Back-to-School with SightSpeed Video Chat: The Perfect Tool for Dorm Room and Classroom

BERKELEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As students in the MySpace generation prepare to start a new school year in a scant few weeks, SightSpeed Inc., the leading provider of Internet video communications, is ready to help them make the transition from home to dorm without losing touch—or sight—of all the special people in their lives.

“The question is how to spend wisely. SightSpeed has been very economical for us compared to other solutions we’ve seen that cost thousands more. We can use SightSpeed to do many things, including live remotes, and (thereby save enough to) buy a computer to do editing on.”

SightSpeed, which has won numerous awards for the quality of its 30-frames-per-second video and its innovation, is the easy-to-use service that enables people to connect face-to-face with others on any computer platform anywhere in the world via video, voice or text.

This means that even though they’re leaving their former “comfort zone” behind, kids going off to college can still be close to their parents, friends and extended family through SightSpeed’s video chat. SightSpeed makes it simple to catch up on gossip with those BFFs from high school, or share a moment with a girlfriend or boyfriend who’s at school in another state. And a video chat with Mom and Dad assures everyone that all’s well.

Not only is SightSpeed a great way to keep in touch, it’s also a powerful tool to enhance learning from kindergarten through college.

Among SightSpeed’s fans is Fred Thomsen, the director of IT for the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, who reports that his school uses SightSpeed for a variety of applications. For example, during a videoconference for students, a J-school faculty member led a SightSpeed-enabled Q-and-A session on online journalism with participants from Yahoo.com, MSNBC and nytimes.com, some of whom were as far away as Paris.

“We have money to spend on technology, but not an infinite amount,” Thomsen says. “The question is how to spend wisely. SightSpeed has been very economical for us compared to other solutions we’ve seen that cost thousands more. We can use SightSpeed to do many things, including live remotes, and (thereby save enough to) buy a computer to do editing on.”

Non-classroom uses for affordable and mobile personal video communications include:

• Virtual office hours for teacher-student conferences.
• Virtual student study groups. For example, a group of school kids can collaborate as a team on class assignments, especially in extreme weather.
• Parents can have more frequent and more convenient face-to-face contact with their children’s teachers.

SightSpeed offers the following video chat capabilities:

• SightSpeed Free: The “gold standard” in Internet-based video chat for consumers, SightSpeed has developed an application that yields video of such consistent high quality that it remains unsurpassed in a growing field of Internet video upstarts.
• SightSpeed PLUS: An enhanced version of the free basic service offers higher-grade features, including 4-way simultaneous video chat and longer video e-mails, for an affordable monthly fee of $9.95.
• SightSpeed Light: a MySpace and hi5 widget that captures and creates video messages as posts, creating extended video conversations that are face-to-face, but not necessarily in real time. SightSpeed Light makes video conversations with Social Network friends livelier, whether they’re real-time, face-to-face chats or threaded posts created by friends recording and posting video messages.
• SightSpeed Business: a full-featured, affordable suite of collaboration and productivity tools for use anywhere in the world—even portably—with simultaneous nine-way video/voice/text conferencing, a significant breakthrough in business video conferencing starting at $19.95 per month.
• Dell Video Chat: an easy-to-use, free application now being bundled on nearly all consumer laptops shipped by Dell worldwide. It’s the first time a PC-based video chat application is being provided natively on a Windows Vista PC.

About SightSpeed, Inc.

SightSpeed Inc. is the award-winning provider of Internet video communications for both the consumer and business user, offering the broadest portfolio of industry-leading Internet video communications services. These include SightSpeed Free, SightSpeed PLUS and SightSpeed Light (for social networks), the most widely praised consumer-focused video chat services, which turn a PC or Mac into an easy-to-use video phone to communicate with friends and family around the world. In addition, SightSpeed Business is the world’s first high-quality, cost-effective and hardware-free videoconferencing service for all businesses, including SMBs.

SightSpeed's services are SIP-based and standards-compliant. The company’s revolutionary human perception-based technology is patented and based on more than ten years of R&D originating at Cornell University. Among the many awards SightSpeed has received are Frost & Sullivan's “Company of the Year” award, PC Magazine's “Editors' Choice,” PC World's “100 Best Products,” and a 2008 “Codie” from the Software & Information Industry Association.

Founded in 2001 and based in Berkeley, Calif., SightSpeed is a privately held company funded by The Roda Group, best known for launching Ask Jeeves and PolyServe. For more information visit SightSpeed online.