Photo Credit: www.freeclipartnow.com

It all started with the YM (Yahoo Messenger) offline messages from my mum in September this year. Through the help of her younger colleague, she learned to open her yahoo account and to send messages to us (I and my brother).

I was ecstatic because I knew Mum. At her age (mid 60s), we can’t expect her to be techie at all. A simple feature in her mobile phone can be extremely complicated for her.

Since she learned to send messages in YM, my brother and I received daily messages. To catch us online, she will rush to her faculty room every break time because by then, we are up already and at work. Then for few minutes we chat.

By the time we have our lunch break, my Mum is already at home where unfortunately she doesn’t have internet. She can only access her YM at her workplace hence it limits our time chat.

So, we decided to purchase her a desktop and also subscribed for internet connection. My sister, who stays and works four hours away from home, traveled and spent a weekend with Mum so she could teach her all the basics in computer from switching on to turning off the machine.

My brother and I were anticipating to chat with her the following week. To our dismay, YM had always a system glitch. Sometimes I was unable to log-in for days for whatever reasons. Then my brother introduced us to Oovoo, a web based free video conference facility.

Since then, we chat every night and weekend. Sometimes due to work demand, I need to stay late and I miss them joining in the video conference. We also demanded curfew for our Mum. With the time difference, we told Mum that she could only stay online until 11.30pm which is 7.30pm in our time. We don’t want her to suffer the next day because of lack of sleep.

On occasions where I miss the video conference with my brother, my Mum would send me a video message. Oovoo is really nice. Rather than leaving offline message at YM, Oovoo has a better option – video messages though it has also a chat facility.

With this, it slashes my phone budget by 70%. I no longer buy phone cards to call Mum and our communication nowadays is even more frequent.

Then yesterday, I discovered the 160by2.com, a website where you can send free sms in UAE, Saudi, Kuwait and few Asian countries like India, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore.

So now, I need only a phone card for emergency calls and when I don’t have internet access.

Update: I learned from a friend about smsteriod, a site for free sms. It’s actually better than the 160by2 because you can send sms anywhere in the world.

I’ve been using ooVoo this week as my new video toy on a recomendation from my pal Jim Hogan to use with conferencing me for work at my company Pro1PR.com

This tool has a free version that is ad supported and one may upgrade to remove ads and even conference with up to 6 people at once. Quite exciting. Lots of uses come to mind.

One of the features I like is the ability to send someone an email video message. Your friend receives a link inviting them to view your video and peerhapd they will download the program and ooVoo you back for a live video chat.

I think this tool would be helpful in meeting with real estate agents and clients to delelop a deeper understanding with folks you may be quite far away from. Many of us may engage business peolple online and may even see them in videos, but live interaction will really help get to a deeper understanding.

Visit ooVoo.com to try it for yourself. You have noting to loose!

ooVoo you later

I listen.  I am fortunate to work with people representing a wide range of ages.  I always pay special attention to what “my kids” (the 16, 17, 18 year old set) are talking about.  This week, it’s ooVoo.

ooVoo is a video conferencing application that allows up to 6 people to video chat.  It looks a lot different than Skype (for the better, I think).  The interface is black and gray, the video screens are the same size and side by side, and the video quality is excellent.  The free version has a lot of ads, I hear the paid version doesn’t.

I see potential for using oovoo more to collaborate with other librarians more so than for connecting with patrons.  From what I understand there is a lot of committee work and meetings that goes on out in the field and oovoo may lessen the burden of having to assemble a bunch of people in the same place at the same time.  It’s more personal than a conference call or web chat which may scare some of the more self conscious among us, but I think it’s pretty neat.

The video below is from my oovoo day which is a marketing tool for oovoo but its cute and catchy and you can get a good feel for what the application is all about. But like Lamar Burton always used to say on Reading Rainbow “You don’t have to take my word for it”. Go check out oovoo for yourself.

Near the top of the short list of things I love more than fried chicken:

We are one attractive bunch.

::EDIT 9/26/09:: Reunited and it feels so good.

