How to look good on a webcam
Life is now enjoyed via web conference, and looking good on a webcam requires a few tricks.
- Elevate the computer to be at eye level, else your audience is looking up your nose.
- Look into the camera, not the screen. The lack of eye contact is noticeable.
- Get a good microphone. The one on your laptop stinks.
- Create better lighting by changing the tone on your monitor. Go to settings and choose a warmer hue than monitor blue.
- Don’t sit in front of a window — you will be a silhouette.
- Choose a good background. This can be performed with software in some video conferencing apps, or by moving to a good spot. CNET
dis-rup-shun: Face it, you aren’t going anywhere for at least a few weeks — especially if you live in California. Your chance to make a first or second or nth impression is right here in your home office and you might as well amuse yourself and your coworkers by stepping up your web conferencing game.
Microsoft Teams reaches 44 million users
As stated above, life is now about web conferencing. All the providers are seeing massive increases in usage, and Microsoft Teams, a very full featured remote work application that incorporates video chat, screen sharing, and instant messaging is enjoying more than double the usage over its 20 million figure last November. CNBC
dis-rup-shun: The bulk of online humanity is now trying out a video conferencing platform, but most may not realize that Teams is both a video conference platform and a virtually work space. Microsoft took some lemons from the abysmal Skype product and made lemonade, and except for some hard to find control features, the product is delightful. Slack will have to step up given that Teams is bundled in Microsoft Office suites. Just ask the good people at Netscape what bundling means.
Pornhub does its part for Europeans
Adult content website Pornhub has extended premium memberships for free for a month to the good people of Italy, France and Spain. The company saw dramatic spikes in viewership after the offer. CNBC
dis-rup-shun: Well, as we tell children at birthdays, it’s the spirit that counts.
PS5 versus XBox X Series
CNET tries to fill in the missing blanks to determine which new console will be better. Both will be well powered with AMD processors, will have faster memory units and offer backwards compatibility for existing games software. Sony is expected to offer a fairly different controller, and Microsoft is expected to reduce latency via software on its controller. Both are using different architectural approaches to accomplish better performance, but the question of what games will be available on the new devices lingers.
dis-rup-shun: It’s the content, of course, that makes the device! Both companies have kept game titles well concealed, with a few titles known for XBox. Even one totally awesome game on a new platform will sell many, many units.