Mixed SightSpeed Experiences in Finland
I set up SightSpeed at home on the family PC so I could “see the kids” while I’m half way around the world. While I tried it when I was home to make sure things were working, I wanted to make sure the Internet connection at my hotel was going to support it. My hotel is providing access via Sonera Homerun, which is WiFi-based. I checked out SightSpeed TV and The Fish Tank and it was working okay, so I assumed I was ready to do. I wanted a live call as well, so I SMSed Ken Camp and asked him to get on SightSpeed and call me. He did, and while the video pixelated a bit on both ends, it worked pretty good. To be fair, the network connection is not nearly as fast as it is at home, and it’s WiFi to boot. But it looks like things were going to work.
I saw SightSpeed CEO Peter Scathy online as well, so I figured I’d give him a video call and let him know my experiences. I knew he was online because I just saw an email from him flash in my inbox. Unfortunately, I got an error saying there was some kind of firewall issue preventing us from communicating. Hm… wonder why it worked for Ken and I, but not when I called Peter. So I figured: hey, I’ll leave him a video voicemail. That doesn’t work either for some indetermine reason. I just sent him a conventional email letting him know (and CCed support as well).
It’s hard to get this stuff to work everywhere, given the infinite number of ways things in a network can be configured. Overall, SightSpeed does well traversing the various roadblocks, but clearly there is still work to do. To be fair, the folks at SightSpeed have not really had a reasonable chance to respond to this. I did all this at around 7am Finnish time on Monday, and it was still Sunday night in California. It’s very early Monday morning there as I am writing this. As the business day finishes in Finland, it will begin in California. I’m pretty sure I will get a call/email later this evening about this.
Stay tuned…
