Skype on the Mac gets Video
Jul 31st, 2006 by Karen
Yipee! Reading TechCrunch today I discovered that Skype for Mac now has video! Its a beta/preview so it still has bugs, but I’ve been waiting for this since the Window version got video. Very cool! Maybe I’ll buy that iSight sooner rather than later. I also messed around enough to discover that I can participate in Skypecasts with the Mac version of Skype. At least I can join existing Skypecasts. Sorry to the EdTechTalk Brainstorm folks who’s Skypecast looked interesting and I bumped into just trying to see if things would work! They did but my microphone was misbehaving making me look dumb.
I’m planning on trying to setup a Skypecast of my own. If I can make that work then I’d be interested in seeing how to record a Skypecast. There seem to be several options for recording Skypecasts with third-party software. Some relatively low-cost solutions include Audio Hijack Pro, WireTap Pro, Ecamm Call Recorder. MacDevCenter has a pretty in depth tutorial on how to create a recording of an interview in Skype.
TechCrunch also points to the Gizmo project (a Skype competitor) that offers many of the same features as Skype and some things like voicemail and conference calls for free, as well as built-in call recording. Definately worth checking out!
[...] I use Skype mainly as an instant message client, I find that I prefer to use a traditional phone to call clients and that my clients themselves prefer it as alot of them aren’t particularly au fait with the latest and greatest technologies. What I have found useful is the recently added video conferencing feature, I finally have a decent Mac-to-Windows video client, the video quality in alot of cases is also better than iChat so Skype is pretty much my default video communications option these days. [...]