Welcome to the 21st century (webcams)

[netmouse]

Last night I used a webcam for the first time. Well, I'd seen other people on webcams, but I'd never had one aimed at *me* before. The lovely eposia and matt_arnold and I bridged the gap a bit from Michigan to Texas, using her webcam and Matt's (with thanks to Laura for providing same), while also chatting on IM (I was over at Matt's house sharing that camera, if anyone's confused). I guess there was some server trouble or we might have used VOIP as well and had a real video call. The video feed was a little jumpy but on the whole I highly recommend the experience and it seems weird to me (as I thnk about it) that this is the first time I've tried it. All this technology has been around for a while and the cameras are now pretty cheap. And then I started to wonder how many other people have done this...

Have you tried webcam communication?

If so, how was it?

If not, why not?

Comments

[overthesun.livejournal.com]

My experience was similar to yours. . . Have a friend in Iraq. His wife and he had each purchased webcam's, for the obvious reasons, before he left. He attached his to his laptop, and satelite-IP phone, and she to their home computer.

After chatting with them for a week, he convinced me to go get one. For some reason I was quite reluctant, so it took some convincing. In retrospect, I think it was the mental overlap between a communications device, and a camera. I dislike being photographed/video'd, in a mild way. I like communications devices.

Once I learned to accept it as a valuable communications device, and stopped seeing it as a camera, I was glad I owned one.

And, in retrospect, it was weird that, unlike almost every other piece of computer equipment made, I didn't own one until it became popular.

I guess even first adopters don't buy everything *grin*