Recently Karen and I were able to host our entire family for a weekend trip. Even J.P. and Allegra were able to come all the way from London! After spending some much needed family time in Charleston we all decided we needed to work harder on keeping in touch. During the trip Justin and I had discussed the need for our family to get a Video Conferencing solution set up so we could all see the new Baby when she arrives. After spending about a week of trial and error we were finally able to find a perfect solution. TokBox!
http://www.tokbox.com
TokBox is both a web application and a stand alone application (like AIM, MSN Messanger, Google Talk and Yahoo Chat). The stand alone application is great because you can leave it on enabling you to receive calls when you are at your computer and not visiting the tokbox webpage. Here is a screenshot of it in action.
TokBox enables you to easily leave video messages, start a video call and group video call with up to 6 people! This application is going to grow like wildfire. It is free and you can get it right now.
1. Register a user
2. At the bottom of your screen click the downloads button
3. Click the “Get it Now” button under “TokBox AIR Desktop Client” (works on both PC and Mac)
After the Desktop Client installs you are good to go. You have to signin to the webpage to manage things like uploading your picture and searching for friends. You can add me by signing in and typing Zane Perry in the search window found at the upper right of the page. My name will pop up and you just click the “Add Friend” button. Friend requests require approval so you are protected from strangers you don’t know.
Some notes I think users should know about,
1. To set up your camera and mic click settings, click on the camera that works, click next, click the audio that is visually receiving your voice (say “test” and you will see movement in the audio levels if you have a mic hooked up), click next and click done.
2. While chatting with someone there seems to be a bug when pasting a link (it sends html code and you can’t even copy and paste). I have sent them a message in there forum to notify them of this bug.
3. Adding more then one person to your video chat is as easy as dragging the name from your “Buddy List” to the video chat window.
4. If you use AIM, MSN Messanger, Yahoo or Google Talk your in luck. TokBox has built in integration. You can sign into all 4 with the client. You can even start video chats with users who do not have tokbox but I have not had a chance to test this function yet.
5. I would edit your mail settings. Your inbox gets full once you start playing with this. You can edit email settings by signing into the web page and clicking the account link.
I hope you found this information beneficial and hope to start video chatting with many of you soon! Keep in touch!
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