Something really cool happened this morning when I put finally got around to getting my little ]ISight Camera working on the Net.
The ISight Camera is a small video camera that looks like a mike and a camera in one….and it is! A clear one at that.
The device costs $140 from any Mac Retailer and comes out of the box with a firewire cable and a few small stands for mounting on your desk or your computer.
Pull the camera out and plug in your Firewire cable and the camera immediately comes to life and start up using ICHAT software that exists with the ILife package the Apple includes with the OS.
You will have to set up a .mac account. I’m trying to figure out a way out of that because at first glance…that’s $99 per year.
My first amusement was looking at myself on my computer screen. The cool thing happened today when we got another camera in for Jeff Rainey. We set his camera up the same way and added me to his buddy list…next thing you know, I’m looking at Jeff in real time from my home office. Our first words spoken at about the same time…”Hey Man’
Anyway. Now we’re just waiting for more Apple buds to get on board and we can have a video conference that uses the new Tiger OS and provides a screen that looks like this.
The center image would be you and your camera and the other three are your Video buds that you can talk to. You can hear clearly and there is very little shake and fragmenting of the image like you see in other cameras.
Let’s get a video conference going soon. Alan in JC ordered his today and I think Patrick may be up next.
[b]Our Account Names are…
idavecate@.mac.com
mountainscrambler@mac.com[/b]
As mentioned….let’s try to solve the problem with compatability too because this is a great way to communicate without long distance charges, air fares or hotel. I do miss the cold beers though