ooVoo Forums

Video conferencing is the place to be!

ooVoo — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:22:00 GMT

The big news in the video conferencing market last week was Logitech's acquisition of LifeSize. It's exciting here at ooVoo since we have been on the leading of edge of helping to drive the importance of video conferencing and face to face communication. And it's obvious the marketplace is heating up with a lot of other companies becoming active and helping to build the category. The question becomes who can provide the best in class solution? Affordable, easily adaptable, easy to use, anywhere and anytime. A heavy investment in equipment and sophisticated rooms won't work for everyone. So, what does this mean for ooVoo? We are really excited to see that video communication is becoming more acceptable and available to more people. We're very excited about the feedback we're getting from business users on our ooVoo Business product. We continue to improve our video and audio offering capabilities – we recently added desktop sharing and have increased the number of countries so our users can easily make affordable calls to landlines and mobile phones from their laptop, PC or Mac! And we see even more new things to come in 2010.

Philippe
CEO, ooVoo

New ooVoo: Milestones and continual improvements

ooVoo — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:08:00 GMT

Our team worked very hard to improve our video chat audio in our newest release (2.2.2.19). We've tested it on countless calls ourselves and also asked for initial feedback from our users. ooVoo Insiders – our vocal and loyal users -- report less echo issues and an overall better ooVoo experience. We highly recommend downloading or upgrading to the new version.

We also take great pride at ooVoo as I see a lot more comments coming from users on Twitter talking about how ooVoo is BETTER than Skype. We are working hard to deliver “best in class” video communication and its great to see that our users are recognizing it.

http://www.oovoo.com/Business

We believe that all businesses can benefit from having an affordable and easy-to-use, robust videoconferencing solution and don't think there's anyone out there that can offer what ooVoo does for the price in our new business package. Check it out: www.oovoo.com/Business!

And finally, I saw one of our competitors "crowing" about the amount of video minutes they did last month. I had to laugh as ooVoo'ers used over 50 MILLION video minutes in the last month alone. A number that only continues to grow! That's a lot of people being together through the power of ooVoo.

Thanks for using ooVoo.

Marty

A First -- ooVoo from a Plane!

ooVoo — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:38:00 GMT

Since I started ooVoo I have probably had thousands of ooVoo video calls: one-to-one, 3-person, some six-way. I’ve ooVoo’d from cars, trains, cafes, hotels and had calls that connect people from Ohio, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Israel and Florida – all in one session! You would think I would be a little jaded – a little less apt to be wowed and amazed by a technology I work with every day. Frankly, I am still amazed daily by ooVoo, but on April 3, I shocked even myself. On a Virgin Air flight from San Francisco to Boston – coming back from the Web. 2.0 conference – I logged onto the wireless connection at 30,000 feet, started up ooVoo and had an amazing, multi-point video chat from the plane with our owner and our vice president of marketing. See for yourself and let me know if you find this amazing.

- Philippe
CEO, ooVoo

ooVoo at Web 2.0 in San Francisco

tj_herman — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:57:00 GMT

The dust has settled on a highly successful Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. I was surprised at how many people attended and the traffic at the ooVoo both was busy the whole time. We even got some coverage from bub.blicio.us.com. Watch it here: http://bub.blicio.us/video-oovoo-launches-open-api-and-developer-contest-at-web-20-expo/

At Web 2.0 we announced an update to our open API which allows people to show smaller video conversations on their web sites. Many of our partners have requested this and in the past it was only available to partners who have paid to turn off advertising, but now we can show smaller ad sizes in the ooVoo embeddable chat client.

In addition, we launched a new set of REST APIs targeted at user account management. Stay tuned for more APIs in the weeks to come.

Finally, we also told everyone about our first developer contest (with a $2500 prize!) We’ve already had a couple of submissions, but I thought it would be good to take the chance to tell everyone about it again and to suggest some application ideas. If you would like to compete, here are some suggestions to get your creative juices flowing:
    - Telemedicine application (charge by the minute consults)
    - Firefox Plugin which allows users to video chat right out of their FF browser
    - Facebook Video Chat Application (Maybe combined with a FireFox plugin)
    - Media sharing room: create a Flickr/ooVoo Mashup
    - Family reunion web site
    - Tutoring web site or application
    - ooVoo dating app
    - Fantasy sports web site with live video
    - Topical Chat room sites powered by ooVoo
    - Auction site
    - Talk show application/widget
    - ooVoo video powered technical support application
    - Focus group application for market research
    - Applications for the deaf community
    - Gambling or gaming web site, application, or mashup

Contact me at developer@ooVoo.com if you have any questions or suggestions and let the games begin !

