I’ve been keeping my eyes open for a cross-platform video conferencing solution that works as well as iChat on the Mac. I love iChat. My mom can figure it out.

I’ve tried to find something that works cross-platform so I could chat with friends on pcs. There are some solutions that are capable, but they usually require a lot of hoop-jumping, firewall-wrangling, preference-setting nonsense. Something fun to try once, but not something you’re going to want to go through with each person you want to video chat with.

Anyway, so Skype just released a beta that is supposed to just work. I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet, but if it works like their voice capabilities, I’m pretty hopeful. If you have a PC and a video camera and want to try it out let me know.

Download Video-Enabled Skype 2.0 Beta for Mac

Update: I tried it with my brother. It works ok, definitely not as nice as iChat but the best cross-platform solution I’ve tried yet. The audio is really good, but it seems like it starts to get a bit choppy after a while. We just hang up and reconnect and all is well again. Also after my brother I tried chatting with my mom and I couldn’t get her video. She’s on a mac too. Then I couldn’t get video with my brother anymore. I rebooted and was able to get video again. Anyway, so it’s buggy, but it does work, and when it works it works fairly well. You can read lips.