White Pine Software is offering new tools for creating video chat rooms accessible through a standard Web browser.
The new Video Chat Your Site software development kit is based on White Pine's CU-SeeMe videoconferencing product. It allows for video, audio and text-based chat to be embedded in a browser window. On the back end, the SDK integrates with White Pine's MeetingPoint server, which allows multiple end users to participate in the same conference simultaneously.
"The end user does not need to have any software [other than a browser] pre-installed," says Peg Landry, vice president of marketing at White Pine. "The user can go to a URL and instantly participate in a conference."
Landry notes users do not even need a camera, as they still should be able to see and hear the other users and can communicate via text chat.
The SDK itself is a series of JavaScript libraries that can be tailored to a specific site's needs. White Pine also ships a number of templates to help customers get off the ground quickly. Also, the kit comes with an Admission Center module that can be used to limit chat group access to specific users or domain names.
"For cliques, clubs and affinity groups, adding video chat is the next logical step," says Andrew Davis of Wainhouse Research in Brookline, Mass. "Especially with more people connecting to the Internet with cable modems and DSL."
White Pine says that the combination of Video Chat Your Site SDK and MeetingPoint can handle around 200 simultaneous users on an standard Windows NT server.
Pricing starts at $23,990 for the SDK and a MeetingPoint server license. A revenue sharing model is in place for distribution of the CU-SeeMe browser plug-in. For those that want unlimited distribution without the revenue sharing, the price is $200,000.
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