Saturday, June 04, 2005

Video Conferencing

Why hasn't video comferencing caught on? Internet telephony is on its way, (thanks to Skype) but what about video messaging? Maybe we're just not ready for it, but a thought came to me today, and it was about the whole video-conferencing interface.

The interface is too much like a telephone, and not enough like actual face-to-face conversation. I'm also still distracted by other things on my computer screen, and in that way I am treating it like a phone call. I mean, I would never try multi-tasking during an actual conversation, right? Maybe it's because most video conference calls have this strange phenomenon where the person you're talking to isn't looking at his/her camera. Maybe if there were a way to make the call more personable, it would catch on more.

I was brainstorming with Bryan today, and I thought that a good way would be to have four cameras at different places around the computer monitor, and then to triangulate a straight-on view to portray to the user on the other end of the call. The user would then be able to look at the screen, and see a caller looking straight back at him.

Of course the technology is probably not there yet, especially in home machines, but maybe one day...

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home