Skype Gripe

Until late afternoon yesterday, I thought one had to find someone to make a call.  Skype UI certainly encouraged that line of thinking, particularly since I couldn't find a way to add a friend manually.  So the trouble with finding people started.

I found Scoble and Deane easily enough but they were apparently not online.  Later, I read somewhere that Skype online status is unreliable currently.  Several friends left me a comment saying he couldn't find me.  I couldn't find them either.  I tried to find myself as an experiment but couldn't.  Duh!

Yesterday afternoon, I suddenly realized that I didn't have to 'find' anyone to make a call on Skype.  I can just type "callto://billgates/" into IE and it would make the call.  So I called James Snell.  Yup!  I couldn't find him but Skype happily called him somehow with "callto://jamesmsnell/".  Nuts.  Skype screwed up their UI IMHO by making a shortcut apppear to be the only way.

He didn't answer but he called me back a few second later.  He said Hello?.  Sounds great!  I said Hello!  Nothing.  James launched into more Hellos and I started fiddling frantically with everything.  Thankfully, we had Skype IM to help us along and figure out that it was microphone input gain problem or something.  I then had to go to dinner so we disconnected.

Late last night, I thought about Skype.  Skype is certainly a neat beta product.  It still needs many more peers in it's P2P network.  Sound quality was good though.  But it felt weird using a computer like a telephone.  Uncomfortable, in fact.  Do I need Skype?  Nope.  I don't have a large phone bill.

My wife does, but the other end has a technology phobia so using a computer like a telephone would be awkward.  It's easier and more comfortable for my wife to adjust calling time and day to take advantage of cheapest international call rate.

Skype was more of a curiosity than a necessity and it wasn't much fun trying to get it to work.  So I uninstalled Skype last night.  Sorry friends for all the trouble.  Let's wait for a better trouble.

Update:

I am not underestimating the potential of a service like Skype.  The potential is there.  All I am saying is that Skype has beta problems and that it doesn't have universal appeal.  If one needs it badly, their tolerance level drops.  Otherwise, others may come along and do a better job.  I also would like to see more detailed information about Skype and future roadmaps.  So far, I haven't seen any welcome attitude toward third-party developers.

Update #2:

A few peopled asked for the Skype graphics I had used for my 'callto:' link.  Here it is.

Infinite Tolerance

I knew the numbers but I just now realized what the numbers really meant.  Only 10% or less of e-mails I get daily are legitimate e-mails.  90% are spams and viruses.

10%!!!

I agree with Jon Udell that RSS is not a replacement for e-mails and that e-mail has special powers, but e-mail infrastructure is clearly broken.

As noted by some, SpamBayes tend to throw e-mails written in non-English language into the spam pile.  The other day, my little spirit-brother (brother not of birth) in Korea called me to ask why I haven't responded to his e-mail.  I told him it was SpamBayes' fault.  He said Huh?

Exactly what is going on here?  Infinite tolerance?  What we waiting for before some drastic actions are taken?  1%?  0.1%?

Patents

Tim Bray confesses about having two patents in the pipeline and goes on to talk about software patents.  I also have a couple of security-related patents in the pipeline.  To me, it's not the software patents but patents that violate public's right of passage.

GIF patent was legit but Unisys was standing there and charging toll on what most of us considered public road.  What is public road and what is not?  The distinction is simple.  If your enforcement of the patent hurts your public relations more than it adds to your bottomline, then you are standing on a public road.

To be more precise, if your patent gives your solution advantages in quality of service, then it's legit.  But if your patent leads to the only solution, then you are a troll.  If your patented formula makes cars go faster, I am fine with that.  If you patented the idea of automobiles, I am not all right with that and all for public's right to steamroll over such patents.

My justification is this.  Since patent laws can be changed or even banished by the people, the people has the right to selectively change or banish any specific patent it chooses.  Implementation is problematic, but the principle is sound IMHO.

MIT/Stanford Venture Lab Event Tonight

As I mentioned last week, I'll be at Stanford tonight.  Online registration for the event is sold-out but you can still walk-in for a few dollars more.  It starts at 6PM.  Ciao.

Update:

It's 9PM and I am back.  I got there a bit late only to find that the first hour was 'social networking' time with food and drink.  I had already eaten dinner, so I stood there with Heinekin in my hand.  Lots of VCs showed up, but even they couldn't quite explain why.

My old VC pal, Robert Simon of Alta Parnters showed up and couldn't explain his presence either.  I asked him if he would invest in a social software and he promptly answered no.  He probably saw that I was about to launch into a fevered pitch.  Heehee.  Gee, Robert.  Tacit.com looks awfully like a social software company.

