BS: Paltalk Room Charges

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: JudeL
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 06:56 PM

Why is everyone referring to paltalk as if it's the only option. When I bought a new headset a couple of weeks ago it included a disc of something called mediaring which appears to be very like paltalk - although my son installed it I haven't tried using it as there didn't seem to be much point if everyone used paltalk. It may be worth checking to see what else is available before either getting upset or committing ourselves to anything.
Jude

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Greyeyes
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 07:01 PM

Mediaring

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Amergin
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 07:13 PM

Interesting...though I am at work for the moment and unable to test it out...I'll give it a shot once I get home....

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 07:13 PM

I quite agree Jude, asked in one previous post, have done some looking and I have suggested Yahoo as a possible alterative above and it would be useful if others try to come up with things too... The last time I looked at Mediaring, I seem to remember it offered PC to PC calling and I think PC to Phone but it didn't offer a multi-user voice chat or confernecing - can you check up and let us know?

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Amergin
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 07:18 PM

Jon, I just look and it does offer voice conferencing....but I couldn't test out the quality or anything since I am at work...

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: JudeL
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 08:01 PM

sorry bout that, I must have been writing mine at the same time as you wrote yours . Don't know about Yahoo but greyeyes has done a blue clicky thing about mediaring. Not having got to grips with all this technology stuff I haven't yet worked out how to do things like blue clickys.
Jude

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 08:04 PM

Sorry Jude, I should have thought: http://messenger.yahoo.com/

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 08:07 PM

Oh, and one for Mark Clark: http://www.java.sun.com/products/java-media/jmf/index.html

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Jeri
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 08:17 PM

Thanks for the info on PopupKiller, Ivan. I'll have to check it out.

As for choices, I think it's easy to forget how quickly things can change in cyberspace. One of these days when I have some time, I'll have to go exploring...

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Tyke
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 08:19 PM

My thanks to IvanB directing my to a pop up killer. It seems to work well. You can find his link to it on one of his contributions to this thread.

I still read Paltalk as wanting to charge for any commercial use in room's weather locked or unlocked. So I do not think just switching to using unlocked rooms is the answer.

I listened into one room tonight and the administrator signed of with a nice little speech. Which included a reminder to every one to spread Vegimite on their toast! Could he just be a fan of Vegimite or has he got some sort of sponsor ship deal? (Vegimite is the UK version of Marmite I do not know if there is the equivalent in the states. I was once told that it was not available in some countries) Perhaps if we could find a sponsor for the Mudcat Rooms on Paltalk?

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: GUEST,17
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 08:37 PM

Tyke,

You really have no idea about business do you?

Who's going to sponser a disparate, worldwide diffused group of at most 100 people?

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: momnopp
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 09:18 PM

I have only used yahoo! one-on-one and it's mediocre in my (limited) experience.

As for free filtering programs: try out webwasher : blickie

I haven't been in Paltalk (or the threads) in ages, but I hope that in the not too distant future I'll be able to participate in a song circle once again. I always got a kick out of telling my co-workers that I was singing with mudcatters from around the world on a Sunday evening.

Cheers,

JudyO

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Tyke
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 09:22 PM

The Sponsor Ship idea of a room was put forward as a suggestion and I thought I put a question mark at the end of it personal I'm not here to do business. But if you have a budget to spend on advertising another problem is would your products meet our approval. My own view is that if someone spent a lot of time finding a sponsor we still would have no guarantee that Paltalk would not suddenly move the goal posts again!

Who are these disparate, worldwide diffused group of at most 100 people that you refer to! Guest17?

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: alison
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 09:27 PM

Unless Mediaring has improved VASTLY since the last time I used it.. it wouldn't work!!!!!!!

it is OK for one on one conversations... but the sound quality was bad..........

Netmeeting is another one... but again I am not impressed with the sound quality...........

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: catspaw49
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 09:36 PM

Most of you haven't been on the 'Cat long enough to remember that MEDIARING was the first voice program we tried and back then it was really exciting to just hear each other but the thing was VERY limited. I'm sure they have progressed a lot since then.......Just found it kinda' humorous, like the thing has come full circle.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Jeri
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 09:39 PM

Tyke, I believe they're going to charge for locked rooms for more than 10 people and commercial unlocked rooms. We aren't commercial, so we should be able to use an unlocked room with no charge. I think checking out other options is still a reasonable course of action.

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Matt_R
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 10:10 PM

Welcome back, Judy! We've missed you!

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From:
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 12:23 AM

I have no idea who Guest,17 is, but in answer to your question Tyke, I have religiously 'palled' folks in mudcat rooms for six months.

I spend between three and eight hours a day, spanning a twelve hour period, seven days a week in paltalk

My 'down time' largely covers UK and States day time

.....less than 100 cats use the system

jack aka scalliwag

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Bagpuss
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 09:46 AM

I don't see that there is a problem.

We can use it for free if we don't mind being open. I've been in several open rooms and never had any sort of problem.

If you want your privacy strongly enough that you are prepared to pay for it, then do so. I don't, so I won't. Paltalk is providing a service for us, and still giving us the option of using it free under certain restrictions. Am I missing something? Is there really something to get our knickers in a twist about here? Please tell me.

