[Doug Nelson]

Well, new to me anyway.

I don't know how many of you have heard of Skype, which allows you to talk for free with any other Skype user. They even have a SkypeMe service which allows you to put a button on any webpage that will connect the viewer to you (of course you can refuse the call or send it to voicemail), all free.

But this got me wondering about retouching (as most things do) and how to use it to our benefit. I haven't come up with anything brilliant about using it for retouching specifically, but I began to wonder if there wasn't a market for personal instruction. Make a webpage with "send me $x via Paypal and I'll teach you Photoshop via Skype" or similar. Or "I'll fix your printer" or "teach you Swedish".

Have sites like this already started cropping up?

[chrishoggy]

Hang on until Windows Live Messenger is launched , I think you will find this to be a very useful business tool. I've just started beta testing it, and I'm very impressed. It should be available to the public for testing quite soon.

Keep an eye on this site Here for the public release. You can also try out some of the new features of the Windows Live site from there too

[Doug Nelson]

Evidently it's a new-ish idea, but not new. Here's an article about an app that automatically charges per minute for just the situation I'd imagined.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7....html?tag=blog