I saw some media folks there too but only Bambi Francisco from MarketWatch caught my eyes.  I gave her some quotes and got her interested in blogging.  Cool.  I would love to see her blog.  Marc Canter was there as well to ask questions.  I gave him one of my Heinekin so he can lube up.

The session itself wasn't that interesting to me.  Nothing new was being talked about although I thought Ross Mayfield explaining wiki as a enterprise software got some people's eyes twinkling.  Jonathan Abrams of Friendster made some funny comments.  Andrew Anker of August Capital, the VC of the panel and a fellow blogger, made some down to earth, post-bubble statements.

Cynthia Typaldos' comment about her group of 4000 marketing professionals being able to meet their social networking needs with just email, blogs, and eGroup.  No special social networking tools needed.  I agree with her.  Social networking in itself is not compelling enough beyond dating.  Social networking is, for most people, passive and incidental activity.  I tried LinkedIn, Friendster, and other social networking services but there was no compelling need for me to keeping going back to it.

I left early because I had to go to restroom and it was too much trouble to crawl back to my seat.  So I acted like I had another important meeting to go to.  Heh.

Reminder to self: get Bambi a blog.  Isn't it funny how I am using my blog as PostIt now?

Lineage II

Lineage II is coming.  Lineage was a huge hit in Korea with millions of players taking adventage of broadband network in Korea.  Lineage differs from other MMORPG in that it actively encouraged building large social groups and large scale battles between them (Socialwarfareware!).  Still, the original Lineage was a isometric which is less immersive than full 3D.  Lineage II makes up for it by building on UnrealEngine2 and the result is impressive.

Where the hell is Starbucks in this town?

Check out the Castle Siege gameplay movie (105mb WMV) and others at Lineage II Movies section.  While Lineage battles are smaller than real world battles, it really feels like a real battle with swirling chaos and spirits soaring or plummeting in an eye blink.  Amazing stuff.  It will be interesting to see if Lineage II with it's strong social features can take off in America.

Serts

It's 4AM and I am thinking about serts.  No, not certs.  Serts, as in Asserts.  Cute, eh?  It's a term I came up with to describe cert-like objects except it's just signed piece of information about anything where a cert is a signed information about a person.  A sert can be a signed grocery list or a list of weapons on board a ship.  A sert is just data signed by someone or something.

Think of serts as anonymous certs gone wild.  Say I visit a website and the website can distinguish me from other visitors using whatever means handy like cookies.  Over time, the website gets to know me.  So it hands me a sert that say "I don't know who this guy is but he has been trustworthy for these sort of activities."  Does that sert have value?  I think so.  Does it matter who I am?  Not really.  That's a sert for you.

World needs serts because everyone could use a bit of sertainty.

Skyping

Just got Skype.  Try Skyping me using the Skype button under my portrait.  There has been some problem finding people so Skype might be mostly hype.  It's VoIP technology might be up to snuff, but it sure is difficult finding anyone to talk to.  If situation doesn't change, it's being uninstalled after a few days.  Yipes!

10th Don

According to Google, I am the 10th Don.  Ahead of me are:

  1. Don Johnston, an educational software company
  2. Don Knuth, still at Stanford
  3. Don Lemmon, author of a bestselling nutritionist
  4. Don Norman, Mr. Everyday Things.
  5. Don Nickles, US Senator
  6. Don't Panic Eat Organic (?)
  7. Don Quijote, an In-Country Spanish language school
  8. Don't Link to Us!, the anti-stupid-linking-policty group
  9. Don Box's blog

Not bad.  Notables immediately behind me are:

  1. Don Young, Congressman for all Alaska
  2. Don Conoscenti, a musician
  3. Don Balón, a world-famous soccer player
  4. Don Aka, a 31 year-old farm boy with a blog

It will be tough to knock Don Box out of the way, but rest should be a cinch.  Muhahahaha!  When I am near the top, I'll link to Don Knuth so I can keep him ahead of me just like I am keeping Safari WebCore source code link above the blog-waterline.

FYI, blog-waterline is my term for link rank level at which the blog effect stops.  If your link is above the waterline, you are really popular.  But then the waterline keeps rising and may place the whole Google underwater.

Update:

I just removed links to other Dons because my linking to them will keep them ahead of me.  Duh!  To find them, use the first link to Google search result page.

Happy Sunday

It's funny how mere icons can make me happy.  I saw these icons today as successful result of my recent crypto works.  They say Acrobat, Signable, Certified, Encrypted, Certification Signature, and Verified Signature.

For my client, above set of symbols means an encrypted, certified, and signed PDF document.  For me, it means I am happy.  As I learned over the years, regular doses of small happyness is what life is all about.