-tj

_______________________
Tom Herman
ooVoo VP Web Strategy
44 E 30th St, 12th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Tom.Herman@ooVoo.com

ooVoo at SxSW and Web 2.0 Expo SF

ooVoo — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:25:00 GMT

We recently worked the SXSW in Austin Texas where we had a lot of fun talking with people about our new API for ooVoo. Basically the API allows developers to embed ooVoo video functionality into their websites. We are headed to the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco and we are excited to meet with more folks interested in using our video capabilities.

We heard that developers want the ability to be able to size the ooVoo video windows. Our development team isn’t wasting any time, we are on it! We expect to deliver this capability as early as May. In addition we have request for an API for our MAC developers. Hang tight, we may even be able to demo this for you at Web 2.0!!

Keep the feedback coming. Our goal at ooVoo is to dramatically enhance the user experience on our platform and on developer sites.

We are also finding that the ooVoo web video call functionality we introduced along with our newest version is getting used a lot, big numbers! We appreciate this very much.

We have also made some dramatic improvements on our site with our new category “How to ooVoo”. Check it out and tell friends about it. We have some videos to help new users get started even faster. To name a few: Video Calling, Web Video Call, Video Chat Rooms, Video Call Recording, and Video Messages.

We are open to more suggestions on how we can improve ooVoo. So don’t hesitate to send us your thoughts, either by video messages, post to our forums, whatever way you are most comfortable, we want to hear from you.

Thanks again and we really appreciate you using ooVoo.

Marty.

ooVoo & Maydalleh – Keeping families and friends connected on Purim

ooVoo — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:05:00 GMT

ooVoo sponsored a NYC community, Maydalleh, for their celebration of Purim on Monday, March 9th. Several ooVoo NYC employees attended the celebration including our CEO, Philippe! The guests danced to Hebrew music at Cain Luxe – a nightclub at 544 W 27th street NYC.

ooVoo is committed to connecting people from all around the world with their families and friends, especially during holidays and special events.

ooVoo Launches Developer Contest at SxSW

tj_herman — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:15:00 GMT

We’re heading off to South by Southwest this weekend (March 14th) where our team -- Marty, Rodger and Cole -- will be announcing our new API and a developer contest (I won’t be there since I have a newborn son at home but look for me at Web 2.0 in SF!). ooVoo 2.0 is a great new release for us and as the designated evangelist for our APIs I’m excited to introduce my other “newborn” to the developer community. I think it so great that you can now build applications that include video chat using ooVoo's award-wining video quality. Some preliminary samples are here:
http://www.oovoo.com/Developers/Samples.aspx

We’ve also decided to sweeten the deal a bit and offer $2500 to the developer who comes up with the best web site to demonstrate the ooVoo Video Chat application in action. Details of our contest and the submission form are here:
http://www.oovoo.com/developers/developerscontest.aspx

If you have any questions, please don't hestitate to contact me at developer@oovoo.com and if you’re attending SxSW, come by booth #231.

Tom
VP Product Marketing and API Evangelist

_______________________

Tom Herman
ooVoo VP Web Strategy
44 E 30th St, 12th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Tom.Herman@ooVoo.com

ooVoo 2.0 Raises Audio Quality Bar Again

ooVoo — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:13:00 GMT

At ooVoo, we understand that providing life-like audio and video quality is key to achieving our mission to bring people together, face to face. From the get go, ooVoo has supported state-of- the-art digital video and wideband audio technology that gives our users a communication experience which is far better than a plain old telephone call. To that end, in ooVoo version 1.7, we turned on high resolution video to give ooVoo users crystal clear picture quality. And now, our latest 2.0 release makes another significant experience enhancement with greatly improved audio quality.

Without boring you with too many technical details, here are some highlights:

ooVoo conversations now sound more natural and ever closer to a face-to-face chat. With other VOIP solutions, users either get lousy audio or audio that may appear to be clean but somehow feels unnatural due to over-processing. Our engineers have worked hard to fine tune our audio system to give you the best and most consistent overall experience by balancing a variety of factors that could affect audio conversation quality, such as the type of microphone and sound card the user has, level of background noise presented, quality of user’s internet connection, and whether it is a one-to-one or multiparty call.

ooVoo users can now enjoy excellent quality conversations even over not so good Internet connections. Dropped words and garbled sound occur significantly less often with version 2.0, thanks to the sophisticated network error handling techniques we’ve included.

