Tokbox has been offering developers a way to integrate video chat into their own services with a few lines of code through its Opentok platform, which has been used by more than 50,000 developers since its launch some 18 months ago. Small told me Monday during a phone call that Opentok’s ideal users are e-commerce sites and similar services that need to make it as easy as possible for users to use video chat. “If you want to do a Skype call, people will download Skype,” he said. But no one would download an app or a plug-in simply to talk to a customer service representative.

Tokbox believes that WebRTC won’t just be easier for end users who won’t have to deal with any plug-ins, but that it will also offer faster connections an better video quality.

In that context, WebRTC could be of great help. “WebRTC has a lot of promise and we are very excited about it,” Small said. Up until now, Tokbox has mostly been using Flash on the desktop, and the company also just rolled out a new SDK for iOS  devices.

With its new WebRTC release, the platform will automatically detect which devices and browser platforms users are running — and if possible — facilitate calls via WebRTC. The whole process will be invisible to end users, Small told me, and won’t require any big changes from developers. “The main thing we are focusing on is removing complexity from the process,” he said.

Of course, that’s easier said than done for a technology that has yet to become a standard, with different companies having different views on how things should be done. One of the key differences between Microsoft and Google is the video codec being used for WebRTC. Google wants to default to its own VP8 codec, which the company open sourced in 2010. Microsoft has been critical of VP8, and Matthew Kaufman, principal architect for Microsoft-Skype on WebRTC, told me that it would prefer to give developers choice on which codec to use for their WebRTC apps.

Small said that he hopes that this roadblock will be sorted out soon, adding: “In the meantime, it’s just going to increase fragmentation.” Still, Tokbox felt it was the right time to give developers access to WebRTC for their video apps – even if it might take some time until everyone can agree on a common standard. “There is a lot of promise, but there is a rocky road to get to that promise,” he said.

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Elance has grown pretty dramatically over the past few years, as more and more jobs move online and work becomes more virtual. To provide more value to its users, the company wants to do more than just connect employers and contractors. That’s why it has a virtual workroom that enables collaborative work and communications tools between them.

In their virtual workrooms, contractors can send messages, submit invoices, respond to to-do lists and other features. And now, Elance has added a new video chat feature to enable more “face-to-face” contact between collaborators, without users having to enter a whole different application to connect.

According to Elance VP of Small and Medium-Sized Businesses Ved Sinha, the addition of video chat to the virtual workroom will reduce the friction that comes when employers and contractors work together. While many had previously interfaced through other applications, building the chat window directly into a contractor’s dashboard enables instant communication with the click of a button.

To do this, Elance uses Tokbox’s OpenTok video chat client, which enables businesses to embed video chat into their websites. While there are plenty of video chat offerings available on the market today, Sinha told me by phone that OpenTok was the only solution that allowed Elance to build video chat directly and seamlessly into the virtual workroom.

That was a big advantage for Elance, which wanted to ensure its users didn’t have to open a different client or application to get in touch with one another. And for its clients, the feature should enable better coordination and more productivity.

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The new plugin essentially makes it possible to host group video chats in front of a larger audience of passive viewers. Think of it like a talk show with a panel of participants chatting while others are watching. Bloggers could also use the plugin to conduct one-on-one interviews in front of a live audience.

TokBox VP of Marketing Micky O’Brien told me that the company already powers video chat on more than 2,000 websites, with more than 250,000 unique users video chatting across those sites every week. Some of the better-known partners include eBuddy and Slideshare.

The company hopes to significantly expand its user base with the WordPress plugin, which allows it to target some 30 million sites across the web. TokBox plans to begin offering premium services to its partners in a month or two, but will keep the basic video chat capability free. Premium offerings could include encryption for its video chats to comply with strict privacy regulations for health care providers.

O’Brien also said that the media focus of the WordPress plugin in particular could eventually help to turn advertising into a second stream of revenue. Media sites already use overlays to monetize their video assets, so adding ad formats to video chat would be a logical next step.

TokBox launched four years ago with a consumer video conferencing offering, but underwent some major management and directional changes last year. The company launched its web-based OpenTok video chat platform six months ago and eventually shuttered its video chat client in April.

Disclosure: Automattic, maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

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The OpenTok platform builds on TokBox’s existing consumer video chat service, and extends it to enable web publishers to create and control video chat services within their websites. With the OpenTok offering, up to 20 people can join a video chat on a web page. The APIs also allow publishers to control the size, layout, positioning and interaction between users, including setting rules for who can join and who can watch the video chat services.

By doing so, TokBox believes it can tap a number of different segments that can benefit from video conferencing applications built into websites, such as messaging, online dating, gaming, e-learning and workforce collaboration. It’s already working with partners in many of these verticals, including IM aggregator eBuddy, speed dating site WinkVid, education service provider TutorTrove, live poker portal PokerView, and project management firm Assembla.

