TeamSpeak 3 is a rewrite of the original TeamSpeak Classic and TeamSpeak 2. The new version boasts new and improved features, for instance cross-platform support, better latency and performance or a powerful SDK to make use of the TeamSpeak core in other programs and applications.

Listed in particular on the TeamSpeak website are Improved Voice Quality and Latency, Stunning 3D Sound Effects, Powerful Permissions System, Improved Security and Privacy and Firewall Friendly File Transfers.

• Improved Voice Quality and Latency – This includes new codecs and automated features like advanced noise reduction, echo cancellation or automatic microphone adjustments.
• Raising the Bar – TeamSpeak now supports Logitech G-keyboards.
• Stunning 3D Sound Effects – You can now place other TeamSpeak users anywhere in three-dimensional space, for instance to link that position to their position in a game, a conference call or presentation.
• Powerful Permissions System – Group permissions are more flexible under TeamSpeak 3
• Improved Security and Privacy – A new authentication system that is identity and server based.
• Friends and Foes – You now have access to a friends and foes list to track users and play custom sound events when they come online.
• Firewall Friendly File Transfer – Files can now be uploaded and downloaded more effectively if the feature is enabled on the server.

More interesting than this, at least for some TeamSpeak users, are client releases for the Android and iOS platform. TeamSpeak Mobile clients are now (or soon) available in both the Android Marketplace and Apple Store.

Here is the official announcement video:

TeamSpeak 3 can be downloaded from the official TeamSpeak website.

First those that are implemented directly in a game, then third party software that uses client and server communication, and finally software that requires only a client.

RaidCall belongs to the third group, as users only need to install the client software to use the voice communication software. That’s different from comparable solutions such as Teamspeak or Ventrilo which both require a server running the server software before they can be used.

RaidCall clients communicate directly with a master server that transfers the data to the connected clients. Because of this, it supports up to 1000 clients per channel. The number of clients per server is however limited to 30 at this moment. It can be increased by inviting new users. Each new user increases the limit by one.

raidcall

Users can log in anonymously to start chatting right away, or create a free account which is required to create a free Raidcall server and use the friend’s list for basic social networking features.

One interesting feature of Raidcall is the ability to display an overlay control window whenever it is needed. Raidcall uses less resources than Teamspeak, the only other voice communication software we had installed on our test server. The software used about 27 Megabytes of RAM while running on the 64-bit test system, compared to the 40 Megabytes of Teamspeak.

The audio quality was okay. One negative aspect compared to Teamspeak was the missing option to change the audio codec, to accommodate for lower or higher bandwidth groups.

RaidCall is an interesting alternative, considering that it does not require a rented or hosted server to communicate in groups. The voice communication software is available for download at the developer site.

One of the disadvantages is that these programs require a server (or a home PC, although this would void some of the advantages) to run. One of the most popular voice communication programs is TeamSpeak which has been available in version 2 for a very long time.

The developers of TeamSpeak have finally released version 3 of their software which is now available as a client and server version for all supported operating systems (Linux,Windows and OSX). The new version has been improved in many aspects. Especially the improved codec which offers better quality and smaller transfers and the ability to share files with users of the TeamSpeak server are two of the improvements that make TeamSpeak 3 a must have update.

Other updates include a global TeamSpeak identity which can be used to find other players even if they change their nicknames frequently and 3D voice communications which can be used to distinguish TeamSpeak members based on their position in the 3D environment.

The TeamSpeak website is currently displaying a static website with torrent and file hosting downloads only. The full website will be enabled again once the traffic begins to slow down again.

Mumble is an Open-Source multi-plattform Teamspeak alternative that comes, like Teamspeak, as a client and server application which is distributed together in the Windows version. The gaming community usually sets up the server versions of Teamspeak and Mumble on Linux servers on the Internet so that everyone can connect to them all the time.

A Windows server would only make sense for playing the game for a few hours but there are probably users who run a Windows client 24/7 as well.

Mumble has several features that might convince gamers to switch from Teamspeak to it. It uses encryption which is nice but probably nothing that gamers are that excited about. A more interesting feature is positional audio for supported games.

What that means is that a user in Mumble will hear the voices of his mates coming from the direction their character is standing in the game. This is currently supported in World of Warcraft and Battlefield 2.

Everything comes down to bandwidth requirements and quality of speed in the end. Mumble is using a default 45.4 kbit/s which can be increased or reduced to suit specific needs.

Mumble is available for Windows, Apple Macintosh and various Linux distributions.

The freeware that I’m speaking of is called MP3 My MP3 Recorder. After installing the application you specify the source from where you want to record the audio from. You may select from the following sources: Phone Line, Microphone, Line In, CD Player, AUX, SPDIF, Stereo Mix and Mono Mix. Stereo Mix for instance should be a great selection for most purposes. Once that is done you should fine tune the recording level for best results.

To do so take a look at the bar on the right side of the program window which should not peak into the red area at all times.  Once that is done click on settings to specify the bit rate for the sound that will be recorded (between 32 and 320). You may also set a time limit for the recording but the default is to record until you stop the recording.

If everything is set the way you want it to be you click on the (red) recording button to start the process. The buttons to stop and play the already recorded songs will become active once that process has started.

I think this is a great tool if you want to record audio fast and easy. The quality is pretty nice as well.

