I was just chatting with Joshua Archer and we tried out Skype. It looks really promising, but we didn’t get to have an actual conversation over it because I didn’t have headphones, and the feedback from my powerbook’s internal microphone was pretty nasty.
Assuming the addition of headphones clears that up, this should be a great addition to our suite of collaboration tools (and would wind up getting a spot in our potential NMC 2005 session in June…)
So, I’m building up my Skype contacts list… If you use Skype, let me know what your account name is, and I’ll add you.
Oh, I’m dlnorman on Skype…
UPDATE: I’ve had 2 Skype calls today. The first was with Josh, and it was basically unusable. Feedback that built up in a couple of seconds to sound like a team of wild horses galloping through the room. The second call was with Tim Wang, and it sounded as good or better than a regular long distance phone call. We were both using the “stock” microphone and speakers in our laptops, so I’m not sure why it was working better with Tim than Josh… But if Skype calls sound that good, then, well, DAMN! Bring it on!
UPDATE: I had several Skype requests waiting for me when I got in this morning. Unfortunately, Skype conveniently crashed after adding the first one… And I don’t know if it keeps a record of requests anywhere. So, if you sent me a request, and I didn’t respond, it’s not personal 🙂 Please send it again…
I was just chatting with Joshua Archer and we tried out Skype. It looks really promising, but we didn’t get to have an actual conversation over it because I didn’t have headphones, and the feedback from my powerbook’s internal microphone was pretty nasty.
Assuming the addition of headphones clears that up, this should be a great addition to our suite of collaboration tools (and would wind up getting a spot in our potential NMC 2005 session in June…)
So, I’m building up my Skype contacts list… If you use Skype, let me know what your account name is, and I’ll add you.
Oh, I’m dlnorman on Skype…
UPDATE: I’ve had 2 Skype calls today. The first was with Josh, and it was basically unusable. Feedback that built up in a couple of seconds to sound like a team of wild horses galloping through the room. The second call was with Tim Wang, and it sounded as good or better than a regular long distance phone call. We were both using the “stock” microphone and speakers in our laptops, so I’m not sure why it was working better with Tim than Josh… But if Skype calls sound that good, then, well, DAMN! Bring it on!
UPDATE: I had several Skype requests waiting for me when I got in this morning. Unfortunately, Skype conveniently crashed after adding the first one… And I don’t know if it keeps a record of requests anywhere. So, if you sent me a request, and I didn’t respond, it’s not personal 🙂 Please send it again…
Related
My Skype name: Downes
It is interesting, I have had similar experience with Skype, and it seems the sound quality is not depending on the distance of the users. I have once talked to people in Vancouver all the way from Hong Kong, and the quality was better than regular phone calls. The friend in Vancouver was using ADSL, I was using another friend’s connection at the Hong Kong University of Technology. However, I have had some bad experience with someone using local networks… This is really strange.
Tim, the weird thing is, Josh is way down in the Bay Area, much farther away from me than you are. But he was connecting from home (well, so was I), so there may have been more network issues at play.
I wonder if he’s checked the “echo cancellation” option in Skype? It’s odd that it’s off by default…
But I have tried from HK to Van, and one end is ADSL at home. So… think we should survey more people out there who used Skype before… Gonna check with people on my list.
Skype gets better all the time. I had an hour long conversation with my wife a few months ago over Skype. Cable modems at both ends. She was in San Diego and I was in Singapore , both of us just using the built in mike and speakers on our PowerBooks and the sound quality was better than when I call home from campus a half mile away.
To me, Skype is on that short list of paradigm busters like PageMaker, HyperCard and VisiCalc. It makes it easy to do things you wouldn’t have done otherwise. Schools, for example, make it hard to run up a long distance bill and pipe a conversation into a classroom. With Skype its trivial to set up an audioconference and bring outside experts into the class. Great stuff!
Bernie, it gets even more paradigm-shifting once you try Skype Out to call a regular old telephone from your computer via the ‘net… For about 2 cents per minute, almost anywhere on the globe. It costs me the same to check my campus voicemail as it does to call Josh in California via Skype 🙂
I’ll never be gouged by insanely expensive hotel long distance charges (I was once charged over $200 for approximately 25 minutes of calling at the Argent in San Francisco!). I can just fire up Skype and call home. My wife can talk on our cordless phone and still be able to chase Evan around while talking 🙂