Vincent's shared items

As always, I suspect that many of you will simply want to download the latest version now – but for the more inquisitive among you, read on to find out what’s inside.

Call quality improvements

4.2 includes a brand-new call quality indicator, along with some changes behind the scenes, both of which will mean you should get the best call quality ever.

Great value, hassle-free WiFi access

When you’re on your travels, connecting to WiFi hotspots can be a pain. Fiddling with your credit card, inserting numbers, and so on. Skype Access in 4.2 removes that hassle – simply pay-per-minute for the time you need, and pay with your Skype Credit.

HD-ready

4.2 includes almost everything you’ll need to make HD video calls using Skype. As soon as special HD cameras appear in a couple of months’ time, you’ll be able to call your family and friends in crystal clear HD.

We’ve also made a number of smaller improvements – fixed bugs, and brought back the call transfer feature. Download it now, and let us know what you think.

But Estonia hasn't had a woman running for PM since 1995 and there will probably be no female face at the debates in 2011, either. How is that possible? How is it possible that in a country where 54 percent of the population is female, the heads of all the major political parties are male, and only one minister out of 13 ministers in the government is a lady?

Our friend and business partner Tiina composed a letter to an American publishing company informing them of our decision not to reprint the entire appendix of a book we had translated into Estonian. The reason? Many of the sources were either inaccessible or irrelevant for Estonian readers.

Though Tin's English is strong -- it's one of the main languages in her home, along with Estonian and Swedish -- I was asked to edit this letter, just in case. I was glad I did. To put it bluntly, Tin was blunt. Too blunt. Absolutely rude. Tactless. Rather than trying to assuage the publishing house about our good intentions in cutting part of the book, she went to work on detailing exactly why we had absolutely no need to republish all that crap in their manuscript.

With some buttery, flowery, feel-good American language, I was able to smooth out the kinks in Tin's text to make it sound as polite and quasi-British as possible, cutting of course the obligatory insincerity that pollutes English discourse ("I'm terribly sorry"), and dressing it up in sunny, optimistic tones ("Let's work together to make this book a success"). Our relationship with our partners would remain cheerful but still smart and businesslike.

It wasn't really Tin's fault that the letter came out that way. It's just that if you communicate the way Estonians communicate in English, you can come off sounding like a rude bastard. If your newly renovated house is ugly, they won't tell you that it's different, they'll tell you that's ugly. If they don't like your food, they won't tell you that they're full, they'll tell you it stinks. Estonians are not liars. They'll tell you to your face what they think of you and not even feel the slightest need to polish it with niceties. This cultural idiosyncrasy, as you can imagine, might pose some troubles for Estonian diplomacy.

Such problems work in other ways though. Just as an Estonian might come off as blunt and tactless in English, an American might come off as abrasive and downright ridiculous in Estonian. It was recommended to me, for example, that for a certain media project I contact a university professor who I'll call Virve. "You should work with Virve," said one academic. "She's quite talented." "Oh, you should talk to Virve, she'll help you, she's really good," said another. Finally, even Epp gave it her blessing. "Talk to Virve. She's one of the best."

So I wrote a letter to Virve and said I was contacting her because her colleagues recommended her and said she was quite talented - päris andekas. I thought such flattery might automatically win her friendship. People are vain, right? They like to hear good things about themselves, right? It works in New York. My colleagues always tell me when someone says something good about my performance. But in Eesti?

"Päris andekas?" Virve was surprised. "Should I take this as a compliment or does it have anything to do with my age and gender? This is something we usually say to a school girl."

A school girl? Shit. I checked it out with Epp who confirmed that, in this context, telling someone they are talented, especially a man telling a woman she is talented, is rather patronizing. "Patronizing?" my body temperature dropped. "Oh no, what have I done? What have I done?" I felt like an idiot. Not only had I been patronizing to Virve -- who, surprise, was too busy to help me -- but my patronizing tone had perhaps even been laced with subtle sexism. And all because I told someone that they are talented! (Still ashamed, I'm rubbing my face even as I write this).

