App Of the Week: ooVoo

Image credit: ooVoo

App Name: ooVoo

Price: App is free; $2.99 per month for premium service.

Available Platforms: iOS (iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone), Android

What does this app do?
Video chat may seem as commonplace as email or text messaging with applications like Skype, Facetime and Fring, but instant messaging and video chat site ooVoo recently kicked it up a notch with an updated app allowing its users to take advantage of a 4-way video display. The app supports up to 12-way video chats and up to four video displays on your mobile screen at once.

ooVoo’s app lets users sync their contacts. One tab lets you see your ooVoo contacts, another your Facebook contacts, and a third tab displays them all in one list. Within the application, double click a contact to make a call. By tapping on the Facebook tab and double clicking on a contact, ooVoo will send a link to your contact’s Facebook account inviting them to call you through Facebook — not seamless, but getting there.

Some handier features include text chatting while simultaneously video chatting, as well as the ability to share links. Push notifications, too, for mobile users, allow people to see if they’ve missed a call or message even when the app is closed. You can also invite friends to join through Facebook, twitter, or an email.

Is it easy to set up? Once you download the free app, you can sign in using your Facebook login and password, or sign up through the ooVoo site.

Should I try it? The app’s strength, apart from its four-way video display and contacts integration, is in its versatility — it works across Mac and PC operating systems as well as multiple mobile devices including approximately 250 Android phones and tablets. This is a good option if you are looking for a multi-party video chatting solution.

Let us know if you have any app of the week suggestions on Twitter at@TechThisOutABC.

Source : abcnews[dot]go[dot]com

Social chat client ooVoo unveils four-way mobile video chat

As the market keeps experimenting with social video, ooVoo continues to build its social chat app.

Social video call application ooVoo continues to build, and today is announcing it’s now enabled four-way video mobile chats. The Web application, which boasts 54 million users, already offers 12-way video chat sessions, but the mobile version will now be able to handle up to four different users in one call, on one screen. The feature is available for Android and iOS, and is operable between users on different operating systems.

Video has become a hot social commodity – and for skeptics, a big question mark. Various startups are attempting to understand where social and video intersect; will its practical possibilities or its creative potential resonate most with users? There’s a ton of experimentation going on here.

OoVoo is clearly trying to exploit both. The application deeply integrates with Facebook but also uses a familiar Skype-like set up for launching and holding calls. In a demo and call with ooVoo execs Jay Samit and Larry Lieberman, they made it clear how important a priority social is to them. “It’s the marriage of communication and social,” Samit tells me. “Facebook is there so you can stay in touch with what your friends did; this is how you can show your friends what you’re actually doing and not miss those spontaneous moments.”

Despite this emphasis, there’s plenty below ooVoo’s surface that makes it a compelling service. During my hands on time with the service, video and audio feedback were spot on. That terribly distracting delay between video and audio that even the most popular chat and call apps are subject to was nowhere to be seen. This lack of reliability makes it rather impressive that ooVoo’s able to stream four videos to individual handsets at once. “How well our video calling works it a testament to our engineers’ hard work and witchcraft,” Leiberman tells me. OoVoo analyzes the various devices’ signals it’s working with, and will drop video for the weakest signal if need be, keeping audio running and keeping both operating for the devices with bandwidth that are able to handle it. “If you can’t handle video up and video down, we keep the audio going for you, and both going [for the other people on the call] so no one loses the experience,” says Leiberman. Competitor services, largely, just drop calls entirely once one of the participant’s bandwidth is unable to support it.

In addition to enabling four-way video chat, the ooVoo update always always you to text during the call — so if you have a private message for one of the participants, you are able to contact them via SMS one-on-one.

“Mobile is taking place on social,” Samit tells me, emphasizing that more social elements is the number one requested feature from ooVoo’s users. This new push means ooVoo’s bent on exploring and exploiting that intersection.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com