I did write about some of them here at ghacks already but I guess only the die hard ghacks readers will know about this. I would like to start with a tool that I have been using for some time now. It is called Hamachi and the main benefit is that it is able to simulate a lan over internet. This is great if a game only offers lan play for instance. I do not suggest you use it for the following purpose but it is possible. Many games require serial numbers and those numbers are checked when you connect to a game server on the internet. They are not checked if you create a lan game.

System Tools:

Please insert the CD into the drive and restart the application. I hate this message. Forcing legit users to have the CD / DVD in drive to execute the program is something I never understood. Pirates crack those protections in seconds and legit users have the problems with methods that are supposed to make it harder for pirates. Something is wrong here. I do like Daemon Tools which emulates CDs on your hard drive. Create an image of the CD, mount it in Daemon Tools and you may use the software without the Cd.

That shitty movie is not playing. I don’t see a picture, I hear no sound. Have you ever witnessed something like that ? This could be due to a missing codec on your system. Gspot analyzed a movie file and displays the codecs it is using. Did I say that I hate the fact that there are billions of codecs out there ? Waste of time and energy.

Notepad 2 replaces Notepad which ships with every windows installation. It offers more features than Notepad like syntax highlighting.

Rbtray makes it possible to minimize every window into the system tray instead of the task bar. If you are like me and dislike crowded task bars this tool is for you.

I like my computers as silent as they can be. One method to achieve this is to use a software that is able to control the speed of the fans in your pc. Speedfan is my choice. It displays temperatures for important system components such as processor, motherboard and hard drives and lets you change the fan speed if that is supported on your system.

Vippy the writer friendly cursor changes the cursor into a eye-friendly one. This is great if you have troubles finding the cursor in a text document. Vippy changes the color of the cursor to red for instance.

Internet:

Ghacks is running on a dedicated server and I have to make the connection using a terminal program. I do use Putty for this, it is fast and clean and does exactly the things that I need it to do. I do use WinSCP to connect download backups that I made from the dedicated server. SFTP means secure file transfer.

I have a Skype account to talk to my friends and see who is online at the moment. There is no charge if both users are connected to the Skype network. I do prefer Teamspeak while gaming. Teamspeak has the advantage that more users may chat and talk at the same time while Skype has that limited I think. When I was playing WOW we were using Teamspeak with more than 40 people in one channel. Don’t worry, you can moderate everything.

If you want to view tv on the internet you should take a look at tvu player which offers some interesting channels to choose from. To name a few: ABC, ESPN, Comedy Channel, CBC, Fox and more. All free, with relative good quality. You need a broadband connection for good results.

You need some additional tools if you want to save video streams. Most providers hide the real url to the stream making it impossible to detect it by normal means. Url Snooper comes into play and detects the real address by analyzing all network traffic.

I need a local test installation of ghacks to test new features before I make the upgrade on the running site. XAMPP offers everything I need to have a local Apache installation with PHP and MYSQL support. It is great for learning and testing upgrades.

Security:

You might remember the Sony rootkit incident. They planted a rootkit on some of their CDs and users had a hard time getting rid of it. Rootkit Revealer is one of those tools that helps detecting and removing rootkits.

Other:

I do not buy lots of new CDs but sometimes I buy some used ones on Ebay or Amazon. I don’t have a CD player at all so I have to get the songs from the CD on my computer to be able to play them and transfer them to my Ipod. CDex is the tool I use for that purpose. It is fast, pulls all relevant information from the internet (author, title, songs..) and adds them automatically to the songs.

Installation of the Teamspeak server is really easy but differs depending on your operating system. You simply install and run it on a Windows operating system. Admin and Superadmin passwords are shown at first start and you have to use them to login into the web interface and configure the server. (login details are saved in the file server.log, you can look them up there if you forgot to write them down).

You find a detailed instruction for linux at the teamspeak homepage – the process involves adding a user teamspeak, using wget to download the current version, unpacking that version and running the start script.

The web admin looks the same for windows and linux, there is no server version of teamspeak for mac.

Select Servers in the admin interface, one server is already running and you should select this one to change the configuraton of it. Server Settings displays some values that you can change: For instance the Server name, the welcome message, you can password protect the server here and define the maximum amount of users that can connect to it.

You also enable the codecs in that menu and are free to change the port the server is running on. You are free to add users from the server settings menu or from the client version directly.

Now, logout, start the Teamspeak client and select Connection, Connect from the menu. Right-Click Servers, Add a new Server and enter the login details of that server. Please note that you need at least the password of the server if the admin protected it with a password. This would mean you login anonymous using the server password. The other method would be that you are a registered user on that server and login registered with a username and password (and no server password).

Click connect and the connection to the server should be made. If you login using your admin account you are free to add channels to the server, maybe something like Chat, Game 1, Game 2, AFK. Big servers with lots of users (clans for instance) normaly have one folder for every game and then subfolders for that game. One example would be WoW as the top folder and the subfolders instance 1, instance 2, battlefield, grinding, level, raid, crafting, afk. You may add as much folders as you like.

Channels may be for registered users only, may be moderated, may use different codecs and may be password protected. Everything is highly customisable as you can see.

Teamspeak does not use lots of ressources making it ideal for multiplayer games but also for general voice communication. The website has a big forum that should help if you run into troubles setting it up or running it.