Pegasus-MotionX, Philippe Kahn, Pacific Cup 2010 - FaceTime

FaceTime from the middle of the Pacific. Arthur and Peter, my MotionX colleagues are in the office in Santa Cruz, California and get video-taped doing FaceTime between Pete's iPhone 4 in Sant Cruz and my iPhone 4 in the middle of the Pacific Ocean one of the most isolated spots in the world. When it came up, it was like magic! To paraphrase Arthur Clarke, Great innovative technology and magic are literally indistinguishable. This is what the Camera-Phone was designed to do.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Pegasus-MotionX
• Philippe Kahn
• Pacific Cup 2010
• iPhone 4
• Apple FaceTime

[Viper007Bond]

Technically this has been doable for quite a while with a laptop and Skype for example, but that was big, bulky, and annoying. This is way cooler. :)

[lin2log]

Get ready for a loooooooong list of mindless, jealous Apple/iPhone-Hater comments repeating the same old shibboleth over and over and over again "I could do this YEARS ago with my N95/laptop/toaster/[enter favorite appliance here]!!!" and so on, merely showing that they have NO clue what they're talking about...

[TheWuster777]

So, what WIFI service did you guys use to get this from the Pacific? My colleagues and I are planning a land trip around the world and and asking around about services for WIFI in remote areas.

[al3xband]

how did  Philippe get wifi on his boat to establish face time?

[Harmonyww]

Facetime is unreliable and generally crap. It takes me and my girlfriend about 30 minutes to get a successful connection to each other over Facetime. Whenever one of us sends an invite to the other, the invite is usually not received at all, but if it is it takes 3 or 4 minutes of waiting to actually connect. We're also using highspeed broadband, and all of my friends get the same result too. It's a horrible feature, and absolutely nothing like this video. Apple need to sort it out.

[JS2393]

@Balzorosso

uhhhh there ARE applications out that allow this. As someone else already mentioned, there's Fring, and I'm pretty sure Qik allows this too. The iPhone isn't the only phone capable of doing this. Get over it

[gpmoo7]

@Balzorosso Because AT&T is already having a lot of trouble supporting all the traffic of all these iPhones in US ... not to mention all the drop call issues.

Video-chat will be way more useful and popular on tablets since they are easier to use than an computer and always on WiFi.

[haipod123]

I agree. I also had the same thought @gpmoo7 had in mind. You saw how laggy the guy's connection was at the middle of the Pacific.

[Balzorosso]

@gpmoo7 Why you say mobile networks are not ready for video-chat? In italy it's been already 3 years that telecoms offer videocalls (but very high charged).

I think people would videochat more if it's a free service, like over Wi-Fi. But until now we never had such a thing (while videocalling with skype on PCs is very very popular here).

[gpmoo7]

@Balzorosso I think mobile networks are not ready for video-chat (that's why FaceTime only works over WiFi right now).

Most of all, I don't think people want to video-chat with their phone.

Even at home, I video-chat only with my family and my closest friends but that's all.

For sure, it's great to call someone and show them the landscape live but I can take pictures and share them on Facebook with all my friends and family instantly.

[gpmoo7]

@Balzorosso You can use Fring on almost every smartphone (iOS, Android, WinMo, ...) but it's no longer capable of using Skype.

[Balzorosso]

@gpmoo7 I totally agree. What I'm trying to point out is that Nokia, Sony, Samsung or many other could have come out with a similar service before, but now they are only good to claim that "it's nothing new". Damn, if it's nothing new, why you didn't do it before??

Why the Skype app has not video capabilities? We could had use it on other phones with front cam, not necessarily on the old iphone.