News 29

If you don’t have enough people to Facetime with, or if you’re just an animal lover and would like to make a dog’s day, I highly encourage you to sign up to Treat Chewie. Here’s the concept:

Sign up to have Chewie the dog text you (to let you know a FT request is coming).
Answer the Facetime request and talk to Chewie.
Chewie gets a treat when you Facetime with him.

Don’t worry about Chewie getting fat on treats… here are the caveats:
– Chewie is only receives treats once an hour on the hour
– Chewie is only open for treat business Monday through Friday 10a-6p
– In order to recieve Chewie’s call you must have an iPhone with Facetime and you must be on WIFI at the time of the call

Go forth and Treat Chewie!

Turns out you can keep your video chats as private as they need to be. According to ZDnet, Apple has confirmed that Facetime calls can be made HIPAA compliant (for doctor-patient video conferencing) using WPA2 Enterprise security.

In addition to medical privacy, the fact that Facetime calls can be made private comes as good news to individuals and corporations who want to ensure that their communications stay private. Need to make sure no one is eavesdropping on your personal or sensitive conversations? Facetime on a secured network could be a good option for you.

Thanks to long time Mac authority Jason O’Grady at ZDnet for the insight.

Facetime is great, but Apple doesn’t own the mobile video calling market. New this week is an announcement from Fring that they have launched 4-way video calling on mobile devices, for both Android and iOS.  Since iChat enabled the ability to chat with multiple people at once in a video call, it seems reasonable to me that Facetime can’t be too far behind unless Apple decides that multiple-person video chats fall into the category of “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

This is why Facetime is so great. It’s wonderful to be able to talk to friends and family over an absolutely easy process, but when you’re afraid your family member may have been caught up in the devastation of a natural disaster, to be able to SEE that they are okay and not just read it… that’s priceless.  From this post from Japan during the aftermath of the earthquakes:

You know how in disaster movies, people on the street gather around electronic shops that have TVs in the display windows so they can stay informed with what is going on?  In this digital age, that’s what the Tokyo Apple stores became.  Staff brought out surge protectors and extension cords with 10s of iOS device adapters so people could charge their phones & pads and contact their loved ones.  Even after we finally had to close 10pm, crowds of people huddled in front of our stores to use the wifi into the night, as it was still the only way to get access to the outside world.You know how in disaster movies, people on the street gather around electronic shops that have TVs in the display windows so they can stay informed with what is going on?  In this digital age, that’s what the Tokyo Apple stores became.  Staff brought out surge protectors and extension cords with 10s of iOS device adapters so people could charge their phones & pads and contact their loved ones.  Even after we finally had to close 10pm, crowds of people huddled in front of our stores to use the wifi into the night, as it was still the only way to get access to the outside world…

…Ubiquitous wifi and Facetime devices gave us a lifeline to our families and the rest of the world. Facetime turned out to be MUCH more stable than Skype (And I’m a Skype fanboy!)

from Apple’s Role in Japan during the Tohoku Earthquake

Have you *seen* the guided tour of Facetime on the iPad? It’s crazy good. Kudos to Apple for producing something that so succinctly explains what Facetime is and how it works. Click through to view the video.

Would you look at that! Facetime got 2 new features today:
– HD (High Definition)
– a price tag of 0.99 cents (app store link)

The HD feature is going to require you have an HD camera (such as on the new Macbook Pros that came out on Feb 24, 2011).

The additional cost for Facetime is said to be part of an accounting issue (thank you sarbanes oxley) more than Apple’s desire to squeeze you for ten of your hard-earned dimes.

You can now download Facetime for the Mac from the Mac App Store and start video chatting in HD.  Pretty cool!

Whoa.  I guess this makes it official… you’ll be able to Facetime between networks in the US.  Good times all around!

Well how about that? Not to be content with Facetime on AT&T, Verizon announced today they are bringing the iPhone 4 and Facetime to the Verizon network. Exciting news!

So starting in February 2011, people will be able to contact each other in a Facetime video call if they have:

– an iPhone 4 on AT&T

– an iPhone 4 on Verizon

– an iPod Touch (aka iTouch) on any wifi network

– a Mac with the free Facetime software installed

Welcome to the big video show, Verizon fans!