mylifeonthenet.com

The majority of us all have webcams. Most people’s are built into their laptops, while others remain discarded into the drawer next to the drawing pins and highlighters.

So many years ago I remember people’s desire for video chat in EVERYTHING. We even invented video phones to get our face-to-face chat — 3G phones as well as landline that enabled us to feel more connected to the person we were talking to. The Internet also gave us that fix–iChat, Skype, MSN, Yahoo, all the major chat clients offered the feature and once you went through all of the loops you managed to get a chat through.

In my entire life I have had a total of two video chats. One was in 2002, to relatives in Greece. Secondly, I had a small conversation with my aunt after I moved to Dundee. Any other time was either a massive failure (thank you, internet) or a one-way video conference.

However, I have voice chats all of the time. I talk to friends in Edinburgh weekly as well as using Skype to connect to family and friends across the globe. Why not video?

Well, there’s a few reasons:-

• What’s the point?
• It hogs my bandwidth!
• I don’t have a webcam.

What’s the point? Well, it lets people see who you really are. You might have met your friends on the net, but it doesn’t mean you have to remain as an avatar. You can almost truly connect, as video chat gives a more natural experience as you’re able to relate to people’s body movements and actions. You can even show things off to each other–such as family items or miscellaneous geekery!

It hogs my bandwidth! Well, that makes sense. But it’s not as big as you might thing. Anyone with a 512Mb connection or higher should be ok with having an video conference.

I don’t have a webcam. Well, that didn’t stop me. If you want, you can use an ordinary DV Camcorder–but it doesn’t cost much for a new webcam these days. My webcam, that only cost me