iChat Info

As was mentioned at our Sept ’04 meeting, a wonderful aspect of QMUG/LA is that it often gives us an excuse to use our Macs in ways we might not otherwise have reason to, and one of those excuses might be to use iChat, so that’s exactly what we’re going to do, have a casual, informal meeting completely virtually via iChat/AOL Instant Messenger!  From the comfort of your own Mac, w/o the hassle of driving, parking, or taking the bus, please join us!

1. To do that, here are some words on: a. Joining our room b. Customizing your avatar c. Sharing your files

2. Or if you need to set up an account first: a. Downloading iChat or AOL Instant Messenger b. Picking an account name c. Creating a short profile

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1a. Joining our room

 i. W/ iChat, from the File menu, select “Go to Chat...” and then enter the room name «QMUGLA».

ii. Or w/ AOL Instant Messenger, from the People menu, select “Chat...” and then invite «QMUGLA» to the Buddy Chat Room «QMUGLA». (Think of the Invite button as a Join button.)

1b. Customizing your avatar

By default, the image you select for yourself when you setup your OS X account or your Address Book is the image (or avatar) that iChat uses for you in your iChats w/ others, but of course you can change this!  Poke around your hard drive for a headshot of yourself, crop if necessary, then paste over your current one.

1c. Sharing your files

Every once in awhile, you may need to send someone you know a large file, something over 5 or 10 MB, and e-mail really isn’t the way to do that.  You could upload it to your ISP’s personal web space and then send the person a link, or you could fire up iChat/AIM and send it that way!

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2a. Downloading iChat or AOL Instant Messenger

 i. iChat Public Beta was available for download before Mac OX 10 v10.2 Jaguar was released, and then was bundled (for free) w/ Jaguar when it was available for sale.  iChat AV is part of the current v10.3 Panther.  And the next version of iChat supporting more people in audio and video chats will be available in v10.4 Tiger.  In other words, it no longer is available for download and sort of requires Mac OS X v10.2 or better.

ii. AOL Instant Messenger is available for Mac OS X or 9 or even Windows (if you want to join us from work). Click here to download!

2b. Picking an account name

 i. Once you have iChat or AOL Instant Messenger on your Mac, you’ll need to setup an account, and considering how many millions of people have already done so, picking one that isn’t taken can be a bit of a challenge.  Here are a few ideas as to how overcome that. After your first name, append:

• your area code, i.e., Steve323, etc.
• your ZIP code, i.e., Steve90069, etc.
• your city, i.e., SteveWeHo, etc.

ii. Like w/ free e-mail accounts, you may want to have more than one free AOL Instant Messenger accounts. So go register a new screenname!

2c. Creating a short profile

 i. Although often overlooked, AOL Instant Messenger allows you to create a profile for yourself by writing anything you want in an open-ended essay-text field.  This is incredibly helpful to people chatting w/ you for finding out a little about you, which can include your basic ASL (age-sex-location), etc.

ii. While iChat currently doesn’t seem to have a way to create or edit a .mac or AOL Instant Messenger profile, you can certainly view one.