Chapter 3: Staying in Touch with iChat

In This Chapter

Setting up iChat

Changing modes in iChat

Adding Buddies

Inviting a Buddy to chat

Sending and receiving files via iChat

Sharing screens with another person

Ignoring those who deserve to be shunned

Adding visual pizzazz with video backgrounds and effects

Throughout humankind’s history, our drive has been toward communication — from the earliest cave paintings, through written language, to the telegraph, telephone, and cell phone all-in-one PDA that the guy in the SUV in front of you is using . . . and he’s arguing with someone and he’s not paying attention and . . . (whump).

So much for the scholarly introduction — anyway, forget that silly cellular phone and your complicated calling plan! As long as you have Mac OS X and an Internet connection, you can instantly chat with your friends and family whether they’re across the aisle in another cube or halfway across the world. And, by golly, if you both have an iSight camera, Web camera, or digital video (DV) camcorder connected to your computers, you’ll see each other in glorious, full-color video! This modern marvel is iChat, and it fulfills the decades-old promise of the video telephone quite well, thank you.

In this chapter, I show you how to gab with the following folks:

♦ Others who use iChat (either on your local network or on the Internet)

♦ Anyone who uses AIM — that’s short for America Online (AOL) Instant Messaging — MobileMe, Jabber, or Google Talk

♦ Folks who participate in AOL chat rooms

Configuring iChat

When you first run iChat (by clicking the iChat icon in the Dock), you’re prompted to create an iChat account. Type the first name (your name) that you want to use in the First Name field, press Tab, and then type the surname that you want to use. (Yes, you can even use Bullwinkle Moose — just leave out the middle initial J.)

By default, iChat uses the MobileMe account that you set up when you first installed Mac OS X. In this case, your MobileMe account name and password are entered automatically for you, and you’re good to go. However, if you’re already using AIM, Jabber, or Google Talk and you want to use your existing account, click the Account Type pop-up menu and choose the correct type; then enter your existing account name and password instead.

iChat will also set up Bonjour messaging automatically. Think of Bonjour as plug-and-play for your local network. In iChat, Bonjour messaging displays a separate window in which you can see (and yak with) anyone on your local network without having to know his iChat name. That’s because Bonjour automatically announces all the iChat users who are available on your network. If you have others using iChat, Jabber, or AIM on your local network, go for this option; if you’re not connected to a local network, however, Bonjour messaging isn’t necessary. Also, if you’re on a public AirPort/AirPort Extreme network or if you’re connecting to the Internet with a modem through dial-up, I recommend disabling Bonjour messaging. (For all that’s cool about AirPort and its faster sibling AirPort Extreme, see Book VI, Chapter 3.)

After you finish these configuration necessities, iChat displays the Buddy List window (or, if you’re using Bonjour messaging, the two windows) that you see in Figure 3-1. Remember that your Bonjour window displays only those iChat folks on your local network.

A few things to note here about the Buddy List window:

♦ If you don’t like your picture, don’t panic. By default, iChat uses your user account thumbnail image as your visual persona. However, you can add a picture to your iChat iDentity — sorry, I couldn’t resist that — by dragging an image to the well next to your name at the top of the Buddy List window. If necessary, iChat asks you to position and size the image so that it fits in the (admittedly limited) space. This picture is then sent along with your words when you chat. In the figures for this chapter, I borrow the smiling face of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Click your image to display your recent thumbnails. This way, you can even use a different thumbnail image for each of your many moods. (Geez.) Also, you can click Edit Picture from the pop-up menu and capture a new thumbnail with your iSight camera.

♦ Check out the buttons along the bottom of the Buddy List window. In order, these buttons are

• Add a New Buddy (which I cover in the following section)

• Start a Text Chat (plain, old-fashioned chatting via the keyboard)

• Start an Audio Chat (chatting with your voice, using microphones)

• Start a Video Chat (the ultimate chat, where the parties can both see and hear each other)

• Start Screen Sharing (where you can view — or even remotely control — a Buddy’s computer)

Using these buttons can handle about 90 percent of the commands that you need to give while using iChat, so use ’em! (Note that the Bonjour window doesn’t have an Add a New Buddy button because the Buddy list in the Bonjour window is populated automatically by other iChat folks on your local network.)

