Web Simple

I’ve been trying to find a web-based video-conferencing service that I can use to chat with about 5 people simultaneously. For free. I’ve narrowed it down to three options, but they each have their drawbacks.

TinyChat
TinyChat uses a browser-based flash client to share your “broadcast” with up to 11 other people. You can password-protect this, in theory, but I have not been able to get it to work in any way except a randomly-generated unprotected chat. It also can’t handle multiple people talking at once, and is a little cranky about microphone feeds. In theory the Twitter chatrooms work better, but most of my interlocutors aren’t on Twitter and don’t want to be.

Openmeetings
Openmeetings is a Google purchase, and it’s pretty robust for a free product. It’s also not for the technophobic. You can use their demo servers (which are in Germany), their Facebook application, or build your own server to host it. That last option is the best, but I don’t want to go through all that when I can just use Skype.

Skype
Definitely the go-to for video chat, Skype’s beta version offers multi-party conferencing. As usual with Skype, the user interface is extremely easy. So far I haven’t noticed any degradation of voice or video quality with additional participants. The one drawback here is that it’s PC only, and a couple folks I want to include in my conferences have Macs, but once it’s cross-platform and in full release, we’ll have a winner!

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