Archive for the 'telephony' Category

The Downfall of Digg

Thursday, December 7th, 2006

Here’s a post on how community-driven sites like Digg succumb to their own popularity.

The idea is fine, but one thing is forgotten… People are sheep. People don’t vote things up they disagree with, don’t like or don’t know anything about. So we see a kind of convergence. The stuff that toes the community line, that most people agree with and that doesn’t challenge people too much gets voted up, whilst the stuff on the fringes, the niche stuff, disappears. The community attracts people who enjoy its content, and so content becomes stale, repetitive and dull.

SkypeOut now free

Monday, May 15th, 2006

Skype has announced that SkypeOut calls to landline and mobile phones within the US and Canada are now free, at least until the end of 2006.

Is it really free? What are the strings attached?

Yes. It is really very, very free. There’s no prepayment, no minimum use, no subscription, no monthly fee, no nothing. You just download and install Skype and then you start calling. Both the caller and the number called must be in either the US or Canada. There are no strings attached.

The only condition is that we have said free SkypeOut within the US and Canada is guaranteed to last until the end of this year — that is, until December 31, 2006. We’re not quite sure yet what we will do after that. Maybe we extend the free period, maybe not. You’ll hear more about this towards the end of the year.

Until then, happy calling.