Jay Gaulard Blog

We’re On Skype

February 15, 2008 – 11:46 pm | by jaygaulardcom

This is pretty neat. The other day, I was fooling around with my laptop. I noticed that it had a built in webcam, but had no idea how to use it. There didn’t seem to be any program associated with it.

I emailed my sister, Stephanie, and asked her to look into this because she has a very similar laptop. We got them at about the same time (I am actually writing a post from it for the first time). A few days later, she told me she figured out how to use the webcam. She said any program that needed it would automatically use it. Cool, I thought.

Around the same time I was fooling around with the webcam, I downloaded and installed Skype. I told Stephanie about it and she downloaded it as well. Basically, (if you aren’t familiar with what Skype is), Skype is a program that allows you to talk to a computer from your own computer. It also allows for video communication. I wasn’t having much luck trying to call Stephanie through Skype because she wasn’t logged in.

Today, I was just sitting there doing some work on my computer, when I heard this weird noise coming from my computer. It was sort of like a phone ringing. Then, I saw this box in the middle of my screen…it told me that Stephanie was trying to call. I clicked the green button to allow her to connect. I faintly heard Stephanie trying to talk, when I saw this little box pop up. It was a video of her and my nephew, James, sitting at the table looking at her laptop. They were waving and saying something I couldn’t hear. I starting laughing with such joy. I know that sounds lame, but it was really exciting. I started yelling at my computer, “Hey, can you hear me…CAN YOU HEAR ME???” She couldn’t hear anything, or see anything for that matter, so she ended the call. I didn’t have a webcam or a microphone on that computer. I instantly picked up the phone and called her. She answered and I started yelling, “I saw you. I saw you and James!!!” She was pretty damn excited. I got on my laptop and asked her to call back.

To make a long story short, we “video talked” about four times today. I got to see Steve, Steph, Storm, James, Matthew, my mother and my father. That was a thrill. I carried my laptop around the house and showed them all my stuff. All for free. Skype doesn’t charge for computer to computer calls. I think this is very cool.

Anticipating this, I already ordered a nice video webcam from Circuit City a few days ago. I am going to hook that one up to my desktop. I have to get a headset for that computer as well. I think this is going to come in handy when I have to talk to people from now on.