John Perry Barlow likes the audio features of Apple's iChat.
I really like iChat. I know not everyone does (they probably need to turn off the balloons), but the interface seems very polished to me, in lots of little ways. The integration with Apple's Address Book application (if a buddy's screenname is listed under one of your contacts, that person's real name shows up in the buddy list along with the picture you've associated with them) and Mail (it displays a little indicator next to messages from people who are logged in and available via iChat) is nice. It even uses rendezvous to support chatting on a LAN without a central server, which is pretty handy in conference-type situations. Overall the UI is really pleasant to use.
And, like John Perry Barlow, I was impressed with how completely painless the audio chat feature was to use. There was no latency, and the audio quality was good.
Posted by jjwiseman at December 30, 2003 01:32 PMI bought an iSight camera and was ready to try out this exciting technology when I realized that I only know one or two people who have the same equipment. I searched the net and found some sites that let you hook up with other people. The best by far is iChatFinder with a lot of useful features and the largest number of members from all over the world. iChattin and Seeser are boring. iChatters is an adult chat room for "alternative lifestyle" folks and they want you to download a unverified program to make the site work. What's in that software? Stick with iChatFinder. See ya there.
Posted by: Randy Trianti on January 31, 2004 05:23 AMSame experience as Randy. I'm not gay looking for a friend so ichatters.com is not for me. I like iChatFinder because it's not a dating oriented site. I video chatted with a nurse in South Africa about the AIDS epidemic there - a very sad situation that kept me awake for many nights. Chatted with a member who lives in Belize to find the best hotel for a vacation and it turned out to be great advice. You can also sign up automatically for VideoChatFinder that is aimed (no pun) at Windows users. If you own a camera, there's no better entertainment available! If you can't carry a conversation with a stranger, you might feel uncomfortable at first but it's worth the effort.
Posted by: Thomas Satre on May 7, 2004 12:11 PM