I just had a look at SightSpeed’s brand spanking new video community called Vlip, and not surprisingly, Peter the SightSpeed Guy is in there like a dirty shirt (or t-shirt, I should say). It looks like a sort of video message board where you can post your own videos and allow others to reply to you with their own cinematic responses. Just like SightSpeed, the video generation tools are built right in–all you need is a web cam.

They say it’s for adults only, 18 years and older, but I don’t know how they’ll enforce that exactly. The terms of use indicate they want to see respect for all opinions, but they will police the posts and take down vlips considered inappropriate.

You can read the official Vlip Manifesto on Peter Csathy’s blog (SightSpeed CEO). The VOIPGirl doesn’t vlip yet, but stranger things have happened.

Today SightSpeed went live with some great updates. If you’re already a SightSpeed user, you don’t have to do anything. All the new features will be there the next time you start the application.

Luca has already posted a great summary of what’s inside the new and improved SightSpeed so I won’t repeat. However, here’s a sample of the new video blogging feature. Rather than post a link to your video message, you can embed the video post right into your blog or web site. Great job!

By the way, to post this in Wordpress, I had to turn off the Rich Text Editor, and then paste in the code.

I’ve been playing catchup a little this week so I’m reading the flurry of posts that started with SightSpeed’s Peter Csathy on Video as the Next Big Thing in Social Networking. Luca Filigheddu and Ken Camp had some interesting things to say. However, PhoneBoy really put it together for me.

First, he says that until video is literally built in everywhere, like right in my laptop or as part of a web site, the masses on the whole may not bother. I see this already in my efforts to get friends and family to join SightSpeed. After all, it’s free, it works, and it’s easy. What’s the holdup? Seems that my friends are either a little suspicious of something FREE off the Internet (what’s the catch) or they simply don’t have a webcam. Why can’t they could just rush down to Staples immediately and spend $40 on a web cam and some gel pens? Not everyone’s a Staples geek like me. If the technology isn’t right there staring them in the face, it’s not a priority.

Phoneboy goes on to say that even if technology catches up and “the ability to do video is as ubiquitous as a mobile phone”, people may still not use it to interact on the Internet. It depends on what you have to say and how you want to say it. For example, I can convince my parents to use SightSpeed because they see huge value in the ability to see and talk to their kids in other cities. My friends are lukewarm on the idea of video calling me just to chat because it seems unnecessary (and they can’t do dishes or look for car keys at the same time).

That said, I’m still trying to get friends, family and colleagues into my SightSpeed network. I may have to resort to webcams as Christmas presents. Because SightSpeed has a great feature that lets you email video messages, I’m just gonna video mail them until a) they tell me to stop, or b) give in and try it.

Following on Peter Csathy’s post about how he uses SightSpeed for business and personal communication, Andy shares six tips for making video calls. In a nutshell, 1) Get over it, your hairdo’s not that bad 2) Get a hat, 3) Come as you are, be comfortable, 4) Have good lighting, 5) Learn to multitask on camera, 6) Don’t worry about multitasking on camera, it’s not considered rude.

Thanks Andy!

Ted Wallingford got the scoop from Sightspeed’s Peter Csathy about their new and improved video mail feature. Faster, smoother, cooler. Gonna try it! 

I received a nice note from the SightSpeed Guy to try the SightSpeed video calling and blogging service. There’s been a lot of blog buzz about this product so I was happy to give it a go. (Check out the video blog post from Andy Abramson that got things going and the aftermath according to Dina Kaplan of BlipTV).

I downloaded, installed and made my first test call all in about 9 minutes. Then, “Does my hair really look like that?” Next 5 minutes trying to fix it. Yowza…

If you saw Andy’s tip for bad hair days, here’s a little additional info for the gals. Check out my video blog post: girl tips for video blogging on bad hair days.

I was following the thread started by PhoneBoy and SightSpeed’s Peter Csathy about the obvious advantages of communicating with someone in person. Facial expressions, hand gestures, and body language are huge non-verbal cues that say a lot. But, when face time isn’t an option, then real-time video calling (using SightSpeed of course) is the next best thing. Peter himself runs his Berkeley-based  team from San Diego, and couldn’t do so effectively without SightSpeed. PhoneBoy agrees and thinks that SightSpeed rocks, “Almost like being there”.

