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Israeli mobile chat startup fring has just taken a swing at Google Plus with Playgrounds, a group video chat tool for iOS and Android devices. Playgrounds are four-way open video chat discussions organized around topics. Users can browse open Playgrounds or create their own.

Sounds like a four-person Hangout, doesn't it? But the Google Plus open video chat service is still confined to the desktop. Fring keeps pushing mobile video chat forward, and the giants are slow to react.

Android phone owners will soon be able to video chat with each other using Google Talk over WiFi, 3G or 4G networks, Google announced in a blog post this afternoon. The feature will roll out first to Nexus S phone owners over the coming weeks and to Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and newer devices "in the future." It's a start!

The offering, when it ships, sounds like it will be more compelling than Apple's Facetime but less useful than independent mobile video chat apps like Tango that offer iPhone to Android video chat. A number of mobile video chat apps have been launched in just the past few weeks from Skype, Qik, Fring (now with group video calling on iPhone!) and others. But how long will we have to wait until Android users can video call iPhone owners without any more thought than voice calls require today?

Mobile VoIP software company Fring has launched a new service called, not too subtly, "FringOut," which aims to compete head-on with Skype's "SkypeOut" feature by offering cheap phone calls worldwide. The service, available in a preview version since mid-August, lets Fring users call the landlines or mobile phones of non-Fring users by purchasing credits to pay for the calls.

At present, the feature is only available on Nokia devices, but the company says iPhone and Android support is on the way "soon." As for the prices, calls start at only 1c/minute in many locations, making it often a low-cost alternative to Skype, whose SkypeOut rates start at 2.3c/minute, according to its "pay per minute" pricing page.

Future, we are here. With today's launch of the Sprint HTC EVO 4G, the hotly anticipated smartphone running Google's Android OS, video chatting moves off the desktop and into the palm of your hand.

Using the popular Qik mobile application, EVO owners will be able to chat with other EVO owners and, eventually, with any smartphone user whose phone sports a forward-facing camera.

Are we on the precipice of a whole new form of communication? Or is mobile video chat going to be just for fun?

We hate to burst your bubble, but the ReadWriteWeb newsroom is not the luxuriant, mahogany den of intellectualism that you envision. Instead, we discuss the greater points of start ups, enterprise and the tech world via conference chat in the comfort of our pajamas. When you've got a virtual team, tools like chat, email and voice over IP are your lifeline. Sipgate founder Thilo Salmon hopes his recent launch of sipgate one VoIP will add new work features where Skype, Fring and Jajah mobile have left off.

Popular mobile IM and VOIP service Fring just launched an Application Programming Interface that could bring some awesome new applications to mobile phones around the world. The new API offers the Fring mobile interface, IM, presence indication, file transfer and other features to developers seeking to build apps in standard server-side languages. Fring ties in to users' Google Talk, MSN Messenger, ICQ and Skype IM accounts.

While the iPhone App Store will open some day soon, will be available around the world and will be usable on more affordable handsets than is the case today - Fring may still be more globally accessible than iPhone apps will be.