Well, when Mexico beats you to the market you know you are a laggard.

Bloomberg.com offers this story:

"Telefonos de Mexico SA, Latin America's largest fixed line telephone carrier, is introducing a video telephone service nationwide to help fight competition from internet calling."

And France has their telecoms pushing video called Visiophony

While the Danes have launched IP video as well.

Nilkas this is getting embarrassing. I thought you were the Telco killer. (grin)

Thanks to SJ's man on the street in Denmark, Torben Nyhuus for this story.

Today Santa Cruz Networks made available a new version of Festoon that integrates to either Skype or Google Talk.

It is free. Festoon is available for download here.

I caught up with Santa Cruz Networks’ CEO Itzik Cohen, former VP of Corporate Development at WebEx, on his mobile using SkypeOut:

SJ: “Okay Itzik, first Skype, now Google. Who is your next target for Festoon? And when?”

Itzik: “AOL is next, before year end.”

SJ: “I really liked seeing the same user interface for both Google and Skype. But I want a combined list. I don’t want to switch back and forth.

Itzik: “Bill, you are so damn impatient! First we will develop each community. Like I said, today Google, AOL by Christmas. Then Yahoo, then MSN for first half of 06. When that’s done you will get your buddy lists integrated! It is sure nice to have instant messaging clients with API’s!”

SJ: “I hear you have been busy trying to raise venture financing. What can you tell our readers?”

Itzik: “Not much at this point Bill. We are very, very close to closing. I have been at it night and day for three weeks. Our story of making video an immersive experience is resonating very well with investors just as our product is resonating with our users. I expect to be back leading a well funded team before the snow flies up in your neck of the woods.”

SJ: “Thanks for your time Itzik. I think you guys will do all right. Multi-user video, cross-platform and desktop sharing are my favorite features. Give me a call when the financing closes.”

Imagine multi-user video conferencing for any IM client: Yahoo, Skype, MSN, ICQ, you name it. That is what I tested with developer Ashod Apakian at WigiWigi yesterday.

This program is not ready for prime time. Unless you are a real geek I would wait a couple of weeks before downloading. So why bring the topic up? I think this opens up a fascinating way to deliver media content.

It works like this. I install wigi5.exe. Wigi icon shows up in my system tray. I go to any IM client and open a chat message to a contact. Establish application focus by clicking my cursor in the chat window and hit the Ctrl key 3 times. A Chat Message is formatted see it View image">here.

The recipient of the chat message, if they have wigi5 installed simply double clicks the wigiwigi call code and copies to their clip board. The wigiwigi application send this code to a central server which then establishes a peer 2 peer video and voice link between our two computers.

Here is the result.

The wigi5.exe is only 450KB iin size. Remarkable for a video application! If the recipient of my chat message does not have the application it can be downloaded in about 10 seconds and installed and configured in another 10 seconds.

I tested with Yahoo and Skype. I will review in more detail when Ashod polishes the video quality and adds the multi-user capability. Lip sync was really quite good. Pictures were very fluid too.

Update: works great with Google Talk!

What ideas come to your mind for using this technology?

Logitech has announced a new family of webcams. I accepted an invitation to visit Logitech while I was in Palo Alto for Skype Night in California last week.

Karen Hoskins, a Public Relations Specialist at Logitech kindly hosted my visit. She hooked me up with Andrew Heymann, Senior Product Marketing Manager and Todd Hernandez, Software Marketing Dude.

I can best sum up the demo with this comment, “I want one NOW!”

I own a Logitech 4000 Pro. I have tested it against many other web cams both in the Logitech family and Creative Web Cam family. I have always been impressed with my 4000 Pro. But the new Logitech QuickCam Fusion left me speechless.