All this, and there’s no need to worry about how to properly set your audio devices. We understand not everyone is comfortable with navigating the sometimes complex windows settings menu so we have automated the process to give you an optimized ooVoo experience right out of box. And, if you are the DIY type (like many of our power users), simply turn off the automation feature and you can take things into your own hands.

In addition, we have invested in the best-in-class Echo Cancellation technology that has only been previously available on higher end professional video conferencing systems that cost tens of thousands of dollars.

If you have not upgraded to the latest 2.0 release yet, you can download it from http://www.oovoo.com/download.

Thanks for “listening”!

Chang Feng
VP, Technology & Innovation

ooVoo Assists Candidates in Israeli Elections

ooVoo — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:37:00 GMT

I would like to share with you a recent experience of how politicians in Israel have been using ooVoo to assist in communication their messages. Due to the recent events in Gaza, Israel’s election period was suspended for 3 weeks. Following the Gaza operation, the politicians had a very short time to convey their messages to the public.

One of the most important voting sectors in Israel has become the Israeli Russians who today comprise about 15 – 20% of the voting rights. Many politicians are retaining special advisers to this sector and deploy numerous efforts to reach them, especially during election time. ooVoo has been partnering with leading Israeli Russian Internet portals in Israel during the elections, including Zahav.Ru, the leading portal. Zahav.Ru asked its users to use ooVoo video messages to send in questions to the politicians. Then, ooVoo was used by Zahav.Ru reporters to conduct interviews with the leaders (VIEW HERE).

The activity was very successful and as a result Tzipi Livni, head of Kadima and Israel current Foreign minister, as well as Avigdor Libeirman, head of "Israel Beiteinu" and the leading Russian Israeli politician who succeeded to gain 15 mandates and to become the 3rd largest party in Israel, each have had a 20-minute interview on ooVoo.. These interviews were posted on Zahav.Ru (http://otvet.zahav.ru/elections2009/) as well as in Google Video (Livni video, Libeirman video) where thousands of people have viewed them. We continue to work with Zahav.Ru and other portals and media outlets on ways to use ooVoo to bring people together, face-to-face, to discuss, debate, communicate and connect.

Danny Yelin
GM, Israel
ooVoo

ooVoo Launches Version 2.0 and Video Conferencing Category Gets Attention from The New York Times

ooVoo — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:43:00 GMT

A BIG day at ooVoo today as we just launched our new Version 2.0 which is a big leap forward for our product and the video chat/video conferencing category in general. The release continues our focus on high quality video and includes significant audio improvements. But what we’re all REALLY excited about at ooVoo is our “Call Me” link which lets ooVoo users make video calls with anyone they know, even if their friends/family/colleagues/social media friends haven’t downloaded ooVoo. All you have to do is send someone a link, they click on it, and in moments they can join your call in a web browser. How great is that? And it is the same outstanding ooVoo quality. ooVooer’s have a permanent “Call Me” link (like a phone number). Give it out, put it in your email signature (we’ll help you create a button for this), post it on your blog or personal web page and all anyone has to do is click on the link to ooVoo you.

What else is new? Users can now build their own Video Chat Rooms (very easily) and can embed these into their own social network pages or blog. Users want flexibility and the ability to be creative and we are doing our best to deliver what our users want. Lastly, we have published an API for developers to build their own applications with ooVoo. And as we learn more about what the development community wants in high quality video chats we will continue to rollout more API’s.

So, back to the title of my post and the forward-momentum of the video chat category. When esteemed technology writer for The New York Times, David Pogue, writes an article such as the one he wrote last week "Video Chats Overcome Clunkiness" it gives attention and validity to this “new” way of communicating. In the article Mr. Pogue gives a pretty thorough review of Skype’s new version 4.0 and it’s features and also mentions ooVoo! We don’t believe Mr. Pogue had a chance to take a thorough look at ooVoo but we’d certainly welcome this opportunity!! And we are located in New York City, how easy is that!! We hear from a lot of users that they find the overall quality of ooVoo superior. Find out for yourself. We’d love to hear from you. Visit us at www.oovoo.com.

Marty Walker
Chief Marketing Officer

"Change" the way we communicate

ooVoo — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:58:00 GMT

To the President of the United States of America, Mr. Barack Obama,

When I saw the photo of you on the telephone on the front page of the USA Today just a few days ago, it struck me that in this day of technology so much more could be accomplished if you and your cabinet members were talking to world leaders (or working to build community with Mr. Plouffe and the members of the O.F.A) on video chat, rather than via phone or email. It is indeed time for a change. And, as you and members of your campaign staff and cabinet are aware, technology and new ways to communicate are changing the landscape of politics. Now you can look directly into the eyes of world leaders and get the full story of what they are saying, beyond the words.