These are just the things that happen when multiple cultures collide. There's no stopping it. It's hard though to rectify some situations because some Estonians, particularly some male Estonians, are the opposite of open. There are infrequent displays of, "That's ok, bro, it's all water under the bridge." There's a paucity of self-deprecating jokes. In short, a lot of the Estonians I've met are convinced that they're just about perfect; it's pure coincidence that they happen to be surrounded by assholes. Nobody's perfect, though, not even these Estonians. Life is messy. People are messy. Even people with the best intentions make mistakes. Maybe honesty and openness in these situations are the best policies because not every letter can be edited by a well-meaning friend, nor every conversation monitored for correct usage of vocabulary.

My fondest memory of my childhood was the day when my grandfather gave me a slate. I was four years old. There was no silicon in that slate — unless you count the silica in the earth itself — that was essentially a thin smooth slab, almost volcanic in color. Along with it came a little piece of chalk, which I would eventually use to write on this slate whose rough edges were covered by a well-made maple wood sheath. I have no idea what this slate cost — maybe one-twentieth of a penny at that time — but to me it was priceless.

For hours at length I would sit with my grandpa and with my mom — learning math, learning how to write proper English sentences, often getting wrapped on the knuckles for messing up my articles. Sometimes I would draw — but mostly I would try and write.

Paper and pencils were expensive and were restricted to finishing up school assignments or “homework” as it was called back then. Over the next few years, whenever I used that particular slate and its subsequent upgrades (it would break way too often), I would start with the proverbial blank screen (or a blank slate). I would write, calculate and articulate.

To me it represented two things. It was a way to spend time with grandpa.  It was also a tool for constant education and self-improvement. Of course, I didn’t know these fancy words then. I just knew it was something I couldn’t live without. The very low-brow slate was the very antithesis of cool, but I just loved it.

It was simple, elegant and utilitarian. It was cheap. And in hindsight it fueled by my imagination, though at the time I had no idea.

On January 27th, when I first picked up the iPad, I was that four-year-old boy again. I felt like I was getting that old slate of mine one more time. Today the meaning of cheap may have changed for me, but the iPad’s elegance, simplicity and utilitarianism is firing up my imagination. Just as I would sit with my grandfather, learning the basics of English grammar from Wren & Martin and then constructing sentences, I am now thinking about what I can do with the iPad and where will we go with it.

The minute I touched the iPad at the Apple event a few weeks ago, I knew my world and my idea of computing had been transformed, irrevocably and irreversibly. I’m not sure why some of my friends, who have helped me shape my thinking about devices, Antonio Rodriguez for example, are disappointed with this device, whose potential is limited only by one’s imagination.

When I look at the iPad, I see a clean slate to reinvent pretty much how we think of media, information and in fact the whole user experience. Why do we have to think in terms of a keyboard — real or virtual? How can we not be excited about the very idea of a media experience based on touch? Why do we have to limit ourselves to one kind of media when building information experiences? Why can’t we leverage everything that is around us — location, social connections and persistent connectivity — to build a whole new media consumption experience?

When I walked out of the Apple event, in an on-camera interview, I told David Carr, media critic for The New York Times, that this device is first and foremost about media consumption. Our world, as I have outlined in many previous writings, is overrun with information. For the past 15 years we have perfected tools for creating information (or content). From camera phones to cheap laptops to open-source blogging platforms, the world of the web has been about creating a tidal wave of media/information/data. What we have used to consume this information is a 30-year-old technology, the personal computer and lately, the cell phone.

While the PC was created for personal computing, it never really became personal enough. The mobile phones weren’t quite cut out to consume content beyond phone calls, some text messages and maybe emails. Today’s smart phones are proving that when done right, they can become great tools for consuming information — from little tweets to Yelp reviews to blog posts to Tom Friedman’s latest rant. The explosive and unstoppable growth of mobile data traffic only reinforces the fact that if you give people a better way to consume information, they will use it!

