 Welcome back fellow techies and today's video is something different. It is the Tech Talks. Episode 4. Which video calling software should you use? There's so many different softwares out there and so many softwares do different things and they cost and they're free. In this video we're going to be discussing seven different variations of video calling software and what you can do with them. FaceTime is an Apple-free app software for iPhones, iPads and iPod touches which is old-school bit of technology now and also any other iOS device such as a Mac. It's really good for sending messages or video calls or audio calls. You can do all sorts of little things with it so if we click on the features you can play games you can just have a video call up to 32 people in one FaceTime call which is really really good. That's a lot more than what house party can do but you only can have video calls to people who have an Apple product. If you don't have an Apple product you can't do a one-to-one or a video call with each other. You can add effects, stickers all sorts of random stuff with FaceTime. It is only a Mac product though but it is again it is free. Skype is a Microsoft program. It is free to use on Mac and PC and it allows you to do all sorts of different things. As you can see by the image here it allows you to do several video calls. You can do voice calls, video calls, you can do sub titles, you can do calls on your phone, calls on your tablet, calls on your computer if you've got webcam you can do any sort of video calls you like. You can send messages a bit like the old MSN messenger you can send messages and emojis. You can try it in your browser. Skype also does recording so you can record a call so you can screen capture it in all sorts. You can use phone numbers on Skype as well. Instead of phoning the scope number you can do international phone calls over the web which works really really well. You can do screen sharing functions and the final one is video share it calling up to 50 people so it's really really good. 50 people are a lot of people to have in their calls so you can do like quizzes and all sorts. Skype is very versatile but it's been pushed out the market recently by all the other applications that is being used but Skype is still probably the main leader. You can host meetings and sign in with your Microsoft account or you can create the account or you can download Skype. It's very good bit of software. The next bit of software we're going to be talking about is Microsoft Teams. Now Microsoft Teams again falls under the Microsoft package. It works on Mac and on PC. It is free to use so you've got to do a sign in with your Microsoft account or create an account. Like I said free to use you can have team chats. You can have normal chats. You can set up a team like a family team if you wanted and add everyone to a family team. You can set up a quiz team and have everyone in the quiz team. So you keep everyone in the same place at the same time. It has all these different functions which allows you to work teams anywhere. So teams you can have on your mobile device. You can have it on your tablets. You can have it on your computer. It's used across at the moment. It's used across those universities and colleges to keep in communication either with the students or with the lecturers or the academics. You can host meetings and join meetings by clicking the join now function on teams. It syncs up with your calendar. If you mapped it to an Outlook account it will sync with your calendar which is absolutely brilliant. You can do calls from anywhere. So long as you've got a Wi-Fi setup or mobile data you can do calls from anywhere. You can all collaborate from anywhere as well by file sharing because what teams does it syncs up to Office 365 OneDrive and SharePoint and everything like that. So everything is shared. All your documents are shared across the platform and it's so easy to share a document within teams. All you've got to do is drag and drop it in. You have so many different functions within teams. You have all the spaces at the side. So obviously you have the activity section. So that tells you when you're being notification in any team you're in or any group you're in. You have the chat function so you can just have a normal chat. Just a bit like Skype. So what teams is in my opinion is a fancier version of Skype. Because you can do all sorts of stuff. You can calls, share files, calendar like I mentioned before but you can also click on this app function at the bottom which allows you to add an additional app to teams. So you can add the whiteboard app. So when you're delivering say a lesson for example or playing Pictionary with your family you can draw on the whiteboards with your mouse and you can... the students can or the family can watch what you're doing or be part of the experience. It works really well. Teams is brilliant to do all sorts of stuff. A little bit more advanced now than Skype. I think it's taken over from where Skype left off. And Microsoft have produced a product now which is vastly better than Skype. It is again free like Skype. You can sign in with your Microsoft account like Skype but it just expands their horizons a lot more. It can do everything Skype can do but more. So there's Microsoft Teams. The next bit of software we're going to be talking about is WhatsApp. WhatsApp is a Android, iPhone, Mac or Windows based messaging service. It also classes a social media platform. On WhatsApp you can do all sorts of things. You can send voice messages to each other in a chat. You can send video messages to each other in a chat. You can have a video call. You can share documents, pictures, all sorts of stuff. You can also find people on WhatsApp if you're traveling together