Skype now supports group calls of up to 50 people

Skype is catching up with its competitors by expanding the capacity of group calls to 50 people instead of 25. The service has been testing it out this feature since last month, but now it’s rolling out to all users. Skype is also adding a notification feature for these calls. Instead of it ringing your device, you could get a notification prompt for a group call. It’s also still possible to call people individually to join said group. Or if you have a call with less than 25 members, you can call everyone, if the notifications aren’t enough to get them to jump into the conversation.

Skype for Desktop lets you blur your background for video calls

If you don’t want your messy bedroom or office to be the focal point of a video call, you might be able to address that soon. Microsoft recently released a new Skype Insider Preview build that will let you blur your background during video calls. This can be enabled during a call in two ways. One is you right click your own video, or you can find it through the new on-hover video settings. Version 8.37.76 is coming to Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Source: MSPoweruser

Skype introduces Content Creator mode for easier audio and video production recording and streaming

Microsoft hopes to help out the content creator community with a new mode it’s introducing to Skype. The app is getting a new Content Creators mode on the desktop for both Windows 10 and Mac users. While the app itself won’t get native call recording, its streamlining integration with existing third-party apps like Wirecast, Xsplit, and Vmix so it’ll be easier to get quality audio and video recordings. These will then be easily exportable for other editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro.

According to Microsoft, this feature will also let streamers broadcast a call live on either YouTube or Twitch. This mode will be launched in full in the coming week and its final release will come out in the fall.

Source: SlashGear

Amazon's Chime promises frustration-free online meetings

Hoping to disrupt the online meeting video and audio space, Amazon is leveraging its dominance of cloud services with Amazon Chime for iOS, Android, Mac and PC for its AWS customers.

Amazon Chime is now available to all customers. Amazon Chime is a modern, fully-managed communications service from AWS that makes it easy for you to communicate with people inside and outside your organization using voice, video, and chat.

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