Notice anything different here? I no longer have that stupid glossy look in my chat bubbles in iChat thanks to iChat Matte. I can’t understand why anybody would want their chat bubbles to be glossy, or better yet, why there is no default option to remove them in preferences.
The ‘Candy’ theme in Gmail is…something else. I can’t stand to look at it for more than a few minutes, but I do really like the details at the top of the chat windows. It makes the chat windows a bit more interesting. But unfortunately, not interesting enough for me to keep using this girly theme.
If you haven’t heard, Google added video chat to Gmail this week and it works just like any other video chat program would. It’s amazingly simple, and the wonderful thing is that it requires nothing except this very quick installation. After the installation, you go back into Gmail and video is as easy as finding somebody else on your buddy list with a video icon rather than a standard green “available” dot.
Here’s a demonstration video from Google on how this works.
I had the opportunity today to really experience the future through video chatting via iChat and Skype. I still find myself very amazed when video chat actually works without any hiccups. Maybe it’s because I’ve tried it in the past and it just never turned out the way it was advertised. But now, it’s all working without any pain whatsoever. It’s almost beautiful!
So today I saw and spoke with Angela in Germany and Katherine, Connie, and Daniel all at once. It was a wondrous experience! If you’d like to video chat with me, you can do so by finding me on AIM or Skype. DO IT.