Surprise: FaceTime Does Not Work Over Google Voice

Why anyone is surprised about this is far and away beyond me. Google Voice operates under the concept of NAT for Telephony: many unique devices hidden behind a single number. That being said, you can see why the establishment of a peer-to-peer connection initiated through telephony might be an issue. It’s 2010 and we’re still tackling this problem in intelligent packet-switched networks. Why would anyone assume that it would somehow function more effectively in stupid circuit-switched networks?

Android 2.2 API Does not Expose Front-Facing Camera

There is no way to manipulate the front-facing camera that the HTC Evo ships with, meaning third-party developers can either vendor-lock with HTC to deliver their solutions or … well, that’s it. I’m pretty bummed out about this for several reasons:

  • Forget Skype until at least Android 2.5
  • The arms race has already started, meaning more vendors will soon be shipping products with a camera unusable by developers
  • Apple’s video-calling implementation is built on open standards, opening up the potential for reimplementation on other devices and platforms

Could you imagine if an open reimplementation of Facetime was operating over 3G before Apple’s own solution? The devious part of me loves the idea.