Staying Connected

One of the neat things about the Macbook is that it comes with both a web cam and microphone as standard. There are several things that you can do with these that will personalize your laptop and allow you to keep intouch with friends and colleagues. More importantly, you will also have the ability to share or control the screen of a friend to learn a program or fix a problem.

First, the application that is the hub for sharing and communication is IChat. To get going with IChat you need an account. The easiest way to do this is to setup a AIM account. AIM stands for AOL Instant Messenger. AOL gives away free accounts to anyone who wants one. Apple's IChat supports only AIM and .Mac accounts. AIM accounts are free and .Mac has an annual fee. Dot Mac may be worth the money if you have more than one Mac. If you don't, it is not worth the $80 - $100 per year. So, I recommend getting a AIM account.

You want to go to http://www.aim.com

Look at the bottom of the page:



You want to select Sign Up. Go through the sign up process and select a user name and password. You must remember what they are. In a later post I will show you a free program that you can keep in your Doc that can hold all of your important information (passwords, user name and information, etc).

Now that you have a user name and password, you must start IChat and enter this information.

When you get to this screen:



Change the selection from .Mac to Aim. Enter your "new" AIM account name and password. Now you are done. Now you want to let all of your friends know your IChat name. You can also search for them and ad them to your buddy list. Once they approve you, they will appear in your buddy list from now on. Once there, you will be able to have a text chat. Boring, but useful. A voice chat, a video chat, or you can share your screen with them (with voice) or they can share their screen with you. Always with voice in the background. This is a wonderful way to collaborate and help each other.