As I may have mentioned in other post's I live in Phoenix with my dog Milo. I'm disabled and I can't drive, so it's hard for me to get out much. I have a lot of time on my hands and I don't want to go completely insane from boredom so I am always looking for something interesting to do. I watch TV, surf the net, harass you fine people here at CC, read, play with my dog, just to mention a few. The one thing I enjoy doing the most is visiting with my son Joseph. He is a student at ASU and he lives in a condo with three friends over in Tempe. He's 20 years old and he is trying to build his own life, I can appreciate that. What with school and work he is pretty busy. Even so he finds time to come over to Phoenix and visit me. Sometimes he stays for 1 or 2 days if he can and we do a lot of different things while he's here. When he can't come over we call each other. Even though the phone calls are nice they feel sort of impersonal, one dimensional,like something is missing, at least to me. Don't get me wrong I'm not complaining, I welcome any opportunity to talk to my son, I'm just making an observation.
A couple of weeks ago Joseph was here visiting and we were talking about this exact same subject. He tells me that he has similar issues with phone calls and it's hard for him to stay on the phone for any length of time. He asked me if I had ever heard of a website called Skype.com I said no, what is it? So he tells me it's site that provides free internet phone calls including video and you can call anyone anywhere as they have the required set up, computer, internet service, web cam, yada,yada,yada.
Sweet. What do we need to do?. So he fills me in on the details and say's the first thing we need is a web cam with a built in mic. Off we go to fry's electronics, we pick up a web cam with mic for $30.00 and haul ass for home. Joseph grabs the web cam and say's let me set that up for you dad. You go to the site and create an account, basic information, user name, password, you know the drill. Then you download the actual program that runs the whole set up. I haven't seen any malware,popups,advertisements or any other malicious horseshit attached to this program, it's clean. Next you set up the web cam. Put it on the top of your monitor, hook up the USB connector and because everything these days is plug-n-play it takes three or four clicks and your done. I have the latest version of windows and it's a total no brainer. Joseph showed me all the finer details on how to use the whole set up and it's user friendly and has a fair amount of features, contact list, one click calling, etc. They also have a pay service for those who want more goodies, I don't have the details so if your interested, check it out. We tested it and everything worked perfect. Later that evening when Joseph got home he called me, the program runs in the background and when a call comes in a prompt box pops up and you select what you want, audio only or audio & video.Poof! picture pops up and there's my son. The video is really clear. It's not jittery, and it doesn't have any of that annoying starting and stopping nonsense that you see with internet streaming. This set up is great for me. it adds a whole new dimension to the calls I make to Joseph. I can see his face and his expressions, it's almost like he's here. I am surprised I didn't think of it, it's not like it's new technology or anything.
There you have it. I posted this little story about my experience and provided a link to the site. I can find myself behind the power curve sometimes so this may be old news to many of you. If not check it out, you may get some use out of it or know somebody who can. Enjoy.
http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/home?intcmp=alogo