I made the suggestion to Mark the other day that we should all get on Skype. To my surprise he didn't know what Skype was! Perhaps some of the rest of you don't either. Skype is a cheap way (free, actually) to make phone calls over the internet. As you can see from the screen shot above, both JaNae and us have it. The picture quality isn't perfect, but I can't complain. Conference calls can happen too - not video, just audio.
All you need is a cheap computer cam. JaNae got us one for Christmas. You should be able to get one for less than $25.
All you need is a cheap computer cam. JaNae got us one for Christmas. You should be able to get one for less than $25.
6 comments:
I think i heard that Skype was bigger than facebook and they might do an IPO. Anyway i don't even know how to use a cell phone so how could i ever learn skype? We do have a camera on our computer, but i never learned how to use that either. Hard to teach an old dog new tricks! We pay $20 a month for unlimited long distance and it also gives us $10 off of our DSL.
Remember when we were very young dad showed us that AT&T was developing the future of the telephone with the picture/TV phone?
Having a tough time posting to the blogs and facebook; and now skype - what's next???
I'm afraid I am on Mark's side. I know that as we get older it's easier to use the "hard to teach an old dog new tricks" excuse.
Which drove me crazy when Grandma Peterson's eyes went bad but she claimed she couldn't figure out the complicated buttons on a tape recorder which would have opened up to her a world of spoken books.
But I think the major thing here for me is that our offspring are of the male pursuasion. That is. . . they are not chatty. Our conversations with them are monysylabic. I cannot imagine that our interrogations of them would be any more complete with this newfangled system. The fact that we could see them and they oould see us would be, for them, a negative.
Changing the subject, I didn't know that Grandma Peterson didn't want to use a tape player or I forgot. I have encouraged Ralph's Mom to use a tape player, also. Her eyesight is real bad as well. She has macular degeneration. We're anxious for her to receive some resources through the state that provide materials for the visually impaired. I'm anxious to see if she'll use these resources. I don't know if we would use skpe either.
1. No, Skype is not bigger than Facebook. Facebook is huge - it actually had more hits than Google for a couple days during the holidays.
2. The 'old dog, new tricks' excuse doesn't work. That's what children are for.
3. Perhaps for our family the conference call feature would be the best use of Skype. We could get 20 of us on at one time during some holiday and play a long distance version of the dictionary game.
I can't wait till you all join me on this beast.
I use Skype a lot (for business), but NOT the camera thing. It is the cheapest way to make long distance calls ($.02/min) if you don't have some fancy cell phone plan--or some other plan like Mark has.
Side-track... I upgraded my email client on Friday and now I can't receive any email--darn computers!!
I just happened to sign up for Skype last night; i should say this morning before I saw all this Skype conversuasion.(i forget theeround). Well I haven't tried it yet; my laptop has the cam and years ago i got headphones with a mic. Now i just have to figure out how to give Paul a call.
greg
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