As much as I love technology for it’s own sake (yes, I know it shows), I love it even more when you use it in real world situations and it just fits.
Case in point: last evening we (at our home) and another couple (at theirs) needed to talk in order to discuss some strategy and business. There where four of us on two homes, each home has an ADSL connection (from different providers, by the way) and has a NAT setup.
We had a iBook on each side and I had my USB webcam (with the required software installed) connected to the iBook.
All it took was for us to fire up iChat, start the (one way) video conf and we spent an hour just chatting as if we where all there. If the other party had a webcam it would have been better but hey… ;-)
So in effect it is voice conferencing in a totally convenient way, you just put the iBook down and talk away.
What a great technology. What a great use for it.