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

[atdt1991.livejournal.com]

I have a USB pipestem webcam from compgeeks.com that I bought for something like five bucks. It works just fine, though the shot is a little dim. I video-cammed with a few friends for awhile, but GAIM doesn't currently have the capability, so when I want to fool around with it, I need to load up Yahoo proper. I do that, occasionally, so's my friend in NC and I can videochat.

I've talked on the cell on speakerphone at the same time, but not authentic VOIP type conversation. I'm actually fresh outta microphones.

I haven't had any trouble or unhappiness with it, except for the occasional PITA in installation (when I formatted my laptop, I'd lost the driver disk for my cam, and it was nearly impossible to locate, being generic).