[liberationtech] Google Hangout the new, better skype? Was Re: Skype redux

[liberationtech at lewman.us]

On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 06:52:35 -0800
Brian Conley <brianc at smallworldnews.tv> wrote:

> So I guess the question is, is there a more/similarly convenient
> video/audio chatting tool that can be advocated as a standard?

Here's a single data point, extrapolate at your peril, I use Jitsi,
https://jitsi.org/.

I use jitsi daily for all my phone calls, text chats, and video chats.
It's not as slick as Skype, yet. It's just a piece of software, you
need to setup your own chat or voip accounts. It works with gchat,
facebook, aol, msn, etc. It just works. It's effectively the open
source version of skype. It's the same UI and functionality across
operating systems (windows, macs, linux, bsds). I've watched non-tech
people figure it out in 10 minutes and start chatting/calling, etc.

I have zrtp-encrypted video and voice chats with people around the
world. I can share my screen so others can see what I'm doing. For
zrtp-encryption and screen sharing, all parties have to use jitsi. And
OTR-wrapped text chat works well so far with any client on the other
end.

It's still a work in progress, much like Skype was when it was first
released, but it's functional and gets out of the way so you can
communicate. My $0.02.

-- 
Andrew
http://tpo.is/contact
pgp 0x6B4D6475