Dawniemom Reviews

I never gave video chat a 2nd thought before I moved away from my family and had kids.  But once they came along, it was important to me that my family see my kids, not just in the occasional photo, but really see them – even when they’re not at their best, so we invested in a video camera a long time ago.

The problem came when it was so choppy and lagged, thereby making it nearly impossible to hold a conversation.  The cam has sat there, collecting dust, for quite some time.

Then, MomCentral asked us bloggers to check out Tokbox.  Tokbox is a video chat website, and is (best of all) FREE.  Tokbox is even integrated into Facebook, so you can connect with your Facebook friends as you’re hurling a sheep at them!  You can also simply put your own specialized Tokbox link anywhere you’d like, [http://www.tokbox.com/Dawnie] and when people click on it, they’ll be able to call you right from there.  They do not need to have a video camera. 

In fact, when I dusted off our camera to try it out, the first couple of friends I tested it with didn’t have video cameras, and I don’t have a microphone! LOL  But you can text chat as you view the video or they view yours, etc.  I did finally find a friend who had their own video camera, and when we got linked up, the HUGE difference in the quality of the video was just mind boggling!  It was as if we were sitting face to face, having coffee – instead of 200 miles apart!

One of my favorite features is the ability to import friends from all your favorite places, like yahoo, gmail, etc. That made finding people to chat with so much easier!

I also liked having the ability to embed this cool little widget wherever I might want to. For those of you who are (rightfully) concerned about privacy, their privacy controls are AWESOME! You are able to set exactly who contacts you. I have mine set so that only the people on my friends list can contact me, IM me, leave messages for me.

With nothing to download, no costs or prepaid minutes, and complete privacy control, TokBox solves a number of the problems we all have staying in touch. Plus – video is so much more fun than simply talking! 

Now if only I can figure out where my microphone went!