Sony has announced a new service that will transform the humble EyeToy peripheral into a video conferencing system. Eye Toy Chat, available in a month or so, ‘offers four very different ways to communicate including text, voice, video mail and one to one video chat. The �text chat� rooms allow 256 people to talk together, while 16 people can converse at one time in the �voice chat� rooms..’

Why does this picture of legions of giggling schoolgirls video gossiping wildly immediately flash into my brain?