At work today, Tim did something really clever. He figured out how to make Google Talk become your own streaming internet radio station. We tried it out, and it worked pretty damn well! Here’s the link to Alpha blog, where he wrote out the instructions:

  • Purchase a male-to-male speaker/headphone cable. It should have a 1/8-inch mini headphone jack on each end.
  • Plug one end into the mic-in port on your computer.
  • Plug the other end into your computer’s headphone port. If you want to listen to music as you play it for your listeners (recommended), use a headphone splitter. Jack your headphones into one port of the headphone splitter, the male-to-male cable into the other port, and plug the splitter into your headphone port.
  • Launch iTunes (or any other audio player) and start playing songs.
  • Call up your friends over Google Talk. They’ll hear whatever you’re playing with surprisingly good sound quality.

Spectacular! Oh, and then we played a really great game, where you stream a rap song and try to type the lyrics as they come. It’s a good way to test out the lag factor as well.