Here's a selection of videoconferencing ideas. I especially like the idea of the virtual dinner:
Links to this story:
Apple iChat:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/ichat.html
Accenture's Virtual Dining:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/tech/family-dinners.html
TEEVE:
http://cairo.cs.uiuc.edu/teleimmersion/
Here's an idea to simplify using Skype video, which, let's face it - is not that simple for someone new to a PC.
From my observations, there is a lot of confusion when people use Skype for the first time. The layout is unduly complex, and the sequence of events is not clear - apart from the obvious ones of starting and finishing a call.
Older people especially who have not used a computer don't know which keys to use, and they have poor co-ordination using the mouse for the first week or more. The learning curve is steep.
My solution is a dedicated keyboard showing a minimum of simple buttons designed to be used in sequence from left to right.
I love GoToMyPC. It's a program you can install on your computer which allows you to remotely access your computer from any other internet-connected computer in the world. You use any browser for access, and pay a small monthly fee:
When I've been overseas I've been able to log in to my computer and answer email almost as if I was there in person. My own computer screen appears as a full-size window in the browser on the computer I am using. Move the mouse, and my own mouse thousands of miles away moves at the same time.
I started a Photo Album folder on her machine and transferred family photos to it through Skype. She has been viewing them almost daily.
Videoconferencing becomes more attractive when it replicates a real setting, or expands our boundaries of view.
For example, our daughter is visiting another country at the moment and used a wirelessly connected MacBook laptop to Skype us.
During the video chat she moved the laptop around the back of the house she was staying at so that we could see her surroundings. We saw the back yard, a friendly dog and the back lawn.
Yes, I'm declaring war on paper... again.
A year or two back I tried to morph completely to a paperless office.
But the idea was flawed from the start because I wasn't solving the problem - paper itself. I was finding ways to digitally store it (using the Fujitsu Scansnap Scanner with a lot of success), but doing nothing to stem the flow.
This picture shows the mail and paperwork I have on my desk from a week's worth of mail neglect. They include:
All this paperwork could have been avoided if the companies and people involved were a lot more organized and businesslike.
So my task for 2008 is to eliminate as much paperwork from these sources as I possibly can. I guess that I can quit at least 90%. There will always be the exception, like the bill from my plumber that I'll need to pay manually. But already I have eliminated a lot of paper activity by automating my payments through internet banking. Of course these institutions are obliged to send the bill and receipt as well!
However, there will come a time when everything on paper is electronically satisfied. And I'm looking forward to that day.
Here's a look at the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510:
While it's great to video chat to a person face-to-face, a bit of variety adds some interest. So I've taken to changing my backgrounds so my callers see a different view each day.
Each day I put the Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 video camera on a different one of my four monitors. Because they are arranged in a curve on my desk, it means the webcam points at a different part of my office. So far the reaction has been good. Variety is the spice of life!
For the past year I've used a home-built videoconferencing unit I developed that enabled me to make accurate eye contact with my video caller. I'll give more details in a later post, but I was intrigued to come across a similar system in principle shown here, at Bodelin.
It is designed to give true eye contact with your caller. The unit fits over the top of your screen, and with a couple of 45 degree mirrors reflects the image so that you are looking directly into the subject's eyes. I've ordered one just now, and will do a review when I get it.
The Bodelin website explains: "See Eye 2 Eye works like a periscope. When you place this patented device over your webcam, a set of mirrors beams the picture of the person you're talking to onto our optical grade beam-splitting glass, which sits in front of your webcam lens. You can see the reflected image while the other party isn't even aware you're looking at anything but your webcam."
One of my questions about its usefulness is the small image size. It looks like you need to reduce the caller's image to 320 x 240 on your screen to get the picture to fit the unit.
That's too small for me - I like to increase a video to full screen (19") for full immersion. A small picture is no better than a videophone like the Ojo with all its size and quality restrictions.
Some people will prefer small talking heads, but I believe the true immersive experience involves a varied background and extended views. For example, when I pick my Logitech Quickcam 9000 off the top of the screen and turn it round my home office, the viewer is always excited to see the larger view. This is the ultimate experience for improved realism and interactivity.
I can see the usefulness of videoconferencing for family and friends. But I'm not really sure it's needed in business.
How important is it to see the expression on someone's face when you're talking to them in a business or selling situation? Would it make or break the sale? As a boss, would you be more inclined to promote someone if you could see their demeanor (and acne) rather than all the ticks in the right boxes on their CV? I think that business video calling is hugely overrated, and its general uselessness could be part of the problem for videoconferencing not taking off as quickly as predicted.