But, I’m curious to know if the folks who use SightSpeed today are making spontaneous or pre-planned calls. I confess that when I use it, it’s usually a planned thing. I’ll email or text someone and say, “OK to SightSpeed you now?”, or I pre-arrange a call at a certain time.

My guess is that live video from the desktop is still so new that people hesitate at “surprising” someone with a video call. Unless of course you’re The SightSpeed Guy. You may want to check out his latest blog post. He’s wearing a tie. Must be the staff Christmas lunch.

Is VOIP a generational thing? When I told my parents about my great scheme to use VOIP for my business line and long distance calling, Mom gave me that worried look that says “Are you sure that’s not illegal?” You should try it, I cry! Vonage, my service of choice at the time, was only $19.95 a month. A simple calculation on my phone bill told me I was spending more that that on long distance every month, so it seemed a no brainer.

Then Dad says, why don’t you just use 10-10-YAK? Only 5 cents a minute.

That’s what my parents use. YAK is a dial-around service you can use for long distance calling. The charges appear on your regular phone bill so there’s no subscriber contract to deal with.

But Dad (I’m deflated now), YAK isn’t VOIP, and VOIP is COOL. VOIP is the WAVE of the FUTURE…OK well whatever.

Now I don’t know if it’s just my parents, but the idea of only paying for what they use on a regular old telephone makes total sense to them. Hooking up a Vonage phone adaptor to their PC and broadband modem to make phone calls does not.

But my Dad did get me thinking about this question of unlimited calling vs. pay as you go. If you ask the folks at SIPphone Gizmo Project, they’ll say that unlimited plans won’t save you money. Only paying for minutes you actually use will.

“A calling plan that involves unlimited calling is almost never in the best interests of the consumer. When you just pay for what you consume, you end up paying far less.”

It grieves me, but lets do the math. At 5 cents a minute, I would have to spend about 400 minutes calling long distance calls (6 1/2 hours) to break even with my $20 plus tax Vonage charges for unlimited calling. I spend way less than 400 minutes a month talking long distance, so (a) I was paying way to much at my telco before for long distance, and (b) I can do way better than Vonage.

Most VOIP long distance rates are around 2 cents a minute or less, so for me paying as I go makes sense (400 minutes at 2 cents/minute is $8)!

 

One thing I wish for in my quest for perfect Internet phone service the ability is to fix voice quality problems on the fly or at least be able to understand “is it me or the network?”

When I had Vonage service, I usually started the converation with “So how do I sound, can you hear me?” Many times there was such a delay that practical converation was impossible. If I was at my computer, I’d try quitting applications to see if that helped (usually not). After hanging up in frustration, I’d try messing with the dreaded ”Bandwidth Saver” feature. But in my opinion, AFTER the call is way too late.

Is it possible to build intelligent applications that KNOW when they’re not performing optimally and can tell you what the problem is, or better yet advise how to fix it?

No sooner had I written this when Peter Csathy, CEO of SightSpeed, let me in on a little secret (okay well it’s not actually a secret…), SightSpeed detects when your video or voice call isn’t going so well and automatically makes adjustments to improve the quality.

For example, a video call that appears jumpy or out of sync with the audio could be caused by network congestion. SightSpeed can downsize the bandwidth usage for video so that at least the voice aspect of the call is preserved or improved. SightSpeed lets you know it’s doing this by popping up a dialog box that says it’s making these adjustments. I don’t know if you can you make adjustments yourself DURING a video call, but you can easily see your upload and download speeds while talking to someone.

To see SightSpeed statistics: 

With your mouse hovering over the SightSpeed title bar,  press CTRL + S (or right mouse-click followed by CTRL + S). A statistics dialog box appears showing your current, peak and average bandwidth usage.

Gizmo Project has a Call Quality Assistant (click the bar graph in the bottom left of the Gizmo Window) that gives you an idea of your network conditions. While it shows you at a glance the quality of your connection, it doesn’t say what you should do about it and at this point in my life, that’s what I need.