Tag Archives: video calling

Chatlight at CES 2016



logoChatlight is a rechargeable light for your smartphone, tablet, or laptop that illuminates all your video calls and selfies. Chatlight recognizes that it’s not the quality of your webcam that makes a good image, it’s the quality of your lighting that reaCHATLIGHT-inpost1lly makes a difference.

Chatlight is specifically designed for video chatting, no matter when or where you are. The small, unobtrusive light mounts onto your device and provides lighting with fully-adjustable brightness and direction for optimal image quality.

One of the things that makes Chatlight so Chatlight-02special is its long-lasting bulbs and rechargeable battery, something rarely found in other lighting attachments. Chatlight’s bulbs last for over 50,000 hours, and the battery lasts up to 90 minutes on a single charge.

Chatlight is compatible with almost any smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop monitor less than 3/4″ thick. It’s sure to improve the image quality of almost any webcam since better lighting means the camera lens can focus more easily and capture a much clearer image.

Chatlight retails for $29.99 and is currently available for purchase on the Chatlight website.


Tango to FaceTime, “Move Over”



There’s a new cross-platform video calling app that just became available called Tango. There are versions for both the iPhone as well as Android. Tango does what Apple’s FaceTime does, except it also does it cross-platform as well as via 3G. Apple’s integrated video calling app FaceTime works only with iPhone 4’s and via WiFi data network connectivity.

I called a friend that has an iPhone 4 with my Sprint HTC Evo via Tango. Both of us were in moving vehicles in different parts of the country, and both of us were on 3G networks – my friend obviously on AT&T with his iPhone 4 in the Miami, Florida area, and me being on Sprint 3G on I-81 in Virginia. Tango took advantage of the forward-facing cameras both in my friend’s iPhone 4 as well as in my HTC Evo.

Overall the experience was quite impressive. If you have either an iPhone or Android phone, download the free Tango app and give it a try.

One really strange quirk with Android phones is that there can be two phone books – the “phone” phone book and the Gmail phone book. Tango relies exclusively on the “phone” Android phone book, so keep that in mind when looking for and/or setting up contacts to work with Tango.