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Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app

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Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app

#211

Post by mxuribe »

jalami wrote: post #51

I'm still putting my money on vector.im and matrix.org. Closed source communication apps are not appealing to me, even if they come with an E2E promise. From a business perspective this makes sense for Google. A big problem with Skype was always the lack of ubiquity. Lot of people had it, but it required another install and explicit configuration. Now that Skype is nearly bundled with W10 and WebRTC has made skype.co…

I actually liked the original matrix mobile client on android, but vector.im still rocks! (And of course vector.im will keep getting updates while the original matrix client i believe will not.) Regardless of the client used, I agree 100% with your comments on using open protocols such as matrix.org; that's going to be the future! Kudos!

Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app

#212

Post by lozf »

lazyjones wrote: post #163

Wasn't WebRTC going to solve all this (e.g. https://appr.tc )? What happened, has it become browser cruft?

WebRTC handles the actual p2p audio and video, but has no method of signaling the other party for attention to actually join the "call", -- no concept of userid, so you'd always need to send a link to your WebRTC service via another channel - SMS, WhatsApp, Email, IRC, ... or some other "new" service, that's really just a wrapper to handle the userid / notification problem, and uses WebRTC underneath.

Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app

#213

Post by thedangler »

karma_vaccum123 wrote: post #20

I know these will be preinstalled on Android, but many friends and family use iOS and I will feel silly asking them to install Duo and Allo. Hangouts is able to mix voice, video and text just fine. Why start requiring separate apps? This is Google at its dumbest. They are squandering the small amount of momentum Hangouts has.

The one thing I hate about hangouts and I could never figure out how to change was when searching for someone to text. It would search googles list of people with google+ and not my contact list first. Random people I don't even know named Mark, for example, would show up for me to text.

Still makes no sense to me.

I'm on iOS.

Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app

#214

Post by mxuribe »

NoGravitas wrote: post #206
jalami wrote: post #51

I'm still putting my money on vector.im and matrix.org. Closed source communication apps are not appealing to me, even if they come with an E2E promise. From a business perspective this makes sense for Google. A big problem with Skype was always the lack of ubiquity. Lot of people had it, but it required another install and explicit configuration. Now that Skype is nearly bundled with W10 and WebRTC has made skype.co…

I'm following matrix.org and vector.im development, hoping they'll get good and take off. Main thing stopping me from jumping on board is that running a matrix home server is said to be very resource intensive and my home server is already overloaded. Maybe later.

I've actually been running my own matrix.org home server quite fine for over a couple of months now on a $5/month vps via digital ocean. ADMITTEDLY, the scale of users on this instance is low in numbers, so your mileage may vary with more users, more activity, etc. I'm using this low-spec vps simply to test things out, and learn about matrix.org. You should give it a try. Whether you use digital ocean or any other competitor vps provider, if after installing the matrix.org home server you find its not to your liking, you just kill off the vps; cheap and easy experiment! ;-)

Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app

#215

Post by cmrdporcupine »

wutbrodo wrote: post #42
karma_vaccum123 wrote: post #20

I know these will be preinstalled on Android, but many friends and family use iOS and I will feel silly asking them to install Duo and Allo. Hangouts is able to mix voice, video and text just fine. Why start requiring separate apps? This is Google at its dumbest. They are squandering the small amount of momentum Hangouts has.

Google's communications strategy has been bafflingly dumb for years and years now. Almost my ENTIRE social network (that was on chat; this was before every part of society was "on the Internet") used to be on Gchat. That's a massive network-effects advantage that they had ages before anyone else did (including Facebook, but Facebook's network did surpass them with the ability to find someone by their face). Almost a…

My analysis is far more cynical.

People (especially product managers and designers) don't get promoted at big software companies for incrementally and carefully improving on some existing thing.

Novelty and churn pays off in the internal promo economy of a large company. Steady at the oars does not.

Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app

#216

Post by Navarr »

nitin_flanker wrote: post #2

Why is Google launching multiple apps with similar functionalities? They already had Hangouts, they recently launched a group sharing app "Spaces". And now a new video calling app "Duo". They also have an app "Allo" which is another chatting platform. I am not complaining or anything, I am just curious about what are they planning to do with their old apps? i.e. Hangouts?

AndroidPolice has an article today[1] that Hangouts has failed as an all-in-one messaging platform. They're going to focus it in on the enterprise - where usage is much more prevalent, apparently - whatever that means.

Hangouts is likely to become a Google Apps Slack competitor, I guess.

[1]: http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/08/16/google-planning-focu...

Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app

#217

Post by lozf »

witty_username wrote: post #11
serpix wrote: post #7

Is there anything currently that works similarly without a google or Facebook account? My dad is so computer/phone illiterate that he cannot/won't register for either of these. It should work across iPhone/Android. I ask because video calling between my son and my dad is no longer as simple as FaceTime after I switched to Android

Some searching yielded https://appear.in/ (I'm not affiliated with that website)

Appear.in is great, but like all the other WebRTC chat services, you still need to use another method of communication to notify the other part(y/ies) of the call either by phone, SMS, IM, email, IRC etc. so they can then click the link to your chat and grant their browser permission to use their mic and/or camera, IF their browser is up-to-date enough, and not Safari. ... That's what makes these otherwise perfect services suboptimal for the majority of non-techies.

Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app

#219

Post by DropbearRob »

izacus wrote: post #116

Does this even work from a deskop computer or is it a mobile app only?

that's a great question. I cant test it because as it stands it isn't showing up for me (just showing that I'm still "registered" for it) but since it connects using a phone number (like whatsapp) I wonder how they authenticate the phone number on desktops/laptops? surely it'd be some kind of 2 factor auth, so it should be possible.. but I wonder whether it ships ready to do it.

Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app

#220

Post by basch »

simonh wrote: post #172
Nullabillity wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least it doesn't only run on Apple devices, like the complete joke that is FaceTime.

You'll need to explain that, I genuinely don't know what you say it. Facetime is just a feature. It's a calling option in contacts and any phone call to another iPhone can be turned into a facetime call at the push of a button. That means you don't even need to think about it. There's no install process, no configuration, no account to set up, it's just there. Furthermore because it can rely on guaranteed hardware fe…

there is an account and you do need to be signed into it in settings. if you don't sign in when you setup the phone, you separately need to sign into: app store, icloud, imessage, facetime, etc
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