Hard to believe another publication season of the TR Times is over, and with it the tenure of managing editor Marilyn Collins is ending. Marilyn has been a joy to work for, and I will miss her. I wish her and Jerry fair winds as they embark on their next adventure.
Earlier in the season I promised to write about online video chats, and I never quite got around to it. The idea of seeing a video of the person on the other end of a phone was promised, and teased, for decades, but it is only recently been fulfilled.
I remember seeing demonstrations of futuristic video phones, also known as teleconferencing, when I was a child. By the late 1980's video conferencing systems finally reached the consumer market place. For the system to work, both parties needed the same device, which if I remember cost around $700, and the pictures were actually slow-scan video — still pictures taken every couple of seconds, giving the images a jerky quality. At the time I was taking part in an educational project between my school district and a school in what was then the Soviet Union, and holding periodic videoconferences were part of our grant.
Telephone to telephone video conferencing never really made it to the mainstream, but today we have something much better. With a video enabled computer and dedicated software, a computer can be used to make video calls (known as video chat) to other computers, anywhere in the world, and see realtime video of the party on the other end.
Almost all laptop computers purchased today come with built-in webcams and microphones. A webcam is a small, wide-angle camera, located above the screen in the center of the computer. When activated the camera captures either still images or video, depending on the software being used. What you will see on your computer screen when video chat software is running is a video image captured by the computer at the other end of the chat. Since the computer camera are wide-angle in nature, the image area can be fairly large. If someone sits close to the computer you will see just their face, but if they move away from the computer you can see the room behind them — perfect for seeing young grandchildren at play.
The most well known of the video chat services is Skype, which since 2011 has been owned by Microsoft. All you need to use Skype is for both parties to have Skype software installed on their computers and to register for a free Skype account. Yahoo also has a video chat service, Video Messenger, that, while not as well known, is very intuitive to use. As with Skype, you need to install the free software on your computer and sign up for a Yahoo account. Both Skype and Yahoo have apps for Apple and Android mobile devices, which can video chat with other mobile devices or with computers running the corresponding software. To be compatible with video chatting mobile devices must have a front facing camera.
FaceTime is a pre-installed, video chat application made exclusively for Apple computers, iPads, and iPhone 4 and 4s models. An added feature on the iPhone is the ability to activate FaceTime at the press of a button during a cell phone call with another iPhone. Similar features are available to users of Android devices with the Google Voice app.
For information about Skype, visit www.spype.com, and for Yahoo Messsenger visit messenger.yahoo.com.
Thank-you to everyone with a hand in editing OnMouseClick, especially my husband, Eddie, who every week reads, and edits, the column before I e-mail it to the TR Times. Safe travels to all our readers — see you next season!
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