The Ultimate Connected
While I was away on business, Jill and I Skyped; I was able to show her my hotel room, and “my view”. (I have been watching too much HGTV) We felt very connected even though we were many miles apart. I was able to see her life and she was able to see mine.
Skype, is an online communication tool, and is one of the many video chat applications that are available today. The company, which is partly owned by eBay, was established in 2003. Skype software was developed by Estonians; Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn. These three Estonian programmers are also well known for Kazaa, which started as a peer-to-peer file sharing of music, video, and applications.
Skype is also known as a peer-to-peer application, and the original name of the program was called Sky peer-to-peer, later shortened to Skype due to the fact that Skyper was already taken as a domain name. http://bit.ly/hHLh82
For Christmas, Jill bought me the Samsung Galaxy Tablet. The tablet has the ability to Skype as does many of the smart phones. I also noticed another video chat program called QIK, preloaded on Sprint devices; and I started to think about not actually needing a phone. We recently got rid of our home line and have not missed the land line. I wondered about the possibility of doing the same with a cell phone. Whenever you would want to speak with someone, you could use any of the video chat applications, which take advantage of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). VoIP converts analog signals to digital packets over the internet. And the best part of this technology is that it is free.
We live in a global environment, were opportunity now takes us far from where we were raised, which takes us far away from family and friends. However, this does not mean that we cannot share in each others lives. I think of Jill, with two of her best friends that she met in California, Shahnaz, who lives in Sausalito and Lia, who lives in Greece, will connect via Skype conference and the three will chat for hours. So Skype someone today and stay connected!
