Where’s the web-based version of Skype or don’t we need one?

Tokbox

I’ve hit a real stumbling block in my cloud-challenge, i.e.: the effort I started on June 6th to see if I could work solely within a browser. By and large, it’s been very successful, but the one client application I can’t seem to get away from is Skype. I use it every day and it’s the application that James and I use for our Geek Session video chats.

Last week, I took a look at TokBox with James. It’s a Firefox extension that essentially attaches itself to the Facebook chat application. ToxBox uses Flash technology and offered us a nice side-by-side video chat (shown above) that would be great for our Geek Sessions, but performance wasn’t even close to that of Skype. We experienced lags and sync issues between audio & video; just not good enough for our needs. Granted, we’re trying to produce decent quality video broadcasts, so folks that just want a basic video web-client for their Facebook contacts might find this of use.

Got any web-based video-conference tools that we’re missing and should be looking at? Seems to me there’s room in the clouds for a good one and while I love the Skype client, it would be nice to see a web-based version. Then again, there might not be a need since you can run Skype on Windows, Mac, Linux, Nokia Internet Tablets and more… maybe I’m trying to hard on this one? Actually, since we’re both smiling in the above video shot, maybe we’re just having too much fun. ;)

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