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Feb
7
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I've been a Skype fan since they started the service in North America. I use it most days when I'm working from home and we have a separate account for calling friends and family back in Europe (for free, with video). I just stumbled across an interesting article with 5 Skype tips for web workers - good stuff - I like the house spy idea - I've alway wondered what the cats do when we're out.
As an aside - telephony is one of those technologies that has a cultural and personal impact like few others - I remember from my own childhood - the monster of a phone you rented from BT (you had little choice - BT had a monopoly in the UK), "party lines" (you shared a line with your neighbour) and the first broad wave of mobile-phones (late 80's) which we're only really mobile if you had a car to transport it in. Then in the 90's - the mobile phone as a status symbol for the young upwardly mobile.
My kid's memories of telephones will be different - watching their Mother sitting at the breakfast table talking into her laptop and seeing their Aunty Nicky or Grandpops 6000 miles away; Wondering who I'm talking to when my thing that used to be a cell-phone is giving me driving directions (It's John Cleese by the way). The real-time synchronous communication with anyone, anywhere, anytime has given my five year old a good understanding of time zones - not something a 5-year old from a previous generation would have been bothered with. I'm guessing the world will seem smaller to her generation a consequence of this rapidly converging technology.
