Tech Talk
By Tak Sato
A parody series to celebrate this magazine’s fifth anniversary would be awesome.
I can almost hear the actor Sir Patrick Stewart reciting: “Internet: the final frontier. These are the voyages of Northeast Ohio Boomers. Their continuing mission: to explore the vast digital world. To seek out beneficial services and free entertainment. To boldly go where no Boomer has gone before.”
Here & Now
Although many “Star Trek” innovations are (still) fiction, real-world engineers have mimicked some of its gadgets and made them indispensable. Popular lore says the fictional “tricorder” was the design inspiration for cell phones. Today’s smartphones and smartwatches monitoring our health are uncannily similar to the series’ “medical tricorder.”
Living thousands of miles away from my parents, I’ve been using videoconferencing applications for decades, first on computers and later on handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets.
Used for working from home, online education, or to maintain social ties with family, friends and communities, video conferencing has become an increasingly common way to bridge social distancing.
From the relatively unknown Zoom app that was catapulted to ubiquity status with the onset of COVID-19 to Microsoft’s familiar Skype, there are many makes and models for video chats.
Just like any car takes you from point A to point B, all videoconference services do the same thing: enable you to listen, talk to, and see the meeting participants — including yourself — in real time on your device’s screen.
If different videoconference services deliver the same utility, users seem to encounter similar kinds of issues: lousy audio and video. From my experience helping people, the trifecta of: they can’t hear me, they can’t see me, I can’t hear them tops my list.
When using a tablet or smartphone for a meeting, troubleshooting these issues on a smartphone or tablet is frustratingly common but relatively simple: make sure the microphone, video or speakers are turned on.
It’s easy to mute the audio on a handheld device. Making matters worse, the controls often disappear after several seconds. One tip: if you can’t see any application controls, tapping the screen should bring them back into view.
To troubleshoot those same issues on a desktop computer, find the application’s Settings, Preferences or Audio/Video Settings section.
Unless your audio component inside your computer is already broken (Run a test with a YouTube video. If you can hear it with the speakers on and volume up, it’s fine), the Settings section of the application helps you find the right adjustment.
The probability of a They can’t hear me issue increases with an external USB webcam. Unless your integrated webcam/microphone is broken and you need an external USB webcam, you shouldn’t have this problem on laptops, Chromebooks or all-in-one computers that contain all their components behind a screen. The other type of traditional desktop computer uses a cable to connect its monitor to its operating components.
Operating systems running on traditional desktop computers can get confused when a USB webcam is attached. In the Settings section, switch the computer’s video and microphone to the USB webcam. That should fix the problem.
Finally, use the same etiquette in a video meeting that you use in an in-person meeting. Remember, the other participants can see you, hear you, and often have the ability to record you. You don’t want to go viral or become an internet meme.
It Shouldn’t Be This Difficult
- In a regular virtual meeting, participants see and hear each other; it’s a two-way communication. In a webinar, (an extra cost to the webinar hosts), participants see and hear only the host, making it a one-way communication.
- If you’re using a video conference service for the first time, you’ll be prompted to install that service’s video conferencing software or app(for tablets and smartphones). You can install multiple client software or apps from different services.
- Most video conferencing services on a personal computer may also work fine through the browser, for example Google’s Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox, or Apple’s Safari, without installing the client software.
- Always refer to the meeting invite email sent by the meeting host. It should include information, such as a link to join the meeting automatically when clicked/tapped, meeting ID and meeting password if joining manually, and a toll-free call-in telephone number. Print the invite in case of technical issues.
- If you encounter technical issues, you can always listen in on a meeting so you don’t miss anything. Take a deep breath, take out your phone and call into the meeting with the information in your meeting invite email you printed out the night before.
- Don’t wait until the last minute to check your audio and video setup. You can always use the link or ID and password in your meeting invite email in advance to test your settings. As Lord Baden-Powell said, “Be Prepared!”
