Did you know that Firefox 33 (currently in Beta) lets you make a Skype-like video call directly from one running Firefox instance to another without requiring an account with a central service (such as Skype or Vidyo)?

This feature is built on top of Firefox’s WebRTC support, and it’s kind of amazing.

It’s pretty easy to use: just click on the toolbar button that looks like a phone handset or a speech bubble (which one you see depends which version of Firefox you have) and you’ll be given a URL with a call.mozilla.com domain name. [Update: depending on which beta version you have, you might need to set the loop.enabled preference in about:config, and possibly customize your toolbar to make the handset/bubble icon visible.] Send that URL to somebody else — via email, or IRC, or some other means — and when they visit that URL in Firefox 33 (or later) it will initiate a video call with you.

I’ve started using it for 1-on-1 meetings with other Mozilla employees and it works well. It’s nice to finally have an open source implementation of video calling. Give it a try!