Gong 5
Real-time Web Voice Communication Tool
A Voice for the Web World - Free!
What is Gong?
Gong is a free system for voice communication on the Web. It allows groups of people such as students and teachers to participate in discussion groups using their computers, using both synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous chat. It is commonly used by schools and universities for providing a 'voice board' for teaching purposes.
There are several different ways you can use Gong. All are free and unlimited:
You can use the Gong system by itself. After you set up the Gong server users can use their browser or the Gong program to use the Gong system. Participants can then leave text and voice messages on voice boards. They can listen to and reply to text and voice messages left by other people. A group of people can join a real-time text/voice chat which can be recorded on voice boards. Any messages can be quickly played back by streaming the voice from the server. In addition, there are some powerful features such as personal messaging, support for multiple languages, styled text editing, voice editing, voice speed up/slow down, selective word/phrase playback and support for multilingual interface. There is also unique support for the Chinese Mandarin Pinyin and Chinese Cantonese Yale romanization systems.
Gong is available as a free module for the Moodle free course management system. By using Gong with Moodle your courses can have a voice board system where participants can leave text and voice messages on course voice boards. They can listen to and reply to text and voice messages left by other people. Any messages can be quickly played back by streaming the voice from the server. In addition, when using Gong as a Moodle module these powerful features of Gong are available: support for multiple languages, styled text editing, voice editing, voice speed up/slow down, selective word/phrase playback and support for multilingual interface. There is also unique support for the Chinese Mandarin Pinyin and Chinese Cantonese Yale romanization systems.
Apart from the discussion board the system can also operate as a smaller version, MiniGong, which is handy on any webpages. It includes the following selected features of Gong: voice streaming, support for multiple languages, voice speed up/slow down, and support for multilingual interface.
A Gong web page scripting interface is available so that you can write your own code in a web page which tells Gong what to do. Your code has full control over what Gong does. So, for example, you can record, display and play back messages completely under the control of your script. Gong itself can be visible or invisible - you choose. You can combine this with control over different startup parameters for complete control. Please see the examples first, and then read more about the Gong real-time programmable control for more information about the Gong web page scripting interface.
The Gong Project