MeBeam

Meebo and MeBeam shack up

Meebo the popular web based multi-protocol instant messenger, has released a whole bunch of games to promote their new Meebo platform.

Along with these games, Meebo have also released some new communications tools, with MeBeam being one of them.

To launch anyone of these new programs, while in a chat window, click the rocket ship at the top of your chat window, and click your choice.
(it may take a few seconds for the program to appear)

Screen shot of MeBeam inside Meebo.

 

You have the right to remain silent

Those famous words, that police give the bad guys in the movies are part of what is called the Miranda warning , but this post has nothing to do with that;

Miranda IM is a very popular instant messenger, which has been around for a while, and has a very strong, technically-savvy user community.

A few days ago George Hazan, the lead developer of Miranda, implemented the Mebeam video specification, and now, along side, Adiumx, Coccinella, and the dozens of other, soon to be announced MeBeam partners, has full multi-party audio and video conferencing, between all the other jabber communities in the Mebeam network.

Miranda has made a beta version of the plugin available via their forum.

A new kind of bug for MeBeam

MeBeam would like to welcome aboard a brand new bug, called Coccinella.

Coccinella, is the newest member to the Mebeam family of networks, and although, the new kid on the jabber block, it looks very promising.

Mats Bengtsson, the developer of Coccinella has just released version 0.96.3 of the coccinella client, with Mebeam support.

Click here to download coccinella v0.96.3.  Note: This is a beta pre-release.

GeoRooms are coming.

A new experimental feature is about to be added to MeBeam, called GeoRooms, which will randomly connect you to a room with people who are closest to you geographically.

The world is a big place, and sometimes, you just want to chat with someone who is a local. I mean, I know hundreds of people online, some of which I consider very close friends, yet, I have no idea what my next door neighbors name is.

GeoRooms, is designed, to help you re-connect with people who live close to you, in the physical world.

By clicking on the GeoRooms link, when released, you will automatically be placed in a room, with other Geo-beamers who are close to you by distance.

This also gets around the problem, of rooms , where one nationality is dominating the conversation, in a language the others don't understand.

Of course, it might be that no other people from your city are in any GeoRooms; in this event, MeBeam, will find the next closest person.

Adium using MeBeam for video

Over the last few weeks, MeBeam has been approaching several Jabber communities with a novel way to provide them with multi-party video and audio conferencing using MeBeam. Over the next few weeks, more announcements will be made as other Jabber communities go live.

First off the mark is AdiumX for the macintosh. I personally haven't seen it in action, but as you probably know, it's a very popular jabber client, and from what I have heard, looks very slick.

Andreas Monitzer has done a great job with the integration; currently available as a plugin; and is available on their Xtras page.

It's only been a few minutes, and I can see the server light popping up, as Mac users get a first taste of Jabber based video conferencing.

One thing, that will become apparent quiet quickly, is that Adium users who have the MeBeam plugin installed, will be able to initiate video calls to any other instant messenger, regardless if they have a MeBeam plugin or not.