Bagpuss

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Grab
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 10:37 AM

I'm not sure about Geordie's assertion that there wouldn't be the same atmosphere in a non-Mudcat room. There's often other groups which acquire a few musicians, and then as more musicians log on, they flick through the groups to find which ones are good and stay with the good ones. IIRC, Friday night was an unofficial Mudcat meeting in a completely open room, and there was some fine music on.

I don't spend as much time on Paltalk as most of you, I guess, but I'd rather see open rooms. So long as the startup text spells out exactly what's going on (ie. concert with no interruptions, or live music only) then admins can do the biz quite well enough. And there's the possibility of getting new members who've never heard of Mudcat b4. But maybe this is a "religious" debate.

I will agree that the sound isn't great, but we're not really using it for what it's designed for - it's designed for speech, not music. It'd be nice to see a Paltalk v2.0 which had some optimisation for music as well, but anyway. In the meantime, $9.99 isn't that much for a year's ad-free subscription, but I would draw the line at the megabucks room subscriptions.

Looking at it from a different angle though, what does it indicate about the company? Sounds to me like this all means they're running out of venture capital, and might go under without this kind of stuff. Would we rather have open rooms, or would we rather not have the service? Or can anyone find a better alternative service?

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: John Routledge
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 01:29 PM

Hi Grab I am not suggesting that the atmosphere in a closed room is better - just different.

I enjoy open rooms also and love the variety and quality which can be found there.

I sing less often in open rooms not because I feel intimidated in any way by strangers but that I find the choice of appropriate unaccompanied song quite difficult in many open rooms. My hang-up not the rooms fault*BG*

No doubt Paltalk will get their act together and we will know our fate. Geordie(Happy Rooms For All)Broon.

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 01:39 PM

Bagpuss, the biggest worry as far as I am concerned is that Paltalk have been moving or trying to the goal posts and stepping up their annoyances lately. Also, I don't think that it is any co-incidence that much of this step up came at the time Firetalk shut down. Grab's suggestion of them running short of capital is another possibility. Either way, although thier services still suit me, I am a little concerned about the longer term provision of any free services from Paltalk and I do think it is wise to consider possible alternatives at this stage for that reason.

Re: The paying for the private rooms, some may be willing to pay but the rates Paltalk are asking are steep and I would guess be far to much for the usage they get. The Concert room sometimes exceeds 25 users so to keep it locked under these terms, it would be neccessary to pay $89 per month for a room that is used once a week for about an hour. The cost for the snug while still expensive, would be more reasonable as it probably averages 2-3 hours usage per day and rarely exceeds 10 users so I would guess a limit of 25 would be safe. Again it is quite possible that there are cheaper (preferably free) options available for private events.

Grab, I learned fairly on in Paltalk that it pays in an open room to spell out in the welcome text what the room is about, as in example, I state my room is for live folk and blues, any one can join in and explain (because of past missunedestandings) that live does not include karaoke - it seems to work most of the time without the need of action by an admin.

Re other musicians, there is a fair amount of crossover between the participents unplugged rooms and the Mudcat (official or unnoficial) rooms and it is quite common to get a few of the non-catters who like folk or more commonly blues to stop by and perform - there are several excellent blues players around.

It can also be quite a bonus having them when things are quiet as they help keep a rooom going at a period when maybe only one or two catters are around. I have noticed what tends to happen is that after the snug has closed, some catters sometimes come on line, find no folk/blues and dissapear. The Song Circle for example, has on several occasions gone on from 11pm to 6am GMT or later simply because of outside support keeping it going through the quiet patches where an admin would probably otherwise have given up and gone to bed or elsewhere and one which certainly contributed to giving Mudcatters far more oppertuninty to just drop in when they liked and find something.

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Tyke
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 03:31 PM

Do you think it be a help Jon if when using an open room for the Mudcat admin open a thread in mudcat to:-

a) Say that a room was now open! b) To invite Mudcat members to identify themselves as Mudcater's to the Admin and or other Caters in that thread. I'm not suggesting favouring Mudcater's for special treatment in the song circle! I would just help identify the users of the room.

I noticed that Yahoo has the facility to click on the name of the person in the room and bring up that persons Profile and send to send personal messages. That did seemed to me to be useful.

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: nutty
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 04:29 PM

George - if you check the threads covering the discussions that took place when Paltalk was set up , you will realise that such issues were discussed at length

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 04:38 PM

Tyke,

a) is already done by a number of admins in open and locked rooms, usually toghether with a couple of refreshes. I believe it is a great help.

b) I don't know bur I think it could be handy if a Mudcatter new to Paltalk did send a text message to the Admin or gave some indication in the general text. I think it also helps if those like me who use a different name on Paltalk to Mudcat introduce themselves with their Mudcat name when they meet someone with a Mudcat name they recognise in Paltalk for the first time.

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Tyke
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 04:47 PM

Thats good to know Jon It will be nice for me to know who's in the room the next time I pay it a vist. Thanks for the info Jon.

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 05:16 PM

And of course there was the suggestion of using MC in front of the name to indicate Mudcat hence Geoff and I became the MCDUCKS

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Tyke
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 05:38 PM

Clever! I didn't know that ether or is it either. I just thought the Mac's (MC) were to keep all the rain we been getting off the Ducks :-) Mrs Duck

Subject: RE: BS: Paltalk Room Charges
From: Tyke
Date: 02 May 01 - 02:54 PM

Moor refreshing than one of the threads this!