The new chat room is here:

http://www.flirtbox.com/flashcoms/videochat/server/php/videochat.php

Hey Toby

Been trying it out a while yesterday night.
For some reason it keeps disconnecting every 10minutes.

Yeah I tried it out..and get disconnected after about 5 minutes!!

just had a quick look at the log in page...did you go in the 'dirty chat room' Susie?

The dirty room is usually cleaner than the main room!

The users that managed to log in got no problem with the connection.
Only certain users that tries to log in would crash the room and everyone would be disconnected.

I tried the new chat room yesterday and it was strangely compelling and a bit scary. I even dug out my old webcam so people could see my boat race as I typed (and even drew) my usual brand of nonsense.

The combination of microphone, body language, scribbles and typed text in different combinations from different people was quite curious. Two or more people using voice tended to block each over as the system tried to work out who should be heard when.

It certainly reminded me that I need to draw more, to personally produce some art for the good of my soul and to refresh my spirit.

In that vein a graphic tablet (to be taken only after meals) could be a better peripheral for me than a microphone for that application, although Ed did show just what could be done with just a mouse.

the thing is its only fun with a smaller amount of people because you can only have five peoples cameras open

if there are too meany people sombody gets left out of the webcam chat and therefore has to type responses and then its just another chatroom

Cat is correct. Ideally there would be 5 bikini models in the chat room at any time. The number of blokes is inconsequencial personally.

I did some work with academic video conferencing systems whilst I was uni and its amazing how far they've come on in ease of use.

The video chat was great except for the crashing and the 5 user limit. I'm assuming its either a bandwidth guide or a licensing guide but its really difficult when someone is having a conversation with someone you aren't watching!

Despite its flaws, a communal chat system works well because you just get to natter with everyone as opposed to having to arrange to have an individual conversation with one person.

No Ed, if we didn't look at blokes we'd never get to see your lovely ceiling!

Prize-winning ceiling!

I concur with Beddo