Skip to main content

A video conference and two big smiles

We, the web2.0 generation, have to grateful for how the Internet has evolved to provide us with the various means of communications.

We communicate via our blogs, our Facebook social network, via Twitter, via IM etc. We know how to use these tools to reach out to the world. These tools cost us almost nothing.

But for the earlier generations, such web2.0 tools of communication sounds very foreign to them. Their known means of communications is only via the telephone phone and pay much for overseas IDD calls.

Over these Lunar New Year, an incident at my in-laws place in Kuala Lumpur highlighted how we have taken for new communications tools for granted.

One of my in-laws have a son, his wife and their child, living in Australia, while she lives in Malaysia . Her only means of communication with them is via phone and expensive IDD calls.

For the last few months, she has heard of stories from other relatives who have visited her son in Australia have told her that her son has been losing weight. Worried, this Aunty-in-law have been trying to get the latest photo or video of her son and family in Australia.

She knew that they could communicate via the Internet and see a video of her son at the same time, but she never knew how.

So recently at my in-law’s place, I was asked to speak to her son on the phone via IDD and check what IM client her son was using. However, I wasn’t surprised it was Skype.

As my in-laws recently bought a LCD TV, I decided to hook up the lap top to use that LCD TV screen as the monitor. This enabled the whole family to see the video conference in place.

The whole video conference via Skype lasted a whole 30 minutes. However, during this time, you could see the smile on both sides. One being able to see family and relatives in one room in KL while a mother saw her son’s face for the first time in months.

After the call, my Aunty-in-law offered to pay me for use of Skype video conference. I explained to her its free and she was even more surprised.

This is how VoIP has changed my auntie’s day for the Lunar New Year.

How has new technology changed your life or someone you know had a changed as a result of technology?

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Singapore radio personality in "hot soup" for reporting train delays based on Tweets?

Update - Hossan Leong has commented on this post to say " I'm not in trouble pls don't blow this out of proportion. Let it rest. It's getting silly. Thank you for your love and concern and I apologize for any misunderstanding." ~  Hossan Leong. Hossan Leong, a Singapore radio personality for The Gold Breakfast Show on Gold 90.5, was censured today for reporting on train delays on the Circle Line because he based the information on Tweets, rather than waiting for the official reports from the Circle Line operator, SMRT.  It is, however, unknown if the "warning" came from Mediacorp producers or SMRT. Tweeted Hossan Leong ,  OK...I reported it on air and now I'm getting into trouble for it?? The CC line is DOWN rite? I did nothing wrong rite? The SMRT Circle Line was reported to be down this morning during peak hours and started as early as 7am. However, local news only received official statement was received by the mainstream media at about 9...
14 comments
Read more

DBS Bank – One Tweet too little too late.

(Updated post - DBS apologise with the 3Rs – Will social media bite? ) It was the bluest Monday for DBS/POS Bank in its entire banking history when more than 1000 of their ATM and online banking services were taken offline due to a software upgrade an outage (PR announced that it was down due to software upgrade, but the outsourcer, IBM, later claimed it was an outage). So on that Monday, DBS decided to sign up onto Twitter and post a 140 characters one-liner onto Twitter to post a one liner to inform the Twitterverse of the down time. Everybody knows that if you just create a new account on Twitter, you would start off with 0 friends. How would you be able to inform the Twitterverse if you start with 0 friends? DBS Bank did something smart to insert the #dbs and #posb and that probably drew some attention to this account. However, the effectiveness of the tweet was lacking as it drew only 28 retweets. As of this posting, DBS Bank attracted 274 followers. A letter to T...
9 comments
Read more

New field in SocialPR: Social Media Crisis Communications

I have been busy with family for the Lunar New Year week but it seem the Singapore blog-o-sphere was active, and is still is, about recently formed Association of Bloggers (Singapore), ABS for short. To cut a long story short, the announcement of ABS via mainstream media didn’t go down well with Singapore bloggers and in the end resulted in some speculation to why ABS was set-up in the first place. A post by the ABS president defending herself against a harsh criticism from a blogger added to the bad start and created even more speculation that ABS was set-up with an ulterior motive. A week later, some founding members of the pro-team started posting up notice of resignation on their blogs and this just added fuel to fire. Again, a story of ABS appeared in mainstream media and this lead to even more disgruntled bloggers asking why the president isn’t responding via her blog or the association’s blog. I also responded to a post about the ABS incident. You can catch a summary of...
6 comments
Read more