With that as context, you start to see the implications of the iPad and get excited.  Paul Buchheit, Gmail creator, FriendFeed co-founder and an angel investor, wrote in a blog post:

By focusing on only a few core features in the first version, you are forced to find the true essence and value of the product. If your product needs “everything” in order to be good, then it’s probably not very innovative (though it might be a nice upgrade to an existing product).

The essence of the iPad, as Joe Hewitt, the creator of the Facebook app for the iPhone, says is that “the Internet is an integral part of the iPhone OS, and it is the part of the OS you can tinker with to your heart’s delight.”

This is one of the reasons why I am spending most of my waking (and some of my sleeping hours) thinking about what would be the kind of application a media startup should build for the iPad, in the process creating a whole new media experience. While some folks might be satisfied with their iPhone application for media consumption, I’m not one of them.

We are in the process of building a fairly unique and distinctive iPhone app, but I’m also ruminating on an iPad-only app that leverages everything from its distinctive menus, large screens, location information and more importantly ability to interact with content by touch.

Hewitt, when talking about the iPhone, recently wrote, “Once I got comfortable with the platform I became convinced it was possible to create a version of Facebook that was actually better than the web site!” He was right. Facebook has more than 100 million mobile subscribers and a substantial portion of those are using the iPhone (or iPod touch.)

iPad is an incredible opportunity for developers to re-imagine every single category of desktop and web software there is. Seriously, if you’re a developer and you’re not thinking about how your app could work better on the iPad and its descendants, you deserve to get left behind.

If you are one of those developers who has doubts about the iPad and needs something to change your mind, I recommend you read RoughlyDrafted’s Ten Myths of Apple’s iPad: It’s a curse for mobile developers.

My mind is made up. I have a brand new slate to create upon. I know sooner or later I will be able to create something new on this. The bad news is that I am not a developer. That is my curse. That is my opportunity. I am four years old again.

Related GigaOM Pro Research (sub req’d):

• Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits Right Notes
• 5 Tips for Developers Targeting the iPad
• How AT&T Will Deal with iPad Data Traffic
• Why Google, not Amazon, Should Fear the iPad

My fondest memory of my childhood was the day when my grandfather gave me a slate. I was four years old. There was no silicon in that slate — unless you count the silica in the earth itself — that was essentially a thin smooth slab, almost volcanic in color. Along with it came a little piece of chalk, which I would eventually use to write on this slate whose rough edges were covered by a well-made maple wood sheath. I have no idea what this slate cost — maybe one-twentieth of a penny at that time — but to me it was priceless.

For hours at length I would sit with my grandpa and with my mom — learning math, learning how to write proper English sentences, often getting wrapped on the knuckles for messing up my articles. Sometimes I would draw — but mostly I would try and write.

Paper and pencils were expensive and were restricted to finishing up school assignments or “homework” as it was called back then. Over the next few years, whenever I used that particular slate and its subsequent upgrades (it would break way too often), I would start with the proverbial blank screen (or a blank slate). I would write, calculate and articulate.

To me it represented two things. It was a way to spend time with grandpa.  It was also a tool for constant education and self-improvement. Of course, I didn’t know these fancy words then. I just knew it was something I couldn’t live without. The very low-brow slate was the very antithesis of cool, but I just loved it.

It was simple, elegant and utilitarian. It was cheap. And in hindsight it fueled by my imagination, though at the time I had no idea.

On January 27th, when I first picked up the iPad, I was that four-year-old boy again. I felt like I was getting that old slate of mine one more time. Today the meaning of cheap may have changed for me, but the iPad’s elegance, simplicity and utilitarianism is firing up my imagination. Just as I would sit with my grandfather, learning the basics of English grammar from Wren & Martin and then constructing sentences, I am now thinking about what I can do with the iPad and where will we go with it.

The minute I touched the iPad at the Apple event a few weeks ago, I knew my world and my idea of computing had been transformed, irrevocably and irreversibly. I’m not sure why some of my friends, who have helped me shape my thinking about devices, Antonio Rodriguez for example, are disappointed with this device, whose potential is limited only by one’s imagination.

