Australian Technology

Atlassian uses FaceTime to create portal

Takeaway: Admit it: you want your office to have portal video conferencing, too.

Too much money? Wasted use of equipment? Impractical? Say what you want, but you know that you want it.


Image Credit: Atlassian

Take two 42″ TVs, some PC speakers, two Mac Minis running FaceTime, and, of course, some web cams, and you too can have yourself a portal-esque video-conferencing experience. You’ll also need some LEDs to recreate Portal’s orange and blue hues, and a wood facade to mask out the FaceTime preview video and give the oval-like appearance. Full details are on the Atlassian blog.

As far as geeky office decorations go, this one is right up there, even if I can see this being more useful for pranking rather than practical uses. It’ll definitely help Atlassian maintain its high spot on the best-places-to-work list.

Atlassian says that future work on the system could include using an Xbox Kinect to allow users to swipe between video feeds of different offices.

As the cynics scoff, think of the alternatives; you could have a David Brent type decide to post a series of these posters around your workplace in order to appear “edgy”.

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Chris Duckett

About Chris Duckett

Programmer and journalist Chris Duckett is the Editor for TechRepublic Australia.

Chris Duckett

Chris Duckett
Chris started his journalistic adventure in 2006 as the Editor of Builder AU after originally joining the company as a programmer. He left CBS Interactive in 2010 to follow his deep desire to study the snowdrifts and culinary delights of Canada and returned to CBS in 2011 as the Editor of TechRepublic Australia, determined to meld together his programming and journalistic tendencies once and for all.