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Live from the church, it’s your wedding
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I got a pleasant surprise this week when a former student e-mailed me an invitation to look at pictures of her wedding posted online.
So I clicked the link she sent and spent an enjoyable half-hour browsing through dozens of shots of the ceremony and the reception. You looked lovely, Kym.
It was fun, and I once again realized how much the Internet and information technology have expanded our ability to stay in touch and share our experiences.
Then, just yesterday, I saw an article in USA today that reminded me of how much more is already possible — and soon will be as common as sharing photographs has become.
I learned that the hot new thing is the "wedding webcast" — buying bandwidth to "broadcast" your wedding live on the Internet.
As reporter Olivia Barker writes, "The wedding webcast has become the latest tech tool for brides and grooms looking to share their big day with as many people as possible."
One company highlighted in the article is webcastmywedding.net — based in Dallas and owned by Ariel Andres.
I gave Andres a call to find out more.
He explained that for $395, his company reserves a chunk of cyberspace for you for 24 hours. All you need on your end is a videocamera (good ones are now small and affordable), a laptop computer and a connection to the Internet. Then, whatever the camera sees can be seen live by anyone anywhere with a computer and a password.
Why settle for seeing still pictures or video of the wedding two weeks later when you can be at the wedding without leaving your house?
Andres says most of his customers are people who have relatives who can’t make the wedding, but don’t want to miss it.
"Say my wedding is in Texas but my favorite grandma is stuck at home in San Francisco and she can’t be there," Andres explained. "Now she can be there."
And, he added, "Sometimes grandma might pay for it as a wedding gift."
Now suppose grandma is watching the reception and spots her grandson, Eddie, sitting in a corner while everyone else at the reception is shimmying across the floor in the traditional conga line.
Well, grandma can grab her cell phone, call the reception hall, and tell Eddie to get off his butt and get dancing. And then sit back and watch him join in.
Or she can ask for a closer view of the bride’s gown.
Of course, this isn’t all about weddings. You can broadcast a graduation, a bar mitzvah, a birthday party — any event as long as you can patch into the Internet from it.
In fact, Andres, 49, started the wedding business to reach a different audience entirely.
"My main goal is to work with churches and broadcast their services because the Internet is the most efficient tool to get the Gospel out," he says. "But churches have resisted it because they feel there is too much pornography on the Internet and whatnot."
But a netcast wedding might get the technology past the church door, and if the pastor sees it, and realizes it’s not such a bad thing — well, as Andres says, "The resistance to the Internet is growing smaller."
Nor is Andres a tech-head.
"I didn’t know anything about computers before I started this," he says. "I hoped I could die and go to heaven without ever having to touch a computer."
But then he began to think about broadcasting church services — and his company was born.
Now this is very cool — and I predict without hesitation that within a few years, you will be receiving invitations from relatives and friends to all kinds of "live" events. The rapid improvement in wireless technology will make it possible to send your broadcast from just about anywhere as more wireless "nodes" pop up in buildings and public places. For example, my brother and his family just got back from a trip to San Diego and he posted pictures online for the rest of us to see.
Nice, but in a few years, I expect to be tuning in a live private webcast as he walks around the San Diego zoo and asking, "Hey, bro, what the heck is that thing I see in the cage over there?"
And this is just sound and images. We can (and will) go further.
I saw an AP story last week that scientists in Japan have developed a device that records odors in digital format and recreates them.
That’s right — this machine can play back smells.
Sure, the thing is huge right now — about three feet long and two feet high — but the first computers were as big as small houses and it didn’t take long for them to shrink.
Imagine someday being able to snap and e-mail not only a picture of a rose with your digital camera, but the smell also. Wow.
Of course, teen-age boys will be e-mailing something other than flower smells to each other — but every technology has its downside.
These and other exciting tech-toys are right around the corner. So close, I can almost touch them, almost taste them.
Hey, wait.
Touch. Taste.
Hmmmmm, I wonder.....