When I look at the iPad, I see a clean slate to reinvent pretty much how we think of media, information and in fact the whole user experience. Why do we have to think in terms of a keyboard — real or virtual? How can we not be excited about the very idea of a media experience based on touch? Why do we have to limit ourselves to one kind of media when building information experiences? Why can’t we leverage everything that is around us — location, social connections and persistent connectivity — to build a whole new media consumption experience?

When I walked out of the Apple event, in an on-camera interview, I told David Carr, media critic for The New York Times, that this device is first and foremost about media consumption. Our world, as I have outlined in many previous writings, is overrun with information. For the past 15 years we have perfected tools for creating information (or content). From camera phones to cheap laptops to open-source blogging platforms, the world of the web has been about creating a tidal wave of media/information/data. What we have used to consume this information is a 30-year-old technology, the personal computer and lately, the cell phone.

While the PC was created for personal computing, it never really became personal enough. The mobile phones weren’t quite cut out to consume content beyond phone calls, some text messages and maybe emails. Today’s smart phones are proving that when done right, they can become great tools for consuming information — from little tweets to Yelp reviews to blog posts to Tom Friedman’s latest rant. The explosive and unstoppable growth of mobile data traffic only reinforces the fact that if you give people a better way to consume information, they will use it!

With that as context, you start to see the implications of the iPad and get excited.  Paul Buchheit, Gmail creator, FriendFeed co-founder and an angel investor, wrote in a blog post:

By focusing on only a few core features in the first version, you are forced to find the true essence and value of the product. If your product needs “everything” in order to be good, then it’s probably not very innovative (though it might be a nice upgrade to an existing product).

The essence of the iPad, as Joe Hewitt, the creator of the Facebook app for the iPhone, says is that “the Internet is an integral part of the iPhone OS, and it is the part of the OS you can tinker with to your heart’s delight.”

This is one of the reasons why I am spending most of my waking (and some of my sleeping hours) thinking about what would be the kind of application a media startup should build for the iPad, in the process creating a whole new media experience. While some folks might be satisfied with their iPhone application for media consumption, I’m not one of them.

We are in the process of building a fairly unique and distinctive iPhone app, but I’m also ruminating on an iPad-only app that leverages everything from its distinctive menus, large screens, location information and more importantly ability to interact with content by touch.

Hewitt, when talking about the iPhone, recently wrote, “Once I got comfortable with the platform I became convinced it was possible to create a version of Facebook that was actually better than the web site!” He was right. Facebook has more than 100 million mobile subscribers and a substantial portion of those are using the iPhone (or iPod touch.)

iPad is an incredible opportunity for developers to re-imagine every single category of desktop and web software there is. Seriously, if you’re a developer and you’re not thinking about how your app could work better on the iPad and its descendants, you deserve to get left behind.

If you are one of those developers who has doubts about the iPad and needs something to change your mind, I recommend you read RoughlyDrafted’s Ten Myths of Apple’s iPad: It’s a curse for mobile developers.

My mind is made up. I have a brand new slate to create upon. I know sooner or later I will be able to create something new on this. The bad news is that I am not a developer. That is my curse. That is my opportunity. I am four years old again.

Related GigaOM Pro Research (sub req’d):

• Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits Right Notes
• 5 Tips for Developers Targeting the iPad
• How AT&T Will Deal with iPad Data Traffic
• Why Google, not Amazon, Should Fear the iPad

Predictably, some argue the iPad doesn’t do enough. It needs a keyboard or a removable battery or multitasking ability or whatever.

But there’s an interesting backlash to that backlash. (Meta-backlash!) The discussion has people openly discussing an ugly truth that doesn’t typically get a lot of play among tech geeks: People don’t know how to use computers. And not just stupid people. Millions of people. People who are adults. And that’s pretty damn lame.

(Bold emphasis in the following excerpts is mine.)

