ooVoo

OoVoo is an audio and video instant messaging client for Windows. It allows you to create a list of friends who use the same system and call them from a Friend list, just like you would with any other messenger. Both audio and video chats are supported. You can record calls in real time, without exiting them or having to use another application. The video and audio quality is remarkable, and ooVoo provides tips about performance and usage at all times. It constantly scans your CPU usage, so, if it goes over a limit, it will warn you about how that can affect your video quality. There is also a connection speed display, which shows your latency with your friends via green, yellow or red bars. The red bars mean that your connection is slow, and green is good.

But conversations with friends who already have ooVoo are not what interests me the most. OoVoo allows you to give anyone a web link that they can open in Firefox or Safari, and they can place a call to your ooVoo account without even installing the application. Video and audio are supported as well, and the quality is magnificent. You can also send audio and video messages to people's e-mails. If you pay for a subscription, you can chat with up to 6 people simultaneously, and screen sharing is also activated.

In short, ooVoo is full-featured video conferencing tool, and Skype has nothing on it. If this was a little more popular, I can see many users switching to it. The fact that it is supported both in Mac OS X and Windows only makes it better.