A friend of mine who is new to teleworking was complaining that her overseas prospects wanted to speak with her on the phone. Since she didn’t want to have to pay for international calls, she turned down these lucrative offers. “I don’t want my fees to be consumed by phone bills,” she said.
“You don’t need to use the phone, you can always use voice chat or VoIP,” I suggested.
“What’s that?”
It seems that not everyone who sets out to do web work knows how to establish their communication methods. There are many tools that allow us to sidestep more traditional — and usually more expensive — means of communicating with our clients, such as client visits and phone calls. For those who are just starting out, here are your options: Read the rest of this entry »
Google just launched video and voice chat today for both PC and Mac. My first reaction? That is so cool.
The only problem is the announcement went out before they had actually activated many accounts. Including mine. Luckily, I had the email address of the Google contact who sent out the announcement, and he spent some time troubleshooting with me. First order of business? Getting my email account activated as well as that of my initial Gmail voice and video chat guinea pig, Scott from Alaska HDTV (@alaskapodshow on Twitter).
After about an hour, Scott still could not see the video options in his Gmail chat box. While he and I continued to restart browsers and compare notes, I received a text chat message from my friend Kris, a multimedia producer and documentary filmmaker in Brooklyn (@krisbritt on Twitter). She had seen my Tweets about my attempts to test out the new Gmail voice and video chat.
I invited her to video chat and within moments and after just a few rings, the video chat window opened, and there was Kris. The picture was clear, the sound was clear.
Right away I thought “This is much better than Skype.”
Read the rest of this entry »
TokBox, a free service that allows you to talk simply with your friends and co-workers over live video, has released a new downloadable application built using Adobe Air.
With the new application, you do not have to be on TokBox’s website to accept or make video calls. Installing is a breeze (something that is common to applications built using Adobe AIR). When installed, it acts like your usual instant messaging application. Just click on a friend or colleague will enable you to do video calling and get immediate notification when someone is calling.
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
