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 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.

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.

I’ve been fiddling for the last few days with my Nokia N80i. I know I should be homing in on the on-board mobile VOIP capabilities, but I’m too distracted by all the other things this device can do. You have to understand that I’m a basic cell phone person. I’ve never held too much with phones that try to manage your life. I use my mobile to make calls. That’s pretty much it. (C’mon Leanne, get with the program here). So now that I’ve tried the N80i, I realize how boring I’ve been all this time. 

So far, I’m delightfully dazzled by the camera, the video recorder and the music player. These three things I never thought would have interested me and now I can see using them daily…oh yeah, and making calls…that’s four things.

However, I had a few bumps installing the software (GizmoVoIP), for Internet calling, and the phone drivers on my laptop. Tell ya about that later.

I’m a bit slower than the other bloggers trying out the Nokia N80i, but that’s typical me. I like to process things a little.

Overall, there’s not much I don’t like about this phone. It’s got a good feel in my hand, not too small but not to heavy either. It takes better than expected pictures, and the video recorder is great for the kids’ spontaneous slapstick routines. The music player is a real bonus for me. I don’t bother with an mp3 player when I’m out and about because it means carrying around another gadget. But now that the player is in the phone, I’m really enjoying using it. I know these features aren’t unique, but the N80i implements them really well. One-button access to the camera, video and music player makes these features super easy to use.

However, I had a few hiccups during the setup. The first was installing GizmoVoIP, which I couldn’t find anywhere on the phone. It is supposed to be available from the Downloads folder but in my case it wasn’t there, at least at first. It only appeared after refreshing the list several times over the span of several hours.

The second problem I had was installing PC Suite, the Nokia driver software and applications for the PC. In my case the drivers did not install, despite many uninstall/reinstall combinations. No drivers means no way for laptop and phone to communicate, no way to download music to the phone from the PC, synchronise contact lists,  etc.

The error I received was: “There is no available connection type. The connection to phone cannot be established.”

Ultimately, my solution was to uninstall EVERYTHING Nokia N80 from the Control Panel/AddRemove Programs. This includes PC Suite AND the Nokia PC Connectivity package. For some reason, there were two PC Connectivity packages installed instead of one which probably caused all the grief. I then downloaded the most recent PC Suite from the support web site, and reinstalled.

The PC Suite on the CD that came with the phone was out of date but the autoupdater that updated the sofware when I installed the first time, clearly didn’t do a very good job. I think this is why I ended up with two sets of drivers that didn’t like living in the same house.

The third thing I did, and this is more of a user problem, is that I connected the cable to my laptop first, before popping in the CD. Predictably, the Found New Hardware wizard prompted me for the CD that contains the drivers. When I inserted the CD, of course nothing happened because PC Suite installs the applications and drivers all at once. But since I didn’t realize this at first and there wasn’t anything in the documentation, I spent a bit of time hunting through the packaging looking for another CD that I may have missed.

Who knows if many users have the same issue, but an easy fix would be for Nokia to add more accurate labeling and instructions to the CD itself.

Anyway, all is fine and dandy now.