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by sneak 1243 days ago
Are you sure? It's a lot of the same skills as your #2 above, however:

- wired LAN

- a soft key light

- a real camera (not a webcam, not the built in front-facing camera in your computer or display, but a camera with an HDMI output and an HDMI capture device on USB)

- real microphone, i.e. a wired headset that puts a mic close to your lips

These are cheap ways of quickly doubling your ability to convey information online.

2 comments

For the microphone, I find the mic built in to the MacBook to be very good. You can use wireless headphones and then just set the input to the built in one.

You can also now use the iPhone as a webcam which gives exceptional video quality and they sell an accessory that sits it on the top of the screen.

How do you do eye contact with the separate camera?

Even clipping a $100 Logitech to the top of a 15-inch laptop at my standing desk, and dragging the video window of the person to be right below it, it doesn't look like I'm looking at the other person/people when I am.

I don't like it, but it would be less bothersome if everyone knew it was only doing causing "eye contact" to be perceived when it was actually being made. (Such that only when person A's gaze is looking at a display of person B, will B perceive A as looking at them.)

There's also cameras behind displays.

As an immediate practical matter, for a Linux desktop setup running open source with ordinary display and camera, I'm still wondering.