January 08, 2004
No long distance charges
I just got off the phone with my wife in Toronto. Well, sort of. We were using iChat AV instead of the phone.
I know this isn't a new technology, but this week marks the first time I've really "field-tested" iChat AV. The experience is almost unbelievable.
Posted by Sandy at 3:12 PM
Consider this: I'm not plugged into anything. I talk into my PowerBook's built-in microphone. The signal goes through the AirPort (802.11) wireless network, through the Internet, to the iMac at home.
The sound quality is excellent, although there's a slight delay. At first, we were tripping over each other's sentences a bit, but it's possible to carry on a normal conversation.
I knew Lori was available to chat because her buddy icon lit up in my copy of iChat when I turned on the PowerBook. She can "see" me when I'm connected, and can request an audio chat at any time.
So. We've managed to avoid the long distance charges from San Francisco to Toronto all week, using the $10 per day high speed Internet service at the hotel and free hotspots at Macworld.
We could have gone one step further and used iChat's video phone feature, but I only have one iSight camera. To video chat, we need a camera at both ends. (Maybe next year.)
Thanks for the kind words, Ted.
Corante management looks after the layout around here, but I'm curious now. What browser are you using?
I ran the "Apple Matters" page through BrowserCam and it looks good in most modern browsers. (Version 4 browsers didn't fare well, and there were some glitches in the Linux browsers, but the page appears (mostly) as expected on the others.) You do have to turn off your sidebar, though -- I think 'most everyone doing page layout these days builds pages at least 700px wide.
See this page for screenshots.
Posted by Sandy McMurray on January 14, 2004 10:02 AM | Permalink to Comment
Re: The Corrante site
I have an 800 X 600 res. display on my computer and the blue band on the right hand side on the corrante site covers over the article text. Even when I am typing this comment now, my cursor is continuing into the blue band on the right and I can't read what I am typing there.
Could you fix this, or must I try to read the article that interested me on my wife's bigger res. laptop.
Oh, and I don't know who Corrante is but they did something right when they got Sandy writing for them.
Ted.
Posted by Ted Dettweiler on January 14, 2004 08:24 AM | Permalink to Comment