A little chicken pox won't slow me down

Cornell professor, attorney, and venture capitalist Zach Shulman didn't let the chicken pox slow him down. Instead of canceling his lectures, he set up shop in his home office and conducted class via SightSpeed.

Chicken pox or not, we're having class
Zach simply had one of his students connect a laptop to the projector, and he taught class as normal. "It worked well. It really makes a difference being able to see the students. I'm going to use it for all my classes until I am no longer contagious," says Zach, "plus, I can pause the video when I get an itch."

I got a job on SightSpeed

Former SightSpeed intern Sam Tingleff sent me an email today entitled "I got a job on SightSpeed".


Sam relaxing between SightSpeed interviews
Sam writes: "This reminded me that I've been meaning to let you know what I'm up to. Way back at the end of May I interviewed over SightSpeed for a sales job with Novell. I had one more phone interview from Ithaca, then three interviews in San Francisco. You could say that SightSpeed got me the job...

This is my second week. Oh yeah, we moved to Seattle, where I work from home when I'm not onsite. It's a great company and I'm enjoying myself so far. Seattle is perfect.

Let me know when you release a SuSE linux build - I'd love to demo SightSpeed as cross-platform videoconf app!"

Congratulations Sam!

Our little bit for Katrina

As someone who has been through two hurricanes myself (Hugo, Fran), I am most impressed by the community reaction and support that follows these devastating storms. As an example, SightSpeed Chairman Dan Miller has committed to giving free SightSpeed licenses to Katrina victims. All they need to do is create a SightSpeed Basic (the free plan) account, and email Dan.

SightSpeed free for Katrina
Relief organizations are asking businesses to do what they can to help, and SightSpeed wanted to participate. While SightSpeed is not food, water, or shelter, we are able to assist with the emotional connection to your loved ones by seeing and talking to them. This offer is also open to businesses that are going to need help getting back on their feet. I am personally looking forward to the first video mail created from a re-opened New Orleans bar. Cheers!

SightSpeed and Creative Labs

Whew! We announced yesterday SightSpeed's partnership with Creative Labs. SightSpeed will now come with every Creative webcam sold globally. Since Creative sells more webcams than anyone (even those "L" guys), that's a lot of webcams. This deal has been a long time in the making, so it's a relief to be able to talk freely about it.

In Motion, with SightSpeed
The first SightSpeeed camera with the bundled offer is the Creative Live! Motion. They are available right now at Circuit City, and will soon be in all stores. This camera has a motor and moves. Creative Labs even sent a SightSpeed video mail to their entire newletter audience showing the camera in action.