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Yahoo! and Spotlife recently announced an agreement that provide Yahoo email users with the ability to sent video email. Have you used video email? Why or why not? What did you like or dislike about it?
Here’s the press release.
Jeff Hester
BigBlueBall.comI checked this out. It’s pretty cool. When you login to Yahoo! mail and compose a new email, you’ll see a new “add video” option down near the bottom of the page.
Clicking that link (the first time only) will prompt you to download the SpotLife Composer software (<300KB). It will auto-recognize your webcam (as long as it's not in use by another app) and, voila!, you should see yourself in a little window. You get 30 seconds of recording time, which includes audio and video. You can also load a file from disk, or save a file to disk.
The recipient doesn’t need to be running Yahoo Mail. They’ll get your text email, along with a link to your video mail. To see your video, they have to first watch a short (<30 seconds) video advertisement though.
The quality is pretty good, and the video size is 320×240. Pretty decent. It opened the video pretty quickly over my DSL connection, but it would be obviously slower over dial-up.
System Requirements are:
- Microsoft Windows 98SE/ME/2000
- Microsoft Windows Media Player 6.4 or higher with v7 codecs (Windows Media Player 7.x recommended)
- Compliant DirectShow (v6), Windows Logo Certified PC Video Camera
- Internet Explorer 5.01 or greater; Netscape Navigator 4.7 or greater.
Get more help on Yahoo Video Mail here.
Yahooooooo!
-FanaticOne more bit of good news:
Unlike a lot of video mail software (like what Quickcam bundles), Yahoo Video Mail does NOT attach the video to the email. This means that your recipient won’t have to wait for a huge file to download; they get to choose whether they want to download and view your video.And a little more on the limitations:
The recipient doesn’t have to use Yahoo Mail, but they do need to be on Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP.
Also, you’re limited to 30 “active” video mails. Video mails are available for viewing and can be replayed for up to 10 days, afterwhich they are automatically “expired.” As video mails expire, your count of active video mails decreases, allowing you to send more.
They imply that you can force video mails to expire sooner, but I haven’t been able to find any info on just how to do this.
-Fanatic
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