I was just chatting with my friend Farrell on IM. The “International Man of Mystery,” is currently in Turkey. Our conversation got a little cumbersome for texting, so we decided to shift to Skype video.
I fetched a webcam from my office, brought it downstairs and plugged it into a USB port on the laptop. When I started Skype, it recognized the camera. As soon as I hit the ‘send video’ link, it did. This is reasonably painless.
I’ve never really been impressed by Skype before, but it was mainly good tonight. We briefly disconnected, but linked up again quickly. Mostly, it was as if Farrell was actually in the room.
He has a Mac with a built-in camera. Set-up and operation was even easier for him.
Is Skype used much for business video conferencing? How high do airfares need to go before this program catches fire? There’s a lot more potential here and I’m probably only scratching the surface.