It took us quite a while, but we’ve been working hard to getting this maintenance release out to you asap. Here it is (and yes, we are proud of it): Version 1.9!

We’ve fixed a ton of bugs and incorporated feedback from our now more than 500 happy customers around the globe. It’s time to say thank-you for your constant support to all of our loyal customers.

The “missing” libraries

In the initial iterations of our product we had to apply a lightweight copy protection, in order to prevent others from stealing our source code and reselling it. Yes, the folks at chatroulette-clone.com are still selling a cheap, ugly and non-working rip-off of our initial script, but we don’t care anymore.

Unfortunately, in order to enforce the protection of our intellectual property, we could not provide the source code for the libraries, that cover the technical aspects of it. For obvious reasons.

Though our FAQs clearly state that we were shipping the full source code for the user interface parts, some customers asked us to include the source code for the libraries, too.

Starting with this new release, I’m happy to respond that the libs are now included. With full source. We provide those libs on an “as is” base.

Red 5 Support

We are planning to release the full blown Red 5 version in mid May. All our existing customers will receive it as a free update.

By the way: Don’t get fooled by the .com folks claiming they already have Red 5 sorted out. They don’t. You might want to check their ugly, buggy JabberCam yourself and compare it to the polished original, we are providing. Their so called Red 5 version is in beta since weeks. Red 5 does not work at all on it. In fact, check the IDs at the bottom of their app. It’s all still Stratus based. (And it’s all still based on our initial version, which they’ve stolen.)

Doing Red 5 the right way is a complex task. We decided against rushing out a non-working beta, just to claim Red 5 support. We promise, our Red 5 implementation will blow you away. Both, in terms of simplicity and scalability.

There must be a reason, why the Red 5 founders support us, and not anybody else, or? :-)

We have just pushed out Version 1.8 to the download center.

In this latest release we’ve addressed network latency, audio- and video quality issues. On some slow connections the quality yielded by peer-to-peer connections has not been all that good. Chatroulette Clone 1.8 dynamically adjusts to the quality of the end users internet connection.

This will dramatically improve the experience for users on non-DSL connections.

We’ve also added a feature, which you’ve asked for frequently: Visitors can now dynamically switch the language. We ship with English and German sample locales, you are free to add your own! Should you want us to include your translation in future releases, do not hesitate to send them to us!

As always, our demo and the Facebook version have been updated to the latest release.

We thought you might want to know about our nice, clean example of Chatroulette Clone embedded into a Facebook page. If you like it, why don’t you become a fan?

We have just releases Chatroulette Clone Version 1.7.

This version includes all the UI enhancements that we’ve introduced to our demo sites a few days ago.

Abuse reporting

You have asked for it, we have listened: Chatroulette Clone now ships with fully automatic abuse reporting. Here is how it works:

Whenever a user engaged in a session finds the remote user behaving inappropriately, she can click the new Report button available inside the remote video display.

Internally, Chatroulette Clone maintains an abuse count for each individual user. Once a configurable threshold is met, the reported user gets kicked out of the system.

Reporting a chat partner is limited to once per connection, preventing users from kicking others out by repeatedly sending reports.

As always, labels and dialog texts can be freely changed without a need to recompile the application.

Flex 4 / Flash Builder 4 support

Last week Adobe released the newest version of the Flex SDK, Flex Framework and the integrated development environment, Flex Builder. For whatever reason, Adobe renamed the IDE to Flash Builder 4. Don’t get confused, Flash Builder 4 is indeed the successor of Flex Builder 3!

Starting with Chatroulette Clone 1.7 we will ship the project for Flash Builder 4 and the latest stable Flex SDK 3.5.

As in the past, you can also work with the freely available trial versions of Flash Builder 4.

We hope you like our latest release and are looking forward to your feedback!

Those of you who regularly visit our demo might have noticed, that we introduced some slight changes to the Chatroulette Clone user interface earlier today.

Driven by popular demand, we’ve removed the hardware settings (audio/video device, speaker and microphone volume and the preview button) from the main user interface. This further reduces clutter and makes it easier to use Chatroulette Clone for novice users.

The controls now smoothly fade in when you mouse over your own video display (the one on the right).

These changes also reduced the total Chatroulette Clone width and height to 755×521 making it ideal for the 760 pixel wide Facebook canvas!

