Festoon Unifies IM Users

[Jeff]

Santa Cruz Networks has launched Festoon Unity, a new feature to its Festoon plug-in, uniting 453 million IM users the world over.

With more than 3.7 million downloads and over 52 million video call user minutes, Festoon plans to bring users of different messaging services together in group voice and video calls, where they can talk to and see each other. Users can also share content, and engage in personalized video experiences and face-to-face communication in one-to-one calls, or in large groups of hundreds.

Itzik Cohen, CEO, Santa Cruz Networks, said, "People don't need to have the same email program or the same phone service to send each other emails or call each other. We believe it should be just as simple with voice and video communications. Festoon Unity connects different Instant Messaging services, so that users can call each other across services as simply as sending an instant message or email."

IM users all over the world use Festoon each day to see each other while chatting, playing games, sharing pictures, or conducting business. All without having to install another messaging service.

"We are pleased to be the first to connect Skype and Google Talk users. With ubiquitous voice and video calls as the goal, in early 2006 we'll be adding Festoon Unity support for AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger. In addition we'll be providing a series of web services that anyone can use to quickly and easily add video communication to their site," said Cohen.

With Festoon, IM users can conduct voice and video calls in groups up to hundreds while sharing photos, spreadsheets, presentations, or applications with others in the call. In future releases users will be able to download additional video effects and personalized experiences, access Festoon's library of camera personalities, wallpapers, and more.

In addition to Festoon Unity, other new features in this product upgrade include significantly improved video speed, voice and video synchronization, enhanced group audio, automatic proxy support, and a number of new EyeCandy personalizations to name a few.

Festoon is available at www.festooninc.com for free, and it works on any Windows 2000/XP PC with an 800 Mhz processor or greater, running Skype (www.skype.com) or Google Talk (www.google.com/talk).