♦ Hey, look, there’s an iChat menu bar icon! When you’re running iChat, you can choose to add a balloon menu bar icon in the upper-right corner of your screen. Click it to display the options that you see in Figure 3-2. You can change your online/offline status, immediately invite a Buddy for a chat, or display the Buddy list (which I discuss later in the section, “Will You Be My Buddy?”). The menu bar icon appears only if you enable the Show Status in Menu Bar check box. Click iChat in the menu and choose Preferences; then click the General button in the Preference dialog.

Changing Modes in iChat

To launch iChat, you can click its icon from the Dock or launch it from its iChat application icon (which you find in your Applications folder). Or, you can click its menu bar icon, which is grayed out when you’re offline. If you’re not already familiar with the terms online and offline, here’s the scoop: When you’re online, folks can invite you to chat and communicate with you. When you’re offline, you’re disconnected: iChat isn’t active, you can’t be paged, and you can’t chat.

Even when you’re offline, you can choose Available from the friendly balloon Finder menu bar icon, which automatically switches iChat to online mode. Or you can click a Buddy name directly, which automatically switches iChat to online mode and opens the paging window for that Buddy. (Naturally, you have to have the proper network or Internet connection first.)

You can use another mode, Away, whenever iChat is running and you’re still online but not available. For example, if I’m away from my Mac for a few minutes, I leave iChat running, but I switch myself to Away mode. My Buddies get a message saying that I’m Away, so they won’t bother trying to contact me. When I return to my computer, I simply move my mouse, and iChat intelligently inquires as to whether I’d like to return to Available mode. You can also use the menu bar icon to switch from Away to Available (or my other favorite mode, Twiddling My Thumbs). Refer to Figure 3-2 to see these choices.

iChat can even display the iTunes song you’re listening to at the moment. Pick Current iTunes Song from the menu and impress your friends with your digital audio techno-powers.

Speaking of modes, you, too, can create a custom mode — like Bored stiff! or Listening to the Pointy-Haired Boss — and use it instead of the somewhat mundane choices of Available and Away. To do this, display the Buddy List window, click the word Available beneath your name (refer to Figure 3-2), and a pop-up menu appears. Click Custom Available or Custom Away to create your new mode. An edit box appears, in which you can type the new mode; press Return to automatically add the newcomer to your mode list. You can also switch modes from this pop-up menu.

To choose an existing mode, click it; modes with a green bullet are online modes, and red bullet modes are offline modes. (Apple provides you with some starting choices, like Surfing the Web for Available and In a Meeting for Away.) Notice in Figure 3-2 that I created a custom mode called Getting Another Diet Coke . . . cAfFeInE fills my life.

Will You Be My Buddy?

I know that question sounds a little personal, but in iChat, a Buddy is anyone whom you want to chat with, whether the topic is work related or your personal life. iChat keeps track of your Buddies in the Buddy list. You can also add them to your Address Book or use the AIM entry in an Address Book contact to generate a new Buddy identity.

To add a new Buddy, follow these steps:

1. Choose Buddies⇒Add Buddy, or click the Add Buddy button at the bottom of the iChat window and click Add Buddy from the pop-up menu, or press Ô+Shift+A.

2. To create a Buddy entry from an Address Book contact who has an Instant Messaging username, click the down-arrow button next to the Last Name box to display the Address Book list. Click the entry to select it.

As a shortcut, you can also click in the First Name box and then type the person’s first name or click in the Account Name box and type the person’s Instant Messaging account name.

3. To add a brand-new person who’s not already in your Address Book, type the person’s Instant Messaging account name and click the pop-up menu to select the proper account type (either MobileMe or AIM).

4. Click Add to save the Buddy information.

Even when you add a new Buddy and that name appears in the Buddy list, don’t be surprised if the name actually fades out after a few seconds — that indicates that the person is offline and unavailable. You can also tell when a person is available if her name appears with a green bullet in the Buddy list.

