Tag Archives: Freeware

Wire Mesh and Lost Souls

You have to love the Internet. It brings you into contact with all sorts of unusual people, the likes of which I haven’t encountered since my days of being driven by tuk-tuk around the sois of 1980s Bangkok. Here’s Linda, for example, who just asked to be my buddy on Skype, introducing herself thus: Me!… Read More »

VOX Rocks (Not)

Unless you’re a real masochist, I wouldn’t bother installing the latest add-on for Skype, VoxLib (Windows only, sorry). It’s a nice idea, insofaras I can understand it, but it sure messes up your system. VOX in theory allows you to make Skype (and SkypeOut) calls via any telephone. It gets complicated, and it certainly didn’t… Read More »

The Message Behind Instant Messaging

Be careful what you wish for. For nearly a decade I, and a lot of people like me, have been dreaming of the day when we could send an instant message to someone who wasn’t on the network as us. An instant messaging program is one that sits on your computer and allows you to… Read More »

The Presence Problem

Steve Smith of Lavalife makes a good point about the surge of new products which extend the use of Skype beyond the desktop. Great for mobility and wider access, bad for one of the key benefits that IM-related programs like Skype bring us: presence. (Presence merely means being able to signal whether you’re online, whether… Read More »