James Leong | Web Developer

Hmmm… if you have been following my blog, you will realise that I am trying to set up an offshore development office in Pakistan.  The problem with Pakistan is that their electronic gadgets are a far cry from what you see in Singapore.  Tried to get a Skype certified webcam and failed terribly.  BTW, it was reported that Skype worked closely with Logitech to develop some kind of high quality video.  had to try it out to see if it just a scam …

http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2007/10/skype_and_logitech_announce_hi.html

That called for a certain amount of personal sacrifice in terms of both time and money…   I popped over to Sim Lim and purchased the following:

• 2 sets of QuickCam Pro 9000 (Costs 179 SGD each.. but bargained to 165 SGD)
• 2 sets of Microsoft LifeCam VX-1000 (Costs 45 SGD each… but bargained to 40 SGD)

 

QuickCam Pro claims to have "4 times better video" and "Carl Zeiss Optics"

 

     

Microsoft LifeCam VX-1000 claims that it was "Optimised for Windows Live"

Wanting to save the best for last, I tried out the both PCs’ with Microsoft LifeCam.  First we tried to use Windows Live to do a Video Conferencing.  It sucked.  Skype video conferencing worked better even with the Microsoft LifeCam.  Having established how useless Windows Live was as a Video Conferencing software, we just moved our testing platform to Skype.

Skype Video Conferencing with Microsoft LifeCam

(Notice the lower left image of me… yes… that is the source video… while the big image is the destination video (the person u are talking to…)

Next, we performed the same test with Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000.  The image was not only much clearer.. but it had advance functions like face tracking… so that camera will literally follow you where your face is…. 

We tried to have one person using Microsoft LifeCam and the other person Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000.  The results, as expected, were good video quality for the person who is using Logitech QuickCam Pro.  Hmmm… a costs saving thought dawned on me… hey, maybe we can just install high quality webcams at our Pakistan office and low quality webcams at our clients’ office…  Customers’ will experience excellent video conferencing and will be none the wiser….

Hmmm… an even cheaper alternative is for our guys to have the high quality webcam and for our clients to have no webcam… so they will be seeing our guys… while they will just be hearing our customers’ voice…  At that thought, Denise laughed and told me about how there used to be a website featuring a human chicken… where people will just issue internet commands to that guy.. and he will act it out… So u can go chicken sit, chicken stand, chicken fly… and the guy will actually sit, stand and flap his wings… all for free.  Guess that is how bored people can get…

 

Skype Video Conferencing on Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000

 

   

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 11:43 pm and is filed under Technical, entrepeneurship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.