Back from vacation: iChatting with my niece

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Just back from vacation in Austria.
My sister, niece and brother in law are visiting my mother in The Netherlands. They are over from Long Island, New York where they live. Unfortunately I was not able to go to The Netherlands to see them.
iChat to the rescue!

This is what it looked like from the other side:


Note that my sister is using the iSight camera off it's holder. That sometimes causes the image to get all blocky but it's great for following the little girl around.
Now let's hope they get a proper broadband connection at home soon! (Still using dialup at the moment.)
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Mac Os X Multi user audio routing

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Interesting tidbit about Mac Os X's audio setup: it is possible to have one audio mapping setup for one user (input and output setting in the System Preferences) and a completely other one for another user and have them active at the same time.

Example
User 1 logs in.
Plays song A in iTunes.
Output is set to USB audio device A.
Switch to User 2 (With Fast User Switching).
Set the system output to 'Headphones'.
Play Song B with iTunes.

Now Song A plays through the USB device, Song B plays through the headphones.
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Audio Blog software studio setup

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Here is my proof of concept for a software-only studio setup for shows like Trade Secrets or The Daily Source Code.

1. The proof of concept from my PowerBook Studio: ABlogSoftwareStudioSetup.mp3 [6.2 MB, 5:21 minutes]
2. ..and how a participant hears it: OtherSideABlogSoftStudio.mp3 [3.1 MB, 5:21 minutes]

A participant is someone who 'calls in' to the show using an audio chat program. Playing back the second file I heard that the participant's part was missing. This is somewhat logical because what the participant says should go to the other side of the chat and should not be played back locally. However, I was routing all audio from my 'studio' back to the participant. This means that iChat probably has a mechanism to filter out anything that originates locally.

More on the technical details of this setup in a later post.
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