Archive for March, 2009
How Words Can Be Used To Effect
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009What Goes Around …
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009Could Be Fun
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009A Cry For Help
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009Another Day …
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009Madness
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009Uh … Can We Go Back To That Racism Thingie
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009Free Healthcare from Walgreen Stores!
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009International Space Station Toliet Diplomacy?
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009Jeff Frederick - the list grows
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009John Brownlee - REPEAL THE “TRIGGERMAN RULE” - Will Ken Cuccinelli Stand With Tim Kaine Again?
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009Terry McAuliffe and his out of state cash….
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009McDonnell-Huckabee Rock Bristol
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009HB1388 And The Meaning Of Words
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009Skype on iPhone
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009Skype is now available for the iPhone. Sound quality for iPhone to iPhone connections on WiFi networks is excellent, and if you leave the Skype app running (in the foreground) you can turn the phone off and still get calls. However, if Skype is not the main app, you cannot receive calls, so there are still some limitations on the usefulness of it on the iPhone. But all that is set to change in June or July, when Apple releases the next major software upgrade for the iPhone, which is supposed to include "presence," or the ability of applications like Skype to sit in the background and still run--in the case of Skype, you could be browsing the Web or sending email and still receive incoming Skype calls.
Skype support for the iPhone is a big deal. There have been some helper apps that allowed Skype calls or used another third party VoIP service, but having your Skype phone book and preferences on the iPhone is very convenient, and at least gives you the ability to make phone calls via the Internet even when not in range of an AT&T cell tower.
When the software upgrade is released this summer and presence is fully supported, it will help sell more iPhones without a cell provider service contract. For some people, just having VoIP on the iPhone will be enough.
Around Here
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009Music, videos, newspapers, books: Going, going, gone
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009The Kindle (version 2) is getting rave reviews, and Amazon has released a version for the iPhone. It suggests that we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the era of the book. Unlike music, videos, and newspapers, I don't think books will disappear entirely. Think of art and architecture books, how to books with lots of pictures and illustrations, certain kinds of specialty topic books.... but the Kindle hints that printing books on paper is about to become much less common.
The Internet is a transport system that is making many other information transport systems obsolete. First it was music; vinyl records and CDs are not about the music itself, they are simply a transport system to get the music to the buyer. Video stores are on the way out, as Netflix and Blockbuster, by using the Internet, are making the video cassette and DVD transport system obsolete. Newspapers are beginning to collapse, as the news-PAPER is just a transport system for reporting the news itself. The news and journalism business, like the music and movie business, will survive and even prosper, but the underlying business models are collapsing because we don't need four different transport systems: one for music, one for movies, one for news, and one for books. And let's not forget the phone and TV transport systems; we don't need those either. So there is a total of six separate transport systems we no longer need. The 'net handles all of those quite nicely.
And that's why every home and every business needs a high performance broadband connection; without it, you might as well be living in 1400--before books, before newspapers, before any information distribution systems existed.
Now, here's one more question. If every source of information is delivered efficiently over a single network, who should be in charge of that network? Do you want a private corporation, which answers only to its stockholders, do decide what information your community can access, or should the community or region have some control? We're not talking about doing away with private sector providers--we need and want them to continue providing the services they already offer--telephone, video, news, etc. We're talking about managing the underlying transport system differently. What if all the roads in your region were owned by s single out of state firm? Would that firm always be able to act in the best interests of your community? Again, the private sector is critically important to the long term health of communities, but we need to manage the information transport system differently.