The delay in more news about the voice chat certainly isn't because there is nothing to report (I love double-negatives). Indeed, the voice chat has been shaping up very quickly. Since my last post, many additional elements have been added in: alert preference for voice invitations, an incoming voice chat request window (that can flash), encryption of the voice data, real-time bitrate changes, display of the actual bitrate, mute for incoming and outgoing sound, display of icons and loading voice icons from a theme (still needing those voice icons though!), complete handling for delays in responding to voice requests, better error handling, and most importantly, a real long-distance two-way test!
Tonight I spoke (again, literally, with BitWise Voice) to cswake in North Carolina, my first genuine two-way BitWise Voice conversation. The quality of the audio stream was excellent. There was some lag, however, and that is going to be a priority to figure out ways to reduce it. I also tested with cswake using 28.8 dialup (though he remained on broadband) and the quality was nice, though the lag was worse (and into the realm of unacceptable). Definitely is something to work on! There are a few other minor tweaks to make, but nothing huge to report.
I also still need to move the code over to OS X and Linux for testing. Hopefully that will be an easy process as both Speex and PortAudio have been tested on both platforms.
More news soon, and I'd say it would be very reasonable that next week sometime will be an alpha version for everyone to play with. I'm definitely looking forward to getting some feedback as well as suggestions for how to improve the interface. Speaking of suggestions, anyone have a cool idea for what it could be called besides "BitWise Voice?"
To end on a totally unrelated note: in the next version, you will also be able to resize an image after placing it on the whiteboard. There's always a tweak working its way into BitWise...
"Since my last post, many additional elements have been added in: alert preference for voice invitations, an incoming voice chat request window (that can flash), encryption of the voice data, real-time bitrate changes, display of the actual bitrate, mute for incoming and outgoing sound, display of icons and loading voice icons from a theme (still needing those voice icons though!)"
I guess you reffering to the icons that that load the voice chat part. My bad.
I think what really threw me off was the typo, you said "Voic Icon" and I really thought you were pointing out a typo and/or asking if I had made a typo. :-/
But yes, the Voice Icons are the icons that would be used on the voice-related windows.
do you mean you are wanting users to make you some voice icons for you?
At the moment I think it's going to be covered, I don't want too many people working on it because then someone's time will be wasted. Check back to see if a new plea is being put out. :)