Rounds, the video chat app and Israeli startup backed by $5.5 million in funding from Verizon Investments, Rhodium and DFJ’s Tim Draper among others, has been slowly expanding across platforms. Originally built as a Facebook-centric experience, Rounds expanded to the desktop last summer, launched Mac and Windows apps to allow its users to send and receive video calls without using their browser… → Read More
Thought Yahoo’s acquisition spree would culminate with its $1.1 billion Tumblr purchase? Well, not so much. In fact, the buy-happy company just quietly made its second acquisition in 24 hours — in two completely different verticals, no less. Yes, Yahoo followed this morning’s purchase of iOS photo app maker, GhostBird Software, by making a play into the enterprise conference calling space. Wait… → Read More
Citrix today added a new real-time chat feature to its Podio social business platform that allows users to discuss projects, tasks, documents and other items by using standard instant messages, as well as audio and video chats. Citrix argues that this makes Podio, which was already being used by over 200,000 companies at the end of last year, “the first collaboration service of its kind to… → Read More
Google Babel, the forthcoming unified messenger service from Google that’s all but confirmed thanks to a number of screenshots, bug reports, developer forum posts and more, is now being said to only include Google Talk, Google Hangouts and Messenger in its initial release. Google Voice integration, apparently, is on the back burner. → Read More
If Tumblr is more of a social network than a blogging platform, then Babblr may be just the thing that its users are clamoring for: It’s an integrated chat client for the platform that lets you communicate with your Tumblr friends and followers and organize your community into groups. → Read More
Using text chat to provide customer service is a pretty standard tool on the web, but when it comes to mobile apps, these chats are still very rare, despite the fact that a lot of online commerce has already moved to mobile. The Y Combinator-backed Hipmob, which offers these chat features and integration with standard IM clients and CRM tools as a service, hopes to become the “premier support… → Read More
Salesforce.com will announce new features for its “Facebook for enterprise” service Chatter this week at its annual Dreamforce conference. CEO Marc Benioff already revealed during his TechCrunch Disrupt fireside chat that the company is adding a Box/Dropbox-style file-sharing system called ChatterBox. Now I’m hearing from multiple sources that Chatter will also be getting secure cross-company… → Read More
QuicklyChat, a Y Combinator-backed startup participating in the Summer 2012 program, has an interesting take on video conferencing. With its newly launched solution designed for small teams working remotely, QuicklyChat is trying to bring back ad hoc conversations, which are still the most valuable aspect to the in-office work environment. With its “push-to-talk” video chat system, your co-workers… → Read More
Yammer, the enterprise social networking company that was recently bought by Microsoft for $1.2 billion, is getting ready to add a new instant messaging feature called Online Now to its main service, enabling users to chat to each other in real time. Online Now will sit alongside existing services that let users post status updates and media as well as send private messages.
The feature was… → Read More
Are you ready for your close-up? In early June, the dynamic, disrupting duo of Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning launched their new video chat and sharing network, called Airtime. As a matter of course, the founders built Airtime on top of Facebook, with a cool $33.5 million in funding to get the operation off the ground — and more.
Today, the startup released a polished new video that aims to… → Read More
Rounds, the social video chat app for Facebook and the web, backed by $5.5 million in funding from Verizon Investments, Rhodium, DFJ’s Tim Draper and other angels, is now expanding to the desktop. This week, the company will debut its Windows and Mac applications which will allow users to send and receive video chat calls to and from their friends without using their web browser or visiting… → Read More
FriendCaller, a Skype alternative which, let’s face it, we haven’t heard much from in years, is today launching new web and mobile apps that support up to 7-way group video chats at once. The addition comes on the heels of FriendCaller’s earlier expansion this year into multi-point video and voice conferencing, the company says.
In addition to the seven video participants, the new apps also… → Read More
Remember ChatON? The Samsung-built, cross-platform, mobile messaging app which arrived in Google’s Android Market this fall? The app, somewhat similar to BlackBerry’s BBM or Apple’s iMessage, provides users with an alternative to SMS or MMS.
At the time, Samsung was promising support for iOS would be coming “soon.” Well, “soon” has arrived. ChatON is now available for download from iTunes. → Read More
FunMobility, the makers of FunMail, a picture-messaging app that organically pairs your texts with appropriate (and fun) images, FunTones, a large collection of funny ringtones, and FunMe, a suite of tools for consumers to create, share, and post their own user-generated content, is clearly striving for a particular brand message. I think it has something to do with “fun”.
Today, FunMobility… → Read More
TVs with Internet connectivity are nothing new, but this is pretty cool: As the world’s first TV makers, Panasonic and LG are cooperating with Skype to incorporate the software, which will make it possible to video chat in 720p HD quality, into TVs.
According to a Japanese media report [registration required, paid subscription], Americans will be able to buy the Pansasonic TVs first (as early as… → Read More
Google has announced an iPhone version of Google Talk which is simply an iPhone-ized browser-based version of the Google’s text chat application. This means you can’t talk over the Interwebs but you can tap out halting messages to your friends on the iPhone’s screen and, thanks to Safari’s tendency to clear pages randomly, you probably won’t enjoy a sustained… → Read More
Did you hear the awesome news? Facebook Chat launched at the weekend for some folks, myself included. Apparently the rollout is on a network-by-network basis, and one of mine, NYU, was a big winner. You can read how great it is on Facebook itself or any one of the fan sites, but I’ll tell you what about it annoyed me. First, the implementation, on a UI level, bothers me. The app, which… → Read More
[UPDATE - I put the chat room over on the side, just to see what, if anything, will happen if our readers can talk to each other. Lawsuits here we come!] We talked about Meebo quite a while ago. They’re essentially a web-based IM client that supports a number of protocols including AIM and MSN. Well, they’ve just started offering embeddded rooms for websites like the one above. → Read More
A couple years ago, I became a member of a crowdsourcing outfit called Cambrian House just as it was getting started. The premise of the site is basically that you submit an idea for some sort of web-based service and then other members of the site vote on your idea. The best ideas get funded and then you can work on certain projects and gain a percentage of whatever profit the idea makes based on… → Read More
From the “It sounded like a good idea at the time” Dept. Microsoft set up a holiday chatbot (northpole@live.com) on MSN Messenger for kiddies to talk to, play games with, and make holiday requests to. Sounds good, right? Except when you tell the bot to “eat it” one too many times, it replies, “It’s fun to talk about oral sex.“ Way to go, Microsoft. And who… → Read More
We’re following the story of a 48-year old man who was posing online as an 18-year old Marine recruit, and was romancing an 18-year old girl who was really a middle aged woman in real life, and the man was jealous of her online relationship with a 22-year old co-worker who was really 22, so he shot him dead at close range in his pickup in a factory parking lot. The Aristocrats! Man Killed… → Read More
My friends and I have so little to say to each other that this would be perfect. ChikaZune is a collection of graphics files that can be sent back using Zune’s phot sharing system. Each image contains containing snippets of text — “Are you busy later?” “Dude!” “I’m pregnant.” You could feasibly create a very simple conversation and, provided… → Read More
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