History and technology

The history of conversation of a network is characterised by tendencies in the basic technologies of a network. The first sites of a chat have shown the simple interfaces made of dynamically made pages HTML. Use HTML has allowed sites to include fonts, colours, communications, and images in their interfaces, giving them more modern feeling which was advantage before seniors, but more established services of a chat based on the text as IRC. The Greatest bottom party to chat HTML was in its interactivity. Each message sent to chat HTML, has demanded submission of the form and the subsequent cargo of page which meant that there was an expectation period between time which the user could send to one message and time, they could start to print the following. Reception of messages also has demanded, that the frequent page has recharged, and could lead to delays, flash of page and dissatisfied activity of a browser. For these reasons chats HTML have substantially gone out of use today though some of the senior sites of chat HTML still remain active.

In 1995, the Javsky technology of an applet has been entered into web-browsers. Well developed network of Java and graphic abilities have made it an ideal platform to create chat interfaces, some of which are used on the most popular sites of a chat of a network today. While there are some lacks connected with Javsky chats, such as long initial times of loading of page, the technology worked well and has measured well.

With 2005, newer technologies of a network, such as the Ajax and Flash were used as the basis for some new systems of a chat. There are some inconveniences, such as incomplete support of the organisation of a network in the basic Javascript and programming languages Actionscript. However, the ultrapresent of these technologies just as their strong support graphic and features of convenience and simplicity of use means that is probable that these types of chats become more widespread.

Video the technology at first has been developed for systems of TV of an electron beam tube, but some new technologies for video of devices of display have been invented since then. Standards for TVs and computer monitors tended to develop independently, but advance payments in computer work both digital television broadcasting and registration make some convergence.

Display resolution

The size of video of the image is measured in px for digital video, or horizontal lines of viewing and vertical lines of the decision for analogue video. In digital area (for example. DVD), the TV of standard definition (SDTV) is defined as 720/704/640×480i60 for NTSC and 768/720×576i50 for the FRIEND or decision SECAM. However in analogue area, the number of visible raster lines remains to constants (486 FRIENDS NTSC/576) while horizontal measurement varies depending on quality of a signal: approximately 320 px for a raster line on quality of the videorecorder, 400 px for television broadcasts, and 720 px for sources DVD. The image format is kept because of not square “px”.

New high-quality TV (HDTV) are capable to decisions to 1920×1080p60, that is 1920 px for a line of viewing by 1080 lines of viewing, progressive, in 60 structures in a second.

Video the decision for three-dimensional video is measured in voxels (a picture element of volume, being of value in three-dimensional space). For example 512×512×512 voxels the decision now used for simple three-dimensional video, can be shown even on some PDAs.

Skype (declared skaɪp) is the statement of the software which allows users to create vocal messages on the Internet. Calls to other users of service, and in some countries to free numbers, are free, while calls to other land communication lines and mobile phones can be made for a payment. Additional features include instant message transfer, a file transfer and video a multiport conference.

Skype has been written by developers of Ahti Heinloj being in Estonia, Priit Kasesalu and Tallinn Jaan who also has originally developed Kazaa. Group Skype based by businessman Niklasom Zennstremom born by the Swedish languages and Dane Janus Friisom, has a staff in Luxembourg, with offices in London, Tallinn, Tartu, Stockholm, Prague, and San Jose, California.

One of initial names for the project was “connection of knots of a LAN of the Sky equal in rights” which was then is reduced to “Skyper”. However, some of the domain names connected with “Skyper”, were are already taken. Lowering the ending “r” has left the current name “Skype” to which domain names were accessible.

Skype has tested fast growth in popular use since start of its services. The company has been got eBay in September 2005 for $2,6 billion. EBay has written down Skype to $1,7 billion on its books and declared the public stock offering on 2010 to turn Skype as separate company.

In networks, loading and loading address to two initial instructions (corresponding to send and receive, accordingly) that the information can move, and further defines such data as copied and collected (designated by the term “loading”) to create a full file, after a time interval. Loading distinguish from the connected concept вытекания which specifies loading in which the data is consistently suitable for the use as it loads, or “streams”, and that (typically given are not stored.

