MeBeam

Multi party video for Skype

A few days ago, I made a post about a new service on MeBeam, which would open up the world of multi-party or multi-user video conferencing to Skype users.

Initially, my idea, or solution, was to provide a service like our operator feature, where you would add MeBeam to your skype contact list, and type in 'call username' for every person you wanted to invite to the conference, and MeBeam would send out the invitations on your behalf.

After thinking about this a bit more, the last few weeks, I came to the relisation, that this in itself, would not be very practical for two reasons.

(1) You would have to type in every persons username,
(2) You may have set up skype, so that you see your contacts by their nickname, as opposed to their real username.

From this challenge came innovation, and we have come up with something which I know your going to like.

Without the need to download anything, you can start a video conference with up to 16 of your skype friends, directly from the Skype user interface, with minimal effort.

Although, this service does not go online officially until tomorrow, I am going to post, the how-to now, for all those who have already added MeBeam as a contact to their skype list.

Assuming you have already added the contact MeBeam to your skype list, and your ready to start a multi person video call - click on user MeBeam in your contact list, and then click on the 'send contacts' menu item, as shown in this screen shot.

Next, you send the contacts you want to invited to the video conference to MeBeam, by clicking the names on the left hand column and clicking the 'Add' button - as shown in this screen shot.

Once you have added everyone, click the 'Send' button and wait for the status message to complete.

At this point MeBeam, will generate a unique room for you and your friends, and send the invitations out automatically.

The service is in beta, and may not be 100% stable, but, you should now all have 16 person video calls available from skype.

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MeBeam on CNN

Chris Pirillo, who has a tech show on CNN, has given MeBeam the thumbs up. So thanks Chris, we're glad you like it.



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Who you gonna call ?

In my previous post I spoke about the launch of our new operator service which effectively gives any jabber based instant messenger the ability to make a multi person video call to anyone on any other Jabber client.

Although, this is a huge step forward, we still have a long way to go, before video conferencing between any internet device is seamless and easy to use.

The next piece of this never ending jigsaw, is the ability to make multi person video calls using Skype and also be able to make and receive multi person video calls to Jabber clients.

As of June 1 ( god willing ) , a new service will be released, which will allow you to do just that.

There is still a few days to go, but you can as of today, add the contact name Mebeam, as shown below, to your Skype, and be part of the multi person video service for Skype as soon as we're ready to roll.



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Hello Operator - I need an outside line

A few months ago Andreas Monitzer wrote a plugin for the Adium instant Messenger,
giving Adium users the ability to make multi person video calls to not only to other Adium users, but anyone else using a Jabber based instant messenger.

The plugin, which makes use of our MeBeam service, was very well received, and made the front page of Digg.

Since then, other Jabber based instant messengers have also developed plugins, such as Coccinella, Miranda, Google Talk etc.

Today, I am happy to announce, our new Operator service, which will allow anyone using a Jabber instant messenger to make a multi person video call to anyone.

So if your using Pidgin, WengoPhone,iChat,Trillian or any other Jabber instant messenger, simply add
operator@mebeam.com to your contact list, type the word call followed by the jabber id of the person you wish to call and the operator service will take care of the rest.

For example to establish a video call from your Pidgin instant messenger to your friend john_smith who is on Google Talk,
simply type in the following into the operator chat window.

call john_smith@gmail.com

That's all there is to it.