Our application for video chat (Searching For Humans) would be available shortly on the BB App World. It is currently awaiting approval, but we would like to hear valuable feedback from Crackberry users before we start working on the next update.
The application is designed so that you can have a conversation (full support for video) with any other Playbook or Android user worldwide for FREE.
You can chat with your existing friends or make a new friend. More screenshots are available at our website.
We plan to provide a desktop client for Windows and Mac users shortly.
While you wait for the app to be available, please post your thoughts on must have features for such an application?
Here is the private link to the bar file for Crackberry users - Searching For Humans.
We have primarily created this application for Playbook users, it is possible that you may run into some compatibility issues if you attempt to contact Android users at this point. We hope to improve this application with your feedback in the future!
It is not easy to install the bar file until it is available on the Blackberry App Store (downloading it from the browser wouldn't work even though it may be present in the downloads folder), but if you have access to the developer tools and SDK then you would be able to try it out at this stage. We will post here once the application is approved and is available for general use.
Ok so I got it up and running but ran into a couple issues:
1) scrolling on the main list is very slow
2) searching didn't work for me, I was trying to search for another account I had set up on my 2nd PlayBook but it didn't find it
3) getting back to the main list of users is a little confusing after you go into search and no results are found, you have to search again with a blank field to get there.
4) kept seeing a lot of "null ..." in the list
That all being said it looks like this app has some great potential, if you need some more testing done please let me know.
Awesome, thanks for trying it out! We have approved your membership as well (part of the requirements from RIM). It was great to be able to chat with you using our application, helps confirm that it does work in the real world.
Awesome, thanks for trying it out! We have approved your membership as well (part of the requirements from RIM). It was great to be able to chat with you using our application, helps confirm that it does work in the real world.
Yup the chat worked. Could you approve my other account then "ShaoSoft" so I can test from PlayBook to PlayBook?
Thanks.
Oh and just another thing I noticed... It keeps reverting me to an 18yr old female in my profile :P
We have approved both of your accounts now. It is possible that you clicked the register button twice (before and after filling the details), which created two ShaoSoft entries - we have removed the 18 year old female profile We will put in some safeguards to prevent users from making that mistake. Both your user names does show up in searches now. If you are still having issues, please try to create a new account or attempt to refresh the list? There is also an option in the settings to clear your local cache.
Regarding your earlier feedback, the search is done over the network first. Future searches will use information from the cache whenever possible. We will try to provide a more intuitive way to return to the home page. (There is the home icon on the top left that should work anytime). Thanks for your feedback, it is indeed great to hear from real users!
Thanks, got the video chat working so heres a little more feedback:
1) Click the camera icon in the chat makes the video skewed a bit.
2) In landscape they keyboard covers a lot of the video, perhaps on that view get rid of the action bar and layout the icons somewhere else? (ie on the side) it fits perfectly in portrait mode, but the video is sideways then, so maybe also rotate video when in portrait?
Excellent! It looks like you have got it all working We are working with RIM on the skewed video problem when you switch cameras between front and rear. There are a few issues around cameras and device orientation. It might be fixed later by an OS update or if we can find a workaround. Good catch though!
dnyanks310 - you would need a developer environment (Windows/Mac etc) to load the bar file directly, see earlier posts for details.
Thanks for all the great feedback, let us hope that RIM doesn't take as long as Apple to approve new applications ;-)
If you are not a software developer, we would recommend that you wait rather than attempt to load the app yourself. eg. you would get updates automatically if you install from the AppWorld.
For the curious, you can follow the instructions at RIM website to install the SDK & then load apps from a Windows or Mac computer. Warning: You are on your own
Currently, we are focused on bringing the best video chat experience to Playbook. We would look into iPhone/iPad support later this year depending on interest level from users.
But, we do intend to support Windows & Mac desktop users this summer or even earlier if possible.