Video Calls

[Flavius]

I just picked up an iPhone 4 today and installed Facetime on all the Macs in our house.

I can see us using this feature a lot. Lot's of phones support video calls these days.

Do you make video calls?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I do with Skype, occasionally.

 

[Sparky]

My father in law migrates south to California for the winter months. We have used msn messenger video chat for the last couple of years. We will be switching to Skype for this year.

 

[Mr. B]

I use Skype occasionally with a long-distance friend.

 

[Starbreaker]

I would never. The telegraph is so much better.

 

[RobertVA]

Get enough junk calls as it is, even though I'm on the "do not call" list. For some reason some callers wait just long enough to register as a message without recording a word. Then there's all the talkative campaigners in the weeks leading up to an election. I guess I'm just not very talkative, especially while I'm doing something like eating a meal, watching a program on TV or surfing the net.

Sorry Bell, I'm just not a fan of your invention.

If it weren't for wanting a way to call out in an emergency and the occasional call from a relative I'd have the phone line deactivated. If I had any better luck getting a Magic Jack working I probably would have.

I certainly don't want to be worrying about a caller seeing me grab bites of my cooling dinner while they are taking their turn talking or the shaving cream on my face.

 

[scotpens]

. . . I certainly don't want to be worrying about a caller seeing me grab bites of my cooling dinner while they are taking their turn talking or the shaving cream on my face.

You can turn your webcam on and off as you please, you know. This isn't Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four.

Sci-fi writers were predicting video telephoning for decades. Now it's here, and how many people actually use it? For most routine phone calls, we don't need to see the person we're talking to. To transmit visual information we use parallel technologies like fax and email.

Maybe someday we'll have human-like domestic robots, too. But just like video phone calling, they'll be more of a toy or novelty than something useful and practical.

 

[Flavius]

The way we communicate changes all the time. Just think about the advent of email and what that did to letter writing. Most of my family lives on a different continent. There are two households left In Europe, I still write letters to - my mothers who will be eighty next spring and my in-laws - everybody else has switched to email like 15 years ago or earlier.

Video calls have been around for many years now, and from what I can tell so far, the nature of the conversation might be changing yet again. Could it be the ease of use that makes it happen? On the other hand, something like skype is not difficult to set up and what about other solutions? The other day I read about projects in France that didn't change much.

As to the information that is being exchanged during a video call vs. a phone call, like it or not, video adds another layer that becomes part of the conversation.

 

[RapidNadion]

My most recent cellphone purchase gave me video calling capability back in June. I used it once or twice, but haven't since. Part of the issue is lack of compatibility - I only have a handful of contacts who have similar capability. The other part is functionality; it just didn't work all that well.

This is, even when the technology is perfected (FaceTime is already damn close) and the user base grows, I don't see me using it all that much. As cool as the technology is, I just don't want people to see me all that often when I'm talking to them on the phone. My boss is across the country; we Skyped a few times when she first relocated, but now we just use the phone or IM.

My girlfriend, on the other hand, uses FaceTime all the time to talk with her distant mother, and loves it for that reason. So different strokes, I suppose.