The history of science fiction is rife with plays on the avatar. Whether a man is able to transfer his mind into another physical being, as in Jim Cameron’s Avatar, or live a virtual life seemingly indistinguishable from reality, as in the Matrix, there seems to be a human fascination with the transformation of our physical presence. Google has just taken us one (whimsical) step forward towards such a dream by introducing a whole series of effects for their Google+ Hangouts service.
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
Rounds, the Facebook “communitainment” platform that lets users video chat, play games, watch videos, listen to music, look at pictures, take snapshots and engage in other activities together with friends (old and new) announced Wednesday that they will be launching nine new activities by 2012.
How do you use video chat? Do you use it to talk to friends and family? To play games? Watch movies? Keep your long-distance relationship afloat? A new infographic from video chat app Rounds, The Video Connection, explores the ways in which we use video chat, as well as the demographics of those who are chatting.
Rounds, the video chat app that lets you chat, play games, watch YouTube videos and do other activities with your friends, has just surpassed one million monthly active users and, to celebrate, they’ve partnered with Screenr to add new recording capabilities to their application.
Video chat has been big for a while now, but with the launch of Google Plus’ Hangout and Facebook’s Skype integration, the buzz around the “Alive Web” is bigger than ever. A new infographic from Column Five Media and Rounds compares the top players in the video chat game.
If you have an Android smartphone and want to do video calling from your phone, you will either need to have a Nexus S that is running Android 2.3.4 or you need fring, which is a free app that you can find in the Android Market. Today fring announced support for more Android devices including the HTC Flyer, the Samsung Droid Charge, the Nexus S, Samsung Galaxy S 2, and LG G2X, with a release of an upgrade to the fring Android app.
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Pick or Skip, a new New York/Paris-based startup, is cleaning up random video chat and providing users with a safe and fun environment to connect to people with similar interests and chat, sans perverts.
I had the opportunity to talk with Jason Katz, CEO of online video chat service Paltalk about the implications of new platforms like SocialEyes and what the future holds in store for online video chat.
Interactive video chat service Rounds has emerged as one of the best places to interact with friends on Facebook. Now they’ve launched a new random chat feature to add strangers to the mix. It’s like Chatroulette, only a lot less icky and a lot more fun!
Social network Bebo has just launched a new video chat service called bChat, powered by vChatter, to enhance user experience by matching up its 117 million global members for random chat.
