vSkype beta

Via Skype Journal (an initiative by a.o. Stuart Henshall and Phil Wolff) I was alerted that last Tuesday vSkype went beta. This is a video conferencing application that builds on Skype.

After installing and adding the webcam usually attached to the desktop to my laptop (it will probably become a standard thing to pack from now on while on the move), Maarten Schenk (Blogologie, Six Apart) and I played with it tonight. Video is a bit slow and shaky every now and then, and sound quality wasn't very good at some points, but it works, and probably will get better. It is in beta after all.

It seems they brought this thing from idea to market in merely 8 weeks!

The vSkype website boasts that you can add up to 200 people to your video conference, for free. Another neat feature is the ability to share application windows, or even your whole desktop.

In the comments on the Skype Journal article it is suggested that vSkype is not truly peer to peer, but a client/server tcp app. It also mentions an earlier released peer to peer app called Video4Skype, released two weeks ago. Will play with that as well.