Skype is the future!

So our microphone arrived for our home PC and the wife got it hooked up yesterday. So this morning, instead of our usual phone call, I got a ring on my work computer - and I got to wish the family a good morning face to face! Easy! And it's very fun when folks walk by my office - "oops, sorry, didn't realize you were on the ph- What!? Are you doing video chat? Wow, that is awesome."

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...

A lecture from a Senator who doesn't LOL

I was driving around the other day and landed on a public radio station that was airing a speech by Joe Lieberman. He was going on about the shameful content in video games and on the internet and all that stuff like he always does, so I stopped to listen.

After he finished, a woman Senator came on (from Minnesota, I think). She opened her remarks by relating a story about a talk she gave at a college recently. She said she was discussing the internet and kids and whatever, and a smarty-pants college kid asked her "Do you even know what LOL means?" And she admitted to him that she didn't. After the talk, her twelve-year-old daughter explained what LOL meant and told her mom she was sooooo embarrassed by her. Hahaha, she laughed and made it out to be a cute story, and then continued her speech.

Well, she eventually got to a part in her speech where she started admonishing parents for letting kids access inappropriate content online. And she talked about how parents need to watch out about what video games their kids are playing, spend time on the internet with your kids, know what they know, etc (all stuff I'm trying to do).

So, I guess the point is just how ironic it is that this woman was going on about being involved in our kids' high-tech world and literally saying how we don't spend enough time understanding or relating to our kids in regards to the internet and modern video games... when she has already admitted that she doesn't do any of that - she doesn't even know what LOL means. Wow.

Scrabulous on Facebook

So, I'm digging my Facebook page a lot lately. I'm regularly updating my Eric Bolstridge is... tag, Playing Scrabulous with a bunch of folks (okay, mostly just my wife), posting my Pandora stations and songlists, and even playing around with cutesy little Fluff friends.

So far I've found about half of the silly applications you can add to your Facebook page to be dumb or only only fun for the first time you set it up. But the other half are actually kinda fun!

Wif-Fi and the Nintendo DS

I've been looking into possibly getting the wife a Nintendo DS for Christmas. The mini-games are fun and she likes the Brain Age and other "adult" games. I think she'd like Nintendogs and cute games like Drawn-To-Life, too. So, with this, I've been checking into the features of the DS and how it works. I know you can play wirelessly, you can download demos and such from stores and at McDonald's, and I know you can even do basic chatting and access the internet for content. And that's really what I'm interested in: the Wi-Fi and online capabilities of the device. Why is that important? Because while I don't know how to do those things, my 6-year-old neighbor does...

And don't laugh and say "Haha, but he's just a kid! Who cares about their silly games?" Because those kids will become teenagers and then adults - growing up as the technology grows with them, and anyone who doesn't keep up will just be another clueless old person to them. And tech-savvy kids have no respect for clueless old people. I know, because I was one of those tech-savvy kids.

Modern example:

In checking out the DS's online capabilities I discovered that Nintendo actually discontinued their Opera-based browsing software for the DS a month or so ago. The reason they discontinued it is that parents were buying it without realizing what it was and then discovering that, to their surprise, their kids were going online with it (um, duh). So, with parents screaming that their kiddo's Nintendo DS suddenly had become a portal to the evils of the internet, Nintendo went ahead and stopped making that "game" and it's now becoming somewhat a rare find in used game stores.

While I think it's funny that a parent would buy their kid a game they don't understand, I have to admit that I don't understand how the DS gets online. What games work online and what is the extent of the file sharing and online gameplay? Other then my Blackberry, I've never owned own a single web-enabled device, let alone set up or accessed a Wi-Fi connection.

But with their lil' Nintendo DS, even the lamest 8 year-old has. And why not? I defeated bowser and saved the Princess at 7 years old - why shouldn't the average kid be able to master the full capabilities of the current Nintendo product in the same way I did?

So, getting a DS and keeping up with modern gaming isn't just a bad idea for a Christmas gift, but it's also a good idea from a parenting perspective: my oldest kid will no doubt have a next-gen Nintendo of his own one day and I think it's important that I not only understand how it works, but maybe even be able play with him.

Video update

I've been doing lots with YouTube and such lately, so here's an update: a while ago I realized it was clunky and messy to embed YouTube videos right on ericbolstridge.com. So, I simply put a link to my my YouTube account and another link to my Arlington County videos.

We've been cranking out content at work, so eventually the Arlington County YouTube account page was getting cluttered, and it was way too hard to find videos or expect anyone to see the "good stuff" with 70 or 80 videos spread over 6 pages... So, I dug into YouTube a bit, figured out Playlists, and set up a bunch to keep things organized. Now, I point people here at work (and on ericbolstridge.com) to the Arlington County Playlist page instead. Ooh, organization! How nice!