discussed some of the issues the startup faced in rolling out the Android app. Singh wrote:

“Android had no API for accessing the front facing camera until the 2.3 version. So, although front facing cameras should work for all devices running Android 2.3 or later, front facing camera support among devices running OS 2.1 or 2.2 is limited. Those devices have been listed in the Android market page of Vtok and will be kept updated.”

As a result, SkyMobius considers the Vtok Android app to be in beta while it works out some of the kinks. That said, it still might have a bit of an advantage over other mobile video chat apps. Skype has desktop video chat capability, but has yet to make video chat available on Android. And startups like Tango and Fring, while they have cross-platform video chat apps, don’t have the kind of install base Vtok can leverage by hooking into Google Talk.

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Android This Week: Nook Color Tablet; Video Calls Ring; Google Docs Improves

Kevin C. Tofel — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 13:00:06 +0000

Early in the week, one of the newest e-readers became the newest Android tablets in a sense. The Barnes & Noble Nook Color is great for reading e-books and is built upon Google Android’s mobile operating system, although you’d never know it due to the excellent interface that hides Android. The Nook Color gained more tablet features with a software update that adds a third-party app store, a useful email client, and support for Adobe AIR and Flash within the existing web browser application.

Once the update arrived, I quickly ran out to purchase a Nook Color and test it out. Overall, I’m very impressed by what this $249 device can do. My hands-on review of the Nook Color answers the question: Is the device an e-reader, a tablet, or both?

For folks who want to supplement e-reading activities with occasional checks of email or web use, the device is certainly worth the look. Power users can also use software hacks to root the device and run the full Android operating system, making the Nook Color an inexpensive double-threat.

Also this week, Google brought Android smartphones closer to parity with their tablet counterparts by adding support for video calls and chat through Google Talk. Handsets will need to run Android 2.3.4, which Google is first rolling out to its Nexus S phone; device manufacturers and carriers will have to follow suit on other devices.

Video chat isn’t exclusive to Google on Android phones, however. Fring has added four-way video calling, while Qik also went live with its video service for Android smartphones. Best of all, both of these services are cross-platform so you can call friends who have either Android or iOS devices.

Reading books and video chatting is nice, but some Android owners want to get work done too. That becomes a little easier now that there’s a dedicated and free Google Docs application available. The software allows for document editing and printing through Google’s Cloud Print service on supported printers.

Also handy is a document creation tool that uses the camera of a smartphone: Simply snap a picture of a physical document and Google will quickly scan it and create a document based on the text it sees, using Optical Character Recognition technology.

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Google Brings Video Chat to Android Devices

Kevin C. Tofel — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 21:28:11 +0000

After nearly 16 months, my Google Nexus One, is finally out-of-date. That’s by far a record for me keeping one single phone but it’s time for an upgrade, because Google just announced video chat capabilities in Android 2.3.4, which is now rolling out to Nexus S handsets and will follow on other devices later. I’ve been getting by with just a single-core CPU and the 800×480 display of the Nexus One, but without a front-facing video camera, there’s no video chat in sight for me.

Google says the video chat feature works with Google Talk and can be used on either Wi-Fi or mobile broadband networks if your phone carrier allows it. Just like the video calling feature in the desktop version of Google Talk, a camera icon appears next to online contacts who can video chat. Tap the camera, and the video call begins. The only downside I can think of is that folks with multiple Google Talk accounts will be frustrated, as Android devices support only a single account for Google Talk.

I have to wonder if competing video chat services got wind of this development before it happened, because there’s been a recent flurry of mobile video communications activity. Last month, Vtok delivered a video chat product to iOS devices that leverages Google Talk and said it intends to target Android next. Fring recently delivered four-way video chat between iOS and Android, and Qik just launched its cross-platform video calling software this week too.

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