SkypeDriving Contest over at Skype Journal: Win an SMC Wifi phone and FON Router

OK so another little competition to let you know about, this time over on Skype Journal. Phil Wolff and the team over there have an interesting "what if" discussion going on, centred around the idea of "In-car Skypeing". The idea comes from Jeremy Carbaugh's Flickr photos, showing him on a video call with his pals as they drive along in their car.

Now, whilst the benefits of Skype video calling whilst in the car might not run beyond being able to check whether or not your partner is picking his or her nose at the traffic lights, the idea of a Skype-equipped car really is pretty cool, and not so crazy as wifi becomes more and more ubiquitous and flat-rate mobile data tariffs begin to become the norm.

So Phil's 2 questions are pretty simple:

What UI and features would you want for a car-based Skype?
What Skype Status states or mood text would you set and share?

They've got some great answers already over there, and if you're the first person in your time zone to answer, you may win a Skype Wi-Fi phone, FON Wi-Fi router, and free SkypeOut minutes (they have 5 in total to give away). See Phil's post here.

Technorati tags: competition, Skype, VoIP, Internet calling, Internet telephony

Comments

What UI and features would you want for a car-based Skype? Hands free operation? What Skype Status states or mood text would you set and share? Confused

As for UI and features, that all depends. The question is where is skype running? On a computer built-in to my car? on a laptop in the passenger seat? This is possible, I can take my laptop cam and attach it to the sun visor.

Regardless of the platform, it needs to be hands-free operation. (sounds like an extra waiting to be built)

As for moods and statuses, I think this is a requisite list:

1. In traffic
2. Driving too fast to talk
3. Road Rage!

I'm the girl in the pink above. So I would have options
of
1. bluetooth to speak via headset or
2. speaker system routed in (my garmin nuvi has a bluetooth feature but it conflicts) it does however switch from music to the voice. It's definitely not there yet.
3. the choice of voice activated video on or off. (sometimes you just dont want people looking at you)
4. laptop mounted not the safest are you guys looking at maybe in the dash hardware like a gps dashboard mount?

Hey Cindy,
Glad you could join us! I'm thinking in-dash would be excellent: if Skype could put the whole firmware on a chip within the Satnav it would be great; especially if there was a Skype map widget which could show the car's location to any buddies using Skype that you let see it. Voice dial would be excellent too.

Be cool if your Skype status was tied to the stereoed and linked to CDDB so it displayed the track you were listening to...!(rock)

Be cool if your Skype status was tied to the stereoed and linked to CDDB so it displayed the track you were listening to...!