Being with friends and family over the holidays is not usually considered a luxury. But what if your loved ones are far away (or what if you're the one who's far away)? Relatives who are abroad this year or even beyond driving distance in the States will be sorely missed if it's starting to look like airfare is out of the question.
And face it: You can't see everyone you know during the holidays anyway. Make a better effort to stay in contact this year by rejecting your inner Luddite. The cold, sterile glare of your computer screen is your ticket to keeping in touch on a shoestring budget.
Skype and more
Foreign-exchange students are natural masters of long-distance fraternizing. You'll find them using their laptops and Skype, a program that lets you talk to friends and family anywhere, even overseas - at no cost.
That's right. Skype chats are free when you call computer-to-computer; the only catch is that both users have to download Skype's free software. (If you use Skype and your computer to call a phone or cell phone, you do rack up modest charges.) You'll also need a microphone - if your computer has one, you're good to go; otherwise, buy a headset that plugs into your computer through the standard USB port. You make the call by clicking your friend's contact information in a menu that looks a lot like an email contact list; the friend's computer rings to announce the call.
Skype's occasional habit of crashing mid-call can be forgiven, especially since it's, well, free. You can also videoconference through Skype if you have a webcam. Yep, that's free too.
Google is edging in on the action with new chat features within Google Mail. You can now chat via voice and video with your Gmail contacts.
Photo sharing
Let's get back to the basics. Photos are a fundamental way to share experiences, and ready access to digital cameras has made it even easier. If you're worried about having your life splashed all over the web, these image-hosting sites feature settings so that the photo can be made private, visible only to users you mark as friends or family, or grouped into albums or sets that you can keep private but send a guest pass to whomever you choose.
Both Flickr and Photobucket offer free accounts - but with limits to the amount of bandwidth you take up per month; that is, you will encounter a limit on how many photos per month you can upload for free, and that number will depend on how large your photo file size is. Upgrading to a paid ("pro") account is relatively inexpensive ($25/year for Flickr). Plus, pro Flickr accounts are free if you get your high-speed service via AT&T.
Video sharing
If you have a fairly new digital camera, this year's holiday letter can be a holiday video. Video sharing sites like Vimeo, YouTube and even Photobucket allow you to share videos with viewers of your choice. Like the photo-sharing sites, it's simply a matter of uploading your file. Like the photo-sharing sites, video sites have security settings so you can shield your video from searches or so that only people with password access can view your stuff. The video-sharing sites have bandwidth upload limits on their free accounts, too, but they're fairly generous and should allow for a decent fireside chat. Talk directly to the camera, or film Dad dressed up as Santa and the baby opening her first gifts, too - by the time gifting day rolls around, your 500 MB/week limit on Vimeo will have recharged.
Fun with Google Maps & Earth
It may seem a simple thing, but keeping in touch is all about information. Show your friends and relatives where you do what you do with these two Google apps.
UW-student Kang Wang uses the "Street View" feature on Google maps to show his parents in Southern China exactly where he is. Though the feature is not available for all cities, it is pretty nifty once you figure out how to navigate with it.
Go to maps.google.com and enter an address in the search bar. A link to "Street View" will appear if the feature is available. Click on the Street View link, and any street outlined in blue will have a ground-level, 360-degree view of the streetscape.
Wang uses Street View to show his parents exactly what he's seeing in his daily life here in Madison just by emailing them an address: "It was very nice in the first months when I was very excited to be in Madison."
The Street View feature in Google Maps pales in comparison to Google Earth, which gives new weight to the phrase "bird's-eye view." The program displays satellite images of earth's surface, sometimes right down to individual trees and cars. You can make like superman and fly across the world with the click of your mouse. Like Street View, all you need is an address to explore the same spots that your friends and family are exploring.
The resolution of the images can vary; Ottawa, Ill., is but a blur on the map, but Las Vegas is visible with almost disturbing clarity.
Twitter can be the ideal web application for both the text-message obsessed and anybody with Internet access (even those struggling to keep up with Web 2.0-savvy millennials). Twitter allows you to write short posts up to 140 characters long from your computer or cell phone. It doesn't matter if you're doing anything interesting - everything from your opinion on the election to your need for coffee is fodder for the nonstop feed on Twitter.
If you'd like, Twitter will assault you with an unfiltered barrage of mental meanderings, quibbles and bona fide news items from around the world. But if you're looking to know what's up with the people you know, limit the Twitter users you "follow" to just those people. You could find yourself creating a whole new community.
Get connected
All the programs discussed in this article require a high-speed Internet connection to work in an efficient manner, or sometimes at all.
Skype
www.skype.com. Free Internet phone service.
Google Mail video and voice chat
google.com/mail/help/videochat/learnmore.html.
Flickr
www.flickr.com. Photo-sharing.
Photobucket
www.photobucket.com. Photo- and video-sharing.
Vimeo
www.vimeo.com. Video-sharing.
Google Maps and Earth
maps.google.com and earth.google.com
Google Earth is a separate program to download and install, and runs outside of your browser.
Brief text updates via a computer or cell phone among family members or group of friends.
