I have an iSight and a nice new Mac laptop. I also have a beat-up old Mac and a decent Canon videocam that I don’t use that much, not having (yet) developed videographer’s reflexes. Anyhow, the Canon has firewire output, so I plugged that into the old Mac and what do you know, it works just fine with iChat AV. So we put the old Mac and the Canon with a little tripod on a desk in a quiet but wired area upstairs and it’s a free videophone to anywhere in the world. Restating for emphasis: whenever I’m anywhere in the world and have an Internet connection, I can have a free videophone call home, that goes on as long as I need to and nobody’s counting minutes or running up a phone bill. Let’s see; free telephone with video, or pay-for-it telephone with no picture. Costly and voice-only, or free with a picture. I think this is what an inflexion point smells like.
Fast Company | If He’s So Smart…Steve Jobs, Apple, and the Limits of Innovation
That Apple has been frozen out time and again suggests that its problems go far beyond individual strategic missteps. Jobs may have unwittingly put his finger on what’s wrong during his keynote speech earlier that day in Paris. “Innovate,” he bellowed from the stage. “That’s what we do.” He’s right–and that’s the trouble. For most of its existence, Apple has devoted itself single-mindedly, religiously, to innovation.
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Truth is, some of the most innovative institutions in the history of American business have been colossal failures.
From the Desk of David Pogue: Video Chats Using Microsoft Windows
Video Chats Using Microsoft Windows
By DAVID POGUEPublished: December 18, 2003
The quest goes on to find a hardware-software combination that would let Windows fans conduct full-screen, smooth, non-delayed video chats over broadband connections to the Internet. (This is in response to a recent column about Apple’s iChat AV software that, if you have a camcorder or an iSight pocket video camera, offers exactly that.)