Recruitment and executive placement will possibly promote the business need, but it is only a very small part of the business landscape.
But connecting visually with family and friends is really where the future of videoconferencing is, whether from the desktop, or a commercial service like Amigo Live (pictured above). There's a huge advantage in seeing familiar people on a regular basis, especially when they're overseas or a great distance away.
Everyone knows the advantage of seeing family they haven't talked to for a while. This morning my mother-in-law - the same 93-year-old I've talked about in an earlier post - Skyped my mother in Britain, half the world away. By all accounts it was a tremendous bonding experience, since my mother-in-law hadn't seen her since visiting the year before. That's the real value of videoconferencing, and it's where the most gain will be made.
I've been using a Skype High Quality video calling setup for the last week, and the results are spectactular.
Here's an excellent and detailed review on the process by Skype Journal blogger Jim Courtney. I'll give my personal experiences and more detail in later posts.
What will videoconferencing look like in a few years? Here's one scenario I've thought about...
I'd like to predict that in the near future we'll all have a remotely controlled robot in all our homes that we can use as our own persona, or body double. When it's placed in a remote location - a friend's house for example - we'll log into it remotely through the net and our own video face will show on the remote robot.
We will be linked to it. It will act as "us" on our command, moving about as we would in the remote surroundings. It will send images and sound back to us in a 3D process that would enable us to be there virtually.
We could move though the host room and sit by the grandchildren, perhaps reading a story to them (providing they are used to the concept and won't get freaked out!) Or we could sit on the sofa, or across the dinner table and join in the family conversation.
We could even hire one located at seminars, museums or trade shows and wander the floor looking around and interacting with the staff. This concept would make videoconferencing useful. It's being done already at a simpler level.
iRobot are doing this with their ConnectR, a virtual visiting robot due out 2008:
A primitive-looking robot called IvanAnywhere is a working solution:
UCLA Medical Center has had a robotic doctor since 2005:
"By the end of 2010, we'd like to see these robots working at every street corner of the city," said Tomohiko Kawanabe of Honda's Fundamental Technology Research Center.
Videoconferencing is not new. Global business has been using videoconferencing for the last 15 years. And in the last couple of years programs like Skype have made huge strides in increasing quality and ease of use for personal users with their High Quality benchmark introduced this month.
Videoconferencing is mainstream. Today at 3.15pm I saw Skype has 5,153,338 people online at one time. It's been as high as 10 million, which shows how a large number of people are accepting and using this type of technology.
But only about 50% of my friends and family enjoy videoconferencing, and this percentage seems to be typical. The main barriers seem to be reasons they won't readily admit to:
- They can't multitask while having a video call. Most telephone users will do something else while they are talking, like typing or paperwork. I've sometimes done that myself. One member of our family readily admits that she enjoys looking out of the window during a phone conversation. She can't do that with a video call however, and feels obliged to remain looking interested during the talk. While that's not difficult if you like the person (or they are related!) but it's hard work to keep up the pretense if you have to be there.
- They don't want to look like a slob, either personally or their home. Most people want to get spruced up for a video chat. Why? I don’t know, since many will invite people into their messy house and greet them in old clothes. But the 50% will give this reason as an excuse for not wanting to use video. It's a bit like the early days of the automobile, where everybody dressed in their Sunday best to go out motoring. Now we just drive around in a T-shirt and jeans. Dress is a barrier that has to be overcome.
- Videoconferencing is just not real enough. That's because a generation of one-way television viewers find it difficult to accept, subliminally, that the screen will interact and talk back to them. It's a mental expectation that the screen is uni-directional, as if we're not talking to a person but just to a familiar image on TV that is not quite real. A real-world example... our grandchildren can sometimes be slightly rude when they Skype us... even though they wouldn't dream of doing it to our face. There is a removal of reality because subliminally they believe they are talking to a representation rather than a real person.
- There's no eye contact. We're all familiar with the standard webcam view... the person on screen studying our chin - and only occasionally looking up if they are aware of good webcam etiquette. We soon get used to the downward view of their profile. But the difference true eye contact makes is remarkable. Most people can discern an eye contact variance of less than 5° at around 20 feet. That means they will be able to tell when a person is standing 20 feet away and looking past your shoulder. The small deflection is immediately obvious. Wow. The human brain is massively sophisticated in discerning these slight differences. So why do we put up with it?
What's the answer? How can we get people to enjoy videoconferencing? I've got some ideas which I've used, and which I'll expand on later.
