chat
Games
PS3 May Get Cross-Game Chat With Next Firmware Update
11:43AM Rosa Golijan | Bedlam in the official Playstation forums: Someone slipped up and accidentally confirmed that cross-game chat may be coming in the next Playstation 3 firmware update. The post was quickly deleted, which forumgoers are taking as evidence of the slip’s truth. More »
Design
OMG Chat Pillows FTW
Software
Gmail Now With Voice Chat and Video
6:19AM Jesus Diaz | Google just added voice and video chat capabilities to Gmail, the perennially in beta web mail program. It uses a special web browser plug-in available for PC and Mac, which only requires a camera. Apparently, the separate Google Talk application is not getting yet the video capability and the company is not discussing the subject. For now, you will be able to access it from the web browser, with the capability to tear the video chat into a separate window. According to Google spokesman Jason Freidenfelds, the idea is to make it “quicker and easier to communicate with other people by whatever means is best convenient.” Which of course really means “easy to access video sex from any computer”. [Reuters] More »
Software
iPhone SDK Limitation: Only One User-Made App Running Concurrently, No Background Processes
7:11AM Jason Chen | The enthusiastic high-fives of future iPhone instant messaging users yesterday might be quite a bit less enthusiastic today when they find out that Apple is not going to allow user-made SDK applications to run in the background. This means every application, from IM to VoIP to GPS mapping, will have to terminate entirely when the user switches out to take a call or change a song. How does this affect you? It means you won’t be a be able to receive IMs unless you’re currently inside the IM app, forcing you to disconnect when you take a call. There’s an upside and a downside to this decision. More »
Games
PlayStation 3 Getting In-Game Voice Chat in Firmware 2.4?
7:10AM Jason Chen | Sony Computer Entertainment UK Boss Ray Maguire just let this bit slip about a future firmware update, which Sony usually doesn’t comment on. More »
Software
Will Mozilla Messaging Breathe New Life Into Thunderbird?
11:50AM Sean Fallon | In an attempt to revitalise Thunderbird in version 3.0, Mozilla has announced “Mozilla Messaging” which promises significant improvements to the email client—like calendar integration, better search, and a chat app. While the core focus will still be on email, Mozilla seems committed to developing a product that will offer a broader range of communications tools. Whether or not it will be good enough to get Thunderbird back on track remains to be seen. [Mozilla Messaging via Lifehacker] More »
Gadgets
“Chat” Concept is Like Living a Comic Strip
1:20PM Sean Fallon | Artist Aram Bartholl’s “Chat” concept enables users to engage in a conversation via brief text messages that are typed on a keyboard and projected onto a comic strip-like voice bubble overhead —not unlike the Voice Bubble Mirror from earlier this year. Even though the keyboard is wireless, a technician is needed to secure the bubble behind the speaker, so the whole project falls short of greatness. A video of Chat in action is available after the break. More »
Software
Russian Chat Bot Talks the Sexy Talk, Scores Chicks for You
12:34AM Wilson Rothman | A Russian website will soon offer CyberLover, a program that simulates chatroom flirting. The stated purpose is for nerds with no skillz, who can use it to talk to “up to 10 women at one time” and score some digits. Says the site: “Not a single girl has yet realised that she was communicating with a program!” It also said that the program could perform virtual sex online. Sure, it’s all fun and games—until someone loses a credit card number, says an Australian anti-virus software developer PC Tools. More »
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FlickIM: Another AIM Client For the iPhone
5:40AM Seamus Byrne | Everyone and their three-legged dog is coming up with an IM client for the iPhone, but this latest one from FlickIM isn’t quite good enough to dethrone our current champ, JiveTalk. FlickIM may have a fancy messaging interface and a cool contact selection dropdown (the default Safari selector), but it doesn’t have any options, it signs out all other AIM accounts, there’s only AIM support, and you can’t scroll up to see past messages. But it does have saved message delivery (that could be an AIM thing, actually) to store your messages when your EDGE is acting up. [FlickIM] More »
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