To load means to obtain the data to local system from the remote system, such as webserver, a server of the PROGRAM of the FILE TRANSFER, e-mail server, or other similar systems. Loading – any file which is offered for loading, or it has been loaded.

Return operation, loading, is a parcel of the data from local system to the remote system, such as a server, or the peer, with intention that the remote system should rescue a copy of that is transferred.

Now that Connect Learning offers instructor-led, hands-on sessions in Virtual classrooms, I’m exploring technology that brings the instructor closer to participants.

Osberto Asturias of Internet Spanish

Osberto Asturias of Internet Spanish encouraged me to take a look at ooVoo. He’s excited about it because it can record both sides of the one-on-one tutoring sessions at the heart of the Internet Spanish method.

New Drop-Dead Gorgeous ooVoo
I was not expecting drop-dead gorgeous high quality video: clear, colorful and sharp. 

ooVoo also enables you to

• Host 6 people in a streaming video conference.
• Share your screen.
• Embed Video Chat in your Web site
• Add a Video Chat room to your Web site
• Record a video message 
• Include text chat

Take a look at ooVoo. I’ll be interested to hear your comments about it.

http://www.connectlearning.com

About ooVoo

The term ‘ videophone ‘ did not become so standardised as the earlier copy, ‘ phone ‘, resulting in set of the names used all over the world, and even within the same area/country. Videophones also are known as video phones and often early name with the trade mark ‘ Videotelephone ‘ which was the first commercialized a videophone in the world, made in quantity. Separate article the page Internet is devoted videophones.

Other names for ‘videophones’ that have been used are: video telephone, Viewphone (the British equivalent to AT&T’s Picturephone), and visiophone, a common French translation that has also crept into limited English usage. Latin-based translations also include vidéophone (French), bildtelefon (German), videotelefono (Italian), both videófono and videoteléfono (Spanish), and both beeldtelefoon and videofoon (Dutch).

ooVoo extends free of charge, but there is also an offer.
Allows to communicate as with one interlocutor, and at once with several (in a free variant – a maximum with two). By the way, the videoconference window is executed unusually as the three-dimensional display, capable to turn every which way.
Record of conversations, sending of video messages, text chat, file transfer is supported. The program ooVoo is similar on popular Skype, but the emphasis in it is made not on audio, and on video.

With ooVoo you can incorporate to any, at any time, with video requirements, video messages, phone calls, the text and more. Use ooVoo to receive time of the person with people, which you cannot personally meet (and to rescue time of passage and money!). ooVoo does a life easier and more entertainments.

I had two separate calls today, each with its own unique high-touch component.

On the first call, I logged into the weekly VoIP User’s conference session using ZipDX and G.722.  Featured speaker was Anthony Stankus, Gigaset Communications product manager for North America — needless to say, he was drinking his own champaigne by using a Gigaset phone.   There were somewhere between 20 to 30 people on the call listening and asking questions — and you could tell who was using G.722 and who was using G.711 (John Todd).

Maybe the contrast between the two codecs on a conference call is what people need to get that “Ah ha” moment and realize life is indeed better with HD voice and wideband codecs.

Anthony has an uphill battle getting Gigaset phones proliferated through the big box stores and the SOHO community, but he’s got a great product at an attractive price relative to the rest of the market.

My second call of the day was with author Austin Bay — well, he describes himself as “Author and syndicated columnist. Soldier, developmental aid advocate, war game designer, lecturer, and radio commentator.” The two of us have never met face-to-face, but we’ve been long-time sparring partners on a mailing list or two.

To borrow a phrase from In Living Color, “Him got 27 jobs, Mon!”

Austin and I did an experimental/experiential video call with ooVoo video software.  Bay has used the software to have interactive video chats with his buds at Pajamas TV, with the net results reprocessed into news clips.  Austin wants to get some of the video artifacts out of his rig and I wanted to see it in action.

Austin was using a MacBook and I was on my Acer Aspire One using its embedded webcam and mic. We seemed to get about the same results, but I was “bad” and didn’t use a headset as recommended by ooVoo; didn’t seem to bother Austin any.   I had some white-wash in the background, but I’ve got a skylight behind me, so there’s a lot of natural sunlight that I’d have to adjust for if I was trying do this on a regular basis for publication.