In addition, Mr. President, and maybe more importantly, when you are traveling you will be able to see your kids and your wife, Michelle, from anyplace in the world. Video chat: it's easy to use and the way the world is moving.

All the best to you and your family.

Marty Walker
Chief Marketing Officer, ooVoo

ooVoo Connects Kids in Israel

ooVoo — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:53:00 GMT

ooVoo is being used by kids in Israel in order to enable them to pass these difficult times in an easier way. More specifically, three bloggers (one from Tel Aviv and two from Ashkelon) have built a blog named www.joinMyLife.co.il in which kids post video messages and text about their feelings of what's going on, as well as getting support from kids that are not living close to the fighting. This blog got many visits and for 24 hours was posted on the Ynet front page (the #1 web site in Israel). We have donated 100 web cameras to this organization to help connect even more kids face-to-face to share their feelings and opinions.

In addition, ooVoo is working on a project with the army which will help wounded soldiers connect with their families over ooVoo when they can’t be together. It makes us feel good that we are doing something positive in this time.

We hope for a peaceful resolution soon and are saddened by the loss of life in Israel and Gaza.

Danny Yelin
GM, Israel

Virtually there, with ooVoo

ooVoo — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:50:00 GMT

This time of year really gets us excited here because we LOVE connecting friends and family over ooVoo especially when they aren’t able to be together in person. And since we’ve all probably seen the news reports of how people are avoiding expensive travel during the holiday season this year and opting for more economical ways to connect, there’s no better time to ooVoo!

We want you to have the best quality experience when you connect with your family on ooVoo for virtual cocktail parties, holiday dinners or to send out video message holiday cards (save a stamp and a tree this year!). You don’t want to have to think about adjusting your lighting or camera in these moments, so we thought it was a good time to remind you of some basic tips to set yourself up in advance:

Camera quality affects image quality
We recommend a camera that offers 640 x 480 pixels and 30 frames-per-second so you can use ooVoo’s high resolution mode (Windows users only right now but, sneak-peak: ooVoo will be adding high-resolution video to ooVoo for Mac early next year.) Creative Lab’s VF0400 is a good choice.

Broadband connection – wired, not wireless
ooVoo works on wireless networks and on AirCards, I’ve experienced ooVoo calls with people on a train, a plane and from the front seat of a moving car (they were in the passenger seat!) and whilst it was cool to see trees etc whizzing past in the background, for best quality audio and video we recommend a wired broadband connection. Also remember that if your downloading files from an online store such as iTunes or playing online video games during a video chat this will affect the quality.

Audio – a headset reduces echo and background noise
ooVoo uses echo cancellation technology that helps to improve the sound quality of a call. Microphones and speakers that are close together generate echo and audio distortion, to avoid this we recommend using a headset or speakerphone such as Phoenix Audio’s Duet (we use these a lot in the ooVoo offices.)

Lighting – indirect light improves quality
Use indirect light to illuminate your face and close blinds, particularily those the appear on camera, that let in too much sunlight as ths washes out colors. You might also consider turning on the backlight feature setting in your camera. In an ooVoo video chat – click on the drop-down menu next to the camera icon in the bottom left-hand corner of your ooVoo conversation window to find the camera settings menu.

Optimize the computer - close applications you’re not using
Your computer is capable of running many applications at the same time but as you know when you are trying to do too many things at once, quite often it helps to focus on one task at a time. Closing applications you are not using on your computer will give you a better quality experience.

We hope you have a GREAT holiday season and that ooVoo helps you to feel closer to those that matter in your life!

Cheers,

Philip

ooVoo Connects Israel to the Elections

ooVoo — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:35:00 GMT

Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election was arguably the most important the world has witnessed in decades and people from around the globe were eager for up-to-the-minute information. According to reports more than half of the 110,000 million television households in the U.S. were glued to coverage of the election from 8pm until midnight. Twitter, the fastest growing micro-blogging service with more than three million subscribers, reported its busiest day with information updates doubling in number compared to regular traffic and CNN.com reported five times its normal website traffic.

Channel 2 News, Israel’s leading broadcast television network, stayed connected to the U.S. elections until the early morning hours by broadcasting live ooVoo video conversations with more than 20 correspondents stationed throughout Israel and the U.S. A wide range of differing perspectives of the election results were offered by contributors that included Dana Rapoport, a writer for Channel 2 News stationed in New York, Eileen Smith the editor of Texas Monthly in her publication’s home state of Texas, Edmundo Rocha an activist, freelance writer and founder and editor of The Sanctuary and Shireen Mitchell is founder and Executive Director of Digital Sisters in Washington D.C., amongst many others. Highlights of the broadcast can be viewed here. To read more about the correspondents, many of whom participated in the MyooVooDay Political event earlier this year, please visit www.MyooVooDay.com/political.

