Day 270 – Wall-E Phone Home

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270/365 (September 27, 2010) – I have a new toy, not Wall-E, he’s not new. I picked up a Snowflake microphone on sale at Future Shop that has all kinds of possibilities.

All new MacBooks and all iMac computers have iSight cameras and microphones built into them, but the 30″ Cinema display on the MacPro doesn’t (well, the really newly released ones do now). I don’t really care about the camera, but the microphone is a nice idea. Hubbie and I use iChat throughout the day to stay in touch and send information back and forth. Sometimes it’s as inconsequential as “It’s raining again”, sometimes it’s “Could you pick up milk on your way home”. But it’s a really nice way to stay in touch when one of us is traveling. The Mac is cool because you can set it to actually ‘speak’ rather than just have the words appear in the window (it does that too), but I’ve become tired of hearing the computerized voice, particularly when Kirk is out of town. So I stopped by the store and picked up a Snowflake microphone.

What a cool little unit. It’s meant for travel, but since the MacBook has a mic built in, and I don’t have a ton of desk space at home, I figured it should work fine for the desktop. And it does, really well! Now when one of us clicks the iChat link, we can speak rather than type, it’s really great! And it has started me thinking about the next sailing vacation. Mom is on a Mac, so if I get her a mic too, she can stay in touch anytime, totally free, as long as we are both online at the same time. No going through Skype, just as simple as opening iChat and seeing us online, then send a message and we can talk away happily, all totally free, no subscriptions with anyone. For the rest of the family we could use Skype as long as they opened a Skype account too. Skype to Skype is free, anywhere in the world.

Yes, I know, it’s been around for awhile, I just never had a reason to really think about it, but it’s all rather amazing how seamlessly it worked. Plugged in the mic, the Mac said ‘ah ha, a Snowflake mic has been plugged in (no software at all) and immediately iChat recognized that a mic was available and now shows me that I can speak to Kirk because he also has a mic.

I love my Mac.