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This article was published on February 9, 2015

Skype too simple? Try this ASCII video chat client that only runs in terminal


Skype too simple? Try this ASCII video chat client that only runs in terminal
Ben Woods
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Ben Woods

Europe Editor

Ben is a technology journalist with a specialism in mobile devices and a geeky love of mobile spectrum issues. Ben used to be a professional Ben is a technology journalist with a specialism in mobile devices and a geeky love of mobile spectrum issues. Ben used to be a professional online poker player. You can contact him via Twitter or on Google+.

Sometimes, older is better. And this ASCII video chat client on GitHub might not replace Skype or Google Hangouts anytime soon (or anytime ever), but it’s certainly worth checking out if you’re an inquisitive dev familiar with terminal.

You’ll need to be comfortable compiling your own software if you want to use the p2pvc repository from GitHub, though. So if you’re not, and you still want to try this, you’ll need some help.

p2pvc

Once installed, both users will need to be running the software in terminal and you’ll need forward a couple of ports to allow the connections. You’ll also need both user’s IP addresses.

All in all, it’s a bit of a faff, but exactly the sort of faff developers love.

p2pvc [GitHub via Gizmodo]

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