Yes, that’s right. I recently participated in a conference call (for Library Renewal). Via Skype. In my car, using my iPhone.
… and yes, no texting was involved, and I used a hands-free setup, so I was as safe as anyone talking on the phone while driving …
And it worked, and I was amazed! Something that took fancy headsets, a computer, and a great Internet connection a few years ago is now easy enough that I can do it on my iPhone in my car. And a day before that, I talked to someone from Australia, to go over a webinar I’m doing soon … I’m even planning to share my slide deck via Skype.
I have to admit … stuff like that blows me away sometimes. Pandora on my iPhone would be another one of those things (streaming music on my phone – no way!) or perhaps a uStream video shared from my cell phone (live, streaming video from a cell phone that anyone in the world can watch – really? Wow!).
Maybe I’m just easily amused…
But yeah. I had a Wow moment. Are you having Wow moments these days? If so … what is it? What’s giving you a Wow moment?
I’m listening …
Wow, when the AT&T bill arrives.
Not a problem – I was grandfathered in to the unlimited data plan, so it won’t affect my bill 🙂
 I’m afraid it’s something that you don’t have in US yet, but I’ve had a number of ‘wow’ moments using Spotify. It amazes me that I can think of an artist wherever I am, search for them on my phone, and start streaming their latest album. With our Squeezebox radio, when I’m at home I can even use an iPhone (or iPad) app to search for a song/artist (again using Spotify), then use the app to tell it to play through the Squeezebox. Don’t you just love technology?!
“I was as safe as anyone talking on the phone while driving”
In other words, about as safe as if you were driving drunk, but not *quite* as unsafe as if you were putting on makeup while driving. Don’t kid yourself: When you’re talking on a hands-free phone while driving, you’re still a Borg, with your primary mental focus somewhere other than that–oops, was that a pedestrian?
As a grad student, I am often overwhelmed by the amount of articles we have to read for class. I hate having to print out those articles and waste all the paper, but I like to muck my articles up by highlighting, jotting notes in the margins, and writing paper topics on the backsides. I tried copying and pasting my articles into Word and then adding highlights and comments there, but the format was always destroyed and I spent more time cleaning it up than I did reading the article! Then I started using Scrible (http://www.scrible.com/). It basically lets you save web pages for later use, and add your own annotations, highlights, comments, etc right on the web page. It then saves your notes for later use in your personal library, which you can search by tag, or key word. I can even access my personal library via my iPhone. I’m taking two classes this summer and I’ve yet to print out an article. Think of all that paper I am saving–WOW moment indeed!
How did you skype without wi-fi?
On the iPhone, the Skype app works over the 3/4g network (for the iPhone 4
anyway). Pretty cool!
Have you used Zotero for keeping track of your references? It allows you to take a snapshot of a webpage and annotate, highlight etc as you’ve described for Scrible. But you can also add typed notes, spit out bibliographies in any format you need, group your reference library into subcollections for assignments and it syncs your database to an online respository as well. A free Firefox extension, you can find out more about it at http://www.zotero.org. And you can keep using it after you graduate, unlike EndNote (well, unless you buy it).
Hi David! I’m planning a road trip and have been trying to find ways to be able to do exactly that…skype using my iPhone….can you tell me how you did it? I was hoping to have it go through my car radio speakers…please help! Thanx!
I have Skype, iphone 3gs, and built in bluetooth in my car? How to you initiate calls without touching the iphone? Is there some voice activation you can use?
Well – I had to push “accept call” – after that, it was hands-free.