FaceBook Heart's Skype

Apparently yesterday, the folks at All Things D posted that a little birdie told them that FaceBook is planning to integrate Skype into their platform in the near future. According to the article, this partnership will allow you to make video calls, SMS, and calls to landline phones, all from within the FaceBook interface. This really kind of exiting to me though not surprising. I figured they would do something like this eventually. My question is how this will look in a mobile platform?
And of course, my question to you all is, how will this affect the way our children socialize online? Does a video chat really count as "Face to face communication"???? Is this scary to anyone? Not to be creepy here, but it almost, and I stress almost could be a way to verify who it is you are really chatting with on the other end.
I look forward to see how this develops and how people really use it.

As always, your comments are not only welcomed, but encouraged. Please don't just respond to this automated email but visit the Blog at http://www.beauvoirtech.blogspot.com to comment. Thanks for taking the tie to read this post.

Articulated Naturality


OK... So most have you have probably heard of something called Augmented Reality. Dictionary .com defines it as -
"-n an artificial environment created through the combination of real-world and computer-generated data"
It's a bit of a step up from Virtual Reality that was popular in the late 80's and early 90's. If your an iPhone or Droid user, you may know about an app called Layar. If you don't know about it.... Get It!

Here's what it does.... As pictured to the right, using the Wikipedia Layer (in the LAYAR app) if you are walking around a city that you may be unfamiliar with, you simply hold up your phone and it will show you virtually what you are looking at. If you were to click on the bottom there, it can take you to the Wikipedia page of The National Cathedral. This is just one of the layers that can be applied. You can also look for restaurants with the Yelp Layer and the list goes on. Like I said.... Try it, I promise you won't be disappointed.

Now, lets get back to what this post is really about... Articulated Reality! Watch the video below, because I just don't think I can write well enough about what its capabilities are. I guess I could just say that it's the next step up from Augmented Reality.

Enjoy the video....

QPC - Articulated Naturality Web from Justin Montgomery on Vimeo.

OK..... Did you get all that? No.... Watch it again.... I'll wait.

Now, My question to you is: How will this change the way that our children will learn in the future? I would love to hear some creative possibilities about how this technology can be used personally, and in the classroom (and outside of course.... the world is a classroom you know) to learn.

As always, your comments and questions are not only welcomed but encouraged. I look forward to hearing from you.

Have a great weekend!