Is there any way to implement something similar to Chatroulette without using Flash or Silverlight?
No, the yet-to-be-implemented-but-very-nice-to-have HTML5 Stream API is not a valid answer. ;-)
A:
If we disregard Flash and Silverlight, the only reasonable things that come to mind are Java applets (please, please do not do this), custom browser plugins (an awful lot of work, and who would want to install a plugin just to use Chatroulette...) and just using the <object> element and relying on whatever media player the user may or may not have installed (this will not give you very good control over much anything).
All in all, I wouldn't say it's feasible to do without using one of the aforementioned, reasonably wide-spread plugins.
Matti Virkkunen
2010-03-31 21:22:16