[teeray]

Yeah… I’ve found audio-only is far more conducive to ad-hoc conversation. The closest I’ve ever felt to virtually “hanging out” with people had nothing to do with the modern era of group video chat. It was back when I’d jump into Ventrilo / Teamspeak / Mumble. Sure, there were video games as well, but I’d sit in there doing homework and other random crap too.

[boondaburrah]

Reminds me of a piece of software that was part of some human-computer interaction study that I can't find right now. I swear it was called "Glance" but that's proven to be ungoogleable

It was a mac menu bar icon (or systray icon) of a closed eye. You could click on and see a menu of who was "in the room" with you. However, if you hovered or interacted with this menu for a bit, the eye would open on everyone else's screen indicating that someone was "looking around." From this menu you could initiate a chat with whoever was also "in the room"

The whole idea was to try and emulate glancing up from your desk and catching the eye of someone who was also glancing up at the same time, so people wouldn't be interrupting people currently "in the zone" Thus you could create the feeling of working in the same space with people while teleworking, but not have to commit to the definite action of messaging someone in order to feel out whether it was good to talk with a "hey"

I think an always-open connection is good for this too, but I agree that I'd much rather it be audio-only.