It is actually Saturday. Whoa. My smiley is SKYPE. I am so thankful for what awesome technology is out there! It is so cool that you can VIDEO CHAT someone who is across the country! Or even, IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY! It’s so crazy to think about! And how places in the middle of nowhere can make calls through skype for cheap or even for free (I dunno, Anita, when you and Charles would call us from Africa?)! So cool. I had another skype date with one of my Project friends today, so skype is what I thought of as my smiley.
Skype allows users to communicate with peers by voice, video, and instant messaging over the Internet. Phone calls may be placed to recipients on the traditional telephone networks. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free of charge, while calls to landline telephones and mobile phones are charged via a debit-based user account system. Skype has also become popular for its additional features, including file transfer, and videoconferencing.
Skype has 663 million registered users as of September 2011. The network is operated by Microsoft, which has its Skype division headquarters in Luxembourg. Most of the development team and 44% of the overall employees of the division are situated in the offices of Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia.
Unlike most VoIP services, Skype is a hybrid peer-to-peer and client–server system, and makes use of background processing on computers running Skype software; the original name proposed – Sky peer-to-peer – reflects this. –Skype, Wikipedia
Sometimes, when my friends and I want to share a document of some sort, we “skype it.” It has become a VERB! Oh, what this world is coming to. It is also an adjective: “I’ve gotta skype-date at 2.” A noun: “Do you use skype?” What other forms of grammar are there? ‘Cuz I’m sure we could make it into anything.
I like skype cuz I get to SEE people while I’m talking, but it also makes me miss them more. But I get to see their face! Pretty cool. Do you have skype? We should be skype friends. =)
Smiling still, Anna =)^2
Anna E. Meyer 