Talk, Talk, Talk it out with TokBox

So I had some time to kill (not really, more like procrastinating) and I wanted to see if I could get in touch with a bunch of my old high school buddies. There was always one problem that just persisted, though. We weren't able to get everyone on a webcam which sucks because there's just no fun typing stuff into a computer and hoping it shows up on the other side. It is way better to see people face to face so you can make fun of their environment and so forth.

Anyway, at first, we tried oovoo but the trial ran out and we couldn't do the three way video chat anymore. lame. Skype never supported anything of the sort and AIM is only one way. Then comes along TokBox. A marvelling achievement in social connectivity. Okay, an overglorification, but it was like a savior. You could probably get up to six people on the same chat (with video) and be able to hold a real conversation. I wonder why companies don't use this instead of big expensive flights to a overly-priced hotel.

The first time using it, however, was less than spectacular. I was more like... what does this do... oops.... shouldn't have done that. The interface is easy enough except there's so much going on, its hard to comprehend. If you're not used to the ajax stuff, you'll be so lost within the interface. If you're someone new to the internet, you're screwed. Anyway, the tokbox itself is actually jam packed with awesomeness despite these little details.

The best thing about it is that you can pull people off different instant messaging clients. I use digsby instead of aim because it combines my gtalk, msn, yahoo, aim, and icq all into one buddy list. tokbox can do the same (but you have to be in a browser). The power behind all this is staggering and I bet you could probably pull video chats off different people across mulitple clients. That means, people in taiwan could be talking to you, in america, and then call someone else in germany!