MeBeam

Private feature added to MeBeam

A new feature has been added to MeBeam, which might come in handy during a multi person video conference, where you may want to discuss something in private someone.

When you move your mouse over someones video you will see a new option appear in the bottom right hand corner which says 'Private', clicking on this will cause the word 'Private' to appear on your video on their screen notifying them of you wanting to break away from the conference and discuss something

You can accept a private invitation by also clicking on the 'Private' button.

At present this feature only allows you to break away with one person - future versions will allow you to select several people to momentarily go to private mode.

In addition, you will also notice some other buttons such as 'Mute' and 'Fade' which as the name suggests, mutes a persons audio and/or fades their video to make them invisible respectively.

Furthermore, on your own video, you have the buttons 'Mic', 'Shhh' and 'Settings', which will turn on/off your own microphone, mute everyone on/off and allow you to adjust your settings, such as which camera to use, microphone level etc.

MeBeam adopts OpenID

In my last post about data portability, I mentioned you will be hearing me talk a lot about data portability this year, and today, I am very happy to announce that, MeBeam will be adopting openID.

This is great news for you, as I will be able to release new features, such as video mail, social networking, private rooms etc, and yet still maintain our no-nonsense, no-registration, instant connectivity that you have become accustom to with MeBeam.

By adopting openID, we open up our doors to every single one of the 63 million America Online users, Digg users, Live Journal users, etc etc.

Talk to the Hand

MeBeam when I say, democratic booting is definitely not a bullet-prof solution, when it comes to self-policing communities.

Earlier this morning, I kept receiving messages over Skype from a spammer, and as you would, I just ignored him, till he got bored, and left me alone.

So I was thinking, why not 'flip' the idea of democratic booting, so that, instead of banning people on MeBeam , it would be more effective, to give everyone, a video-mute button as well.

This way, any over-excited patron on MeBeam room will see that no one is watching or listening to him, so there is absolutely no point him carrying on.

He no longer has a captive audience.