ATTENDING: Tom B, Jack H,
Gene N, Bob G, Bob S, Jerry L, Diane B, Henry B, Larry T.
TOPIC: How
to Skype
Skype is
a little program for making free calls over the internet to anyone
else who also has Skype. It’s free and easy to download and use,
and works with most computers, both Mac and PC. It also supports video
conferencing over the net. Skype is a proprietary peer-to-peer Internet
telephony (VoIP) network, founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström
and Janus Friis, the creators of KaZaA and competing against established
open VoIP protocols like SIP, IAX, or H.323. The Skype Group is headquartered
in Luxembourg with offices also in London and Tallinn. The system has
a reputation for working across different types of network connections
(including firewalls and NAT) because voice packets are routed by the
combined users of the free desktop software application. Skype users
can speak to other Skype users for free. Skype also has paid services
allowing users to call traditional telephone numbers (SkypeOut), receive
calls from traditional phones (SkypeIn), and receive voicemail messages.
As of September 2011, Skype had 663 million registered users. In October
2011 Microsoft
paid $8.5 billion dollars to officially own Skype.
Tom
gave a step-by-step
demo of how to download, install and setup a free Skype account
(preview actual Skype forms here).
Then each person who had a laptop, iPad or iPhone set up an account
as well. We then proceeded to connect together, two at a time, to test
our Skype connections, and, with some trial and error (and persistence),
most of us were able to make it work. It was very helpful to have everything
visible around our table to get a clear idea of how the video looks
and the audio sounds.
TIP:
An easy way to capture a picture while using Skype (especially of wiggly
grandchildren) is by using the keyboard shortcut COMMAND-SHIFT-4 and
then press SPACEBAR to change crosshairs into a hovering Camera icon
over the Skype window. Just tap (or click) to capture an image.
There
are Skype versions for both Mac and PC, iPad, IPhone and other devices.
iceCam2 -
for those who do not have a built-in iSight camera on their Macs, an
inexpensive solution is this clip-on cam available from Amazon for
$16. Tom used one of these on his PowerBook G4 and it worked very well,
even in low light; also see MacAlly
MegaCam $29 at OWC.
iGlasses -
small app that gives you control over several
features of image quality for built-in iSight cam and other webcams
(demo download 875k) - buy for $19.95
OTHER DISCOVERIES
2D Barcodes Explained - TidBits story behind those little puzzle
tags for your iPhone or iPad.
iStat Pro - Apple widget to keep tabs on your Mac's innards such
as CPU, Memory, Disks, Network, Battery, Load & Uptime, Temperatures,
Fans, Processes. (download 1mb - freeware)
Apps
For Autism - Gene mentioned this interesting news about the use
of iPads to help autistic children.
USB
Laptop Speakers - Jerry shared this nice solution for audio speakers
that clip on the edge of your Mac and power via USB.
Hammondsport Mac Users Group - Hammondsport, NY 14840
- www.hportmug.com