Category Archives: New Paradigms

better ways of looking at and doing things

New Paradigms, VoIP

Skype gets through when Bell Telephone fails

your call cannot be completed…
Like so many others with friends and relatives in the London area I called my brother early yesterday morning.

On my first attempt I got a message that my call could not be completed. On two subsequent attempts over the next ten minutes I got no message or sound at all.

I suppose this was because of the heavy phone traffic as everyone on the Eastern Seabord woke up to the news of the London bombings and picked up their phones at about the same time.

SkypeOut connects when the phones fail
I have subscribed to Skype’s SkypeOut service which connects PC users to the regular phone system. So at this point I booted my laptop, put on my headset, and dialed as soon as Skype showed me online.

Immediately the phone rang at the other end and I was connected to the London phone I was calling.

I believe this worked where the phone system failed because Skype crosses the Atlantic via the Internet, bypassing the North American phone system and connected directly into the local system at the London end, which was not experiencing any problems.

It would be interesting to know if this would have been the same with the VoIP services that provide local phone service. That may be the case if they also bypass the North American telephone switches.

In speaking with others I found that some had experienced the same failure of the phone service while others had not.

Anyway, I was glad to have an alternative.

New Paradigms, Open Source

congratulations, EU, on rejecting software patents

congratulations!
As a card-carrying member of the EU (dual Cdn/UK nationality) I offer my congratulations on winning the Good Fight(tm) against software patents.

If the developer in the street (rue, Straße) is right then I can now look forward to sustained innovation and a wider variety of software development models (proprietary, open source, and mixed) than would otherwise have been the case.

Cheers!

Emerging, New Paradigms, podcasting

interesting competition in canadian radio

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This year’s Canada Day celebrations are now a memory. The fireworks over the lake have faded and the bands have gone home. In a couple of days our American neighbours will do the same thing for The Fourth of July.

The almost forgotten medium of radio has just undergone a rebirth of sorts where, in Canada, the fireworks were for the first licensing of two satellite radio services. Elsewhere, virtual fireworks have recently accompanied the addition of podcasting features to Apple’s iTunes software.

and they’re off…
So (legal) Satellite Radio has at last come to Canada. On hearing that the CRTC had finally sanctioned the medium my first thought was “Thank goodness they will have nothing to say about podcasting” 🙂

My second thought was that “expensive” satellite radio will most certainly be competing with “free” podcasts. This is true on my daily GO train commute into Toronto where mp3 players are one of the few diversions that can keep riders awake. (but not always)

Car radios, a common “driver” for satellite, are now being advertised as “iPod ready” and lots of iPod-to-car-radio connection options ranging from $50 – $250. Now that iTunes is “podcast ready” public knowledge of podcasting will increase.

On today’s Best Buy home page I see the featured buy “Here Comes Satellite Radio” right below the announcement of the latest colour screen iPod series.

The competition, if it develops this way, will indeed be interesting to watch since both satellite and podcasting are arriving in the Canadian market at about the same time, unlike the US where satellite was available years before podcasting developed.

Canadian content
The Canadian Content issue was, and continues to be, an issue with Satellite broadcast licences. In Canada the percentage of Canadian content is regulated by the CRTC. Which is why it will be interesting to see how this will compare with Canadian podcast “content”… however that will be measured.

Hi Ho!