Notices

yes, you can make calls over Skype and do IM. With the opening up of the Skype frontend source code and maybe with a closed source video calling backend (which should be possible using the cpu to do the compression needed according to some), then you'll have Skpe video calling.

You CAN do already MSN video calling, supposingly. See this : http://www.amsn-project.net/maemo-downloads.php
I'm also still waiting for my N900 so I didn't test it yet. But it looks very nice.

If they can do it, then it's a matter of time before the others follow. If the will is there, ALL is possible with a N900. No limits. Sky (and programmers) are the limit. That's why I pre-ordered my N900.
Even if every Android 2.0 phone released these days looks better on some or other points. The whole "picture" and vision is still much better for N9x0 and Maemo. It might be a stubborn, hard headded idea but it's a vision of the future.

Honestly, seldom I had doubted this much on buying a phone, there is soo much choice on good, capable, stable phones these days.

But I do think the N900 (and successors) has a very bright future, if Nokia keeps supporting the programming and user community and starts/keeps promoting Maemo and it's bright future it can have.

Amen.

It's honestly unacceptable that a device with a front facing camera doesn't have basic functionality my smartphone from 3 years ago has

You give me hope, at least! Let's see if aMSN works. I totally hope so. I agree that the potential of the N900 is awesome. Still I've seen so many mobile devices give great promise, and then in the end some feature, such as the webcam, would be shut off in some way, rendering it useless in certain scenarios. Thanks again!

Count my vote as well.
Video Call over IP, ex Skype, MSN etc would be great.
Killer app is the exact worlds.

I got a reply from aMSN forum admin, kakaroto. Unfortunately the webcam with voice over internet on the N900 does not work (yet). It does for the N810, though. Kakaroto believes it is a software issue in aMSN rather than hardware N900. Time will tell. Here's part of his reply:

"About the N900 and video/audio calling, in my tests it wasn't working, only the old 'webcam' feature was working. The problem is not with the N900, but as far as I know, it's a problem with amsn's code.. I might have a look at it someday."

I wouldn't mind if you join in the discussion and show your desire for this to work with aMSN on the N900, or for those of you who know programming perhaps to lend a hand, so that "someday" comes sooner rather than later.

For those of you who are/will become members of the aMSN forum, check the thread out here:


http://www.amsn-project.net/forums/v...=3659&start=45

It's weird that it doesn't have an app for that still.

It comes with a front camera after all.

So, can you make video calls on the N900 with aMSN? I kind of confused because after seeing screens, it seems like it work, but what Gadgety post is hinting towards it doesn't work. It would be nice if someone can clarify this issue.

Also, how safe is it to install aMSN on the N900 now? I'm kind of tempted to install it on my N900 at the moment.

I was also very surprised by the lack of software utilizing the front camera. I was expecting to have at least Skype video call or 3G video call support. But I am confident that given the hardware and the OS being Linux, someone will find a way for us users. It would be so awesome to have video sessions on the move

Hey all, I'm KaKaRoTo, aMSN developer.
Just want to clarify what I said to gadgety since it seems people are confused.
aMSN has supported the 'webcam feature' for years now, it's an MSN proprietary protocol that allows the webcam to be sent or received, which means a unidirectional video only call. You can of course send and receive the webcam, it just involves two 'send webcam' invites/accepts.
Since a year ago, I got a newer type of video calling feature implemented in aMSN (which was first released as the 0.98.1 version of aMSN a week ago).
The video calling feature is very different, it's not proprietary, it's all standard protocols (SIP, RTP, ICE, TURN...) and it's bidirectional real time audio and video calling. There's also a SIP/RTP bidirectional audio only call feature.
With aMSN, you can now do an audio and video call on your computers, and it works fine (usually, not always), we're using farsight and gstreamer and libnice, which are all bundled by default on the N900. The problem with aMSN and this audio/video SIP call is that the code in aMSN is not able to correctly create/start the pipeline, so it doesn't work. But I only tested this once, so maybe I was just unlucky that day.. maybe it all works fine, I have yet to try it again, but in theory it should have worked from the first try because the N900 has all the dependencies we need...

So that's what I said doesn't work and which I'd work on someday...
What *does* work already is the old proprietary 'webcam' feature. So you could always do a send/receive webcam invitation in amsn, get your webcam call in aMSN, and use your SIP/gtalk/skype/whatever account for an audio call at the same time.

I hope that clears out the confusion.

KaKaRoTo

Thank you for your clarification kakaroto!

After this piece of news I'm extremely likely to get the N900 over any other phone. Even though there is lack of some software I want to run, such as e.g. MyLifeOrganized as an Outliner which backs up on my PC; no voice dialing ability at the moment etc.
I'll find workarounds for the ability to be able to do web based video chat/call on the move.

Thanks again! Great news! Really, really great!