I've attempted to keep long running video sessions going on a few occasions and have come to the conclusion that it doesn't work when you're using the same computer to skype and to do other things (work, surf the web, etc.).

The problem is this: when you're using your computer, you're sitting two to three feet directly in front of the camera and microphone. The other party sees and hears what they would if they were standing three feet in front of you. If you mumble under your breath, they hear it. If you try to discretely pick your nose, they see it. In the real world, most people don't like to sit three feet directly in front of someone else for long periods of time, even when they're working together. Instead, you usually position yourselves around 8 to 10 feet apart, facing in the same direction or maybe even away from one another. When you need to talk, you raise your voices for short exchanges and walk across the room for longer conversations.

On top of the proximity problem, If you're using your computer to do something else, you tend to put the skype window in the background. This means that you can easily forget that someone is three feet away from you and say or do something you didn't intend to share. And since the conversation isn't up on your screen, it's not immediately obvious to someone else (say, your spouse) who walks into the room that you're on a call, so they might do something they didn't intend to share.

I would like to think that these problems could be solved by having a dedicated device positioned about 8 or 10 feet off to your side, basically in the same position that a physically present coworker would choose. That way, the mic wouldn't pick up your voice unless you raised it a little, and it would be easy to turn your back to the camera. Also, since the other person would always be visible, you and those around would be less likely to forget that someone else was present.

An iPad would be the perfect device for this setup. I don't have the new model, so I can't try it myself, but I'd be interested to hear from someone who has one and has tried a similar arrangement.

I wrote that post in 2008 as you note. Since then, I've gotten a bit skeptical of the ambient presence idea since I haven't actually seen it catch on anywhere. Webcams never got that popular outside the porn/voyeurism industry. I saw plenty of demos of things like speaker-following cameras a few years ago, but I don't see many around.

Cisco's wall-sized telepresence stunts have kinda remained rarely-used stunts. Mostly for when you want to put on a show. And I haven't heard of the ambient presence couple connection catching on either. I've never used it despite being in the remote situation for several years.

So despite the ability to do ambient presence cheaply, we still do "appointment presence" or "on-demand presence" so to speak, and tend to default to the lowest bandwidth medium that will do the job. Is it just adoption delay, or something more fundamental? I think it's something more fundamental. I don't use the phone if I can email. I don't call if I can text. In web conferences I turn my camera off unless someone specifically asks to look at my face, and can pull rank on me and make me do it. I use the chat in Skype more often than I use audio.

The NYT had a piece about how people now think using the phone is rude if you don't need to. I totally agree:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/fashion/20Cultural.html

In fact the only kind of ambient presence that has caught on in even a minor way is Facebook wall updates/Twitter.

So I think we're missing something about the psychology of collaboration. Until I understand that, I won't speculate on the future of Google's shiny new toys, but I will propose the following new conjectures:

1. For any communication need, be it foreground, ambient or both, people will use the lowest bandwidth, minimum modality, most asynchronous channel (let's call this channel the minimal channel) that will do the job. In most cases, this is asynchronous text.
2. For any communication need, the minimal channel is determined by the emotional intensity of the communication need. You escalate from text to audio to video to rich immersive 3D video to whatever future olfactory/tactile things might be available based on how much you need emotion data bits.
3. For ordinary, non-intimate interactions, text/visual symbols (via emoticons) has more than enough bandwidth to accommodate the emotional range.

So in a sense I have gone 180 degrees in my views. Initially I used to think richer modalities were about more sensory experience and that people desire sensory experience for its own sake. But the more I thought about it, the less sense this made.

If we were actually optimizing for sensory experience in a brain-in-a-vat full Matrix illusion sense, today's tech is a bad joke. The difference between text vs. the best of today's immersive, holographic 3d, on a scale where being there in real life is 100%, is like 0.1% vs. 0.2% (I don't mean this as a rhetorical percentage; I suspect if you did the analysis of bit rates of full sensory brain-in-a-vat experience, they WILL be orders of magnitude higher, I vaguely recall some estimate like this in Denett's Consciousness Explained).

Another way to think of this is as follows: I find digital versions of famous paintings or 3d walkthroughs of famous buildings quite satisfying. But I find even the best digital recreations of nature (say, even a simple walk in the woods) completely unsatisfying with respect to the real thing. This means that human created environments have very very low information content compared to full-blown nature.

So why are we even bothering with this 0.1% to 0.2% upgrade? The only meaningful extra stuff it buys us is emotional communication, which is actually fairly low bandwidth. If I recall correctly, reading body language or facial expressions is about a fairly small bit-rate... much higher than verbal, like 5-6 times higher, but still, nothing compared to full-blown sensory, brain-in-a-vat bitrates.

And when is it ever great for BOTH parties to want this extra emotional communication bit rate? Certainly not most business situations, where we all want the low bandwidth so we can backchannel, be unshaven, work in pajamas etc. There is too much of an adversarial element and misaligned motives. The sales guy may want to see his client because he can manipulate better. The client may want to avoid being seen for exactly the same reason. Why do poker players wear dark glasses?

Probably only very intimate communication acts with near zero conflict and a very noisy text channel qualify. This means even most couples don't qualify.

