A national initiative, “Give Thanks America” was created as a way of allowing the families of U.S. service men and women to send three minute video messages to their loved ones. Give Thanks America honors the memory of those who lives were lost in the terrorist attacks, including those of five Compaq employees. Give Thanks America is also a show of support for the military effort.

Compaq, Sorenson Media and Digital Island, a Cable & Wireless Company, in cooperation with the Department of Defense, have joined together to create a technology solution that allows U.S. families of service men and women to send three-minute video messages by email to their loved ones. As a part of this ongoing effort, over 1,200 Compaq employees have volunteered their services at the video recording sites, which have been taking place at Mobile Sites around the United States. At this point, no foreseeable end to the initiative is in sight, which will continue to support communications with service men and women and their families as long as the “War on Terrorism” exists.

Give Thanks America Message boards are on the site with messages from Celebrities, Government Officials, Musicians and Music Groups, Firefighters, Police, the Air Force and more. Clicking on the name of the person who posted a video will allow you to view it.

Here’s how it works. Using a Compaq Presario 5000T and a Logitech QuickCam Pro 3000 video recorder, the camera captures the video message and the My Movie Studio software is used to edit and compress the file. Once the video has been compressed, it is packaged with the email and sent to Sorenson Vcast (Vcast ties integrates the network, FTP, streaming servers, content locations and email delivery system together, simplifying the task of streaming video across the Internet).

Sorenson Vcast collects the email with the video message, stores the compressed video on Compaq servers and generates a “video ticket.” The ticket is embedded in the email message which is then sent out to the service man or woman. A copy of the message is sent to the original sender as well.