Two big breakthroughs made by this webcam family─
1. Light sensitivity
2. Wide angle view

Those who have followed my posts on The Ultimate Skype Video Experience know that the three most important parameters are lighting, lighting and lighting. The QuickCam Fusion dramatically changes your lighting requirements. Logitech brand this a RightLight. All three webcams achieve this extreme light sensitivity by using 4T CMOS technology (four transistors per pixel).

The second breakthrough is wide angle view. A wide angle view turns your office space into a personal video studio. Two people can comfortably share the same screen. You now get space to achieve what Martin was talking about in his post “Proof by arm waving”
Hopefully I will have my QuickCam Fusion soon so I can do some in-depth testing and show you more about why I am so excited about this new product. At $99 it is a steal.

Linda tells me, "I would never do video." Dina says, "I feel naked!"

For many the web is a place of fear: fear of being flamed, fear of being "hit on" by the opposite sex, spammed, infected with a virus, or of someone hacking into your computer. To protect themselves many users hide behind NAT Routers, double firewalls and strive for anonymity hiding behind pseudonyms and avatars. Trust takes a longer time to build in this environment. It might take weeks or even months weeks before you share a pic of youself with what was a brief time ago a complete stranger. Given the potential intimacy provided by live video this behaviour seems to suggest that video will be in low demand or its use constrained.

But other real-life examples tell a different story. Video is hot. 500,000 Skype fans downloaded Video4IM and vSkype in the first 30 days of the beta release of both these products. WebCams are hot too. This ChannelTimes article (server down at time of posting) claims Skype's partner Logitech shipped its 25th million webcam this year (37 % of the world market according to research firm IDC).

Is all this activity about moms and grandchildren? Or is sharing real-time images of you and your environment simply cool. Does video dramatically enhance voice and Skype Chat? So what is the story here? And what is your story? Is your video pic a real-time emoticon?

Robin Batt's story covers both sides, "I get more of a feeling of a connection with Kay, she's based in Italy, we speak daily, IM all the time. If she leaves her camera on, I know when she's there, I can see when she's frowning/laughing/doing something else. Although, Kay doesn't like it because it makes her self-conscious."

"There is a big opportunity in making cute little apps that let you mess with your appearance. I'd actually like to find a developer who can and build a couple. Could be either really sophisticated photographic touch up or could be really easy to build little cartoon cutouts like, today's Friday, I've got my real face, but my party hat on or or, you could have fake backdrops so if I'm talking with a client I put a fake office backdrop on so I look like I'm in a smarter environment than I really am.

I think video will be about fun long before about doing mission critical business much like mobile, emoticons, ringtones etc. Mobile operators ALWAYS get it wrong they are only just learning now that mobile data is about killing time, not saving time. That's especially important in the mobile environment waiting for a friend in a bar, waiting for the bus, dentist, taking the train somewhere, even if using business apps - like stock tickers - you're doing it more to kill time than to save time that's my philosophy anyway.

I think video is the same as mobile. It will be more about social interaction - friends goofing around...than business communications...in the beginning. Killing time and goofing around become the drivers for the mobile and video market until the deeper uses get discovered.

And until people get familiar with it...or until it becomes so popular on a social level that it starts to virally pervade businesses anyway...so they decide to harness it so they can control it...and it becomes an enterprise app (like IM did). Plus I don’t think goofing around is necessarily shallower. Nothing wrong with goofing around.

oh, and porn of course - always an early driver of new tech. Although that's an interesting one because the phone/online/text sex industry benefits from the fact that the buyer cant see the 'hot chick' to validate if she really is hot. That changes in the video environment, obviously."

I wonder if Robin has it right with her comment on hot chicks? I wonder whether in fact all chicks are hotter in a video call than a voice call. Are there not more "emoticons" happening in video? Doesn’t live video provide more to feed your imagination; not less?

Tell us about your experience with video. What "deeper uses" than goofing around will make Skype Video a pervasive application? Is it a killer-app for job interviews? Does Skype video enhance voice and chat messaging for you? In what ways?

Are you afraid of Skype video; are you videophobic?