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.