You can also specify a number of actions that iChat should take if a Buddy logs in or out of Instant Messaging, or if a Buddy changes his or her status to Available. To display these actions, click the desired Buddy’s entry in your Buddy list and then press Ô+Shift+I. Click the Actions button and then choose the event that should trigger the action from the Event pop-up menu. Select the desired check box to specify whether iChat should play the sound that you select, run an AppleScript, or animate the iChat icon by “bouncing” it in the Dock.

Click the Address Card button on the Info dialog to enter or edit the person’s

♦ Real name

♦ Nickname

♦ E-mail

♦ Buddy icon

iChat obligingly creates an entry in your Address Book for your new Buddy. (Apple, you truly rock.)

Chat! Chat, I Say!

Turn your attention to getting the attention of others — through inviting others to chat. Good chatting etiquette implies inviting someone to a conversation rather than barging in unannounced.

If you want to join an AIM chat already in progress, choose File⇒Go to Chat Room (or press Ô+Control+G). Depending on the service being used, you might have to specify both the type of chat and the specific chat room name.

At this point, it’s time to draw your attention to the green phone and video icons next to each person in your Buddy list (as well as next to your own name at the top of the list). If the green phone icon appears next to both your name and your Buddy’s name, you can enjoy a two-way audio (or voice) chat. If both you and your Buddy (or Buddies) are lucky enough to have iSight or DV cameras connected to your Macs, you can jump into a real-time, two-way video chat room, complete with audio. Time for a very important Mark’s Maxim that’s violated a surprising number of times:

Always wear a shirt while chatting with video, no matter your impressive physique. Always.

If your Mac has a microphone or video camera hooked up but you don’t see these icons, click the Video menu and make sure that the Microphone Enabled and Camera Enabled menu items are selected.

To invite someone, click the desired Buddy from the Buddy list, click Buddies, and then choose Invite to Chat. (If your pointing thing has two buttons, right-click — or Control-click — the Buddy in the list and click Invite to Chat.) You can also click directly on the phone or camera icon next to the person’s name in your Buddy list. iChat displays the Group Chat window that you see in Figure 3-3, which also doubles as an Invitation window.

You can invite additional Buddies to enter the chat by clicking the plus button at the bottom left of the Participants list and choosing another Buddy. If the Participants list isn’t visible, click the View menu and choose Show Chat Participants.

Type your invitation text into the entry box at the bottom of the window. If you want to use bold or italic text, highlight the text and press Ô+B for Bold (B) or Ô+I for Italic (I). You can also add a Smiley (often called an emoticon) to your invitation text: Click in the desired spot in the text, click the Smiley button to the right of the text entry field, and then choose the proper Smiley from the list. To send the invitation text, press Return.

Figure 3-3: Inviting that special someone. (Actually, this guy owes me money.)

The recipient of your chat invitation can decline or accept your chat invitation. You’re notified (as delicately as possible) if the chat has been declined.

To invite a Buddy to an audio chat, select that person in the Buddy list, click the Buddies menu, and then choose Invite to Audio Chat (or One-Way Audio Chat, if only one of you has a microphone). A video invitation works in a similar fashion: Click Buddies and choose either Invite to Video Chat or Invite to One-Way Video Chat, depending on the hardware available. (Need I mention that you can just right-click [or Control-click] the person in your Buddy list and choose these commands from the pop-up menu that appears?)

If the chat is accepted, iChat displays a message saying that the Buddy whom you invited has joined the chat, and you now can begin the chat. You don’t have to alternate sending messages back and forth between participants — everyone in a chat can compose and send messages at the same time — but I personally like to alternate when I’m chatting one on one. By the way, you might notice that AIM users are represented by the AIM Running Dude icon (unless AOL changes it, or you assign an icon picture of your own, as I describe in the “Configuring iChat” section, earlier in the chapter).

If someone invites you to a chat, you get the opposite side of the coin: A prompt dialog appears, and you can choose to accept or decline the invitation. (If it’s a video chat, you even get a video preview of the person inviting you.)