From a working perspective, the only annoyance was Austin and I sometimes talking over each other due to a slight network time lag. He would start and I would start up at the same time with our yadda-yadda.

Without going into details, Austin is getting back into the saddle after a couple of surgeries.  I’m kinda frightened to think what he’s like at 100 percent and medication free, because he was full of enthusiasm and pep from his den in Austin, Texas.

After I got married, my family size increased and became more geographically diverse. Keeping in touch via telephone was okay but too be honest I am not much of a phone person. Video conferencing was a tool a tinkered with from time to time. Having an iMac, I had iChat to play with. It was great if the other person on the other end had an Apple. But let’s face it; it is not a true Apple world yet and most of my relatives use PCs.

I have worked with Citrix, WebEx, and more sophisticated VC systems at work and all were great for the business community with support personnel onsite to support it. However, at home and for personal use required a more unsophisticated way of conferencing. Let’s face it, would your great aunt in Iowa be able to troubleshoot communication link problems or understand video compression algorithms.

So I did an Internet search and came across Skype. Yes that Skype http://skype.com/ . Skype has a function for video conferencing. It worked great for international video calling. The drawback was it was only a one-to-one solution. We could not do group video calls which was vastly more appealing to my family.

I discovered Oovoo http://oovoo.com/. It was easy to install and worked with both Windows and OSX. It allowed 6 way video calls.

There were a few drawbacks.
A. International calling did not work well. Due to bandwidth limitations the video and audio became unintelligent. This was not an Oovoo issue but a local bandwidth issue.
B. If more than 3 people got on, an echo appeared. It forced us to mute our microphones when not in use. It made having free flow conversations a little difficult.
C. After the first month, Oovoo limits your subscription to 3 users at once and reduces your video quality to standard instead of high definition. 3+ users required a paid subscription. Free is still the best plan for any service. Having only 3 people on at once was not a bad thing it actually cut down the echo problem and made the session more manageable. The video quality, at least in my opinion also did not adversely affect my usage. Standard or high def seems to have very little difference.

So if you are looking for a universal piece of software that works with PCs and Macs, easy to install, easy to use then I highly recommend Oovoo.

I am having pain now! Please Fix

The general consensious of the people writing the Twitter manuals on “how to” and “what is” appropriate in TwitterLand, might need to reconsider their follower/following number guidelines.  Those guidelines currently recommend that you should have about an equal portion of follower to following or else you are considered a spammer (following more than are following you) or a celebrity (have more followers than following).

Well, I think we can all be celebrities!

Corporations & brands that want to really be a part of the social media uprise, need to LISTEN & ENGAGE!  But, not in a spammy way.  Be there for us when we cry out & have a need.  Be there for us when we are talking about certain subjects.  Be there when we have a request or question about YOUR PRODUCT (or a competitors!-but be nice).

Because I have been on both the consumer side of Twitter & the represenative of a company listening for those cries, I give you my following examples: 

Me as the Consumer: Tuesday of this week @digitalvision tweeted out the following:

digitalvision: Webex, you and your non-sharable proprietary formats give me headaches

I responded that it was valuable info since I am in the hunt for an efficient webinar service.  We pinged back & forth a few times, and then-it happened.  @ooVooMarty chimed in and @’d me the following.

@JenHarris09 saw comment on webex, give oovoo a look, www.oovoo.co….

He was either searching for key words and or competitors and found our conversation.  He was not spammy, but very kind & gentle on suggesting that I check out oovoo.  

My Results: THAT my friends,is how you engage.  I pinged him back, said thank you for the OOVOO suggestion (which I have since checked out) and that I appreciated his engagement & am considering using!  (cost to Co? 2 min of his time to find & tweet me…ROI? Much better than a click through rate!)

When/If the ball is in the COMPANIES court (or is it, when the Twal is in the companies Twort?)

