Video Phones & The Future!

When I was about nine or ten years old, the movie "Dick Tracy" came out. In that movie, Warren Beatty's sleuth character has a watch that makes video calls. Being a child, I was amazed by what I was seeing! Phone calls, through a watch? And you can see them? This completely blew my imagination. Earlier this movie, I'd only seen such things in sci-fi movies that took place a long, long time ago in galaxies far, far away.

The idea of getting

But it appears that people are now used to the idea of getting and making calls and being able to see the person they're talking to, and the practice is now ready to go mainstream.

This week, Facebook announced plans to allow users to make video calls through the site with the help of Skype. The popular VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service was recently purchased by software giant Microsoft, an acquisition that has a lot of analysts scratching their heads.

The first company to provide video calls

Skype undoubtedly is not the first company to provide video calls, nevertheless it is one of the most popular ones out there. The company as well did something that Google did for search, it made the process of making VoIP video calls a verb. "I Skyped with so-and-so."

Video calling went mobile when Apple released the iPhone 4 with FaceTime. Shortly afterwards that, a FaceTime app was released for Macs. FaceTime calls are currently only compatible with iPhone 4 users and Mac users with the app, and it can only be used in Wi-Fi.

While it appears that video calling is becoming more and more popular, I don't see the old fashioned voice-only calls going away anytime in the near future. Instead, i think video calls will exist side by side with voice calls.