July 16th, 2008 Posted in Camfrog, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Camfrog 5.1 is the latest release from Camfrog. Camfrog has been around for quite sometime now and has an extremly large user base, at the time of writing this review Camfrog had almost 89,000 people chatting online in just shy of 4,964 webcam chatrooms and its website boasts “millions”.
When you first run Camfrog 5.1 you are greeted with your standard style Instant messenger screen. The Instant messaging capabilities of Camfrog 5.1 are as good as most of the IM programs available, with a friends list, to keep track of your favorite cam chat buddies, and a favorite(s) chat room list included.
Clicking on the room list you will notice in the window that loads, there is a drop down menu on the top right hand side which reveals there are different Camfrog servers for different regions of the world, which is great if your not from an English speaking country, being an Australian I couldn’t make head nor tail of what was being said, but they looked like they were having just as much fun as the English rooms.
After selecting your region you then can select a room from the huge number of rooms available, which whilst not as diverse in terms of the range of topics for each room as say Paltalk, is still overwhelming. Rooms have a variety of topics, you can choose to hang out and play karaoke, discuss current events, test your knowledge in trivia rooms, just goof off or enter the adult zones amongst many other topical rooms you have access too on Camfrog.
Not only do you have the option to join people in other rooms, but you can play host and set up your own.
The interface is extremely easy to use, friendly and welcoming.
Once in a room of your choice you can hover over viewers names to find out more details of them, the viewers icon are either male or female, and this is also determinable via the text over link information. Hovering over a name in the Camfrog 5.1 chat room of your choice will give quick to read info such as gender, age and whether or not they have camera or voice capabilities (much like, but an improvement on yahoo messenger), the users icon will also be male or female, with or without cam
A GREAT feature of Camfrog 5.1 is you have the ability to determine who is watching you, you can order viewers by “who’s watching me” and / or by hovering over their name. If someone is watching you would prefer didn’t you can ignore that user.
The IM layout is much like yahoo, you can send private video feed straight to your contact as opposed to the rest of the room.
You can also send your friends or new contacts virtual gifts which is a lot of fun and makes the experience a little more welcoming.
My only real concern with Camfrog was like all other similar communities you only have to agree that you are 18 to enter the adult areas, so I feel minors should be supervised when using Camfrog, but Camfrog is not unique there all chat communities I have used face the same issues.
Having said that the rooms are well moderated, to ensure the all ages / clean chat areas are kept that way, even in the adult areas rooms are moderated to ensure everyone is respectful and doesn’t over step the mark too far.
Camfrog has a unique following in the deaf community it would appear, with many rooms for those with hearing difficulties.
As mentioned before, like the majority of cam chat communities, there are Adults only zones to cater for the naughtier cam folk.
The Video and Audio quality of Camfrog 5.1 is extremely good, on par with most other video chatting software, although the ability to configure your cam would be a nice feature that we hope will be added in the future
You will never be alone on Camfrog with its Multi-user Videoconferencing capable of hosting over 1,000 people in one room
There are 2 different types of accounts, free and the advanced account which costs a one time fee USD $49.95 that gives you Camfrog 5.1 + future updates for as long as you want to use it.
The following lifted from their website www.camfrog.com explains what features become unlocked in the advanced “paid” version:
- Pro users can view up to 100 video windows in video chat rooms. Camfrog 5.1 is the only webcam software with Camshare technology that allows multiple SUPER FAST video windows. Some Camfrog 5.1 rooms have hundreds of users with super fast video, it’s incredible!
- See HUGE live video windows, resize video windows to any size.
- Locate what room a user is in.
- Add cool text effects to your video windows.
- Send files to other Pro users. Sending files works behind firewalls and routers.
- Make your IM and chat windows transparent so you can easily see the video behind them.
- Remotely access your webcam from another computer with a password. See what’s going on at your house while you are away via super fast streaming video.
- Show a time log of when you last received an instant message from someone.
- Keep a history log of all video chat room and one on one video chats, plus keep a history of all IM messages.
- Drag your contacts to the desktop to see when your friends come back from being “away”.
The rewards of using Camfrog 5.1 are rich, in particular being able to chat with some may different people across the globe, we at Video Chat 101 will be watching in anticipation of any further developments in Camfrog and will bring you the news right here.
News Fash: Camfrog also has a web based service for more information you can visit the site www.camfrogweb.com
I must say Camfrog 5.1 surprised me as I hadn’t heard that much about it compared to Paltalk, Yahoo and Windows Live but I found it a great place to hang out, one which I will return time and time again.
Be sure to tell us of your experiences with Camfrog 5.1 or for that matter any of the video chat programs out there…
Whilst not in the same league as Paltalk Scene it is well worth checking out.
If your new to video chat or want to expand your video chat experience Paltalk is the largest voice and video chat service. Claim your free trial of Paltalk Scene for video messaging and chat.
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Rating: 4/5
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