The internet, social media and technology played a vital role in changing the landscape of how political campaigns are communicated and information is shared. On Tuesday millions of individuals tuned into broadcast television and radio news hungry for breaking news of the U.S. president elect, and many more logged onto to websites, discussion forums and social networks to around the world to sharing their opinions with text chat, images and videos around the world. According to BusinessWeek's article 4.9 million Facebook users indicated that they had voted.

How did ooVoo users share their politcal views leading up to, on and after this historic election? Share your stories or conversation recordings with us and we may include some of them in an election update.

Philip Robertson

My ooVoo Day Political and National Conventions

ooVoo — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:05:00 GMT

We recently completed another successful “My ooVoo Day” event this one focusing on discussions about the political landscape in the U.S. ahead of the election of a new president later this year. The conversations were fun and meaningful, providing the political hosts and bloggers a platform to express their opinions about the forthcoming elections but also an opportunity to see and hear from other individuals.

Several of the participating bloggers continued to use ooVoo to file reports live from the Democratic and Republican National Conventions earlier this month. The conventions were amongst the biggest events in the U.S. political calendar with thousands of people attending to hear speeches from the presidential candidates, vice presidents and their parties.

Eileen Smith, a host during My ooVooDay Political and editor of Texas Monthly, a well respected magazine and website serving Texas, attended both conventions in Denver and Minneapolis and conducted a daily ooVoo video interview with her editorial team back in Texas. Throughout the road to the Whitehouse campaign Eileen and her team will offer their insight and opinion in a daily “ooVoocast” – as Eileen has begun calling her reports which can be viewed at http://www.TexasMonthly.com, click on the Election 2008 update on the left side.

ooVoo at the Independent Film Festival

ooVoo — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:24:00 GMT

The summer can be considered a time for relaxing at the beach, soaking in the sun, BBQs and being outside. Well, at ooVoo we've been busy. Very busy. And it’s about time we let you know that we’ve been creating new software, powering conversations, hosting and attending events. Check out an example of ooVoo powering the conversation all be it a rather shaky Qik video of one from Erin Kontecki Vest's (AKA Blogger Queen of Spain) where ooVoo connected panels at two different conferences discussing political issues - BlogHer in San Francisco, California with the Netroots conference in Austin, Texas.

(A landscape pic from the back of the room at BlogHer, San Francisco)

At the end of July we took part in the Independent Features Film Festival held at Tribeca Cinemas in New York, where we powered the post movie 'Question and Answer' sessions for directors and producers with members of the audience.

(Jonald Reyes, producer of "That Asian Thing" takes questions
live on ooVoo at Independent Film Festival)

Memorably Romulo Guardia, director of the acclaimed movie El Señor Presidente, dubbed as “the film that said no to Hugo Chavez” was able to participate and have a face-to-face conversation with the audience, despite being denied a passport to travel to New York by his home government. The movie, which is highly critical of Venezuela’s human rights record, was one of the 23 films showcased at the festival. The full Q&A session can be viewed on the Festival's YouTube channel and video messages from directors and producers from all Independent Film Festival participants are hosted on the festival’s YouTube Channel.

Best regards,
Philip Robertson, director of marketing communications

ooVoo at Podcamp Boston 3...we'll also pay the entry fee for 20 students

ooVoo — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:15:00 GMT

In just under two weeks, I'm heading to PodCamp Boston 3. ooVoo is a sponsor and we're excited to announce that we'll be giving 20 PodCamp 'scholarships' to college students interested in attended this unConference as guests of ooVoo.

Podcamp Boston 3 takes place on July 18, 19 and 20 in the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School.

You may already know that PodCamp Boston is charging registrants $50 to attend this year, so this is your chance to get in for free. While $50 might not seem like a lot of money, especially when you think about all the great presentations you'll hear and all the social media friends you'll meet, we know that when you're a student, every dollar counts. So rather than invest our sponsorship money in an exhibit table, hand-outs or tsotchkes/swag, we thought we would give back to the community in the form of free passes.

