Mac Mode

Looking for a way to monetize your expertise in some area by the minute via iChat? Flavorsofa could be the ticket.

Here’s how this works:

- iChat/AIM account and Mac required. For video iSight is required ($149.99)
- register for an account at Flavorsofa
- in order to sell your time you need to upgrade to a Silver account which is a one time charge (?) of $1 and then upgrade to the Gold account.
- setup a new special iChat/AIM account that Flavorsofa controls and forwards to your existing iChat/AIM account

I haven’t bought an iSight camera yet but it’s on the wish list for Christmas. This site sort of reminds me of iFriends.net which has been on the web since Valentine’s Day 1998:

Through iFriends’ standards-based, e-commerce-enabled, personal webcam streaming and audio-streaming software and web-based community platform, any internet user in the world — from individuals to Fortune 500 companies — with a webcam-equipped PC can use the iFriends platform to offer live or prerecorded web-conferencing and streaming products or services, ranging from online advice and expertise to entertainment.

I’m guessing because this specifically targets Mac users, they might get a higher percentage of Mac experts on there? Not a whole lot of Flavorsofa sellers yet but they have to start somewhere. Also, Flavorsofa is always live and iFriends can be prerecorded or live. Live is more desirable than prerecorded when someone has a quick question.

All in all, I signed up and will revisit this one after I get an iSight camera. I hope the quality of the iSight camera is pretty good because $149 seems kind of spendy for a webcam these days.

Hat tip to Dori Smith

Colloquy is a freeware Mac OS X IRC client. As far as I know (and please someone correct me if I’m wrong) one of the few tools the Mac doesn’t come with is a built-in IRC client. Colloquy stunned me when I first ran it — it has an elegant, intuitive design. I used the word pretty, but with the fuschia globe, I think the word beautiful is more apt. Functionality-wise, it has the basic IRC features covered and adds the ability for plugins (”extras” they call them on the main menu). I’m not a heavy IRC user, though I do have my own IRC server, so feel free to stop on by and say hello after you download. My nick is TDmacosx on irc.scriptschool.com #blogevent