You can resize the Chat window by using the handle at the bottom-right corner, just as you can most other application windows in Mac OS X.

You can also change fonts and colors while composing a line of text. Simply select the text and then choose Format⇒Show Fonts or Format⇒Show Colors (or press Ô+T or Ô+Shift+C) to display the Fonts and Colors windows, respectively. These windows can be resized and moved wherever you like.

To save the discussion in a chat, choose File⇒Save a Copy As. In the dialog that appears, type a name for the chat file, select a location where you want to store the file, and then click Save. To automatically save transcripts of all your chats, choose iChat⇒Preferences and click Messages; then select the Automatically Save Chat Transcripts To check box. By default, the transcripts are saved in an iChat folder that’s created inside your Documents folder in your Home folder. You can, however, click the pop-up menu to choose another location if you like.

When the iChat window is active, a number of display choices can be made from the View menu. Click the Messages item in the View menu to display these options, including

♦ Show as Text: Each line that you write and receive in a chat can be displayed in balloons, just like your favorite comic — the default — or as simple text. You can also choose to display text lines in the more traditional boxes or as compact text (allowing more room for more characters in the iChat window).

♦ Show Names and Pictures: Each line can be displayed with the individual’s picture, just the name, or both the name and picture.

If you’re tired of the default background for the chat window, click View and choose the Set Chat Background menu item to choose a graphic to use for the Chat window. To return to the original appearance, choose the Clear Background menu item.

Click the Buddy list, and the View menu offers a different set of controls: You can sort your Buddy list by first name, last name, or availability; you can also toggle the display of offline Buddies. These options are also available from the Buddy List window toolbar.

Curious about the capabilities of your Mac hardware in iChat? Choose Video⇒Connection Doctor, where you can view statistics and information about your current chat, display the features of iChat that are supported by your Mac, and view any error messages that are generated by iChat during this session.

To close a chat, click the Close button on the Chat window.

Sharing Screens and iChat Theater

How often have you wanted to show someone a neat new application, or lead your Aunt Mildred through the paces of setting up an Apple TV connection on her system? That’s the idea behind the ultimate collaboration tool, sharing screens, where you can watch (or even remotely control) the display on another person’s Mac — across any broadband Internet or local network connection!

Screen sharing must be turned on for you to send or receive sharing invites. Choose Video⇒Screen Sharing Enabled — a check mark appears next to the menu item when the feature is enabled.

If a Buddy invites you to share a screen, you receive a prompt that lets you accept or decline. If you accept the sharing invitation, iChat automatically initiates an audio chat (so that you can gab away to each other while things are happening on-screen). Suddenly, you’re seeing the Desktop and applications that your Buddy is running, and you can both control the cursor and left- or right-click the mouse.

Throughout the screen-sharing session, iChat maintains a semi-opaque panel on your screen that has three buttons:

♦ End the Shared Screen Session: Click this button to exit shared screen mode.

♦ Switch Desktops: Click this button to swap between your Mac’s screen and the remote Mac’s screen. (Those Mac owners who have enabled Fast User Switching will recognize the cool screen swap animation.)

♦ Mute Audio: Click this button to mute the audio during the screen-sharing session.

To invite a Buddy to share your screen, choose Buddies⇒Share My Screen.

Okay, if sharing a screen with someone you don’t absolutely know and trust doesn’t set off alarm bells in your cranium, it should. Remember, anyone with shared screen access can perform most of the same actions as you can, just as if that person were sitting in front of your Mac. Granted, most of the truly devastating things would require you to type your admin password, but a malicious individual could still delete files or wreak havoc any number of ways on your system. Be careful with whom you share your screen!

But wait . . . What if you don’t want to control Aunt Mildred’s Mac? Perhaps you just want to share a document instead? For example, you could show off some photos or a movie you’ve just finished. That’s the idea behind iChat Theater, where you can share a document or video and hold a conversation while viewing the content! iChat Theater falls in between Screen Sharing and a simple file download, which I cover in the next section.

