My So-called iLife
I love Apple. I've been using iChat and the iSight camera for video conferencing for a couple of months. I can video conference with Jason in London, Doug in Minneapolis, Todd in Denver, Rudy (pictured below, standing outside the Harambee Center chatting with me) in Pasadena. My sense of comunity and connection has expanded in very meaningful ways through technology.
Today it took a quantum leap forward. I have our projector in my office because I am putting together a Keynote presentation for our Ash Wednesday gathering tonight. I'm set up with a double-monitior. When I move my mouse across the screen to the left it keeps going to the next monitor. As a result my screen space is doubled. I can drag programs onto the other workspace for example. Today I made the projector my second monitor. It shoots an image of my desktop onto the wall and thus my desktop is probably five by seven feet. Now add to that iChat and what I have is a full-wall image of another person talking in real-time who can also see me. With this, I could have Jason, in London, do some teaching with leaders here in Kansas City, among a million other possibilities.
Unbelievable. It's a wonderful iLife.
Bro..I took your advice and picked up the iBook G4. Awesome, oh by the way...I had to add a 15 g ipod. Thanks dude! next on my list is the isight. What a life.
Posted by: Chris Marlow | February 26, 2004 at 01:15 PM
Awesome! I hadn't heard of anybody doing that with the whole projector set up before. Very nice! I've definitely got to upgrade to Panther so I can get the videochat going again on iChat. You guys are inspiring me! ;-) Shalom.
Posted by: Steve K. | February 26, 2004 at 05:20 PM
Who knows, Steve...maybe I am the first!!! That would be a first!
Chris, I'm glad to hear you've come to Jesus, ahem, Apple. JK...I do hope you will enjoy your experience. I haven't looked back. I noted on your blog you asked about saving pictures and stuff. It's pretty intuitive. One way to load hyperlinks, photos, etc., without having to nail a bunch of HTML is through a program called "ecto." Google it - I think it costs $15 and you simply drop photos onto slots and it automatically uploads them to your blog. Good luck.
Posted by: Tim Keel | February 26, 2004 at 06:09 PM
thats quite an expensive extra desktop. not only do projectors cost an arm and a leg, but the bulb wears out pretty quickly, those cost arms and legs as well.
there's a reason why projectors are only used for presentations/classes ;)
Posted by: Hes Nikke | February 26, 2004 at 09:56 PM
Hes (or Nate - I'm not sure?) - you're not kidding about the expense...this is not something I'll be doing regularly...it kind of happened accidentally...however a friend was sharing with me that he toured a campus nine years ago that was promoting themselves as a technologically advanced campus - they had just spent $50K+ to do the very thing I am able to do for $2500 - $4000 (depending on the equipment). And...I am a hack. I think the implications for this are pretty amazing. We'll see.
Posted by: Tim Keel | February 27, 2004 at 06:07 AM
I see you never experienced a dual-screen setup... :-)
First time I used it was on a Mac IIcx running system 6 or 7 or so.. one monitor being on a 2-bit b/w card and the second on a 24-bit color card. Guess what happens if you put an application window with a picture in it covering both screens? One neatly displays the grayscale and the other color - no sweat! This was somewhere in 1990 or so.
Back in 1992 i did a similar trick with an overhead projector & LCD screen (beamers were unpractical at the time).
And YES it worked too!
Quite cool...!!
/Paul
Posted by: paul | February 27, 2004 at 06:18 AM
Hey Paul, thanks for the post. Where are you? In Amsterdam? I went to your site and it was in Dutch! Anyway, like I said above I am a neophyte at all this stuff but I love to learn. Since you were doing this kind of stuff 12 years ago (!), will you tell me what you are thinking about right now so I can be prepared for it in the next 8 -10 years. 8^)
Posted by: Tim Keel | February 27, 2004 at 06:26 AM
Just got my first Apple a couple of weeks age. loving it. Except for learning the whats different from PC world, I guess that will just take time. I got it b/c you fools keep giving it such big props, but more importsntlt b/c we just started a new ministry which will incorporate a lot of film and in my research I soon found that Apple was the way to go for that.
--a new Mac disciple
Posted by: rob wondergem | February 27, 2004 at 07:17 AM
Welcome to the clan, Rob - and thanks for finally posting and not just lurking ---> looking forward to hearing from you more often.
Posted by: Tim Keel | February 27, 2004 at 07:21 AM
Hi, Tim--Doug and Scott put together our own dual monitor set up seven or eight years ago. Great for Doug, who is a website designer, to have multiple screens happening. Fun, huh?
Posted by: Katy | February 27, 2004 at 10:26 AM
somehow, Katy, this does not surprise me...the remarkable Raymonds! BTW, I've got an outstanding e-mail do your brilliant son looking for some more web-mentoring.
Posted by: Tim Keel | February 27, 2004 at 10:38 AM