Video chat is something that a few years back was only dreamed about in films such as Blade Runner or Total Recall. Now though, it's a reality and the technology has become so advanced that it's now possible to chat face-to-face on your mobile phone.

Mobiola WebCam turns your phone into a video camera for online chats. The software uses your mobile's camera as a fully-fledged webcam for Windows. The app basically consists of two parts: the 'client' application on your phone, and a webcam server installed on your PC that processes the images sent from your camera.

The camera-to-PC communication all takes place via the magic of Bluetooth, meaning that images are processed pretty quickly, so there's not too much lag when transmitting them to the web, though obviously the smoothness will still depend on the speed of your Net connection.

There are a number of options you can tinker with to enhance the quality of your moving images, such as contrast, image quality and compression rate, though there's little in the way of fancy effects or anything to heighten the fun. Many of the Windows-based webcam programs out there do contain these special features, but the advantage of using your phone is that you can really harness the power of the very latest camera phone technology.

If you don't have a webcam, or want a more versatile solution to your current cam, then Mobiola WebCam is an essential download.