Ok, so I’m a believer! If you’d have told me about podcasting 5 yearsago or tried to convince me that I would be a massive fan just 12 months ago, I’d have probably laughed in your face. Lets face it,Podcasting to the uninitiated is nothing more than amateur radio. Even now, and I listen to probably close on 8 -10 shows a week, if I try and explain it to someone they look at me like I am some closet geek with a homemade radio transmitter in my loft!
“Its like radio shows that you can download and listen to at your own convenience. They can be made by you and I, for a relatively little amount of money, yet some of the traditional broadcasters have caught on now as well. With subject matters as diverse as web design to film and music to gardening.”
Rumours are beginning to circle the web regarding Skype offering an integrated video call option in a new release soon.
Festoon, which recently changed its name from Vskype, offers a current alternative but the name change must be taken as a signal that Skype are going their own route.
Further according to Skype Journal, an independent Skype blog commentary, last September they posted extracts from Skype’s Product Development Road map illustrating the planned video release in October.
Now with the unforeseen introduction of the Sony’s IVE, ‘Instant Video Everywhere’, application (a collaboration with Glowpoint) it must surely force Skype’s hand.
Sony’sEric Murphy: “The launch of the IVE service as a free, unlimited useservice is a communications watershed moment for consumers – aninstantaneous, easy-to-use application that brings people together by literally putting them in the same room.”
With some 200,000,000 downloads, Skype has grown exponentially and has developed to a point where Ebay purchased them last month for an estimated $2.6 billion. Skype is the no.1 name in Voip and video is a natural progression, for Sony to beat them to release must be seen as a major coup.
The concern would be that Skype’s product is rushed to the market place and the application not impress in the same way it did when first released!
Ok I probably aint the first but definitely wont be the last to comment on this but Riya the photo search people that uses face andtext recognition, are supposedly being lined up as the next Google acquisition.
Firstly, this seems like a pretty sensible move on Google’s part and great business sense. Yahoo clearly got a major step up on the big G with Flickr and is in danger of completely loosing out in the photographic market. Secondly this software is hot, from the stuff of science fiction novels little more than a decade ago this can completely revolutionize the waywe store and retrieve photo’s. The fact is Flickr is damn good and theproof is in the massive community but if we could automatically tag photo’s when uploading them with peoples names and places then it would take the only headache out of the equation.
Don’t get me wrong, there is an awful lot of crap floating around again in this Web 2.0, dot com part 2 or whatever you wanna call it but this is a good example of what all the fuss is about. The figure quoted at the moment is along the lines of $40m which for a fresh, venture capitalist, start up is good business all round.
Kind of figured I should return the favour…… You see, I tried to put a lot of thought into this blog, did a lot of reading (others blogs), and spent considerable time working out the features I wanted on my blog.
The way I figured is, if I was gonna do this seriously, I needed to host it myself (which wasn’t a problem as I have hosting anyway) rather than the blogs that are given away free. Next up was the hostname, being witty and creative certainly wasn’t me that day and as benbishop.co.uk is some geezer selling insurance and the .com wasn’t available I figured .me.uk would suit me fine.
It appears all our juvenile hopes have come true, well nearly all! Mario Kart DS is a winner and it now looks as though I am gonna have to buy a DS now as well.
“IGN 95
It’s hard to imagine how Nintendo’s going to improve on what they’ve done for this stunning portable rendition. There’s so much gameplay and depth in this design, moreso than the series has ever had in the past.
