Thursday, November 8, 2007

#7 Blog about technology - sharing photos online instead of sending photos by airmail

The development of technology greatly affect the way I communicate with my overseas' families.

Since I left hometown ten years ago, I kept posting letters to my parents via seamails or airmails. A year past, my life became busy. I wrote less letters, but rang home. Initially used home line to dial IDD, then used much cheaper telephone card, which was diverted to the cable Internet or satellite telecoms.

Later on, we downloaded a free software, Skype, to the computer. Used it to make free international phone calls via the Internet. What you do is - first, you need access to the Internet, then connect a web camera to your PC, wear a headphone, type in the phone number you want to dial, hope the other side party is log on to the same program at the same time, if so, you can talk online for hours for free. You can also see each other, no matter how far away the physical distance is.

We used to send print photos with the letters mail to my overseas' families. When the digital cameras became available, we took heaps of photos, burned them onto the CD ROM, then mailed to overseas. Mum learned how to retrieve the images from the CD ROM on her computer. She was happy to be able to see more photos we could send.

Of course, emails with attached image files is another solution. Now I have learned how to upload photos to my blog, or use the Flickr to share photos online instantly. I can choose to make my photos accessible to the public or just available to my families and friends.

Don't know what future technologies will lead me to. But I determine to learn them to improve my life.

No comments: