chat

Leaked from today's 404 show:

- Soccer to adapt goal line, ball-tracking technology.

- Friday's history lesson: AOL's longest running employee on the history of AOL chat rooms.

- British Airways will google passengers in preflight.

- Hillbilly Alabamians celebrate Fourth of July by shooting guns into air.

- Best Buy lays off 650 Geek Squad employees nationwide.

Bathroom break video: Super Moonwalking!… Read more

Samsung Electronics today announced the Galaxy Chat, an Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone designed with socialites in mind. Initially available in Spain later this month, the handset will expand to Europe, Latin America, Middle East, China, Southeast Asia, and Southwest Asia over the coming months.

The Galaxy Chat sports an uncommon design, which includes a portrait QWERTY keyboard set below a 3-inch QVGA display. The official announcement does not indicate the processor speed or manufacturer, nor does it list how much memory the phone offers.

But considering the known details and Samsung's claim that it will be … Read more

Skype for Windows Phone received an update today that makes some minor improvements to smooth the experience for users of the VoIP service Microsoft acquired last year.

The changes to the app include enhancements to the contact list, which now displays all contacts that have at least one phone number in the list. You'll also now be able to edit a phone number using the dial-pad before making a call.

The release comes with some minor bug fixes as well. An issue that would end a Skype call if another incoming call or a calendar notification came up has … Read more

Each Tuesday, the newest episode of "Always On" will premiere at 11 a.m. Pacific time, 2 p.m. Eastern, with a live viewing party on the show page. I'll be there with pre-show and post-show commentary on video, and we can watch the first episode together in chat on the page. I'll give behind-the-scenes insights, if I have them, or we can groan at my bad jokes together, or you can give me make-up tips...whatever seems appropriate.

Over the years of doing Buzz Out Loud, I realized that the chat room was one of … Read more

Facebook is testing out a new "Call" button in profile pages to promote its video chat capabilities.

Despite launching the service in a partnership with Skype nearly a year ago, Facebook may feel the pressured to amp up its video chat's visibility with competition from services like Google+ Hangouts and the recently launched Airtime.

TechCrunch first noticed the little button showing up at the top of people's profiles.

It seems like the person needs to be online for the Call button to show up. A glance at my list of friends online seems to confirm that, … Read more

Apple's FaceTime video chat service will finally work over a carrier's cellular network, making it even easier for people to make video phone calls from anywhere. But will the new app gobble up bandwidth on capped data plans?

Since it was introduced in 2010 with the release of the iPhone 4, the FaceTime video chat application, which allows people with iOS devices to call each other over video, only worked on Wi-Fi networks. The reason given at the time for the limitation was that carriers like AT&T were afraid of what FaceTime would do to their … Read more

Now that the oohs and ahhs of Airtime's launch this week have settled, it's time to look at the nitty gritty of this new browser-based video chat service. One of the company's policies involve user privacy.

The way Airtime works is by using Facebook as its log-in platform. At its basic level, Airtime allows simple video chat with users' Facebook friends, but take it up a notch and it lets people chat with strangers that have common interests.

So, as a way to keep its users safe, the service takes random secret photos of video conversations between … Read more

Years from now, when our children are grown, we'll tell them we were all online when a single Web site changed the way we use the Internet. Unfortunately, Chatroulette stumbled after racking up more than a million users thanks to a certain part of the male anatomy, but Napster co-founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning have teamed up again for a video-chat pivot called Airtime.

Though it's not ready for deployment yet, Airtime is already getting support from celebrities like Jim Carrey, Alicia Keys, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus who can't wait to start a random conversation with a Facebook user online. The service is different from Chatroulette in that it actually protects the eyeballs of its users from "vulgar behavior, sexually suggestive behavior, violence, and animal cruelty". In other words, nobody associated with The 404 will receive an beta invite.… Read more

You won't find any revolutionary features with Facebook Chat IM, a free instant messaging program, but it does give you a way to easily interface with your Facebook friends.

The free instant messaging tool presents an interface that anyone who has used an IM program will understand. Even those with no experience using an instant messenger will find the simple, clean interface easy to follow. There's a field for your message, a Send button -- all you need to instantly keep up with what your Facebook pals are doing. And you'll find all the staples of instant … Read more