:: Closing Time ::

:: Sunday, March 02, 2003 ::

In this blog I'd like to introduce a concept to my readers, my semi-readers, my browsers, my "looking over somebody's shoulder at Pete's blog"ers, and everybody else who's reading this. It's a concept I've long been a proponent of, and a concept I'm a huge fan of. It's a concept that with the advent of high speed internet in many homes and nearly all colleges has become very, very realistic, and it's a concept which, thanks to the rapidly decreasing price of electronics, has become extremely affordable. It's a little geeky, I know - but it's rapidly getting less geeky, and more mainstream. And trust me when I tell you it's really fucking cool.

Welcome to the world of Internet Video Chat.

Hear me out, I swear. Videoconferencing, as we've heard it billed, has a very star treky feel to it - you stare at a person on the screen and talk, and they talk back to you, and you both see and hear each other in real time. Reality check - it's not quite that good, YET. Second, nobody really calls it VC, it's almost always referred to as camming (from webcam, the piece of hardware you use to send video to your computer). It's free, once you get started - no video chat software I know of has anything like a monthly service, and all of the software that people actually use is free too. All you need to buy is a webcam, which you can get for $30 or less these days, although a quality piece of hardware may set you back $50. And it's by far, in my opinion, the best way to actually keep in touch with people (short of blogging). There's no substitute for facial expressions - none.

So you fire up your cam software and connect to somebody - great. Sounds like a lot of fun, sure sure sure, pete you're ranting like an idiot. But I said hear me out. First off, my favorite piece of software (iVisit) supports group cam. You can get up to 10 people in a room at once and all talk in a chat room and see all of their webcams at once, and they can see you, and it really DOES have a room/hangout feeling to it. Just like chilling at home people will get up to get a drink occasionally, people will crack jokes and you'll SEE them laugh, and every so often somebody will flip you off. It's real, it's raw, and it's connected.

To hit a topic I talk about a lot in my blog, sometimes you'll have a great conversation with a person while camming with them solely because you're camming with the person - the action itself is amusing and entertaining, and then you start talking. I don't talk to at least half of my "people from home" buddy list on a regular basis, but if any of them were like "hey, what's up. wanna cam?" I probably would, and it would be fun. And I'd give them a virtual tour of my room, and we'd talk. And it's a lot of fucking fun.

So go out and get a webcam, damnit. All of you. You've no excuse not to. And they're lots and lots of fun. Even without video chat, they're still cool for taking random quick and easy pictures of a million things (like 9 out of 10 pictures I've taken are with my webcam) if you're just showing something to somebody. Webcams are great. Everyone should own one.

And anybody who DOES have one had better fucking tell me, because we ought to get an ivisit room going ;)


:: Peter 11:39 PM [+] ::
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