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ICYMI: Gameroulette, 3D-glass printing and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-356435{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-356435, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-356435{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-356435").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: An MIT group built a 3D printer that extrudes glass rather than plastic; they believe the technology could be used to make cheaper fiber optic cables. Chatroulette users were treated to a surprise live first-person shooter game that pitted them against creepy zombies. The rest of us totally missed out. A new tech-enabled bartending buddy would sync with its smartphone app and walk you through making the perfect cocktail: All for $39.
Chatroulette users stumble into a live-action zombie shooter
Chatroulette often brings surprises, but usually not good ones. However, several users were recently greeted with an amazing real life, live-streaming Doom-style first person shooter (FPS) game complete with undead characters and a creepy graveyard setting. To play, they talked the hero character through the scenes, giving commands like "Run! Run, fat boy, run!", "Go for the head shot!" or "Check what's in that pot!" The "game" was replete with sound effects, blood and guns, including a "rhino turret" and rocket launcher. The reaction of the players was beyond hilarious, with many adapting surprisingly quickly to the scenario ("Hit him again to make sure he's dead!").
Airtime testing new video post features, improved buddy list
Remember Airtime, the Facebook-integrated video calling / media sharing service with a Chatroulette flavor? Well if not, we don't blame you -- usage stats suggest it hasn't quite taken off, but maybe the new features it's testing will secure a few more fans. No longer is the service restricted to the here and now, as the major change is all about video posts. Use Airtime to record a message and you can post it to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or via a traditional email to get the conversation started. Friends can then reply to your message through Airtime with a video post of their own, and so on. Its buddy list has also been given a little love, so now it shows friends as online, idle or offline, and details your interaction timeline. Whether the features are enough to inspire wider uptake is questionable, but for the few that actively use Airtime, the updates are out in the wild now on a "limited public release."
Fring launches Playgrounds for group video chat with friends or randoms (video)
We all remember kicking it in anonymous chat rooms masked behind the safety of a screen name, but today Fring announced a new way to engage with randoms -- this time with video. Playground lets users start their own video chat or join an existing room based on topic, with friends or complete strangers. We've seen four-way video from the app before, but the new feature takes it a step further -- similar to joining a Hangout in Google+, only on a mobile phone. Although it does sound creepily Chatroulette-ish, it's free (unlike Skype's group video calling) and works on iOS and Android Phones -- so go ahead, take a peek and see what's actually going on in "Voldemort's Death Eater" channel. Check out the demo and full PR after the break.
Exclusive: TinyChat to enable location-linked video chat on iPhone 4
When it comes to ad-hoc video chatting with friends, strangers or space aliens, the heir apparent to the Chatroulette throne is TinyChat. This Flash-based video-chatting service, launched in 2009, lets you create chatrooms on the fly. You and several friends can all broadcast, while more attendees/fans/you-name-its can watch and comment. It's become quite popular with more than 30,000 people joining the site every day and a million active daily users. It's even got the requisite celeb cred with financial backing from Sean 'Puffy' Combs and Charlie Sheen's replacement Ashton Kutcher. Today, the site released a major redesign along with a new feature: location tagging for your video chats. You can choose to reveal your region or location down to a 10-mile radius, and the service displays a 'chats in your area' map to help you identify nearby conversations. Co-founder Dan Blake says that this feature is a natural extension of the geotagging options in social services like Facebook or Twitter: "This is all about continuing to make the world a more connected place via the web. Say, if there's a regular Tinychat room you use to discuss fishing, we think this feature will make it even easier for those users to meet 'IRL' for an actual fishing trip!" (Of course, the service's safety tips page reminds you never, ever to agree to meet someone in real life that you encounter on the service... a bit of cognitive dissonance there.) Where there's video and location awareness, you know what's bound to be right around the corner. TUAW has learned that TinyChat has an iPhone app in the late stages of development, scheduled for release within the next couple of weeks. iPhone 4 users will be able to participate in chats on the go, and can include their location information (again, this is optional) with their user profile or their chatroom settings. It's likely that TinyChat will be first to market with this capability; although Apple could always add location to FaceTime, that would probably provoke a wave of privacy concerns. You can sign up for a free TinyChat account through the site or via Facebook; when the iPhone app is ready for prying eyes, we'll preview it here.
Facelette brings random chat to FaceTime for Mac
Sometimes it's very easy to predict the future. Just as the day follows the night and the sniffles follow ragweed pollen, we can confidently say that within a short time there will be incidents of unwanted exposure on Facelette, followed by urgent cries to protect the innocent, and likely as not the collapse and disappearance of the whole thing shortly after. The path trodden by Chatroulette is a wide one -- but maybe we can hope for some awesome piano improvisation along the way. In the meantime, if you're of a mind to video chat with random strangers via FaceTime for Mac, check out the service. Developer Zach Holman acknowledges he whipped it up in "about an hour" and that it's "dumb as hell." You definitely want to create a throwaway/spampot email address for this, rather than your fulltime Apple ID. [via Hacker News & Download Squad]
