Google Video Chat

Ginger was originally planning on coming back tonight, but a storm passing through Richmond made them rethink their plans. That coupled with the fact that I don't think the kids really want to come back just yet means they're staying until tomorrow. They have to be back eventually though because this is the last week of Catherine's Spanish class and that's on Tuesday and Thursday. While Ginger and the kids have been in Richmond, I've been using Google's Video Chat to say goodnight to them. As near as I can tell this can only be accessed from within a web browser. You bring up gmail and enable chat and if the person on the other end had video capabilities you'll see a little video camera symbol next to their name. From there it's a simple matter of starting up the chat and choosing start video chat in the popup window that appears. Over Christmas I gave everyone in the family small web cams. So in theory we should all be able to video chat, but I don't think anyone other than me has installed the camera. Ginger's Macbook though comes with a built in web cam (and hey, so does my windows laptop which only cost about 1/6 of what the Macbook cost). Anyway, saying goodnight to the kids is now infinitely more entertaining. My favorite has been when the kids decide to play hide and seek over the web cam. That's lots of fun. In retrospect I should have done a screenshot of the chat, but that didn't occur to me at the time.