So ambient presence with a baby or pet is likely a great feeling. Or a doctor with a patient. Or a military unit coordinating a real-time attack with shared situation awareness and verbal silence. Or some future augmented reality MMPORG where you play immersively in a faux-real environment instead of with avatars in a game environment.

These are outlier scenarios.

So my prediction: the everyday stuff will stay textual. Google Hangout will be little used in ambient ways.

There are several key differences:

• Google Talk's video chat only works from within an open Gmail session. Skype is installed desktop software
• Skype 5 includes "Group video beta", a multi-party video chat system that in our experience seems to work pretty well (but costs money after an evaluation period)
• Skype also includes the ability to broadcast screen-sharing over the video channel, which can be extremely convenient depending on your use-case
• In terms of quality, both are comparable if you install "Video chat enhancements" in Gmail Labs (http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2010/09/new-in-labs-video-chat-enhancements.html)
• In their highest-quality modes, both can have a pretty significant impact on your system performance on lower-end PCs. Especially with Google Talk video chat we've seen stutters and dropouts when doing even low-resource actions (like opening a new tab in Chrome)
• Only Skype offers video calling on mobile devices, and only on iOS devices.

Just as SMS still stays relevant today in different forms (e.g. Inter-working with apps, alternative or low cost messaging), voice could be the new text for messaging. And Facebook is definitely looking to capitalize on this.

Potential user stories via context, intent, location and content which Facebook could garner from it's growing 1 billion user base, could be staggering. This coupled with the fact that close to 50% of Facebook users are accessing FB via their mobiles lends further cred to its foray into voice messaging.

Lastly, as with all contents, FB will continue to tread a fine line on its privacy policies with its users, which now will include social voice.

The “new” Google+ is an obvious slim down of the original Google+. Most of the original features have been either removed completely or moved offsite. This includes the local Google business listings (now Google My Business) and the Google+ photo stream (now Google Photos).

The idea for splitting up Google+ started in early 2015 when Bradley Horowitz (Google’s VP of Products) decided to take Google Photos and Streams in their own separate directions. This was the first “tug” so to speak, on the thread that has resulted in the unraveling of Google+.

Google hangouts and Hangouts on Air were both awesome and simple to use. They were probably the only real unique features that Google+ had to offer for most average users.

Google Hangouts is now a standalone and more robust mobile app and a chrome/browser application.

Google Hangouts on Air has now migrated to “Youtube Live”

See: Create a live stream

See: YouTube live FAQs

See: Introduction to live streaming

I don't think such charges would stand the trial in a court case. It will be quashed the moment someone decides to contest it.

Skype is not a service provided by Bharti Airtel, neither is it making use of any infrastructure of Bharti Airtel. It is using packets of data for which the user has already paid the charges. By making up random hocus pocus that they are infringing on the territory of telephony services and becoming virtual network providers, they cannot charge us.

The day my service provider charges me for a whatsapp message, I'll be the first to write a formal letter of protest and surrender my connection. If all service providers join hands, then I'll not use a phone at all, but I'll not pay for a whatsapp msg or Skype calling as long as I'm paying for data packs. If Internet access is made free, then I might reconsider.

I have a slightly different view on this. I believe that the experience within Facebook is self consistent, people use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and discover new friends (and effective partners).
The availability of video chat is great but the common person will escalate to video chat only when the receiver is very important. The problem I see is that VOIP lives in another space, in another portion of the person daily life and business practices. We have already seen that Skype did not overtook VOIP or gotomeeting when it comes to B2B activities.
These are the type of apps I believe have potential to bring disruption in B2B.
Mobile Video Messaging : The New Frontier

The impact depends on the quality of user experience when escalating from messaging to text voice and from text voice to live voice.

Right now Whatsapp user experience in messaging and voice messaging is excellent and the speed of communication in conjunction with the fact that the service is basically free makes adoption very easy.

Escalating voice messaging to live voice takes several steps in my view. First the availability of complete contacts list. In android for example not all your contacts are reflected on Whatsapp for a variety of reasons. If you have to call someone you might have to go on your main phone directory. This creates a mental barrier in using whatsapp that could be enhanced by the perception that internet telephony quality is anyhow lower. Thus in the user mind this reasoning could be on : "in order to call person xyz I need to spend the time on the phone book, than I have to spend time to link back to whatsapp for a lower quality call".

If escalating from voice message to live vice occur like in "hangout", that is within the context of a conversation that has already been initiated in whatsapp than this is the path of less burden and more convenience for the user. As such, if voice quality is reasonable, user will prefer to continue on whatsapp.

I remember reading articles on Google+ when it first launched.
In order to attract businesses to create profile pages on G+, and to actively use the platform, they had to up the game a bit.
Why move to a Facebook clone where you have no followers?
So collaboration and circles where a core concept. Being able to use Google plus not just to promote your business, but to actually run your business on some level, would make it far more attractive for SMBs.

Google+ allowed for easier collaboration on Google docs, and if you were already a Google Apps customer, it only made sense that your social network allows you to collaborate better (via video in hangouts) and even allow you to mark areas of the screen/documents you were discussing in a conference.

Remember, Gtalk was around for a while and they probably needed a face-lift too. Having yet another IM client wouldn't make users embrace it. But having a client that allows IM, VoIP, multi-party conferencing and document collaboration during the conference makes it quite a robust platform for communication.