Google+ Hangouts improves single broadcaster functionality

Google+ Hangouts has the ability to do a group chat with full video and audio, on the web or in mobile apps, for free which is unmatched by any other service. Group chat is great but sometimes you may want to broadcast just yourself, previously you would be displayed in the main window but also in a smaller window along the bottom which is the participant strip. If you think about it, it was quite useless to have the participant strip along the bottom if you were the only person in the hangout.

Now, for these single participant streams, Google is making it possible to push the video to the entire window, maximizing the used space. It is now the default functionality, Google has updated their Google+ Hangouts functionality so that when there is only 1 broadcaster in the hangout, they are now presented in a full window.

I think this is a great feature which will allow the screen space to utilized by a broadcaster to it's fullest potential. Hopefully someday soon I will host a Google+ Hangout to chat technology related things with my subscribers and twitter followers.

-Ubu out

Gmail voice calls remain free for 2013

Were you even aware that if you have a Gmail email account that you can talk to other Gmail users via voice and video? You certainly can using Google's VOIP service within Gmail. See photo to the right, the little phone handset symbol toward the lower half of the picture allows for both voice and video chatting similar to Skype.

It will remain free of charge for calls within the United States and Canada in 2013. A note on the Gmail blog announced this on December 26, 2012.

There are several clients that can utilize the Google Talk feature on moble phones, for instance Vtok for iOS allows me to make a VOIP call to anyone in my Gmail address book. It would be considered data usage so be sure to check what your data plan limits are.

I am glad Google is continuing to provide this feature for free, it allows for calling long distance relatives much cheaper then using a long distance service provider.

-Ubu out