Aplus.net Blog

Sure, one-to-one “iChat” and video conferencing have been around for a while. But combine IM, Web cams, chat rooms and online video – and what do you get? Live video chat rooms. Whether for business, social networking or even chatting online with your kids, it seems that free Web chat rooms are an idea whose time has come.

Today, we’re ‘chatting’ with Craig Kilgour of Camfrog Video Chat based in Austin, TX:

Aplus.net: Who uses Camfrog ­– and are they located mostly in the U.S./North America?

CK: Camfrog is a very diverse community that is composed of people from all over the world. For some reason, our software is very popular in Asia and Europe, and also in Turkey.  We have localized versions of our software in the major European languages along with Thai and Turkish, and we are working on adding even more languages.

AP: Who are your chief competitors –and how does Camfrog stack up (camvoice, ivideochat)?

CK: Skype is one of our competitors. They concentrate on one-on-one communications, while we concentrate on multi-user group communications.

AP: Your Camfrog Web product is designed to add multi-user videoconferencing to your Web page. Are many businesses, nonprofits and others utilizing this?

CK: One university is using Camfrog Web as a meeting place for its students. A church uses Camfrog Web to broadcast live church services worldwide, and viewers can even participate in the service. We are working on a Firefox version of the software. Right now the Web version is for Windows users only and only works with IE.

AP: You advertise “blazing fast streaming video and amazing audio quality.” So how fast and how high is the quality of your service?

CK: The unique thing about Camfrog is how many users you can see simultaneously, and these video windows have high quality. No other software does anything like this.

AP: Is Camfrog usable on any browser?

CK: The Camfrog Website and Web features can be accessed on any browser. We have both a Mac and Windows Camfrog client.

AP: You also offer a number of chat rooms for the deaf. Anything different or enhanced about that service?

CK: Deaf rooms can be put in a “deaf” mode where all sound is disabled. Deaf users requested this because they could not hear what people were saying on microphone of course, so we added this for them. Camfrog is very popular with deaf people who communicate with sign language. They use sign language on the Webcam to communicate in real time.

AP: Camfrog also offers an upgrade to a full version unlocking more features. Highlight the best of those features for us.

CK: Camfrog Pro allows you to view multiple video windows, and to change the size of the video windows.

AP: This concept (online video chat rooms) still seems pretty new. Describe how this idea is evolving – and what’s next?

CK: Camfrog is not Web-based; it’s a downloadable client for Mac or Windows. Camfrog has had over 35 million downloads of our windows client. We have slowly evolved from low quality audio and video to super high quality and high resolution video. I expect bandwidth availability to increase until perhaps everyone has access to HD super high quality audio and video with no break-up due to bandwidth limitations.

Expect to see more applications for this unique Internet hybrid in the years to come as Web chat rooms continue to add real value to online communities. If you have Internet access and/or a Web-enabled mobile device, you’ll be able to video chat with anyone, anywhere.