Skype Town

Today I had a really nice 90 minute video Skype call with some friends out in Providence R.I. who used to live in Chicago. If you haven't used Skype, it's a video phone call which costs nothing. The friends have had a baby since I last saw them and have a house which I haven't seen either, so they gave me a tour of their house and the baby was in most of the video call as well. Good stuff. It wasn't just a social call, but it could have been.

Anyway, if you haven't used it and you have a video camera built into your computer or you have $40 for a decent camera, download Skype and find someone to call! It's technology that only existed in cartoons 25 years ago!!

As a side note, I had a regular phone call with New Zealand in December for 22 minutes that cost me $77!!!! If that were a Skype call, not only could I have seen the person with whom I was speaking, it would have cost me nada, zippo, bupkis.

Finally, Voyager 1 is now about 12 Billion miles away from the Earth after having been launched in 1977. Here's a link to show you how far away 12 billion miles is. Voyager 1 came up because it was 20 years ago this week that NASA, at the behest of Carl Sagan, had the space probe turn around and take a picture of Earth from about 4 billion miles away. Cool stuff.