One of the great things of being a Virtual Assistant is that we have the freedom to try out new technologies to make our work a little easier and our clients at ease!
Many ‘old-school’ business owners and managers still believe that they need to be in the same office and be face to face with an assistant. The innovative concept of virtual assistance might make one hesitant in giving it a try. VAs still will not be in building with their clients but there is an alternative if one needs to actually see each other. Video conferencing.
After reading an article in PC World (unable to find article online but an alternative review can be found here) I decided to give it a try. The graphical interface is slick and you can converse and view with up to six people at once. Best of all Oovoo is free with no advertising and pop-up banners!
I had the privelage to have a morning coffee with another VA halfway across the country. For some reason her video camera was not working (Oovoo is in Beta and suggested to her to contact support to figure out the problem), and I could only see her static picture but the video from my end worked great (camera is intergrated into the laptop). One has to get used to allowing another person to speak as there are brief second delays, but other than that I was very happy with the result.
As a word of advice, once you get the software installed and create an account, if you are a very private person, go to the Settings section and adjust your privacy preferences, as by default, you are listed for all to see.
One thing that I was not wholly impressed was phone feature (free until April 1, 2008). I called a potential client and the sound was really choppy. So for now, I will stick with Skype.
