gamboling.co.uk

The great thing about VoIP is that it has changed the way I use my computer. Not just by having me be able to talk to people on my computer an act which might be considered to render my computer as just a telephone for that time. But I now am able to enjoy the phenomenon of shared browsing.

Basically you and a friend are both looking at similar sites on the web, totally able to browse independently. And whenever you see something interesting you call out about it. You describe it, and then you send the link over. Because the phone call is free, it doesn’t matter if there is extended silence. You’re just getting on with stuff, and then when you see something interesting you send the link and chat about what you’ve seen, but you don’t have to stop looking at new pages to do it (like you used to in typed chat).

The big problem is the future of VoIP. What is skype’s end game? Maximum usage of the system would mean no business plan, because everyone would be online and there will be no need to dial out at the other end.

More and more isp’s are providing VoIP applications and implementations of their own. Any why is this? Because soon enough there will be a port blocking equivelent. Remember back in the day when you could change to any isp you wanted but you could only send e-mail from your web address if you were logged in to that isp? Well, that will be VoIP soon I think. You will only be able to make calls with your own ISPs software so the revenue stream is intact.

you start to wonder if the mint from one more Mojito would mean you won’t have to brush your teeth in the morning.

The Sun newspaper’s headline today was a good stab at perfect illiteration as they reported the Abu Hanza story with the following mast:

Hook’s Bomb Big Ben Book

which is good except surely better is:

Baddie’s Big Ben Bomb Book

Yesterday Intel became the main processor providor for Apple finally bringing the 8086 architecture to Apple computers for the first time (well that’s not strictly true because of the ill faited dual processor computers which promised so much until “somebody” killed them).

And what was the Apple share price at close of business yesterday?

$80.86

No really.

Apple’s share price an in-joke for Intelites

A suggestion that Fair Trade products could be tagged with RFID so that consumers can actually tell where they have come from.

How to rethink the digital divide

Bill Thomson here also talks about the $100 dollars laptop. An idea that seems to have been missed with this is the idea that they should be sold for $200.

Wait? I hear you say, why are you introducing rampant capitalistic tendencies to such a worthy product?

There are no new laptops on sale for $200. None. If there could be one sold for $200 then that one sold could fund one for a child in the developing world. The project is currently trying to get governments to fund the laptops, but if we could harness people’s greed the project could do even better.