I'm older than many net users. Next year I will celebrate my 60th birthday. But despite those six decades, I still feel 21 inside with all the excitement and promise of flying cars, wall-to-wall videoconferencing and a no-work society still welling up inside me from time to time.
In a way I've already accomplished those many childhood dreams. I work alone, digitally - almost on autopilot - with the world as my market, without leaving my desk. I'm dictating this post through Dragon Naturally Speaking and sharing my work on four 19" screens (pic).
With the click of a button I can access most of my family in far-flung parts of the world, and talk to them face to face.
Another click or two and I can buy products from any part of the world, and have them sent anywhere. It's an incredible existence, far surpassing anything I had ever dreamed of.
As an example, a week ago I bought a new webcam for my brother who lives in Britain - a Logitech Quickcam 9000 for high quality video through Skype. I already had one.
Although it was a Christmas present for him, it was really for me... because I benefited most from the better quality video. But the exciting part of this giftgiving was that I was able to purchase it from Amazon.com in UK, and have it delivered to his doorstep in a matter of two or three days.
Today, this is commonplace. Kids take the net for granted. A few days ago my grandson, aged 11, added another contact to his Skype list with the help of my brief instructions. Computers weren't even invented when I was 11, for goodness sake, yet here he was deftly managing this overly complex business we call the internet and computer.
But there's a lot wrong still with our digital world. Design and function are primitive. Last week I gave an old computer to my mother in-law, who's 93, so we can video chat. That's her setup on the right.
She has done remarkably well in working it out with my brief instruction - considering she had never used a computer in her life. But there were a lot of physical problems to overcome like controlling the mouse and understanding what a window is. Still, we've gone far enough to make and receive Skype calls, and no doubt she will start building her list of contacts in time as I did.
So the internet and computing at any level is still fiendishly complex. And until you tutor someone who has never worked on a computer do you realize how much underlying knowledge you have built up over the years.
My ambition is to make our digital life as simple as possible. At the moment I'm doing this awkwardly with complex workarounds like hotkeys and automatic mouse & keyboard sequences because there isn't a better way.
But it shouldn't be like this. More on this later.
I don't know why it should work again, but a full install of Picasa yesterday resulted in all my photos returning... captions and tags - all back. The result is I've decided not to go with Flickr, but now that Picasa has web-based storage, I'll move everything across to Google.
Not sure that I like all my digital life being in one googlebasket though. I may use Flickr as backup. (23 December 2007 : Still not used Flickr. It's hard moving away from familiar territory! And I've gone off using Google for everything for security reasons. More about that later).
At the end of this recent post I talked about hoping to eventually quit my keyboard.
Since all my work is dictated, I thought a keyboard would be of little or no use. Well, after trying to do without it over a couple of hours, the result showed that I was way out in my thinking. Actually, it's very unlikely that I'll be able to quit the keyboard just yet. And here's the main reason... a program I find essential...
ShortKeys. It's an absolutely essential utility containing a large number of text shortcuts, and I use it constantly.
There's 660 of these shortcuts I have built up over the years. You can see about 50 of them in the graphic here.
If you didn't know the advantages of ShortKeys, let me tell you that there are hundreds of URLs that I use frequently, but have never typed but once. That's because with a shortcut for each of them, ShortKeys does the rest.
Those shortcuts also apply to long paragraphs, signatures, passwords, HTML code, and dozens of other exceptionally useful pieces of text. It's fair to say that ShortKeys is one of the most valuable software programs I own. Everything else on my desktop can be duplicated in some way - except the myriad of shortcuts I use to automate and hugely speed up my digital life.
So eliminating the keyboard would need mean that I would have to dictate each of the shortcut keys. That's actually harder than it sounds. I've never been able to get my dictation program, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, to any sort of accuracy dictating a single symbol, even though it's 99% accurate with everything else. In fact, I don't even know how to dictate single letters... I'll have to go to the ShortKeys' support page to find out, when I get some time.
Looks like the keyboard is here to stay for a while!
Another advantage of ShortKeys is increasing security. I use a large number of detailed, complex alphanumeric passwords that are identified only by a small number of ShortKeys letters. But since these initial letters are in code, and are known only to me - it's impossible for anyone to identify the program they come from.
There is no way that a keylogger or trojan program - should they get past the large number of virus protection programs I have - would ever be able to identify them.
In short, ShortKeys is an essential part of automating my digital life. And I see now they have an associated macro program called Macro Express. If it's as good as ShortKeys, it'll certainly be invaluable.
The Microsoft Surface tabletop PC is straight out of the film "Minority Report." It looks really interesting.