TokBox has had a bit of a troubled past, with multiple CEO changes and a round of restructuring about 18 months ago. While the team cut six employees last year, it’s growing again, with 21 employees now and five open positions. It’s now placing its bets on OpenTok, which should enable it to make some additional revenue by charging companies that use the platform for additional features or controls.

TokBox’s new Series C financing round was led by DAG Ventures, and includes existing investors Bain Capital and Sequoia Capital. Altogether, TokBox has raised $26.4 million.

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The company launched in October 2007 by spamming me and others who were invited to test out Tokbox. The company’s video chat service has struggled to find the super-growth that a consumer-oriented company such as Tokbox needs. Tokbox says it has a “user base of over 1 million people who are making over 1.5 million video calls everyday.” According to web-traffic measurement service Quantcast, Tokbox is  getting about 62,000 visitors a month, roughly in line with the user metrics reported by Compete.com. I have always been a little skeptical of Tokbox, and frankly, I haven’t seen anything that has made me change my mind.

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Bain Capital has led a $10 million investment in TokBox. The move comes less than a month after the company named a new CEO, Nick Triantos, who has worked for many tech firms, but has never before held that title.

The company launched in October 2007 and has thus far raised a total of $14 million from Bain and early investors Sequoia Capital. Scott Friend, Venture Partner at Bain Capital Ventures, in a press release announcing the Series B round, said:

“The company is executing well…We are excited to be investing with our partners at Seqouia in a company we believe has the potential to be the next ‘big thing’ in web communication.”

Just to put his words into context, TokBox recently fired its founder and CEO, Serge Faguet. And according to Compete.com, they had about 179,000 visitors in the month of July, though they did sign a deal with Meebo that stands to get them some traction. (For a list of their competitors, check out NewTeeVee’s round-up of video chat applications.)

From the way I understand it, TokBox is using the built-in video capture capabilities in Flash player combined with the Flash media server to offer in-browser video conferencing. When the company launched, I pointed out that it was an “interesting idea, but more of a feature than a platform for a standalone company or model for a viable, long-term business. If (and that’s a big if) TokBox is going to work, it will need to be rapidly adopted by the marketplace.” Rapid adoption hasn’t quite happened, however, and I wonder if it ever will.

But again, the guys at Bain must be able to look into the future better than us skeptics.

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TokBox has worked to expand its reach over the past year, developing its video chat service for web-based IM platform Meebo as well as Facebook, and the company released an Adobe AIR version of its service.

TokBox isn’t alone in this space, IMO.IM is another browser-based video-enabled chat service (founded by ex-Googlers) and Skype offers video calling as well. No one, however, has solved the biggest problem with video chat: webcam placement. Until someone builds a camera behind the monitor, video conversations will never feature eye contact, as everyone’s looking down (and away from the camera) to see the person they’re chatting with.

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With the new application, you do not have to be on TokBox’s website to accept or make video calls. Installing is a breeze (something that is common to applications built using Adobe AIR). When installed, it acts like your usual instant messaging application. Just click on a friend or colleague will enable you to do video calling and get immediate notification when someone is calling.

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It’s well-known that, for some time, Apple has chosen to package certain files as bundles; they appear in the Finder as single files, but from the Terminal and the file system proper, they are directories. Subversion (SVN, the popular version control system), like CVS (Concurrent Versioning System—another, earlier versioning system), stores its state files containing information about the current revision, the main repository, and so forth, within special directories inside each directory under Subversion control.

I have been using SVN to manage revisions of my writing—a prudent thing, you might agree, as it is both easier and more robust than the “track changes” feature of Pages (or Microsoft Word, for that matter). However, the problem lies in those .svn subdirectories that are part of every directory under Subversion control.

When Pages (or Numbers or Keynote) saves a file, it appears to do so by completely overwriting what is already present: the .svn directory is erased in the process. Attempting to commit those changes to the central repository for safekeeping illustrates the problem:

Files (directories? bundles?) are therefore left high and dry, and the entire point of revision control becomes moot. Since iWork does not support built-in revision control (unlike Microsoft Office), utilities such as CVS or SVN would be the next best option—if they weren’t cut down by the file bundle notion.

Ideally, Apple would decide whether file bundles—files such as applications, plugins, and iWork files—were actually files or directories and treat them as one or the other in all cases. It seems that file bundles are here to stay in their present state, at least for the foreseeable future, however.

While there are several workarounds [1][2], perhaps the most logical solution is to migrate from Subversion to a different revision control system that does not suffer this problem, such as Mercurial, Git, or GNU arch. None of these three keeps local state information within subdirectories of the working copy.

It is unknown whether other bundle-type files are susceptible to SVN and CVS impotence.

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