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Voice and Video Chat Comes to Gmail

by Tim Stevens on November 12, 2008 at 10:47 AM

Gmail is great (when it's working), offering top-notch spam filtering, gigabytes of storage, and a slick user interface all for free. It also offers integrated instant chatting for those who are into such things, and, as of a few weeks ago, text messaging too. Now Gmail is growing again, offering you the ability to chat with voice and video without having to leave the page.

You'll need to start by downloading a browser plugin, which installs in a few seconds and, after you restart your browser, should let you get going. Naturally, you'll need to ask whoever you want to chat with to install the same, but once that's done you can just click on their name in your contacts list to get a voice or video chat going. From there, you click on the "Video & more" link in the lower-left, and, in just a few seconds, their (hopefully) smiling mug will appear! You also have the option of popping the video out into a separate window from Gmail, and can make it full-screen if you want.

As of now, not many people will have the plugin installed, but from playing around with it a little this morning it seems a heck of a lot easier to use than most other video chat apps, especially since you don't have to configure anything. Just a few clicks and you're chatting. The video above shows exactly how it all works and, if you don't have a Web cam, Logitech certainly has an array of offerings that should suit your needs, so keep an eye out for Black Friday sales. [From: Official Gmail Blog]

Tags: audio chat, AudioChat, breaking news, BreakingNews, gmail, google, video chat, VideoChat, webcam

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