Vid Chat
Among college students, video chatting has become one of the best ways of communication with staying in touch with friends and family back at home and even across the country. Personally, I use Skype, iChat and sometimes Oovoo.
Skype, the program I use most frequently, was created as a software to make phone calls over the internet. It is also used as an instant messaging program, a video chatting reference, and offers a screen sharing component. This comes in handy when you are trying to show a friend your screen, or “what your talking a bout” while video chatting at the same time. The program was created in September of 2002. “One of the initial names for the project was “Sky peer-to-peer”, which was then abbreviated to “Skyper”. However, some of the domain names associated with “Skyper” were already taken. Dropping the final “r” left the current title “Skype”, for which domain names were available.” Skype was originally owned by eBay, but in September of 2009 it was bought by investors under the label of Silver Lake bought 65% of it for $1.9 dollars.
Skype is compatible with many things, from Linux, Macs, Windows, and even the iPhones and Windows mobile devices. Skype is a free software unless there is a phone call being made from a computer to a cellular device, in that case it charges the “telephone number” of that device.
An interesting note about Skype is that it was developed by the same person who developed KaZaA, the initial music downloading program before programs such as LimeWire entered the internet world.
The ways Skype makes its money includes a mailbox facility in order to record calls, SkypeOut/Skype airtime in order to use your phone enabled with Skype anywhere around the world and SkypeIn with the ability to use its services using your original number of your wish connecting to your computer. I assume that mostly businesses equip their employers with things of this sort, giving money to Skype.
I think that Skype is a wonderful tool of invention allowing me to stay in touch with all my close friends. Its much easier being away from them because sometimes just seeing a video of them and being able to laugh with them is almost the same as actually being with them.
Carol Dye
Yes, Skype is truly a brilliant invention for a tech-savvy generation like ours. With the prevalence of social networking sites in our present-day society we are often accustomed to spend countless hours in conversation whether it be productive or useless. Nevertheless, Skype provides singnificantly more creativity than the popular MySpace and FaceBook pages in that one can actually see the people one is talking to and laughing with. Thus, the Skype experience provides more flavor to a conversation rather than the simple stream of black letters and “lol” abbreviations on a MySpace page. Skype is an excellent tool and example to how much our society is leaning toward digitizing everything from conversations, to books, to mail, and to other aspects of our life that 40 years ago might have been imprinted on simple stationary.
-S. Petrov
I love Skype!! I feel like it’s safe, that is if used in the right ways. I really like being able to not only talk to, but also see my friends who are half way across the country at other colleges. It’s really nice to have that option. Also, I have some friends in Germany and Greece, and because Skype is done through the internet, it is free to talk to them, whereas over the phone it would cost a fortune. It’s truly amazing the options technology presents in our day in age.