One open source development house points to Google’s Summer of Code effort to include voice and video chat support for Pidgin, the open source Linux and Windows multi-headed Instant Messaging program using something called Farsight2.
An example of what Farsight2 can do is available here on YouTube.
Here’s more on Farsight2. It seems that Telepathy is using it inside their VoIP/Video client on the Nokia tablets. Now that’s something I’ve seen before and was impressed with.
Update–SightSpeed’s CTO and co-founder, Aron Rosenberg, in an email pointed out that this is a Google student support activity, with Google mentors. Thanks for that.
My view..Your ad dollars at work. ….Google gets ideas from all places, floats the balloon and sees what flies. Your ad dollars go to fund activities like the Summer of Code. Besides, what Senior in college wouldn’t give his laptop away for a chance to be at Google for an Internship in the future.
That makes me wonder. Does Google end up competing with their own advertisers at some point? You bet they do. And all those analytics YOU pay for make that possible….
Google seems to have a lot of options in the video chat area. It purchased Marratech in the last year, and while they claimed it was for internal use, the Marratech technology could be put to use in Google Talk couldn’t it?