If you're a student -- or know students that might be interested in applying (please feel free to spread the word) -- we'll be giving away the scholarships to the first 20 people who contact us and meet a few simple criteria:
• You are a college student with an active .edu email address. You're on the honor system, so we ask that professors and alumni sit this one out.
• You are an ooVoo user who can provide us with a valid ooVoo ID -- it doesn't matter if you subscribe to the fully loaded Super + Phone package or the free Standard package; in fact, it doesn't matter if you just signed up today. But you will need to include your valid ooVoo User ID in the body of your email and send an ooVoo friend request to philiprobertson for verification. We promise not to bother you; we just need to make sure you are a subscriber.
• You have a first name, last name and a date of birth. We know you do, but we'll need to know them to complete the PodCamp registration form -- so if you are selected for a scholarship, we'll need to ask that you share this information with us.
• You let us know you're interested by emailing us at ooVoo@crayonville.com.

To recap, scholarships will go only to the first 20 people who meet the criteria -- so if you're one of the 20, we'll let you know and provide you with a complimentary pass to the event. (We'll cover your registration fee but you'll need to pay your own travel expenses.) We'll be in touch with each of the lucky 20 personally.

While I'm at PodCamp, I'll also be joining crayon's Greg Verdino, SHIFT Communications' Doug Haslam and Morpheus Media's Adam Broitman in a session about "Smart Social Media Marketing." We'll chat about how ooVoo has been using social media channels to promote and implement programs like My ooVoo Day With... and the forthcoming My ooVoo Day: Political Edition, and to engage directly with both influencers and customers on a day-to-day basis in addition to social media and marketing with Greg, Doug and Adam – they are the experts and worth coming to listen to.

I hope to meet some of you at PodCamp - so be sure to join us for our session. We'll be in the HIM Room from 11:15am to noon on Saturday, July 19. You can get all of the event details at the PodCamp Boston site.

Good luck and see you there!

Philip Robertson
Director of Marketing Communications

Father's Day

ooVoo — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:37:00 GMT

Children say the funniest things at least that was the evidence of the popular TV show of the 1990s and 2000s that shared kids being candid, inspiring, awkward, funny and lovely. Kids being kids on video. This weekend is Father's Day for many people around the world and we've heard from a number of users that are sending and receiving ooVoo video messages, especially those fathers that travel for business and won't be at home this Father's Day. Check out a sample video message right on this page. You may need to download and install the latest DivX codecs to view the video in Internet Explorer.

View Video
Format: avi
Duration: 00:09

We'll add more video messages to this blog in the next few days and if you'd like us to feature your child being cute, lovely or just funny please send us the video to press@ooVoo.com in either a flash (.FLV) or audio visual (.AVI) format.

If you'd like to send or record a video message for yourself or record a message with your children click here or on the video message button on your ooVoo contact list.

Press "record" to begin recording your video message.

You can now send the video to any ooVoo user by pressing on 'Add' or to anyone with an email address by pressing on the envelope with a plus sign.

To save the video message as an .FLV or .AVI so you can post it to your blog, website, Facebook and YouTube simply press the "Save As" button at the top of the message.

And that's it - simple and easy huh?! Hope you have a happy Father's Day.

Philip

ooVoo Introduces Billing and Wins Red Herring 100 Award

ooVoo — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:09:00 GMT

Good news; we won the Red Herring 100 award which recognizes the top 100 private technology companies in North America.
The timing is highly appropriate as we officially came out of our beta phase last week with the launch of ooVoo 1.6. What a great way to cap off the first year!

We’ve received plenty of feedback on our new version and the ooVoo Options packages through our support center, the ooVoo forums and directly to us via ooVoo, which we love. Look out for a cool new web feature we’re launching that will bring you face-to-face with some of ooVoo’s employees for direct, real, face-to-face conversations about how you feel about the product, how you’re using it, etc.!

Jamie Watson from ZDnet and Mitch Cantor from Studio Nashvegas blog and others are giving us valuable input and we are encouraged by the initial reactions. Almost everyone appreciates that we have kept ooVoo’s most often-used features free: high quality video chats between up to three people on PC or Mac, video messages, instant message text chat and file transfer. Let’s be honest, there are some customers who aren’t too happy with the change and while we NEVER want an unhappy customer, we are working hard to build a business for the long-term and sometimes that includes unpopular decisions. Call us crazy, but we still believe it’s unbelievable and AMAZING that you can have a video conversation with anyone, anywhere in the world – for as long as you want to – for free.

For those people that are new to the ooVoo experience (where HAVE you been?!) we include a month free trial of ooVoo Super + Phone option that includes video conversation recording, hosting and streaming, adding people to a video chat by phone, advanced video effects and enhanced customer service. ooVoo Mac users, while not yet enjoying all of the features available on the PC version, will continue to have free six person video chat (in addition to unlimited video messaging, text chat and file transfer) until the full-featured Mac version is ready – we are aiming for Q4 of this year.

