Online Communication Tools

by Samuel Sennott

I had a cool experience today where I was chatting with a friend using GMAIL’s chat feature and then he pulled up a video chat.  I had set it up the other day.  I frequently use iChat and Skype, but the spontaneity of this struck me.  My satellite connection here up here in the mountains of Vermont did not allow for us to stay connected by video for long, but it struck me how things really have changed.  I sat an ate dinner tonight with a group and we spoke about how when some of them were growing up there were no cell phones, no personal computers in schools, and certainly no iPhones!  Yet, I question the concept of digital imigrant as I have been skyping with my grandmother!    Check out this partial list of popular online communication tools.

1. www.skype.com Skype, the internet telephone
2. www.aim.com AOL Instant Messenger
3. http://mail.google.com and http://mail.google.com/videochat Google Mail and their new video chat!
4. http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/ichat.html Apple’s iChat….(my personal favorite)
5. www.facebook.com One of the big social networking applications
6. www.myspace.com One of the big social networking applications
7. www.ning.com You can create your own social network…see ours:  assistivetech.ning.com
8. www.twitter.com The most popular microblogging client.