TokBox, a worthy opponent

Until now, I haven’t seen any [Confabio](http://confabio.com/) like websites. There is a project called [stickam.com](http://stickam.com) but my experience with using it is that it’s just a big maze of teenage chatrooms.

Last week [aczid](http://aczid.digigen.nl/) notified me of a project called [TokBox.com](http://tokbox.com/) which is pretty similar to Confabio. ToxBox can be summarized as follows:

* free video chat
* no downloads
* create your video-profile (a tokbox?)
* embed your tokbox into your blog, myspace, facebook etc

Also, it allows you to do easy video mailing. To solve the same notification issues Confabio is facing they use IM triggers. Unfortunately they only have AIM notifications so far. Confabio is trying to solve this problem with a downloadable tray icon (like [wakoopa.com](http://wakoopa.com)) and by providing open API’s / easy accessible URL’s.

tokbox pros:

* looking good, especially the flash parts
* embedding makes it good to share
* your video-profile is a simple url: tokbox.com/dominiek for example

tokbox cons:

* another site to register for, don’t know if you need to do it to chat with someone too (I assume not)
* not very clear how you can actually chat with someone
* IM alerts only through AIM

I think it’s quite obvious that Confabio will go a different direction then sites as Stickam and TokBox. We aim to provide:

* a free means of personal communication (without downloads or signup)
* an easy accessible way of having a meeting with a team of coworkers