Let's face it. Email, for all of it practicality, is kind of impersonal. Even the best writers out, and I know a few good ones, can be misconstrued via email. Sometimes, you need to see, or be seen, in order to get the message across. Well guess what party people, that where Eyejot comes in. Eyejot is a free video messaging service that is easy to use. It's basically video email. And guess what, you don't need much to use the service. All you need is:



A webcam - Easy enough to find. you can get a Sony Eyetoy (make sure you get it without the game unless you have a PS2) and use it as a cheap webcam. It's about $30. All you would need are the drivers to run on the PC/Mac. You can just Google Sony Eyetoy Drivers and find them.



A microphone or headset - Most webcams have a built in mic, but you can opt for a better quality or a headset/mic jobby that you   may have lying around.



A PC (or Mac) with a web browser and Adobe Flash installed - If you can see this post, chances are, you have this already. I could be wrong, though.



Once you have all of this, you can put them together, set your phazer's on stun, and point your browser of choice to Eyejot.com. Sign up (it's free, like I said), and start recording using the easy to use controls. The first time you use it, you will have to allow Flash to access the webcam, which should come up the first time you try to compose a message (If it doesn't, press the little camera next to the stop button and go through the setup assistant). It go time from then on. You can record your message and send like you would a regular email. It's just that simple. You have an inbox to house incoming Eyejot from friends and also a friends list (address book) to keep your email addresses in.



There's also a couple other neat features to the service. You can get a widget for your Blog, website, Myspace page, whatever so that people can see you profile video and/or send you an Eyejot through it (should they have the proper setup...What am I thinking, of course they do.  I forgot where I was.). I'd do this but... I really don't think so. For you iTunes users, you can enable support for RSS and subscribe to your messages from iTunes or any RSS reader (Firefox, Google reader, etc). What's also cool is that you can also enable viewing Eyejot messages on your video capable smartphone. That's pretty neat! I should point out that the site is in Beta (of course), but it seems to work pretty well from my tests.



Now I know what you might be thinking, "why on earth would I want put myself on a webcam and send it to someone"? My answer: go back and read the beginning of this post. My real answer? You do it anyway with the webcam you have set up in the bedroom that you charge for. And you're all over Skype video, so why not? Maybe your friends you like to actually see your face instead of the cold heartless emails (forwards, mostly) that you keep sending them. You ever thought of that? Of course not, you selfish bastard! However, if you do this, don't try to hold me responsible for when you send them drunk messages with some other body parts in the webcam outside of your face. It would NOT be my fault (though if you're cute, I might want to see it)! And don't try to blame me for giving you any ideas that you, or anyone else (me), didn't already have.





So, if I didn't give you a good enough reason to try this out, allow me to leave you with my slogan for the service. Feel free to use it, it's good. Ready?



Eyejot - When you care enough to let them see how crazy you look.



I just want credit if you do use it!



Peace





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