Unlike traditional video chat services of today, this system renders you as a realistic looking avatar. While that seems like a step backward, I can think of a number of instances where I’d welcome it: An early morning video chat while still in bed or on a bad hair day, for example. (My solution for the latter is a hat, but now that’s a tell-tale sign of bad hair at GigaOM HQ!)

The large headgear certainly isn’t practical, but as a prototype, I see some interesting technology here. Capturing one’s face in 720p resolution with 180-degree fish-eye lenses, adjusting the actual images to compensate for the wide view and stitching the images together in real-time is impressive. The level of captured detail and subsequent rendering is nifty as well: Take a look at the avatar’s eyes when the real person blinks, for example.

Even as an early tech adopter, I realize this solution is more of a demonstration for now. Perhaps Google will take note, however, and adopt some of DoCoMo’s concept with the Project Glass headgear. Until then, I’ll rely on “old school” video calls. Now, where did I put my hat?

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Anyone can get a call from Chewie, so long as they have an iPhone capable of FaceTime calls, and are connected to a Wi-Fi network. Just visit treatchewie.com, enter your name and phone number, and you’ll be added to Chewie’s calling queue. When it’s your turn, you’ll receive a text message ten minutes beforehand to prepare you, and then a FaceTime call from the dog herself. Here’s a video of how it works:

The call is actually triggered at the same time as a modified dog treat-dispensing gumball machine, both of which are attached to a Mac mini doubling as a server for the website. Through a combination of Arduino, AppleScript and Python, the system dispenses treats, calling Chewie to the camera, and then calls numbers collected from the website.

I know what you’re thinking: This is a recipe for canine diabetes. But luckily, the maximum number of treats Chewie can receive is one per hour, and even then only between Monday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST.

The creators behind Treat Chewie, former TAB contributor Jenny Kortina and Python coder Shreyans Bhansali, plan to make detailed instructions about making your own machine available sometime soon. For now, though, Chewie has a tasty monopoly on receiving web-based treats and talking to humans on iPhones.

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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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According to Tango, iOS registrations were up 35 percent above average since the launch of the iPhone 4S, which is the biggest spike the young app maker has seen. That’s even more of a lift than it received on Christmas — the day that users typically unwrap new gadgets and try out apps on their devices. The increase in downloads moved Tango from the no. 12 spot in the App Store top downloads the week before launch up to no. 7.

But it’s not just iOS registrations — Tango has gotten a lift on other devices as well, such as traditional computers and Android smartphones or tablets. Total registrations were up more than 25 percent overall after the iPhone 4S launch.

For Tango, which provides a way for users to video chat with each other regardless of the device they’re using, the massive sales numbers the iPhone 4S has seen should not just help them in the short term. As users (like me) that upgraded from phones without front-facing cameras, discovering new features and applications will continue.

Tango, which competes with desktop and mobile video chat apps like Skype, has raised a total of $47 million since being founded two years ago. That includes a $42 million round it announced along with its desktop app in July.

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Update: The Skype iPad app is now available once again in the U.S. App Store, so if you like the looks of what you see below, go ahead and check it out for yourself.

Late Monday night, Skype for iPad finally arrived in the App Store, after weeks of waiting. But don’t expect to find it there now; Skype pulled the app temporarily, saying it “went live prematurely.” We managed to grab the app before it disappeared (and it’s still available on some international stores), so here’s a look at what you can expect from it when it returns.

Skype might have had an issue with the timing of the release, or it might have just wanted to make sure it was completely polished before it hit the streets. I noticed some slightly buggy behavior, like pop-up menus that don’t rotate when the app does. But overall, the product is ready for active use, especially when it comes to core features like voice and video calling.

Over both Wi-Fi and 3G, video and voice calling worked well on the iPad when I tested it by calling my desktop installation of Skype on an iMac. I’d say video quality was at least comparable to what you can get with FaceTime. Plus, with the iPad, you can also talk to users on Android and Windows devices.

Skype also boasts a contact browser that would actually be pretty if any of my Skype contacts had user pictures. It sort of resembles Apple’s built-in Photos app, with your various contact sources (like your iPad contacts app, Skype, Online contacts, etc.) represented as stacks, which, when tapped, display contact images on a grid. Tapping any contact flips up the relevant card, giving you contact information and options to initiate a voice or video call, chat, or SMS (if you have enough Skype credit). The Skype for iPad app, like its iPhone sibling, also runs in the background, so you should never miss a call.

You can also call landlines and mobile phones from the iPad app, if you have Skype Out, and search and add people from the Skype directory. A nice feature also lets you save a phone number (without having to create an actual contact) for later use.

As someone who uses Skype as a home-phone replacement, I’m quite happy with the iPad iteration. You can receive calls to your Skype In number if you have one and make all the voice and video calls you want, right from the device that, for me, is most likely to be next to me on the couch on any given evening.

Skype may not yet think the iPad app is ready for public consumption, but based on my experience, it’s very close. You shouldn’t have to wait long to grab it, and considering it’s free, it’s well worth the wait.

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The Series B funding round was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and includes existing investors. It includes $8.7 million raised in a convertible note that was revealed through an SEC filing earlier this year. With the latest round, Tango has raised a total of $47 million since being founded just 18 months ago. The funding news was first reported by Bloomberg last month, but was just confirmed by the company today.

No doubt some of the investment comes as a direct result of Skype being acquired in a deal worth $8.5 billion, which is a huge amount for a company in what is still a very nascent video chat market. But while Skype began on the desktop and has been slowly (but gradually) adding support for the iPhone and Android mobile devices, Tango is taking the opposite route.

Tango launched with a mobile focus but is gearing up to start working on PCs, with the upcoming launch later this summer of a desktop app that will let users sign in and be contacted on their phone or on their computer. By doing so, Tango also hopes to attract more users to its service. It currently has about 18 million users on mobile devices, which is a far cry from the 600 million that Skype has attracted to date. But it sees desktop availability as a huge potential boost.

Eric Setton, CTO and co-founder of Tango, said in a phone interview that there are about 1.5 billion PC users worldwide, which is a huge addressable market. Not just that, but PC availability has been the #1 requested feature from its users.

The new app will mirror its existing mobile apps both in form and function, allowing users to be simultaneously logged into their accounts through multiple devices, and ensuring that their contact lists are synced across each. When an outside user tries to initiate a video chat, both the PC and phone will ring, enabling users to choose whichever device they want to talk on.

In addition to PC app development, the funding will be used by the company to ramp up hiring in general. According to Setton, Tango has added about 25 people in the last three months alone, bringing total headcount to 60 employees company-wide. He said it wouldn’t be surprising to see the company with more than 100 employees by year-end.

Many of those employees will work on increasing support for more platforms and mobile devices, as Tango struggles to deal with an incredibly fragmented device market. Some will also work on getting its software supported on the chip level, which will ease integration with devices once they finally come to market.

While Skype is the big heavy hitter in the video chat market, it’s not the only competition Tango has to contend with, particularly in mobile video chat. Over the last year, we’ve seen a rash of new entrants emerge, spurred on in part by the launch of Apple’s FaceTime application on iOS devices.

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The mobile video chat market is heating up, ever since Apple launched its FaceTime app with the introduction of the iPhone 4. Since then, a number of companies have sought to cash in on the phenomenon, including Skype, Tango, Yahoo and others. Like most of these video chat apps, ooVoo works on both 3G and Wi-Fi networks, and enables users to chat with friends on the web and on Android mobile devices.

The big differentiator ooVoo has is the ability to do multi-user chat. The app allows up to six different video chat partners to be logged into a call at once, and it does so with pretty fantastic video quality, even on mobile networks. In that respect, it primarily competes with Fring, which launched a multi-party, multi-platform group video chat app in early April.

There’s one other crucial difference: ooVoo’s user base. The company has long had a video chat application available on the desktop, where it mostly competed with Skype. But while Skype is used by many enterprise users and web-savvy professionals, ooVoo is being adopted by a very young user base, a trend being accelerated with the launch of its Android app. I have two teenaged sisters, and anecdotal evidence from their usage of the app shows that ooVoo is pretty cool with youngsters.

In a phone interview a few weeks ago, ooVoo CMO Matt deGanon confirmed my suspicions that the app has become a popular way for teenagers to keep in touch. According to him, about 57 percent of all ooVoo users are under the age of 25, and the overwhelming majority of that group are under 18. Surprisingly though, those teenagers aren’t necessarily using the app to just speak with their friends; deGanon said young ooVoo users were using the app to connect on social networks and meet new people live.

ooVoo has more than 25 million registered users now, but the launch of the iPhone app will surely drive that much higher. After announcing availability of the iPhone app to its 1 million Facebook fans, it has seen registrations at about three times its usual level, and expects to hit a record for registrations today.

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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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Fring is the first app that brings group video chat to the iPhone, beating out industry leaders like Skype, and also Apple itself. Code found in FaceTime for iPhone seems to indicate that Apple plans to eventually roll out group video chat for the service, but for the time being, Fring gets to be the only game in town (for iOS; there’s a group video chat for Android and Mac/PC called Oovoo). Best of all, video calling is completely free with Fring. Enabling group video chat in the Skype desktop client requires a paid premium account.

Group video chat may not be a feature many users find themselves pining for just yet, but if you do happen to need it, not having a mobile option is a considerable drag. And even if not many users actually take advantage of Fring video calls, the company still scores a significant victory just by being first to market, especially in a field like video calling, which is expected to become huge in the next few years, especially on mobile devices. That Fring also managed to bring cross-platform support for the two biggest mobile operating systems out of the gate at feature launch is also no small victory.

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Qik had previously launched a video chat app on handsets from Sprint, T-Mobile, Samsung, HTC and Motorola. But Video Connect, which just launched on the broader Android market, will allow any user with Android version 2.1 or above to use the service. According to the latest Android platform numbers, that includes more than 90 percent of all devices running the mobile OS.

The new app faces increasing competition in the mobile video chat market, as startups like Tango and larger players like Yahoo Instant Messenger  court users with new apps that let them chat with friends and family from anywhere.

Apple got the ball rolling by introducing its FaceTime video chat offering on the iPhone 4 last year, and later extending the service to the fourth generation iPod touch, Mac computers and new iPad 2 tablets. Skype, which acquired Qik earlier this year, has introduced its own mobile app, which connects with its PC video chat offering. And tiny startup Vtok has introduced an app that allows mobile iOS users to video chat with their Google Talk contacts.

The problem with these apps is that none of them work together — which means users can only chat with friends on existing networks. That could be a limiting factor in mobile video chat adoption. Just as the SMS market didn’t take off until mobile users could text between different mobile carriers, video chat services could also see their growth limited by lacking of interoperability. Given its already large user base and technology it acquired in the Qik acquisition, Skype might be in the best position to change this by opening video chat capabilities with other app makers. But whether or not Skype will open to others — or try to leverage its market clout — is still an unanswered question, and one that could shape the mobile video chat segment.

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