Monday, September 10, 2007

The Perceived Unpopularity of Skype in the US

I have been using Skype for at least three years now and was, initially, sold on the fact that it goes way beyond the normal messengers like MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, AOL and others in the fact that it just plain works and has voice and video applications that work better than anything I have seen. As an administrator I have used it to contact students and parents at no cost to my school. I have used it to display real-time video from a scientist in Australia who studies spiders. For $30 a year you can call out to any phone in the US and Canada. Pretty cool stuff. It is more secure than any other messenger with its 256-bit encryption that not even the CIA can tap. Skype also has a voice mail option and a call-in option, but these two options will cost you. So what is free, well, you can call to any other Skype user, this is where you will find this great tool very unpopular. It is unpopular in the US because it is in competition with MSN and Yahoo Messenger who have been greatly popular in this country for over ten years. Try to get a relative or friend in their 30's and 40's to download and install the client so you can communicate freely is like asking them to give a pound of flesh. I have spoken with plenty of people who are daily users of Skype that have faced the same problem with trying to convince people how useful a communication tool this can be. Just try it. It can save you a lot of money in long distance calls, it is quicker than email, and you can transfer files by dropping an dragging them to the chat window of your contact. Check it out here: http://www.skype.com


My status

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Health Benefits of Coffee


I love coffee! But, I don't often think of it as a healthy drink. Perhaps it is not healthy when it is made in one of those aluminum urns with pre-ground coffee that has been sitting on the shelf for who knows how long and is doctored-up with ten spoons of sugar and creamer made of some sort of white powder that looks like that stuff that you see around the post of your car battery, etc, etc. However, I am rather a connoisseur of fine coffee and use only real sugar and real cream in mine, and drink it fresh ground and make certain that it is organic. Sorry, I don't mean to be elitist, but I like what I like.

Anyway, I found this report that speaks of the few benefits of drinking coffee in large quantities.
http://men.webmd.com/features/coffee-new-health-food

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Tips for better, more efficient reading....


I like reading, but don't have a lot of time to do so. I like to keep up on the news, but don't really have the time to sit and read a five paragraph article on some new study that proves something right I have been doing or something wrong, but I read it anyway and hurry through and don't always get the gist of it. I like to speed read, but text on the computer screen is sometimes difficult to see. Here's a great reader that will allow you to copy the article or whatever and paste it in and set your reading speed and retain stuff like you never have before in a fraction of the time. Check it out at http://www.zapreader.com

Realtime Board

Currently in beta, this new, realtime collaboration tool is packed with so many possibilities I think it will   become very popular in ...