Come back soon!

Philippe

ooVoo Phone Feature

ooVoo — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:39:00 GMT

Hi everyone – Philippe here again. As most of our ooVoo customers know, we’ve been running a trial offer since February to promote the launch of ooVoo 1.5. This promotion gives our customers FREE telephony (up to 500 minutes/month) so they can call any landline or mobile phone in the U.S. or Canada (from within or from outside the U.S.) It’s a great feature because it allows you to add friends, family and co-workers into your video conversations even if those people aren’t at a computer.

We’ve received a lot of positive feedback from this promotion and we’re learning a lot in the process. Unfortunately, one of the things we’re learning is that some people are using it to make harassing or prank calls to individuals, a behavior not uncommon in VoIP or regular telephone services, but obviously very concerning to us (and not permissible per the terms of the ooVoo end user license agreement).

We’ve taken immediate steps to answer the complaints we’ve received from the affected individuals and to block the users making these calls. We want to be able to continue to offer this great feature (and trial offer) to our valuable customers who are using it in the way it was designed: to communicate and connect with each other - whether it’s face-to-face or on the phone – from anywhere in the world. Please send an email to reportmisconduct@ooVoo.com if you need any assistance in this regard.

Thanks,

Philippe

ooVoo wins CNET Webware 100 Award

ooVoo — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:28:00 GMT

I wanted to write a quick post to tell everyone some good news about ooVoo. We found out yesterday that we were one of the winners of the CNET Webware 100 Awards in the Communications Category. This award is great because the Web 2.0 user community decides the ultimate winners – voting for the finalists selected by the Webware editors. This year, the community voted nearly two million times and we think some of those were from our loyal ooVoo users like you – so thanks! Read more in our press section here.

Philippe

ooVoo your friends on Facebook

ooVoo — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:04:00 GMT

Ever wanted to actually communicate with the people you have in your Facebook friends list? I don’t mean communicate in the Facebook “poke” sense of the word, by sending a virtual plastic monkey or randomly being bitten by a vampire. ooVoo users with Facebook accounts can now initiate a live face-to-face video chat from within Facebook at the click of a button.

Follow these steps and you’ll be having real conversations quicker than you can become a vampire or get involved in a food fight.

1. Find the ooVoo link

2. Be sure to check “put a box in my profile” – as this is where your friends will find the ooVoo Me button

3. Add your ooVoo ID

4. Voila - your ooVoo link, complete with your lovely profile image will now appear on your Facebook profile.

5. We might suggest moving the ooVoo link onto the left hand side of your profile just below your friends to make it easy to find and start talking.

6. Your friends that have ooVoo running on their PC or Mac need only click on “ooVoo Me” to start a face-to-face conversation with you. Those that don’t can click on “Get ooVoo“ to catch up with the rest of civilization and have a real conversation… without virtual plastic monkeys

Don't have a Facebook account but do send email or host a webpage/blog? Then simply follow the instructions to create your ooVoo widget and have people contact you in the same way on MySpace, your blog or even the signature of your emails. Follow the instructions on how to download the HTML code here.

Philip Robertson
Director of marketing communications

Technorati Profile

Stream ooVoo Live

ooVoo — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:51:00 GMT

By way of a brief introduction, I’m Tom Herman vice president of product development for ooVoo. I’ll keep this post brief, or as brief as I can make it. There have been many requests by ooVoo users who want to broadcast their ooVoo conversation over the internet… to many people at the same time. It's pretty easy to do and here are the steps:

1) Download a virtual camera software, there are many out there, but one we have used successfully here in the test lab at ooVoo is SplitCam (http://www.SplitCamera.com). It's free and stable.

2) Launch splitcam and set the video source to "Desktop".

3) Set the frame rate to 30 FPS and test both interlaced and de-interlaced for highest quality

4) You now have a virtual web camera that looks like a real camera pointed at your desktop. If you have a broadcast solution, then you're all set, just grab this "virtual" video camera as the source for your broadcast. If you don't have a broadcast solution, you can use a free one like uStream.TV (http://www.uStream.tv). At their homepage, click the "broadcast now" button and set up an account.

5) On ustream, you also want to make sure to set the video and audio qualities as high as they will go. uStream allows you to embed your video stream w/ an HTML snippet into your web site and it also allows you to just give the uStream URL for people to watch your broadcast on their web site.

