No, not Marco Polo the eleventh century explorer, but Marco Polo the iPhone app. Marco Polo the app makes video-texting easy, and I use it now while in Mexico to video-text with my grandkids (actually, my friend Lisa's grandkids, but I've seen them since they were really small so I'm like a grandfather to them). But how does this transcend cultures and generations?

In Mexico, I've been enlisting my Mexican friends to join in with my video-texts to the grandkids, and everyone loves to do it. The culture here is family-oriented, so all I need to do is show a bit of the video clip of Mila (seven years old) counting to ten in Spanish, and the adults fall all over themselves joining in the videos and helping. So the Marco Polo video clips are connecting people across countries, cultures, and generations.

And that's what Marco Polo the explorer did too. So the "app" was "aptly" named!

If you would like to see my friends in Mexico falling all over themselves to "Marco Polo" across countries, cultures, and generations, here are some Marco Polo videos I sent:

Elena instructs Mila on counting to ten in Spanish.

Fernando jokes and instructs Mila.

Fernando, with the help of Caeser, instructs Buggy.

Keman helps Mila with counting, but acts like she does not know how to count.