Via the official Gmail blog:

That’s why today we’re launching voice and video chat — right inside Gmail. We’ve tried to make this an easy-to-use, seamless experience, with high-quality audio and video — all for free. All you have to do is download and install the voice and video plugin and we take care of the rest. And in the spirit of open communications, we designed this feature using Internet standards such as XMPP, RTP, and H.264, which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat.

I assume this is only for chat within Gmail, rather than with the separate GTalk application. I use both, and would like to see it within both. Yet either way, cool stuff. I am eager to try this out, yet will have to get someone to install the addon first. That being the only hurdle to using the video chat feature, you must install something to have it work.

On that note, isnt it irratating when you have more than a healthy amount of tabs open and you need to reload your browser?

Just an update to my last post… I had heard some online rumors that PC Club was being acquired by a new company and would be reopening. Official news post here.

The last weekend, I ordered some computer parts from the only local computer retailer left in my area. I consider them the only local store as Best Buy and Circuit City do not count, and Comp USA (if you count them) closed recently too.

Expecting the parts to arrive today (Tuesday), I was excited to see a number call me that resembled PC Club. I got a voicemail after missing the call. The call dropped so I called back. I was surprised to hear the sales person inform me that PC Club was closing and I would need to come into the store to get a refund on my order. Um… What!? Closing? I asked him what he meant, and he explained on the phone that they were bought out or some crap.

After a few moments, I was partially upset that I was not going to be getting my parts as expected today, but that turned into a moment of fear. This all happened so fast that I was afraid I may not get my money back. So I did a quick Technorati search for anything PC Club related. Only found one thing, this. Now this is claiming bankruptcy, so this is what I left with as I immediately drove to the store.

Upon arriving, the door was closed and the security gates closed. I had to ask to come in, only being let in after I informed them that I was called about a refund. According to what the sales guys told me, a new owner had purchased the company 2 or 6 weeks ago (I forget which it was). And he just up and disappeared after the transaction was complete. I am not sure which I believe more, Bankrupt or new owner. Either way, it really blows. Not to mention, I feel really bad for the employees. No one would like to go to work and find out around lunch that you are out of a job as of tomorrow.

A tech support worker told me that he was told subtly to not take in a new order as he was helping a customer. He was then pulled aside and told the bad news. Ouch!

HardOCP is also mentioning Bankruptcy. I saw another site that mentioned PC Club closing and that all product was being sold at cost. This was not the case when I went in. My order was only held up by a CPU. The MoBo, Vid Card, and Memory were all in stock. So when I was there, I asked if they had any other CPU’s that I could get, hoping to get something off. The Manager would not sell at discount, and I ended up only taking the Vid Card and getting refunded the rest. One other customer was in getting his order, and was told same thing. They were not selling anything to anyone, normal or discount. And were trying to refund.

Regardless, I ordered my stuff through NewEgg. And I sure hope that refund goes through. If it doesn’t I am not sure who I would even call to complain.

Update – From HardOCP Forums:

So….basically, we all got screwed.

2 years ago, the owner/founder (Jackson Lan) passed away after a long battle with cancer. Now it seems his dream passed with him. He had an outlook for PCC that never would have ended in this manner.

His brother took over the company, and shortly thereafter ~15 store were abruptly closed citing reasons of ineffectiveness. Of course many of these stores had yet to be open for 2-3 years. Those stores were in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, etc.

Roughly about a month ago, maybe a little more – the current president, the vice-president, and a couple of regional mgrs were ‘separated’ from the company. Then came a massive reorganization in which HQ was restructured from the top down. It seemed as if the company was consolidating and preparing an effort to return to the old days of focusing on the ‘brick and mortar’ business that it was founded on. In the weeks following, cost cutting measures were implemented and more staff rearranged and removed…including the heads of accounting and HR. Still, we were all reassured that this was being done for the good of the company.

Then come the inventory issues. All stores in the company are running short of product and the distribution center has no inventory on hand. We are told this is because new purchase accounts are being established and the lull is only temporary. District managers are plainly telling store manager’s as recent as yesterday that inventory problems should be taken care of soon and that we may just have to deal with it for a couple of more weeks. In the mean time, customers continues to ask if we’re going out of business – resellers are openly pissed about not being able to get product.

Then there’s today. And all of you already know what happened. Senior management disappeared and were unreachable by the company attorney during the ‘meeting of doom’. We closed the store, made final deposits, got our stuff, and left.

If you talk to the people who have been with PCC for a while, they’ll tell you that the current state of PCC was not always like this and it in no way resembles the founders original dream.
PCC was good to me, and I worked my ass off for them while I was there. We had a good store. We had loyal customers. We had solid employees. And we continually posted a profit.

Loyal employees deserved better and this should have gone down much differently.

May 28th would have been 6 years for me. I’ll miss my store, the people I worked with, and those I interacted with daily.

I guess Adobe got a lot of feedback about concerns similar to mine below. Potential users were not happy about the prospect of their content being used without consent of royalties. Although the new EULA is not up yet, they are working on some new language. I may forget, but I will try to watch for the new agreement when it comes out.

More on this from ArsTechnica…

Adobe has released a free web based version of Photoshop, called Photoshop Express. From a photography perspective, it offers the basic tools that some may need such as cropping and red-eye removal. Yet this is obviously not intended to replace an experienced designers or photographers arsenal of tools. Yet I think the idea is pretty cool for those that do not want to install the free tools that exist such as GIMP. And from a development standpoint, I really think that the creators of the site inside of Adobe did a very nice job. It looks great, functions well, and seems to be pretty easy to use. Yes, it is a bit slow. But this is web based, so what do you expect? And this is an early version, I am sure it will improve as time goes on.

Overall this is not a surprising move on Adobes part. I read somewhere a while back that Adobe would like to move all its applications into a web based subscription style service. While I do not like this idea one bit, the concept seems to be liked by most software houses. The idea of a continual flow of revenue along with piracy issues would obviously make this desired from their standpoint.

Yet, part of my issue with the service that would make me never use it should I need (say I was offsite and needed a quick image crop), is the TOS. Not to mention concerned about any future online offering from Adobe. Scroll down to#8…

8. Use of Your Content.

1. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.
2. “Publicly accessible” areas of the Services are those areas of the Adobe network of properties that are intended by Adobe to be available to the general public. However, publicly accessible areas of the Services do not include Services intended for private communication or areas off the Adobe network of properties such as portions of World Wide Web sites that are accessible via hypertext or other links but are not hosted or served by Adobe.

For someone uploading a new photo of a crazy party of the weekend (perhaps the intended audience?) this may not be a large issue. Yet anyone worried about copyright and protecting their property, this is a show stopper. When I think about any online service, this is the first thing I think about. Not only privacy from unauthorized access, but “authorized” access to your data from within the controlling body. Call me paranoid, but my content will stay on my computer than you very much. This declaration in the TOS is expected in this situation to be honest. Yet I would be very curious how they would word the terms if they ever do move a more professional application to web based use, such as the full Photoshop or Illustrator.

Now this section also clearly states public areas of the site. I guess it comes down to whether or not new uploads will default to public galleries and sections. I think I am going to setup an account to see what I think after exploring it in depth some more. I guess the TOS just makes me uneasy with my already paranoid view of publicly accessible private information.