in two separate cars for example and you can follow each other on the map. Which is really really cool that's really interesting to know. You can just follow show basically on driver one's phone you can set enable location and on driver two's phone you can follow driver one's location and see where they are and it's pretty cool. WhatsApp runs on mobile data or Wi-Fi. It can also be used for WhatsApp for business and it is in end-to-end encryption. It's really really good WhatsApp. I tend to use it for more messaging friends and groups and stuff like that and work colleagues. I don't usually use it for the video calls but the video calls are just as good as any other video bit of calling software where you can have a one-to-one. You can have a group call and you can do all sorts of fun little things with WhatsApp. So if I click explore more features here this allows you to keep in touch with everyone. It basically explains everything we've just gone into and it is free. So it is free which is great. Another bit of free software here and it works really well. The voice messaging is really really good so if you're struggling to explain something to someone via text or images you can send for example a screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet and then you can speak about said spreadsheet in a voice memo and then that will explain everything in detail a lot easier than it would do via a text. The next bit of software we're going to be talking about is HouseParty. HouseParty is a face-to-face social network type video call type conference call type thing. It's really good for playing games hosting quizzes but the only issue it is the only issue it has is it currently have up to seven or eight people which can participate in one call. You can spend time with people, you can have calls on your phone, you can use it on your iPad, you can use it at the computer. It's an app you just download from the App Store or Google Play and you can have all sorts of people involved. You can lock the chat room, you can mute your microphones, you can mute your camera just like any other bit of software we're using. You can work like I said it works on all these different devices. You can contact them via Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc. They are a really good bit of software to use. It's also free to download which is brilliant and it allows you to play games and it has got like built-in doodle games or built-in heads-up game it's called. So it's brilliant to play a few games with people at the same time as just having a one-to-one video call or like I said seven person video call as well. And one of the final bits of software we're looking at is Adobe Connect. Adobe Connect helps with all sorts of different things. You can do video calls, you can do talk to chat calls, you can do webinar setups. You can do all sorts because you can change the way it's set up on your screen. It works on Mac and PC. It's a free download from Adobe and it allows you to do webinars which is brilliant. So webinars are perfect little meetings where you can have a meeting in front of a lot of people for example and the chat can interact with the main speaker. So if there's one host the host can do all the talking and then there's a chat to follow. There's all this little extras on your screen to follow. You can reply, you can show the presenters mode, you can show webcam mode, you can show all sorts of different aspects within Adobe Connect for helping learning aspects. It's more for educational things than it is for fun at home. You can't do games at home on Adobe Connect. It's more to do with lecturing or webinars but it's a very helpful and useful tool to do with webinars. The next bit of software we're going to be talking about is Zoom. Now we've previously spoken about Zoom in a couple of videos we've done on how to schedule a meeting and how to activate your Zoom account. So we're going to now just talk about Zoom. Zoom allows you to have meetings, webinars, conference rooms, breakout rooms, polls, you can phone system, you can have a chat system, you can do all sorts in Zoom and it is free. You can get a free account, sign in, set it up, you can host a free account, you can change your account up to a pro account, up to a more advanced account if you want to. You can register, you can use it, it's definitely free, it's definitely worth it, it's very, very good at what it does. It allows up to, depending on what your your account is, up to 10,000 viewers or a thousand participants. It's dead easy to use, very user friendly Zoom. We can also, on Zoom, I said you do your meetings, your webinars, your conference rooms. Zoom allows you to do digital phone calls so you can phone internationals like you can on Skype and you can on Teams, you can get it on OS, you can get it on PC, you can get it on phones, you can get it on tablets, you can get it anywhere. It's dead simple to use and really, really reliable. The free account is really good for 40 minutes free and if you've got more than one, three people in your meeting or event or you can do all sorts, you can take over people's screens, you can screen share, you can draw on the white boards. The functions of Zoom is, in a sense, never-ending and you can also go into your settings and change all those preferences within there as well. Zoom is another video conferencing, web conferencing bit of software which works just like Microsoft Teams, Skype, FaceTime, they all work the same as in they can do a video call, they can do a normal call. It's very versatile bit of software. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like the video if you enjoyed it and subscribe for more and also ding don't like notification bell to get further updates. Thanks again. Goodbye.