Cozy

Another good day has arrived. I even slept in a little bit later than usual. That’s probably because the house was kept warm by a combination of the &%@*?!& woodstove and this unseasonable warm weather. Hard to believe, but it will top out near 70° today!

And I found out what has been causing IE7 to crash; it’s the Skype Toolbar and I’ve turned it off for now. And speaking of Skype; I first downloaded the software for the program in 1999 as part of an experiment within our department at PCG. We all thought it had promise, but bandwidth was so variable at the time that the application suffered from it whenever you had less than the maximum. Voices would slowly fade away and then suddenly go back to full volume as the bandwidth fluctuated. Our first thought was to have it available for all corporate long distance calling. Since we had so many offices in so many states, it seemed to make sense… free long distance calls! But it never caught on and the idea was dropped.

Since I had been the one to bring Skype up for review, I kept the software on my computers but never did anything with it except to make the occasional upgrade. Now Skype is the Number One provider for Voip calls and the cost of a Skype to Skype call is still zip, zero, nada. And I see that you can make unlimited calls in the US from your Skype account to plain old telephones, anywhere, at a cost of $15 a year. I also see that I should have bought stock in the company.

But I hate telephones! With a passion! So why am I rattling on about some telephone that connects to your computer? Ah! Because it’s the perfect way to merge the technologies. My computer becomes my answering machine, a two way answering machine that lets me know if someone is busy and doesn’t want to be called and I can do likewise; letting others on the Skype network know if I wish to be called or not. You can view the status of all of your Skype contacts from a single screen.

Let’s face it, telephones are rude. Impolite. They interrupt people. They butt in. They take up valuable time with chatter. With Skype, you have the freedom to continue on with whatever you were doing before the phone rang… and now they have Skype cellular phones; just needing a WiFi hot spot to call.

Now I need to find out why the Skype Toolbar causes problems with IE7. I have a feeling it doesn't happen with Firefox.