IGlasses, an automated wearable computer, to supplement face-to-face speech with additional information. Analogous to Cued Speech, this language aid can facilitate speech perception and language understanding for persons who have limited auditory input. Before addressing the needs. Webcamoid is a full web camera suite. You can take photos and record videos with.
Anyone who buys an iMac or a MacBook gets a built-in iSight. Personally I think Apple is a tad ahead of the game with this one. Maybe Apple is trying to kick start the game. I don't think video chat is so widespread that people must have a built-in iSight in their Mac. In fact, I reckon if you gave people a choice of built-in iSight and built-in TV tuner, they'd take the latter.
IGlasses, an automated wearable computer, to supplement face-to-face speech with additional information. Analogous to Cued Speech, this language aid can facilitate speech perception. Download iGLASSES and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. This app is not an ordinary app you've seen before. We are proud to present iGLASSES, Save the photos to the album, send them to your friends by using emails and share them with people around the world through Twitter and Facebook.
What is Apple up to with iSight? If you've ever planted a garden you'll know it's recommended to prepare the soil first, especially to fertilize it. I sense Apple is doing the same with the iSight. Is Apple planning a killer product that will leverage off the abundance of iSights out there? Are iSights the fertilizer enabling the rapid growth of some new product? And, of course, what is that new product? Will it be a video enabled iPhone?
But for the time being, we just have the iSight. A little black square staring you in the face, urging you to suck up internet bandwidth. Today I had my first video chat with it using Skype 2.0 beta and was reasonably impressed. I believe the person on the other end was even more impressed. She was using a PC and had a dodgy microphone and couldn't do any clever tricks on the fly, like sepia, crazy colors, night vision, rotate, mirror and so on.
Of course it wasn't Skype that gave me that ability. It was a must have utility for the iSight called iGlasses from Ecamm Network.
Features
iGlasses lets you - in real time - enhance the image iSight captures. It comes with several presets but also allows you to create your own using any combination of:
- Brightness
- Colorize
- Contrast
- Hue
- Night Time
- Saturation
- Sharpness
- Threshold
- White Balance
You can also mirror and rotate the image.
And again, these settings are applied in real time. They are not some sort of post-editing feature.
iGlasses' most useful feature is of course that it can enhance the image iSight is capturing. In particular the white balance and brightness, two things that do need some help with most web cams. So whether day time (above) or night time (below), you can present yourself as a much healthier looking specimen of humankind on your iSight.
iGlasses supports many iSight enabled applications including:
- Skype 2.0 (beta)
- Photo Booth
- iMovie HD
- Yahoo Messenger
- Quicktime
and many more.
How To Use Glasses Repair Kit
Wish List
With Core Video, it'd be cool if iGlasses extended the range of effects - something like Photo Booth. Imagine chatting to a friend on a PC and switching on twirl or pinch or pop art? I think they might just want to know what computer you are using.
The iSight has built-in automatic white balance adjustment. It'd be good if there was a way to over-ride this in iGlasses as it messes with your image, no matter how finely you've tuned iGlasses.
Overall
Really, why hasn't Apple built something like iGlasses into OS X? At $8 it is an absolute steal. Based on what I've seen of utilities at the low end, iGlasses would be twice the price or more at many other vendors. Ecamm are to be congratulated for its excellent pricing, and not just on iGlasses, but all of its Mac applications. Here's a quick list:
- Call Recorder (records Skype calls to QuickTime movies. Currently audio only as Skype with video calls is still in beta) $12.95
- Conference Recorder (records iChat AV audio and video calls to QuickTime movies) $14.95
- iChatter (adds voice synthesis to iChat) $8.00
- PowerBoost (makes multiparty video conferences possible on G4 macs) $8.00
- Drag'n'tooth (utility for easily installing files on to your Palm OS PDA or smartphone via Bluetooth) $9.95
- DockStar (adds up to 5 new-mail indicators to the dock icon) $8.00 (See Aaron Wright's review here)
- iChatUSBCam (add-on for iChat AV which allows you to use a USB webcam for video conferencing. It also enables video conferencing on Macs which otherwise fall below Apple's system requirements for conferencing.) $9.95
Check them out. (Ecamm also make Mac and Windows developer tools and applications for Palm handhelds.)
Considering its price, its usefulness, and its functionality, I am going to give iGlasses the full 10/10.
How To Use Iglasses
How to Play a Movie as your Camera with iGlasses
You can use iGlasses to play a video or show a picture 'into' a video app instead of the image from your webcam.
This can be useful for showing a video or picture to someone on the other end of a video conference or video cast, or maybe to pretend to be someone else for a while.
If you look on the Effects tab, on the last page of effects, you'll see 'Share Media.' This will let you play a movie in place of your camera. Now you can share a video clip or picture from within any program. For example, you could play a movie directly into Skype, FaceTime, or even Google+ Hangout.
There is a play/pause button and a scrub bar that works like QuickTime Player's controls. This lets you have complete control over playback.
There's a also a picker for Recently shown files. Click the x in the corner of the thumbnail to remove the image.
As a shortcut, you can also just drag a movie file's icon into the effects section of iGlasses to play it instantly. You can also save an iGlasses Preset for a movie.
There's no way to hook the audio from the movie directly into your video chat, but if you turn on your speakers and microphone, your fellow conference partners should be able to hear the sound from the movie feeding back into the micorphone.