But there's a catch... it requires large arm movements to manipulate the objects.
My mouse pad - in contrast - measures about 5" in diameter, and I don't even use 50% of that space. Micro-movements allow me to get the mouse pointer to any of my three 19" triple screens.
Will we get tired using the huge surface that Microsoft has developed, or will it just become an interesting way to exercise? Will the next generation of kids start looking like gorillas with overdeveloped arm and chest muscles?
I think not. But the Surface concept is exciting and innovative, and I'm looking forward to using it in the future.
Though I'm more interested in brainpower as a way to interact with a computer. Less effort - more promise. Surface is a step in the right direction.
My Roomba hasn't been working very well lately. It would vacuum for about a couple of minutes, then stop with some of the indicator lights blinking. When I pressed the "clean" button on the remote, it would work again.
So I've taken to check on it using my lounge security camera. I have a wireless cam set up high in our lounge, and it overlooks most of the area.
The screen sits next to my 4 screen setup in my downstairs home office, and it's easy for me to check whether the Roomba is still going - or whether I have to go up and reset it again. Fortunately it seems to be working for up to 10 to 15 minutes at the time now, but just in case it doesn't, I'm able to keep a beady eye on it. (OK, since I wrote this it has been a trooper - carrying out the full 40 min clean without stopping).
You can see it arrowed in the photo above. When it disappears behind the sofa and I don't see it for a while, I turn the webcam sound on and listen for it.
One day I'll send it in for servicing, but the main problem is that my second backup Roomba isn't working either. In their favor, I have to say that of the 5 Roombas I have owned, they all seem to work quite well for up to a year, and I use them each day. It's certainly worth the $599 a year (the cost of a Roomba in our country), to replace a cleaning service or the time we spend vacuuming our house ourselves.
A couple of years ago, I decided to take my business - and my life - fully digital. That was the main reason for this blog.
Up till now, it's been a bit hit and miss... touch and go. Mainly because my expectations were well ahead of the existing software and hardware available.
But a number of things have been happening to change that. Among those, and I guess most importantly, has been Google's move to offline web based applications announced a couple of days ago. In time, Google Gears for example, will allow you to work on your Gmail offline, then move it to the web when you're ready.
I'm already using many of Google's apps for my digital business, and I'll list those in a future post.
So their development is a great step forward, but it's more than that. It signifies the move towards the "empty computer" concept - a great term which basically implies that everything you need is held on a server somewhere, and you access it via your computer which acts as a conduit. It's all very similar to Oracle/Sun's Network Computer (NC) a few years back, which didn't catch on.
However, there's still a way to go before I can turn my digital life on. But there's something that's causing me to accelerate my progress. And that's a series of "recovered from a serious error" dialog boxes over the last week. I'm taking this to mean that my hard drive will eventually expire shortly.
I have everything backed up of course, but it's hugely inconvenient to get everything back and working again.
That's why my mission to go fully digital is getting quite serious right now.
And as I was writing this post, I idly wondered how much could I could reduce my physical computer setup.
At the moment my triple screen configuration is now essential to me for boosted productivity - so that stays.
But do I need a keyboard?
I do all my 'typing' through Dragon NaturallySpeaking, so do I really need keys?
Also, most of my gestures are done through the mouse - so most of my keyboard use could be eliminated... if I could break the habit. (Photo shows my Logitech cordless keyboard and MX3000 mouse on my desk).
That will be a pretty exciting step - either fully quitting my keyboard or maybe only using it briefly when required.
As always, my increased productivity (read "laziness") is prime. Let's see how far I can take that.
I haven't added anything to my Picasa photo album system since Xmas.
Sadly I have not been able to access Picasa on my computer (Windows XP Home), despite many reboots and downloads. This means I have effectively lost all the tags and organisational ability of Picasa, and I'm very annoyed.
So I'm looking at using Flickr to leave all my photos online and avoid this disaster happening again. I'll keep you posted.
I videoconference a lot with my relatives overseas. As an ex-pro photographer I'm very conscious about lighting and camera positions.
Just now I came across an excellent step-by-step blog on how to improve your basic webcam lighting to get a better picture. That's the author in the picures above. See the story HERE
I've just finished reading this fascinating excerpt by "How Stuff Works" creator Marshall Brain.
He talks about the rise of a robot workforce within the next 20 to 30 years, and its effect on the world. The implications are mind-boggling.
Start here: http://marshallbrain.com - and go to his interesting "Robotic Nation" story here: http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
I've put a lot of the information that would normally run here over to my lotto blog at: http://honest-lotto.blogspot.com/
Take a look.
