How many times are you working on a project with a distributed team when email or phone calls just aren’t cutting it? If you are like me, it happens all the time. Sometimes what you need is a way to get face-to-face with the person or people without the expense or hassle of being in the same place at the same time.

Enter TokBox a free service that allows you to talk to friends and colleagues over live video. All you have to do is head to TokBox, sign-up and they will give you a link that you can use anytime and almost anywhere you want just by sharing a link to your TokBox.

You can put your TokBox on your Facebook, MySpace, or almost any other page, blog or website that you can embed a small amount of code on.

TokBox has widgets for MySpace, Friendster, Freewebs, Blogger, orkut, LiveJournal, iGoogle, WordPress.com, myYearbook, Facebook, TypePad, Netvibes, Xanga and also cut and paste code for almost any other use). If/when you are online, all the other person needs to do is click on the “Push to Talk” button and it initiates a live video chat.

I can see a lot of different uses for this application from providing customer and technical support in a more personal manner to allowing you to connect someone face-to-face when you or they are out of the office. Despite all of the great technology advances we are enjoying, sometimes face-to-face is the best way to get things done. This tool makes it efficient, effective and easy to do just that. You can see how I implemented it on my blog by visiting my contact page

There is no cost, no hassle (other than a really simple sign-up and the need for you to be able to insert a small code snippet to the site you want to add your TokBox to) and nothing to download. An added benefit is the ability to control who can see you and who can’t, always nice for ensuring a modicum of privacy.

Another really cool extension of the application is through it’s integration with Meebo. If you have a Meebo account you can actually launch a group video chat session with up to six people. You can read more about this on the TokBox Blog. Tokbox: http://www.tokbox.com

Sphere: Related Content