Last week I was talking to Chris Hart from ReactionGrid about their Skype solution they have built. She blogged on what they made here.
In short, it is a system where you go to a webpage and add your Skype to your avatar ID. To start a call with somebody you wear a badge. Others can click on it telling you they want to start a call. Then you can click the badge and you get a Skype link, which when clicked opens Skype and starts a call to the persons that clicked on your badge.
It is a nice system. With it you can setup a 1 to 1 or 1 to 4/5 person Skype conference pretty easy, but when starting a conference with more then that it can become a problem. Chris was looking into using Skype4COM, but didn’t have the time to look into how to get it working. Fortunately for her, I got some time and started investigating how to use Skype4COM to create a little conference system.
The first question is, can Skype4COM initiate a call to another person? Answer is yes. Second question, can Skype4COM then also add persons to that call? Answer on this question is also yes. With that figured out it was time to build a full application that can be used to create conferences on ReactionGrid.
The application exist of two parts. One is a web server, the other is the part that talks to Skype4COM, and a little front-end to control it all. The web server is built in to receive a request from ReactionGrid to join the conference. This is done with a http call from a LSL script in world. Once a request is received, the person is then added to the call. Some other nice features is that it has a queue system because request can come in much faster than calls can be made. There are some other features in it that just make it a nice little application.
Want to know more, contact Kyle on ReactionGrid. (PS tell him you have read this article).
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