The Hypocrisy Weblog

Say hello to Google’s new Instant Messenger (IM) software: “Google Talk“. Google Talk is Jabber/XMPP-based, which means that you can use any Jabber-compatible program to connect to Google Talk.

What you need to connect to Google Talk is a Gmail email-address, and after you install the program, you simply login with your Gmail username and password. (If you need an invitation to Gmail, go to “contact me” on the top of this page and I’ll send you one)

The interface is clean and simple, just as with Gmail which is a plus. It has no extra “crap” like MSN, Yahoo! Messenger and ICQ has – but it yet has no offline-messaging support < - which means that you can't send an instant message when the one you are writing to is not connected to Google Talk. This is a major con which I hope will be fixed in a later version, because yes - Google Talk is still in Beta.

As you see from the image displayed here, the Google Talk interface is clean, just as described above. Another neat feature is that those you email with a lot through Gmail gets added automatically in your Google Talk userlist.

In the same breath as I write about Google Talk, I have to write about Skype. Matt Veenstra at Vibe of the Tribe speculates about Google’s possible next step which could be to buy out Skype and integrate it in it’s own IM-product. I don’t see this happening though, as Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis from Skype declined News corp’s to buy Skype from their hands for the meagre sum of 3 billion dollars US.

Is there room for yet another IM-product on the market? Yes and no, Google doesn’t add anything spectacular to the array of Instant Message software out there, but they do have a very strong brand, which will talk in their favour. Google Talk is also based on the open Jabber/XMPP protocol, which rings good in the ears of the ones who actually care about these things – which aren’t many if you look at the popularity of programs such as MSN messenger and Yahoo! Messenger. An interesting sidenote is that Yahoo! Messenger now uses Skype voice-technology for their Voice-chat. (and yes, ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) are compatible with each other nowadays).

I think that Google Talk will attract those who want a small and clean chat-program, and that the success of Google Talk depend upon the success of Gmail as the two products are tightly integrated with each other.

This Slashdot newsflash made me giggle

“The New York Daily News, fine bastion of reporting that it is, released an article today discussing the rise of nerd popularity among women in general, and famous women in particular. Detail is given into the dating exploits of Christina Aguilera and Elin Nordegren (nerdy Tiger Woods’ supermodel squeeze), among a bunch of regular Janes. Apparently being a nerd is now in?”

The link to http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1532839 is very entertaining!!! I still find it fascinating how people still are desperate to distinguish themselves from others. Following many email-lists online, it seems to be so many that wants to be a Geek – just think about all those 80ies college-movies, where the geeks where those with thick glasses who were outcasts, could never go parties and never had a girlfriend (or boyfriend for that matter)… Aaaaaah, how things change – I think for the better though!!!

But hey, in all honesty: isn’t the old truth: “some have it, some don’t” the real truth?!

The pioneer within the mp3-player field, “Rio” is no more. D&M Holdings has decided to quit making hardware under the “Rio”-brand, as it didn’t fit the core and profitable premium consumer electronics brands such as “Denon” and “Marantz“.

Here is en excerpt from D&M Holdings’ press-release:

“The company’s decision to exit the Rio business followed a determination that the mass-market portable digital audio player market was not a strong enough strategic fit with the company’s core and profitable premium consumer electronics brands to warrant additional investment in the category. The original goal of strategic advantage with wholly-owned and branded portable client devices was reconsidered in the context of the costs required to effectively scale and compete in this sector, where competition has grown intense. D&M Holdings will now focus all its resources on the core Premium AV business and advanced content server products.”

Did Apple just take a new scalp?

My local morning paper “Norrbottens Kuriren” had an article about HAP (swedish only) – “High Altitude Platform Station” and how this technique can revolutionize how we access Internet-related services while being mobile.

It was a happy surprise to see an article about this technique in my local newspaper, and it is certainly relevant as we both have the technological and industrial interests up here with LuleÃ¥’s Technichal University (LTU) and the space research facility Esrange. Just too bad that Esrange is the only partner in this program, and only as a technological partner for the actual launches of the unmanned vehicles.

HAP is a system where you have a range of different unmanned flying vehicles that cruise on around 20000 meters altitude. This is well above where the commercial airlines fly their airplanes, and well below commercial satellites cruising range. These unmanned vehicles have a current datatransfer-capacity of around 120 Mbit / second, and a ground area-range of around 60km in diameter.

The use of HAPs is very broad, from enabling fastmoving trains and airplanes to get connected to the Internet, large areas on the ground can get Internet-access, areas that aren’t economical in other cases to provide other forms of broadband Internet-access to (such as xDsl). Also extra capacity can be given to events such as the olympic games or other (mainly) sport-events where the demands on the data/voice networks are high.

I am convinced that HAPs will be common in a not so distant future, and it’s a shame that the swedish authorities aren’t putting in more effort in a technology that actually can maintain Sweden’s position as a “country in the technological front”. Instead, plans are made to manufacture a unmanned weapons-system, something that most likely won’t be used by a broad mass of people, and will be very expensive to develop with a (realistically) low chance of ROI (return of investment).

According to ZDnet and several other news-sources, The Bush administration objects to the creation of the new porn top-level domain “.xxx” due to mentioned administration having concerns about a virtual red-light district reserved exclusively for Internet pornography.

This is despite the fact that the “.xxx” top-level domain is already approved through ICANN.

My comment: I understand why the current Bush administration is objecting to the “.xxx” top-level domain: rightwing-conservative politicians are trying to gain political points by being against everything that is immoral – totally logical. What is illogical is that a new “.xxx” top-level domain could make it easier to filter out unwanted sites in firewalls, both at workplaces, schools and in homes. What is totally forgotten it seems are all the millions and millions of pornsites listed under .com, .net, .org etc etc. This is a total charade from the current american administration, and I hope that it will stay in words. In my eyes, a “.xxx” top-level domain would make the Internet a little bit safer!

Justice has been served:

A former America Online software engineer was sentenced yesterday to a year and three months in prison for stealing 92 million screen names and e-mail addresses and selling them to spammers who sent out up to 7 billion unsolicited e-mail messages.

“I know I’ve done something very wrong,” a soft-spoken and teary Jason Smathers told U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein.

Jason Smathers will be spending 15 months in jail and will pay $84,000 in liability to AOL. I find the sentence to be fair, even though it could be even more severe in order to set a legal precedent.

Speaking about AOL, this is from the Slashdot sea of comments:

America Online: A sucker born every minute…

According to a corporate press release dated June 16, 2000, America Online has surpassed the 23 million member mark. Founded in 1985, AOL has been a household name to novice computer users worldwide. Unfortunately, many of these novices don’t know that they’re only seeing a small portion of the Internet and are being limited by AOL’s proprietary and archaic interface.

Now, it’s fairly safe to make the assumption that at least a quarter of AOL’s 23 million customers are simply short-term users along for the free trial or jumping from service to service looking for the best deal. And, using that same line of thinking, roughly half of those 17.25 million remaining customers are probably smart enough to see AOL for what it really is and cancel their service in a desperate fit of fight or flight.

That leaves approximately 8.63 million customers that use AOL as their primary Internet Service Provider, give or take a random three quarter million people at any given time signing up or canceling. With this in mind, and approximately 7.88 million minutes in AOL’s 15 year history, this proves that a sucker really is born every minute.