CREATIVITY WITH SKYPE

In spite of what had happened in my case, which readers will read about shortly, I must say Skype is still a wonderful technological creation, especially with its video chat facility, which allows PC users to talk to each other at no cost to either party.

Because of my impending move to Vietnam, Dilip & I had tested it as an alternative to our regular face-to-face pow-wow at my place in Jurong West over the last two years or so.

Last week, while Dilip was in India & I was in Vietnam, [by the way, we are still where we were at this time of writing] we took the opportunity to use Skype to deliberate on a business proposal to a very important entity in Singapore.

We went though some eight rounds of pow-wow via two-way communication over Skype.

Dilip finally got down to finalising the business proposal, which involved the design & drating of a large, visually illustrative synergy map, following several iterations from Dilip's artistic virtousity.

It was designed to show how two business entities could work together to build on each other's assets & resources to create delight for endusers around & across the world, using the World's Most Powerful Learning Systems, as envisaged by Dilip.

The video display was generally OK, voice quality was acceptable, but there were numerous intermittent glitches like Dilip could hear my voice loud & clear, but at my end, I couldn't hear him at all. Sometimes, he could only hear only part of my beginning voice outputs, & had to figure out on his own what I was saying.

Of course, these were the real frustrating moments for me as I had to repeat several times what I had said earlier via the system.

Despite all the fiddling on my part, I couldn't resolve the problem.

Nonetheless, toward the end, we were both sure glad that we had finally completed our little project.

All I can say is that technology is never an idiot-proof thing.

Until now, I still don't quite undertand what had happened with the glitches as described.

My computer system, a DELL INSPIRON notebook, was running on 3G wireless broadband from Vietnam. My headset was more or less state-of-the-art piece, which I had deliberately brought from Singapore.

Skype also had an audio/video self-test which had shown my system to be perfect. For me, it was amusing to hear one's own voice during the test. By the way, Dilip's nephew in India said he loved to hear my voice.