This weekend, my friend (and fellow MIT Engineer '89) Bill Cammack twittered about broadcasting live on his website. I moseyed on over, and found myself in a UStream/Skype/iChat audio/video experience with Bill, Tyme, JennTaFur and DarrenKeith. A few other folks came through as well.
We initially started chatting with Bill via the Meebo chat widget, when Bill got the idea to add some audio to the mix. The Mac users were easily integrated with the iChat audio feature, while the PC users got themselves together via Skype. Bill recorded some of our 2-hour session (it went by quickly), and a few minutes are in the clip below.
Yes that's me laughing and coughing up a storm in the background. I'm actually an avid laugher (will laugh at anything), and Bill always exacerbates my laughing problem. I couldn't control myself because I had no idea where this recording was going. Bill did and said everything on the fly, not cluing any of us in on what was about to go down in front of the camera.
Either way, it was a good exercise in testing out how all of these services would work together to create a media rich communication environment. I think we concluded that it was a good technical experience, but that those who call in should be on the same service because there was a slight lag between iChat and Skype audio users. Once I listened to some audio playback from Tyme's end, I could hear the flaws in the experience.
We initially started chatting with Bill via the Meebo chat widget, when Bill got the idea to add some audio to the mix. The Mac users were easily integrated with the iChat audio feature, while the PC users got themselves together via Skype. Bill recorded some of our 2-hour session (it went by quickly), and a few minutes are in the clip below.
Yes that's me laughing and coughing up a storm in the background. I'm actually an avid laugher (will laugh at anything), and Bill always exacerbates my laughing problem. I couldn't control myself because I had no idea where this recording was going. Bill did and said everything on the fly, not cluing any of us in on what was about to go down in front of the camera.
Either way, it was a good exercise in testing out how all of these services would work together to create a media rich communication environment. I think we concluded that it was a good technical experience, but that those who call in should be on the same service because there was a slight lag between iChat and Skype audio users. Once I listened to some audio playback from Tyme's end, I could hear the flaws in the experience.
Nice writeup! :D
That was a spur-of-the-moment thing, but now that I know how well it works, we're going to have specific topics for next time! ;)
you're such a laugh maniac
@jen: Don't act surprised! You know I'm crazy.