PICTURE PHONE

 

It’s New Year’s Eve, and it’s about midnight. In spite of terrorist’s threats, thousands jam Times Square. Dick Clark counts down to the beginning of the New Year. After the first of the year holidays, you surf to MTV and TRL is on and the viewers as well as the announcer are looking down at Times Square. You watch the NBC news and the camera sweeps down to a big picture of Tom Brokaw in Times Square, then to the studio to see him. On ABC, the camera moves from a Times Square marquee to Peter Jennings and the news.

 

In fits and starts, Americans are now seeing a picture phone of sorts. The television acts as a picture and the remote as the telephone. Since the early 60’s, what was “Ma Bell” introduced the “picture phone” to the public. However, the public did not want it and the technology was not quite capable of doing a good job.

 

Times change. Now there are all kinds of pricey gadgets to connect the picture with the voices of the two callers. Some use the Internet; others work through other sources to get two folks who live far away from each other to get together. (U.S.News & World Report, February 17, 2003, D5.)

 

There is even a cell phone that will transmit static pictures to the other person. So in many ways if both sources have the technology, picture and voice can come connect.

 

So what? It sounds expensive and troublesome and so you soldier on with the voice alone. Not anymore. Last summer, I discovered another way to get picture and voice on the cheap with low technology.

 

My son lives in Manhattan; a borough of the Big Apple (New York City) His East Village apartment is a few miles from Times Square. We talk often and e-mail each other, but nothing is more pleasant than when I can see him. So I go to GOOGLE, key in Earthcam, follow the directions and I’m looking at Times Square as indicated earlier. With cell phone in one hand and browser in the other, I can see my son who stands on a cement island in the vicinity. There is the great big wave from him and an intense discussion of what is going on as cars, trucks, SUVs and Stretch Limos go by.

 

I can hear you saying that you don’t have relatives in this area. So Earthcam has a search engine, and you can go to many places, all over the states and the world. You find a location that has a good spy cam provided by the city, ask your loved one to go to a certain corner, make the cell phone connections and you can see them.

 

Earth cam is very comprehensive, but still has its limits. So go back to GOOGLE, key in the name of your relative’s newspaper or television station, and look for a view that can pick up pedestrians walking in an area. The rest becomes second nature.

 

In the mean time, if that fails, my suggestion is the mobile picture phone. If both of you have the phones, a still picture with surroundings is the best for the buy at this time. However, don’t discount that some day, you may connect by cell phone to a moving picture and an image and voice of a friend that now lives thousands of miles away.

 

It is worth the call.