The way I was sitting, you could see Truffles, the siamese cat, on the
card table in the background, quietly cleaning herself. Once or twice
I picked Truffles up and held her up to the camera.
Or so I'm told. Anyway, Janet asked me to call her at the show with Internet Phone from her computer at home, so we could talk for free, and I could help demonstrate the product a little.
As soon as I got home on Monday night from work, I turned on Janet's computer, dialled in to Netcom, and started up Internet Phone. They had a couple computers set up in their booth at Comdex, one of them equipped with a color QuickCam. I had the b/w QuickCam set up at home, and when we got connected we could not only speak, but also see each other. True, the framerate wasn't too great; maybe two or three frames a second. I also noticed I spent more time looking at my own picture than the picture of the people on the other side.
Basically, Janet and I would talk for a bit, with my voice on the speakers on the Comdex end so that people standing around the booth could hear me. Sometimes people in the crowd would be curious about the system, so she'd put them on the phone to speak with me to let them judge the sound quality and so forth.
After a while I got tired of just sitting in front of the camera speaking about the same old inane stuff. Yes, I'm still in Queens. Yes, I'm using a computer. No, I don't have a VoiceNet unit. No, you don't need a VoiceNet unit on both ends of the connection. No, I can't speak at the same time as you are speaking.
The way I was sitting, you could see Truffles, the siamese cat, on the
card table in the background, quietly cleaning herself. Once or twice
I picked Truffles up and held her up to the camera.
After Truffles explained to me with her rear claws that she wasn't interested in being hoisted up by her armpits and dangled about in front of the computer, I went in the living room where the Halloween decorations were -- I was supposed to pack them up in their boxes and stow them away before Janet returned (which I eventually did, late Friday evening) -- and I brought back the electric vibrating plastic skeleton, Mr. Janglin' Bones.
Mr. Janglin' Bones and I spoke for quite a while on Internet Phone
with the nice people from Comdex.
He would sit in my lap and talk
with me, sometimes look around the room and sometimes climb up on the
keyboard and mug for the videophone, his jawbone opened wide in
childlike glee. It was really hilarious to be talking with Janet and
see some important-looking businessman come up behind her and look at
the screen, and then have Mr. Janglin' Bones hop up and waggle his
teeth at the businessman.
Eventually I had a whole little menagerie of puppets arrayed on my end of the connection. Mr. Janglin' Bones was sitting around with Dilbert on his shoulder, and one of the little kitten Beanie Babies was peering at the camera, while in the background I had set up Janet's cardboard cutout of Princess Leia.
I also wrote out little signs on sticky notes and held them up to the camera. They said things like "HELLO FROM QUEENS" and "SEND ME SOME PIZZA" (to which Janet said, "Are you kidding? The pizza in Las Vegas is awful! You're the one in Queens, you should send ME pizza!") This was followed by a longer series of little signs held up one-by-one to the camera:
LIVE ON THE INTERNET IT'S... THE DAN AND JANET SHOW STARRING JANET IN LAS VEGAS STARRING DAN IN QUEENS ALSO STARRING MR. JANGLIN' BONES
One other cool idea that I was going to try (but wasn't able to make work) was to set up Internet Phone, set it to autoanswer and let them call me from the show. When the connection was established and the screen lit up, it would show an empty chair, occupied by Mr. Janglin' Bones with a note taped to his chest saying "BACK SOON".
I thought this would harken back to the old Datamation cartoon. Guy in shirt and tie (speaking to skeleton seated at computer terminal, covered with cobwebs): "System been down long?
However, the irony was somewhat lost on Janet, because she doesn't read Datamation, and besides, Mr. Janglin' Bones wasn't really stiff enough to sit up in the chair. I tried thumbtacking his head-mounted dangle-string to the seatback to hold him upright, but he was too heavy and the tacks kept coming off.
Since then, Mr. Janglin' Bones has been hanging around on the doorknob, with a sign saying "BACK SOON" taped to his forehead, waiting for one last little QuickCam photo shoot Monday night to illustrate the Web version of this story before he gets packed away in a box with all his little halloween pals.