If you are looking to try out one of the latest and best performing video conferencing technologies available out there, you have come to the right place.

Robin Good and Milton Chen of VSee while using the VSee videoconferencing technology

Quietly launched over a year ago from a group of former Stanford graduate students and professors, VSee is a new outstanding P2P video-conferencing technology that integrates text chat, screen and document sharing, annotation and full session recording while remaining extremely easy and simple to use.

The only drawbacks of this technology are that for now it is only Windows compatible, and second that it is not yet targeted at the large consumer market, but it is almost exclusively sold to a few large and very prestigious corporations.

It is likely that until VSee doesn't strike some major new deals or gets new fresh funding from some capital firm you won't be able to buy this for your own private use. But things may also turn out to be not as expected. For one, you can fully test and use VSee right now, to get an idea of how good this tool really is and with the minimum of effort in terms of setting it up.

Here some more details about this great new videoconferencing tool:

Vsee is a browswer-based video conferencing application requiring a simple installation via an IE active-X plugin or FireFox extension.

If you don't have the software yet installed on your PC, calling another VSee user will immediately launch the plugin installation procedure. Once that is done, video calling another person on VSee is as simple as typing the "name" for that person in the search box appearing at the center of the VSee home page.

Once launched VSee is very compact, simple and intuitive to use. The first unique trait you notice is that VSee uses only the video window(s) required by standard videoconferencing applications, to seamlessly integrate all of its key functions. So, there is no additional user interface estate to deal or learn outside of what you see inside and around your VSee floating video window.

The few and simple controls VSee offers are all immediately accessible from the top frame of the video window and they integrate the ability to freeze video (with a nice fade out effect), mute the microphone or to access a simple menu containing access to the other key features of VSee.

Video and audio performance are quite impressive, as video appears crisp and the frame rate allows near-perfect lip-synch. The overall video image quality is also very good though what will impress anyone is the fact that VSee does all this in an amazingly small amount of bandwidth. During my own tests and during the video interview I did with VSee Milton Chen, overall bandwidth utilized during a two-party videoconference with the above characteristics was never above 256 Kbps. For the quality delivered that is something you don't see often. So, even the raunchiest ADSL line out there, and believe me there are lots of them served to many non-competent and uncomplaining users, would be quite enough when using VSee to carry out an effective videoconference with two people.

In Vsee, video windows are fully floating on your screen and can be positioned just anywhere you like.

A document sharing facility also allows direct and immediate ability to show any document or application running on your PC to your live connecting videoconferencing party.

Not only.

The other party can also intervene in real-time to edit, contribute, and annotate any part of the document you have opened for sharing. The visualization and display of the document shared is excellent and provides a high-res display of text and fonts that make co-working at a distance quite effective indeed. Imagine a GoToMeeting session on steroids, where video and audio are fully integrated.

Recording is also integrated in VSee, allowing any of the participants in a session to fully record video, audio and any document or application being shared.

VSee can manage from two to over 100 simultaneous video feeds depending on the amount of bandwidth you and the other participants have available. By assuming a load of about 100 Kbps for each participant it is easy to determine how many simultaneous participants you can have in one VSee session.

For most corporate users this will mean that the typical need of a two to four party videoconference can be fully satisfied even where there isn't a major surplus of connectivity bandwidth.

Video is transmitted at a resolution of 320 by 240 pixels and at an officiale minimum frame rate of 10-30fps or more, depending again on bandwidth and VSee version (there is a Pro and a Scientific version, targeted at academia and R&D which works wonders on very high-speed Internet networks and also on internal LANs).

Last but not least, VSee satisfies the ever higher demands that corporate users make on security by providing standard or triple AES 256-bit encryption for all VSee based sessions.

VSee is marketed as a hosted service or as a licensed turnkey server-based system, which a company can purchase and install within its premises.

VSee is a very young and small company and from what I have seen, it likes to takes its steps prudently and one-at-a-time. If the results achieved so far are any indication of how much business potential they have in the near future, my take is that you will hear more about VSee, and that such breakthrough video technology as theirs will be soon very appetizing to many a company, both large and small.

VSee is presently marketed almost exclusively to large multi-national corporations which are test-driving its use as an integral new component in organizational management.

Vsee has also been selected as one of the companies that will be showcased at DEMO 2006, taking place next month in Phoenix Arizona.

I couldn't recommend it more.

N.B.: Next week I will be releasing the audio portion (with a full text transcript) of my interview with Milton Chen of Vsee. You get to hear my first approach with this latest version of Vsee, during an actual videoconferencing session with Milton Chen. During the session lots of interesting research information relating to the effective use of real-time videoconferencing and its application in scenarios as different as corporate online interviews versus online language learning are discussed. Milton and the guys are VSee own a wealth of information about the human side of effective real-time video conferencing that is rarely seen in other conferencing and collaboration companies.

Too much emphasis is generally placed on the engineering and technical development side with hardly no investment of time and resources in scientific research focusing on the human aspect of this new communication equation.

I strongly invite you to stay tuned to read or listen to this interview as it shares very useful information about videoconferencing that is generally hard to find. Even though the audio recording has not been created with the Vsee integrated recording facility (I didn't know at the time if the video interview that VSee had all these capabilities), it offers the opportunity to everyone to learn more about a great new videoconferencing tool and about the concepts you need to be aware of, to make video work for, and not against you.

System Requirements.

Try it out now.

Install plugin now from here.

Live demo. remotely view a VSee connected webcam, which you can also tilt, pan and zoom with your mouse. (You must have first installed the VSee browser plug-in for this demo to work).

More information.