We have not yet pushed out these changes to version 1.6 but will do so later.

Today, we are proud to announce that we have almost finished full support for the Red5 Open Source Flash Server.

The continuing fight against intellectual property theft – yes, chatroulette-clone.com is still trying to sell our code – has slowed us down a bit lately, but we are confident to having an early release with full support for Red5 out within a couple of days.

Red5 Server is an open source implementation of the Flash Media Server capabilities.

In the Chatroulette Clone ecosystem it effectively replaces the Adobe Stratus service, thus decreasing external dependencies. While the free Adobe Stratus service works perfect for almost all of our customers, we listened to your requests for additional Red5 support.

Please make sure you follow us on Twitter and subscribe to this blog to stay tuned!

We are happy to announce the immediate availability of Chatroulette Clone (aka Chatroulette Script) Version 1.6!

Besides the usual minor bug fixing and internal optimization, here is what we’ve added to this release:

Auto Next

Highly requested by our customers, we’ve added the Auto Next feature. Users can switch on “automatic next partner” and Chatroulette Clone will automatically look out for a new chat partner in case the old one disconnects or a connection times out. This features has been high on our list and we are happy to get it out to you with this release.

As always, the label is fully customizable at run time through the included, text-based locale file.

Alternative “Users Online” indication

Another popular customer request: We now allow you to switch between indicating the real number of absolute users online and a rough indication (less than 1000, more than 1000). We have introduced a system setting, allowing you to switch back and force without any need to recompile the Adobe Flash movie.

Change in Licensing

While we have to continue to protect our work against intellectual property theft (read my private blog for more about that), we have significantly changed the way we handle licensing. In past releases, any violation caused Chatroulette Clone to stop working.

Starting with Version 1.6 we handle license violations much more graceful.

As our solution is quickly becoming the Web’s most successful Chatroulette Clone offering we have decided to introduce an official Affiliate Program.

Already marketed through a handpicked list of Value Added Resellers, this is your chance to make money with your website.

We offer three distinct price tiers, completely automated license distribution and an extremely fair revenue share.

If you have got a high-traffic website or are an expert in Internet marketing, we’d love to hear from you.

Contact us and we’ll immediately provide you with our Affiliate Program Terms of Service.

When you’re ready to go, we grant you with private access to our Affiliate License Center and you can start selling Chatroulette Clone within minutes.

We’ve just released Chatroulette Clone Version 1.3.

Due to popular demand, we no longer distribute updates via email. Instead you will now be able to download the most recent version straight from our new Download page.

The new version features a slightly revamped look and feel, which is now also live on our demo site.

Besides the updated user interface, we’ve slightly reworked some of the internal code flow, so that sessions establish even faster.

While we continue to work on the larger road map items, we strive to update with minor changes more frequently to further enhance the Chatroulette Clone experience.

Thanks for making us the most successful Chatroulette Clone on the Web and stay tuned for much more to come!

We have received fantastic feedback and decided to rush out an update with the most frequently requested features to all our Subscription and All-in-One Edition customers.

Here is what we’ve added:

Support for runtime localization.

This means that you no longer need to recompile the Flash application when you want to change any of the UI labels or text messages!

You can simply change the concerned texts in an XML file, upload it to your web server and the next time a user loads Chatroulette Clone, the changes will immediately show up.

Protecting your Flash Movie

We have also changed the way licensing works, to protect you from others stealing the Flash SWF file and continue using your backend.

With the new mechanism you can provide a list of top-level domains where your version of Chatroulette Clone will run from. If anybody steals the Flash file from your web server and puts it onto her own – Chatroulette Clone will stop to work.

The list can dynamically be changed at runtime. There is no need to recompile the Flash application.

Changing or removing the “Get this script for your website” ad

You can now easily change the contents of the ad at the bottom of Chatroulette Clone or completely hide it. Again, as with all changes in this new version, these can now be applied at runtime without the need to recompile the Flash application.

With a little bit of PHP knowledge, you can even let the ad rotate on each launch. It’s all in the PHP part, no longer in the ActionScript code.

Immediate Release!

We start to send out Version 1.1 to all our Subscription and All-in-One customers over the weekend.

All purchases accepted after the publication of this blog posts will automatically be fulfilled with Version 1.1.

Clearly: If you buy Chatroulette Clone now, you get the latest Version 1.1!