6) Once you have SplitCam and uStream all set up and you're ready to go, you need to launch ooVoo and start your call. Then make the ooVoo window 100% and you'll see that the broadcast shows your whole desktop, but that means it just shows ooVoo since at 100% it takes up your whole desktop. SplitCam doesn't recognize an "extended desktop", so if you use two monitors, you can open up a web browser in your second monitor and see the broadcast of your ooVoo conversation which takes up all of your 1st monitor.

A couple of notes... First this is all free. Second, the quality of uStream isn't the greatest. To really broadcast to many people at the same time in high quality and high resolution, you obviously will need to pay for that service. ooVoo doesn't offer that service right now, but we're looking at providing this in the future. However the more requests we receive for this feature on our feedback page, the more likely that it will happen... (http://www.oovoo.com//about/feedback.aspx).

Finally, you'll notice that SplitCam comes up in the web cam choices under ooVoo. In this way, if you are in an ooVoo video conference and want to show someone on the video call with you an image, a video file, a web page or whatever you're looking at on your computer, it's very easy to just change from your web cam (Logitech or built in cam, or whatever) to the SplitCam virtual camera which is showing a feed of your desktop. Pretty cool, eh?

Got any other power tips or what to share more idea? Contact me at Tom.Herman@oovoo.com.

Tom Herman,
vice president of product development

ooVoo Nominated for CNET Webware 100 Award

ooVoo — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:29:00 GMT

I’m really excited about some great news we just received from CNET. ooVoo is being considered for a 2008 Webware 100 Award – an awards program where CNET’s Webware users vote for their favorite Web 2.0 applications across many different categories. The editors of CNET Webware.com selected ooVoo to be one of 30 nominees in the communications category -- and now it’s time for our users to show their love for ooVoo by voting for us here!.

Since we launched in June 2007 we’ve received a lot of positive feedback (some not so positive, but we encourage that too) and reviews from ooVoo users, bloggers and media. Our recent release, ooVoo 1.5, was positively reviewed by the Associated Press, Laptop Magazine, Yahoo Tech, ZDnet.co.uk and CNET. And last year, we won PC Magazine’s for Best Software Innovator award at the Digital Life show and a 2007 Web User Gold award. With your help, we can add to our growing list of kudos. But most importantly, these things help to increase awareness of ooVoo – which means more friends and contacts for you to chat with.

Please vote for us before March 31st. The winners will be announced on April 21 – please vote for us here!

Thank you!!!

Philippe

An introduction to Marty Walker, COO

ooVoo — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:49:00 GMT

I’m Marty Walker, COO of ooVoo. I basically get to do whatever Philippe doesn’t want to do.

I’ll admit it: I don’t have a technology background. Before joining ooVoo, I was in the pet food business for many years. I had the good fortune to be at The Iams Company when it was very small and was there as it grew into a $1.7 billion business. You could say my background is in helping bring something small to a point where millions of people can enjoy it.

I’m also in that technologically challenged age group – I’m approaching 60, my kids are grown , have all left home and now live in different cities in America. I’ll tell you something: having the ability to see them on a regular basis with ooVoo is pretty cool.

Right before my son graduated last year, I ooVoo’d with my two sons. One’s in Hoboken. One’s in Boston. I was headed to Israel on business. The three of us had a great conversation and a big laugh about football chatter. It was funny watching them on camera being themselves - one is a typical college kid who was wearing a baseball cap and no shirt, his brother was “giving him the razz.” (translation “making fun of him”). His brother replied with an obscene gesture and we all laughed. That’s ooVoo – real communication!

Another example of how easy ooVoo makes staying in touch: My 71 year old mother-in-law is from Tokyo. Her daughters are in Sacramento and her son’s in Bakersfield. When she first connected with them on ooVoo it was incredible to watch – to be 71 and see your daughter this way whenever she wanted despite the distance. She had a real sparkle in her eye.

I’d like for everybody to experience face-to-face communication with ooVoo. A tremendous number of people don’t know the capability is there. It’s a brand new category of consumer experience. You need it in your home. As with all advancements, we believe technology savvy early adopters will use this first, and then, as awareness grows and people become more comfortable sitting in the living room ooVooing, face-to-face communication will become more widely used.

What’s unique for me about ooVoo is that the people here live and breathe this thing. We are heavier users of our own product than just about anybody. I use it every day. We’re really conscientious about understanding what it is we are providing by experiencing it personally. That really impressed me.

What would I be doing if I weren’t here? Something challenging that contributes to the lives of humans or pets. Maybe just reading a good Vince Flynn novel and drinking cocktails on the beach.

See you on ooVoo.

Marty Walker, chief operating officer, ooVoo