Cool Stuff... and Apologies
to all those who wrote to me, wondering when their "Beating Microsoft" fix was coming -- I'm sorry for the missed posts in the last few days. I've been sick, and am just now recovering from it. I guess my sudden absence is just a reminder that behind the software, there's always a real person.
I'm still not fully well, but here's a tidbit I saw from James Fallows this weekend that I thought was particularly interesting. Fallows is the long-time technorati from The Atlantic magazine, and former editor of U.S. News and World Report. I even met Fallows when he worked for awhile as a Microsoft contractor, in order to write about MS culture and practices.
Anyway, he now writes a "Techno Files" column for the NY Times. In this week's column, he writes about Skype and Google.
Here's a few tantalizing excerpts:
"Skype resembles Google, the gold standard of modern computing, in several ways. Its adoption rate has been phenomenal. When I wrote about it last September, it had been downloaded a total of 21 million times. Now the total is 100 million, and at any given moment more than two million Skype conversations are under way. Like Google, Skype keeps introducing new features - for instance, "SkypeIn," released two days ago, which allows users to create a local phone number and have all calls to that number forwarded to the user's Skype connection, wherever in the world that might happen to be. As with Google, once you get used to Skype, it's hard to imagine doing without."
AND
"In February, Google introduced Google Maps, a faster and better-looking alternative to MapQuest and other online mapping sites. Last month it added a touch that made Google Maps different from any competitor: high-resolution aerial photos of the area covered by the maps, which visitors can zoom in on for a closer bird's-eye view. (These photos came from Keyhole, a company Google bought last year.) Go to www.maps.google.com, enter a ZIP code or address, and then click the "satellite" button to switch from map to photo. In either view you can get driving instructions from one point to another, as with other map sites. But when the route is traced in the photos, the turns and waypoints are much more vivid."
He also adds THIS:
"The real importance of Google's map and satellite program, however, is not its impressive exterior but the novel technology, known as Ajax, that lies beneath. About that, and its implications for Google and other companies, there will be more to say in a future column."
Which is both tantalizing, and personally frustrating, as I had a long column (perhaps a week or so) planned on Ajax. Oh well, perhaps I'll still be able to add some insight to Fallow's "common man" perspective on Ajax.
See you all soon... as soon as I'm well enough to write without hacking my lungs out. Sayonara.
I'm still not fully well, but here's a tidbit I saw from James Fallows this weekend that I thought was particularly interesting. Fallows is the long-time technorati from The Atlantic magazine, and former editor of U.S. News and World Report. I even met Fallows when he worked for awhile as a Microsoft contractor, in order to write about MS culture and practices.
Anyway, he now writes a "Techno Files" column for the NY Times. In this week's column, he writes about Skype and Google.
Here's a few tantalizing excerpts:
"Skype resembles Google, the gold standard of modern computing, in several ways. Its adoption rate has been phenomenal. When I wrote about it last September, it had been downloaded a total of 21 million times. Now the total is 100 million, and at any given moment more than two million Skype conversations are under way. Like Google, Skype keeps introducing new features - for instance, "SkypeIn," released two days ago, which allows users to create a local phone number and have all calls to that number forwarded to the user's Skype connection, wherever in the world that might happen to be. As with Google, once you get used to Skype, it's hard to imagine doing without."
AND
"In February, Google introduced Google Maps, a faster and better-looking alternative to MapQuest and other online mapping sites. Last month it added a touch that made Google Maps different from any competitor: high-resolution aerial photos of the area covered by the maps, which visitors can zoom in on for a closer bird's-eye view. (These photos came from Keyhole, a company Google bought last year.) Go to www.maps.google.com, enter a ZIP code or address, and then click the "satellite" button to switch from map to photo. In either view you can get driving instructions from one point to another, as with other map sites. But when the route is traced in the photos, the turns and waypoints are much more vivid."
He also adds THIS:
"The real importance of Google's map and satellite program, however, is not its impressive exterior but the novel technology, known as Ajax, that lies beneath. About that, and its implications for Google and other companies, there will be more to say in a future column."
Which is both tantalizing, and personally frustrating, as I had a long column (perhaps a week or so) planned on Ajax. Oh well, perhaps I'll still be able to add some insight to Fallow's "common man" perspective on Ajax.
See you all soon... as soon as I'm well enough to write without hacking my lungs out. Sayonara.
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