I'm new to hangouts and have been trying to set one up but when I "Start a hangout", a new window comes up and I see a progress bar.  The bar stalls when it reaches the second "g" under Google+ for about 30s, then disappears and 30s later I get the message "A connection error occurred while loading this page. Please try refreshing the page."  Refreshing doesn't help though I had to paste the URL into another window since the popup window didn't have a refresh button.  This happens with Chrome, Firefox and Safari.  My colleague next door has the same type of network connection I have (hardwired), and uses hangouts regularly so I don't think it is a firewall issue.  We both have Macs, though he's running Lion and I haven't upgraded yet (summer project when things settle down).  I've rebooted my system, all to no avail.  Only found one other post from someone with this error who was in a hotel and thought it was a firewall issue.