theITbaby

the IT city, the I.T. Baby

Apps

Talk to your baby at home with Google Hangouts

Maggie making a video callYesterday while waiting on A&E Factory Services to call and tell me they would be late  again, I had little that I could do as I had a very needy baby on my hands. Something about being sick a couple of days ago has turned her into the skin-contact monster. We were laying on the couch and I was about to send ITMama a note that Baby M had consumed yet another 4 oz bottle when I decided to go to the future and do a video call with Google Hangouts.

While Baby M was a bit confused as to why her mom was on the screen and not there to hug her, it was appreciated by the baby quite a bit.

Hangouts is the free Skype-like messenger that’s integrated into every Google product these days and can notify and let you video conference from pretty much any system with a keyboard (virtual or no,) a microphone, and a camera or any combo thereof.

Hangouts replaces Google Talk, but carries over the same functionality and expands on it. Basically a name change and a face lift.

Baby M got to see and hear ITmama, which left me with a little less needy of a baby, and a much happier baby in a bit. One thing I did notice is that phones and devices need to be a lot further away than you would think from baby as they will take a baby pounding.

It’s nice that anywhere you can have a data connection you can see your baby in real time… may be a little bit blocky, but it’s her. If you’re not in the mood for a full on baby conversation, or the data connection is wonky, you can also just shoot pictures back and forth.

Sadly I don’t have a picture due to holding the phone and baby and not having enough hands to deal with everything, but when I do I’ll slap it here and replace the one we’ve got here.

Google Hangouts is free and available on Android, iOS, Mac and PC although you may need to download a plugin depending on your browser.

4.5 / 5 stars     

Paul King

Paul King lives in Nashville Tennessee with his wife, two daughters and cats. He writes for Pocketables, theITBaby, and is an IT consultant along with doing tech support for a film production company.