It seems thoroughly irresponsible to introduce such a thing at a time when bandwidth on the Internet is so constrained, especially as the only kind of insect to which it will appeal is the kind that can’t resist waving its arms about and shouting hello Mum whenever it sees a television camera. But Microsoft Corp and Intel Corp yesterday unveiled separate but compatible software for real-time video communications over the Internet. Microsoft’s offering is NetMeeting version 2.0 beta 2 and Intel’s is Internet Video Phone beta 1.0, either of which enables computer users to place video calls over the Internet, and both are downloadable free from the respective Web sites.
