better living thru technology

So, some years ago, on a whim, I bought a QuickCam at a garage sale for about $1.50. Over the years, I pulled it out occasionally, played with it, and put it away in a drawer.

On my last visit to Wisconsin, I noticed that my Mom's attendant, Ester, was communicating with family in the Philippines, using her laptop's built-in webcam and her wireless broadband connection. This gave me an idea.

Yesterday, I dusted off the QuickCam, installed it, pulled in the latest upgrades, and, last night, did a successful test with Joe and Shirley in Florida (hi, guys), where we could each see the other's video. It was pretty cool.

This morning, I contacted Ester via email and asked if she had a Skype account. She said 'no', but she had a Yahoo Messenger account. It took me a minute to properly configure it for my Webcam and add Ester to my Contact list, and, a minute later, Mom was viewing me, as I sit here in my computer dungeon.

Obviously, we had to take it to the next step. I put on my headphone/mike and placed a VOIP call. Ester answered and it worked great. Mom got out of bed and was able to speak a few words that I could hear, confirming that she could see me.

It would have looked something like this:


Then, she had to go back to bed. We will try again in a couple of hours.