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Photo: Shanu John

For emotional high The tone and tenor of the voice makes a world of difference

Text chat is obsolete. Voice chat is kewl (cool). “My friends have begun to call me an owl for my newly-acquired nocturnal traits,” he laughs explaining about voice chat, which makes talking to anyone possible through a click of the mouse. After snail mail giving way to e-mails, it is the voice chat that is catching on like wild fire, especially among the younger lot.

The latest communication mode comes handy even for the elderly. The electronically challenged and those with arthritic fingers that find typing on a keyboard a complex task can now just plug-in the headphone-mic set and start talking to their children, grandchildren and old friends living across the globe.

“Besides listening to her sweet voice, my web cam enables me to actually see what changes a city like Dehradun has brought about in my daughter,” says Swati, mother of 18-year-old Nisha who is off to pursue a goal of piloting planes.

“When we say that technology is accretion, it doesn’t mean that one fades out and the other moves in. It is just a growth. Voice has a far higher emotional bandwidth than text. Text will never convey the emotion as well as the tone of voice does,” points out tech-savvy Rishi. Voice adds that element of reality, which is not possible in text: singing, whispering, shouting, etc.

Harita is an online buff and likes making friends from different parts of the globe. While playing a game of Scrabble on Facebook, Harita met Andrew Gordon. “The voice chat makes it possible for me to grasp the difference accents and the nuances of the language which vary from nation to nation. Chatting in the text mode is devoid of these opportunities.”

Voice chat is the only means for 18-year-old just-married Shabeena to stay in constant touch with her husband in the Gulf. “My every Friday begins with a chat with my husband and the day ends in the same way. We stay glued to our laptops and don’t move away from it even while eating food, says the blushing housewife.

“Almost every night, we have a blast thanks to the latest mode,” says Paroma, who stays in a workingwomen’s hostel. She has a laptop with wi-fi connection that makes the fun-filled chat all the more exciting. Besides textual chat, Google also offers voice chat. This means you can talk through the Internet to anyone on your contact list, as long as they have a computer equipped with a microphone and speakers and have a broadband connection. This is a PC-to-PC calling system only. But Skype allows PC to telephone and vice versa for a nominal charge. Voice chat over Skype has been rated the best.

Technology wave has touched many lives, from retired grandparents to grandchildren and estranged couples. With the new mode of communication reaching larger sections of people, the telecom company and the private cell phone companies were also forced to bring down the rate of long-distance calls, all thanks to the online voice chat.

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