More Skype

So I've installed Skype on my PC here at work and it's working like a charm. Trouble is, I can't run my webcam on ericbolstridge.com at the same time as I'm doing video chat with Skype. You'd think that software would be smart enough to split the signal or whatever. So, I think this will create a problem of some sort, since I will be using the webcam more for Skype now and the website won't have a feed. I think I might change the "webcam" page of ericbolstridge.com to a simple invitation for folks to call me on Skype... but that's not really the same as the anonymous looking that a webcam allows...

Anyway, Skype works great, and I even got a microphone working, too. So now I can video chat with my friend down the hall (who is in reality so close I could simply shout, but that's not the point!).

My wife also downloaded Skype and installed it on our home PC. Her webcam is working, too, so now we can see each other with a much much better frame rate then we could using Yahoo! Messenger. I need to get a microphone hooked up at home, still, though. It's a little cumbersome to use, but overall, I say "Yay, Skype!"

Skype & video chat

Back when we were doing our podcast and we were taking calls through the phone, we would make fun of other podcasts that were using Skype to conduct their on-air interviews because of the marked difference in audio quality. But, at the same time, I had never myself tried Skype, so in a way, we were using "old" tech on our show, since our production process was more from what we know - traditional on-air radio. In fact, we didn't even record the show on a computer - we recorded it directly to CD and then uploaded it.

Anyway, my buddy at work is from Great Britain and his friend over in England has turned him on to Skype as a fun and free way to keep in touch with his ol' mates back home. He was telling me about it and explaining how one of his more 'net-savvy pals was even doing video chat. We went into his office, and there his friend was, chatting away like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, in alarmingly clear and quick video. It looked way better then my webcam can produce over Yahoo! Messenger.

So of course, I realized that here was another thing to try to tackle. Together, we set to work trying to get a camera hooked up on my co-worker's PC so we could video-phone back to his friend. We played around with trying to get a Canon digital still camera and a small DVCam to perform as a webcam for a half-hour or so before giving up.

But I was truly impressed with the frame-rate of Skype's video chat... Much better then what I've seen using AIM or Messenger... Maybe it's time for me to switch...

The webcam returns to ericbolstridge.com!

Hooray! The webcam is back on ericbolstridge.com! Thanks to my devoted wife, who found me new and improved FREE webcam software, my web-cam is back online! I'm using YawCam, from www.yawcam.com. I needed to go back into my GoDaddy account to remember the right way to type in my FTP server address, but that was no big deal. Simple install and the webcam is back! Woo-hoo!

Web Cam software expiration

So, my Web Cam software, Biromsoft Webcam, was downloaded on a trial basis. It works awesome, automatically linking to my web server at GoDaddy.com and uploading an image every few seconds via FTP. Works great! So, of course, when the trial period ended, I clicked "Buy It!"

I paid my $29.99 via paypal to a company called ShareIt!, which I now know is a middle-man company that accepts payments on behalf of independent developers. So, they got my $29.99 and allegedly notified the Biromsoft folks that I had made the purchase. According to ShareIt! I was to receive my verification code by email within 24 hours.

Well, much more then that went by. So I emailed ShareIt! and I emailed Biromsoft. No response for over a week. So, I clicked through PayPal's "Resolution Center" thingy that sends another email... The next day I called American Express and had them retrieve the money.

Thankfully, AMEX is awesome about this stuff, so I got my money back with limited hassle, but I'm pretty grumpy about the whole experience. Here's this great software that I was fully willing to purchase, but because of some glitchy something or maybe just bad customer service, I don't get to have a web cam and they don't get my money. Such a lose-lose. Ah, well.

Web Cam on EricBolstridge.com

Hahahaha! Yeah, it's been a while since my last post, but it was worth it. I downloaded a couple software applications to see if I could get one to solve my webcam question, and I got this one from Biromsoft to work! It's set to my cheap Labtec cam and is uploading straight to my server that I have through GoDaddy! After getting the image uploading (the frequency of the upload is variable), I then had to get the HTML in there to refresh the page. That kinda sucks, because it's not a true streaming feed - it's just refreshing the webpage automatically ever few seconds.

Also, I have a slight concern that I might exceed my "upload" capacity or something like that, but since I'm not actually adding tons of images and only overwriting the same one, I don't think it will be an issue with my account limitations...

Anyway, what fun!

Web Cam on EricBolstridge.com?

I did a redesign of my website, EricBolstridge.com. All I really did is change the font and background, but hey, it looks a lot better and now it has several pages that I can add content to as I get around to it so whatever. I went ahead and added a page for "Web Cam," too. I'm going to look into how (if) I can stream images to the site from my desktop webcam here at work....