bitgeist

Arrrg! Got my first SMS spam. Well, that is if you don't count the spam I get from my cellular provider. How nice to get stock pump and dump crap beeping on my phone, intruding on my viewing of Comedy Central's Daily Show. Now I know for sure that the communication systems that we have spent so much time building will collapse under the weight of all the unsolicited garbage. Somebody always has to pee in the community pool.

Not a good day for Skype users:

By Joosep on August 16, 2007.

UPDATED 14:02 GMT: Some of you may be having problems logging into Skype. Our engineering team has determined that it’s a software issue. We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours. Meanwhile, you can simply leave your Skype client running and as soon as the issue is resolved, you will be logged in. We apologize for the inconvenience.

OMG. 12 to 24 hours! This highlights the problem with a "peer-to-peer" service that still depends on a single central login service. At least services like Jabber are decentralized, just like email. If only libjingle was on track and being used by more clients. It is a shame that google talk is only google at this point.

I bought an 5th generation iPod video in June. It died last night. When I plug it into a computer, the screen flashes white repeatedly and the computer doesn't see it. Reset or disk mode doesn't work. Sigh. At least a call to Apple technical support was a pleasant experience, and they will ship me a replacement. I'm not sure what happened. I was listening to it in my car on the way to a friend's house, and when I got back into my car to drive home, it was not working. Good thing I have multiple digital audio players. I'd hate to have to listen to the radio.

While trying to create picture "sets" in yahoo's flickr, I ran into the annoying limit of three sets for free users. I like a free service as much as the next person, and I understand that I'll have to pay if I want more than the basic experience, but I hate it when they try to up-sell based on arbitrary limits. Charge me for things that cost money, like more bandwidth or storage. Don't charge me to overcome a limit imposed by a simple number in the code. Grouping pictures into sets doesn't take up more space or use more bandwidth, so I'm not inclined to pay you for more sets.

I found a nice list of Telephone numbers around the world that you can call to connect to the global SIP VoIP network.
http://www.sipbroker.com/sipbroker/action/pstnNumbers

Skype was released along with new firmware for the N800 on Friday. Too bad there doesn't seem to be any links to the news on Skype's website. Even though Gizmo was already available, Skype is important because so many people already have it and there is a healthy hardware market for Skype-enabled products.
Skype is important for me because many people in my family already use it.

I've had my Nokia N800 for a few months, and I'm loving it. I take it with me when I travel, and I don't need my laptop as much any more. Battery life is great. I'm a consumer of information, so the on-screen keyboard isn't much of a problem. It wouldn't work for me f I was trying to write long papers or edit spreadsheets. I've even been using it as a crappy still camera and uploading to flickr. Thanks to FBReader, it makes a great ebook reader.

I like the open nature of the device. A lot of the open source software that I'm used to on the desktop is also available on the Nokia N800. I'm eagerly waiting for the next firmware to bring me some of the closed software, such as Skype.