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The pandemic has been rough on everyone, especially when it comes to maintaining connection with the people we love. Luckily, technology allows us to maintain these connections in all sorts of useful ways. Chats. Game nights. Video calls. You can even watch movies together—even if you aren’t in the same room.Read more...

WhatsApp is more than just a text chat service—you’ve been able to use it to make voice and video calls for as long as I can remember. In fact, WhatsApp has even bolstered its video chat capabilities during amid these cheery pandemic times, and now allows you to converse with up to 50 people at a time. But you still…Read more...

As I often say, I’m the world’s worst Fortnite player. Unless I can catch someone standing still for an extended period of time and snipe them from an ungodly distance, I take shotguns to the face and build about as well as a three-year old. However, Fortnite is more than just running-and-gunning; there’s a big social…Read more...

The dreaded “Zoombombing” is a risk for all Zoom meetings, even private rooms secured with a passcode and data encryption. All it takes is for the invite to wind up in the wrong hands, and suddenly you have someone screaming randomly in your work meeting—or worse.Read more...

Zoom is letting you use its video chat service for free on Thanksgiving Day. Better yet, Zoom is going to lift all video chat restrictions that day, too, so you can talk to your loved ones—remotely—all day if you want to. Of course, you’ll still need to not blow past your ISP’s data cap if you decide to have a huge…Read more...

One of Zoom’s best features is finally available in Google Meet: Virtual backgrounds. For now, you’ll only get it if you’re using Google Meet via a desktop browser (sorry, app users), and it’s coming online via a rollout, so you might not even able able to access it yet. The novelty of the feature is too great to let…Read more...

With great work-from-home flexibility comes great responsibility. While your job is unlikely to get very upset if you take a moment to do your laundry, make a sandwich, or watch something funny on YouTube, that doesn’t give you carte blanche to do anything you might do in the off-hours during the workday.Read more...

Google Meet’s Android and iOS apps offer a streamlined version of the video chat service’s desktop interface. The basic controls are simple and should be familiar to anyone who has used a video or voice chat app on smartphones, but plenty of helpful features and settings are tucked away in Google Meet’s mobile…Read more...

Remote work doesn’t get much more exciting in 2020 than taking a Zoom call from a tropical locale—even if you’re not really there. As an added bonus, Zoom’s popular virtual background feature allows you to conceal your messy, work-at-home room from your colleagues—and it’s now available for use on the Android Zoom app.Read more...

I don’t FaceTime much, but I have frequently been accused of not “appearing present” in various video chats because I tend to stare at the screen, not the camera pointing at me, whenever I’m talking or watching others speak. And because there’s no shortage of technological innovation in the world, Apple has found a…Read more...

Google is rolling out new features for its current video chat apps, Googles Meet and Duo. Meet’s updates include a new background blurring tool; it also now allows users to view up to 49 camera feeds while using the “tile view” in large group meetings.Read more...

Facebook’s new “Watch Together” feature supports up to eight people in Facebook Messenger, or up to 50 people using Messenger Rooms. However you decide to structure your digital party, it’s a convenient way to get everyone watching (and commenting) on the same videos at the same time.Read more...

Teachers create the best hacks. Full stop. No argument. The clever ways they go about managing the number of kids they oversee—and getting around the limitations of old equipment that often isn’t well maintained—always surprise and delight me. And today’s trending trick for sharing documents via video chats is no…Read more...

While it sucks that smarter schools are shutting their campuses and switching to virtual learning, there’s one big, silver lining to this transition: It’s a hell of a lot easier to take notes, recordings, and automatically create full transcripts of your online classes and meetings.Read more...

With COVID-19 continuing. to force many of us to work and socialize from home, most of the big camera brands have released official software that turns your DSLR into a webcam that can be used with Zoom, OBS, Facebook Messenger and other apps.Read more...

I woke up this morning and suddenly realized that I had yet another game night scheduled for tonight with my friends. That’s just what our quarantine lives have become: endless game nights, during which we’re always trying to find something new that works well over Zoom / Facebook / Google Meet / you name it.Read more...

After months in quarantine, we’re all used to working and socializing remotely (right?). The ubiquity of camera-touting devices and the abundance of video-chat apps made the transition easy (well, not easy), but there’s always room for improvement—and one way to make your video chats look even better is to get a…Read more...

See if this scenario sounds familiar: You’ve put on your best Zoom shirt for your daily work check-in, you’ve poured the wine for your weekly friend hangout, you’re ready to engage in some digital face-to-face connection—but you spend the entire chat session staring at your own face. Happily, if you want to change…Read more...