Google Talk has yet to have video conferencing like the other two competitors’ Instant Messengers (IM), MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger. Therefore, Santa Cruz Network has developed a plugin for Google Talk enabling Google Talk users to conduct video voice calls. They named the plugin Festoon.

Santa Cruz Network just launched the plugin for Google Talk few days ago followed by its success in launching the most popular video plug-in for Skype with more than 2.75 million downloads so far. For you information, Festoon works fine with both Google Talk and Skype now.

Festoon allows Google Talk users to talk to and see each other just like any other video conferencing feature in other IM, share applications, and engage in video experiences from 2 to 200 face-to-face communication. It offers high-quality group voice utilizing the industry leading GIPS audio codec used also by Google Talk, Skype, and AIM Triton.


Since Festoon is a third party plugin, is it secure to conduct video conferencing with your friends or colleagues? I think it is as Festoon uses 128-bit SSL encryption from end to end. This is almost identical to most of the encryption credit card transactions use in e-commerce website. However, this Festoon Beta only supports Windows 2000 and Windows XP at the moment, no other platforms.

To use Festoon, what you need are the followings :-

• At least 800MHz processor
• Windows 2000 or XP
• Internet Explorer 5.0+
• Skype or Google Talk latest shipping version

Although you do not need a microphone or webcam to use Festoon (if you only want to see them ), otherwise, you need a microphone and webcam.

You can download the plugin via the Festoon download page.

Besides, don’t forget to download some Google Talk Themes I created too.