Me as the Company: For three months I was the Social Media Sales & Marketing Specialist for @TSheets.  I was all over Twitter searching for mentions, recommendations & critiques of @Tsheets.  I also searched keywords such as “time tracking”, “time tracker”, “time card” etc.  Since 60% of the current customer base was tech, it was a good place to look.

My results? Conversations with potential customers and engagement with those looking for help…in a NON-Spammy way of course.  Our Twitter follower numbers never dropped because I was human & respected peoples time.  I would read our customers blogs when they Tweeted them out and respond if I had something relevant to add (this is a WHOLE other blog on how a Social Media Marketer should engage in all platforms – stay tuned).

My Tip of The Day?  Use Search & Learn how to use “operators” well.  Don’t be spammy, be human, be helpful.  And Consumers, it is ok to have a skewed number of followers, if the man a caring company is listening in TwitterLand, it is better for all of us as consumers in the end.

We’re excited to announce a partnership between SeeToo and ooVoo. SeeToo was always about sharing videos with few friends or family members. ooVoo’s solution enables to video chat with couple of people at the same time.

So now, with the integration of ooVoo into SeeToo, you can share a video and see your friends live at the same time. We think that this partnership makes SeeToo even more useful and hope you guys enjoy it.

You can read the official PR message here and send us feedback about the new integration through this email.

This is the first in series of posts covering the Web 2.0 Expo starting tomorrow at the Moscone Center, in San Francisco, California. I am very excited about the number of companies offering Enterprise 2.0  tools, platforms for developers and end-(business)-users at the event this year. Many of these companies  have plans to announce exciting new social-sharing features and tools at the show, stay tuned for more details. 

 Here’s a sneak peak at some of the more interesting Enterprise 2.0 collaborative platforms and developer tools at the show this year:

ooVoo provides a high-quality video chat and communication service for people to call and connect over the Internet. ooVoo’s technology enables people to experience a face-to-face conversation and share a full range of emotions as if they are in the same room together, whether they are across the street or across the globe.

Huddle.net combines unified collaboration with social networking. The two year old company, based in London UK, provides asynchronous collaborative tools (document management, project management, discussions, team management) and live collaboration (web and telephone conferencing) via their online application and rich API. Huddle’s founder Alastair Mitchell will be talking at Web 2.0 Expo on April, 1st.

MindTouch is an open source enterprise collaboration and community platform that enables users to connect and remix enterprise systems, social tools and web services. The MindTouch Deki i’s built with a Web Oriented Architecture (WOA), enables users to connect teams, enterprise systems, publishing systems, Web services and Web 2.0 applications to create unique content oriented experiences while maintaining IT governance.

ProtoShare is a collaborative website prototyping tool for teams to build, discuss, and refine clickable website wireframes and their creative design comps. Team members, management, clients, and marketing can all  participate in the discussion at an early stage of the interactive development process. ProtoShare is a web-based tool, it supports a wide range of interactive prototypes, from gray-box wireframing to rich Internet functionality.

DreamFace Interactive  develops and markets an Open Source Ajax Framework for creating Enterprise Web 2.0 Applications and Mashups. The new DreamFace version, called Outsider, allows tech-savvy business people to create, personalize and share their own web applications through a unique and innovative concept called Web Channels.Web Channels are mini dynamic applications designed for change. They incorporate DataWidgets; widgets which use diverse data sources coming from both corporate data and the internet, to display information and interact with other DataWidgets.

Last but not the least, CoreMedia CMS is a content management system powering corporate websites, Intranets, public and high traffic media portals. CoreMedia CMS provides a foundation for strategic content platforms for corporate websites, intranets and high-traffic media portals. Soeren Stamer, German entrepreneur, CEO of CoreMedia and Author of “Enterprise 2.0 – The Art of Letting Go” will speaking at Web 2.0 expo on Wednesday, April 1st.

I’ll be blogging on social media tools and platforms for the enterprise space throughout the show, if there’s an enterprise-focused company/product that you would like to see on here or if you want to tweet up, you can find me at Twitter.com/MiaD. 

You can also follow the conversation on the Web 2.0 Expo website or on Twitter (#w2e).