To select one or more items for your Theater show, choose File⇒ Share iPhoto with iChat Theater (to share images from your iPhoto library) or File⇒Share a File with iChat Theater (to share movies and other documents). iChat displays a standard Open dialog, in which you can select one or more items. When you’re ready to begin your Theater presentation, click Share. If you’re using a video camera, your video appears as a thumbnail, while your content gets center stage.

iChat Theater works with anything that can be displayed in Quick Look or located with Spotlight, including slideshows from iPhoto, a Keynote presentation, or a QuickTime movie.

Sending Files with iChat

To send a file to a Buddy, click the desired entry in the Buddy list and then choose Buddies⇒Send File. Alternatively, you can use the Ô+Option+F keyboard shortcut; right-click and choose Send a File; drag the file from a Finder window to the person’s entry in the Buddy list; or even drag the file into the text typing window. (How’s that for convenience?) A dialog appears to indicate that the recipient is being offered a file transfer request. If the file transfer request is accepted by your Buddy, the transfer begins and is saved where the recipient specifies on her system.

If a Buddy sends you a file, the Incoming File Request pane appears. You can then either click the Decline button (to decline the file transfer) or the Save File button (to save the incoming file to any spot on your system).

Always check any files that you receive from iChat with your antivirus scanning software before you run them!

Eliminating the Riffraff

Here I need to explain something that I hope you won’t have to use — what I like to call the Turkey Filter. (iChat is a little more subtle — you just ignore people.)

To ignore someone in a chat group, click her name in the list and choose Buddies⇒Ignore <person>. When someone is ignored in a chat group, you don’t see anything that she types or have to respond to any file transfer requests from that person.

If only it were that easy to ignore someone when he’s standing close to you.

Anyway, if the person becomes a royal pain, you can also choose to block that person entirely. That way, the offensive cur doesn’t even know that you’re online, and he can’t reach you at all. Click the person in the list and choose Buddies⇒Block <person> — the deed is done.

Adding Visual Effects

Our esteemed Apple software developers decided to bring a little Hollywood special effects “flash” to iChat with video backdrops. You can also use many of the special effects filters provided by Photo Booth to keep your video chat room laughing!

To add a video backdrop to your video feed, choose Video⇒Video Preview to display your stunning self in a live video feed; then choose Video⇒Show Video Effects. Use the scroll buttons to move to the backdrop thumbnails toward the end of the Effects library. When you click one, iChat prompts you to leave the frame for a few seconds so that the plain background behind you can be correctly “masked” (just like those blockbuster special effects used in today’s films). When your background has been captured and masked, iChat prompts you to return to your spot, and you’ll see that your new static or animated backdrop is in place. Just plain cool!

The plainer the background behind you, the better iChat can process and mask your background. A plain wall painted a single color works best.

“But, Mark, I want my own movies and photos for backgrounds!” No problem — you’ll notice that iChat provides six user-defined backdrop slots for your own selections at the end of the Video Effects collection. (Click the right scroll arrow in the Video Effects window until you reach the last couple of pages.) To add your own visuals, you can

♦ Drag a video from iMovie to an empty User Backdrop well in the Video Effects window.

♦ Drag a photo from iPhoto to an empty User Backdrop well in the Video Effects window.

♦ Drag a video or photo from a Finder window to an empty User Backdrop well in the Video Effects window.

As long as an item can be displayed in Quick Look, it can be used as a video background. Think of the possibilities!

To try out a Photo Booth effect in iChat, choose Video⇒Video Preview to display your live video feed; then choose Video⇒Show Video Effects (or press Ô+Shift+E). Figure 3-4 illustrates the Video Preview and Video Effects windows; click a video effect thumbnail to see how it looks on you in the Preview window! Effects range from simple Black & White to a Thermal Camera look, an Andy Warhol–style Pop Art display, and a number of really cool optical distortions (such as Twirl and Light Tunnel).

Figure 3-4: Andy Warhol would be impressed by my iChat video effect!

After you find just the right video effect, close the two windows and start chatting. If you decide you’d rather return your video persona to something more conventional, display the Video Effects window again and click the Normal thumbnail (which appears in the center of the first screen of thumbnails).