On Skype
Text is fun. Text is, and always will be, useful. Text is immortal.
That being said, stop typing - and start talking. I’ve been using Skype for quite some time (thanks Adam) and recently they got their hands on $18.8M in VC. Not too shabby.
Also recently, they’ve released a new BETA version of their software (0.97.0.6). The main reason for me letting you know about this update, is the fact that they’ve added a feature that I’ve been waiting for since I started to use Skype. Conference calls.
You, me and them. Up to 5 people can be conferenced together at a time. Not sure if this is a permanent threshold or not, but it is definitely adequate. Tonight I spoke to my Mother (North Carolina - AOL Broadband) and a woman (Clark ’s Summit - 56k AOL), and we had no trouble at all.
What was my reasoning for the first few sentences? Because I don’t want anyone to think that I am giving up on text chat, we are far from that point, and I doubt we’ll ever be totally away from it. iChatAV (utilizing the iSight firewire cam from Apple) is the most comprehensive, crisp and easy way to video chat, however it still has it’s problems. In fact, 9 times out of 10 I am unable to use it for some reason or another. We’ve done some extensive testing, yet we’re still far from getting it just right.
In the future, perhaps we will be speaking to each other over screens the size of our Televisions to our relatives who just built their first home, on Mars. But I seriously doubt we will ever get to that point. Cure hunger first.
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Sara Bareilles' "Between the Lines" is the Song of the Week for April 20 to 26.