Fraser Speirs writes this in “Future Shock”:

I’m often saddened by the infantilising effect of high technology on adults. From being in control of their world, they’re thrust back to a childish, mediaeval world in which gremlins appear to torment them and disappear at will and against which magic, spells, and the local witch doctor are their only refuges…

The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table’s order, designing the house and organising the party.

Steven Frank says:

Since the days of the Apple ][, C64, and Atari 400, all we’ve done is add, add, add. Add more features to sell more computers. We’ve never stopped to take anything away.

I’m weary of this notion (even when presented as satire) that anyone who can’t master a computer must clearly be mentally retarded.

So while we trump up our skills at designing “easy to use” interfaces for our applications, millions of people are still trying to figure out how to get our beautifully designed application out of its zip file or disk image. Or where in fact the Downloads folder is. Or what, exactly, a folder is. If we hadn’t been there for every step of the personal computer evolution since the days of DOS and AppleSoft, I wager we’d find it pretty bloody confusing as well.

Rob Foster “On iPads, Grandmas and Game-changing”:

My mother-in-law walked in the door the day of the keynote and the first thing out of her mouth was “Did you see that new Apple iPad? That looks like it would work for me. Would that work for me?”

I was utterly flabbergasted. She NEVER talks about computers or technology. She tolerates them at best. Her attitude is typical of most baby boomers I’ve talked to regarding computers. She wants to benefit from them but is frustrated by the wall she must climb in order to do so. She’s learned how to use email and a couple of other things on the Internet and that’s about it…

I’ve long felt that computers were too hard to use, that the filesystem should NEVER be seen by the user. That human-computer interaction should favor the “human” side.

That these conversations are even going on is a good sign. For those of us surrounded by the minutiae of computers all day, it’s easy to forget there’s a world of people out there who just don’t get it. And it’s not their fault. It’s ours.

Apple has decided it’s worth throwing out advanced features in order to get these people onboard. Anyone who builds apps would be wise to consider taking a similar path. (Note: It’s not just about making a computer or an app more accessible for people who don’t get it. It’s also for people who do get it because this way is better.)

You can spend so much effort tweaking code or a specific part of the UI or adding a new pet feature that you forget the most important thing of all: People need to be able to START using your product. If they can’t do that, who cares about the rest?

You can crank up the snow machine. You can set up the slalom course perfectly. You can shape all the moguls so they’re just right. But if people can’t ever get on the ski lift, there ain’t gonna be any race.

Get Wired's take on technology business news and the Silicon Valley scene including IT, media, mobility, broadband, video, design, security, software, networking and internet startups on Wired.com

Those of us who work at home or on the road sometimes need to reach out and touch someone. Collaborating with co-workers is very important, not only in order to get things done effectively, but also to keep in touch with the outside world. Skype is a commonly used tool for interacting remotely with others. It’s free, and it works well for text, audio and video chats. The latest version of Skype for the Mac and Windows has added a brilliant feature that takes collaboration to the next step. I have been using Skype to share desktops remotely with other Skype users, and it has been an outstanding experience.

An effective way to collaborate with co-workers remotely is through desktop sharing. One of the two workers, the host, invites the other to share his or her desktop for collaboration. The remote worker sees exactly what the host is doing on the local computer. This is good for a number of tasks — among them being computer support, design work, and collaborating on documents.

Skype makes sharing a desktop remotely as simple as pushing a button in the call window. In just a few seconds, the host’s desktop pops up in a window on the remote user’s screen. This window is resizable, up to the resolution of the host’s screen. Resizing the window is done with crisp resolution, no matter what size is used.

The shared desktop is updated in real time, which Skype does with almost no lag at all. The remote user can follow the cursor of the host on the screen, and see exactly what he or she is doing at any given moment. This is true collaboration; it is just like looking over the host’s shoulder to see what he or she is doing.

Yesterday, Kevin and I had a 30-minute collaboration session to work on two documents. We needed to jointly contribute to the editing of a Word document and an Excel spreadsheet. Kevin suggested that we go the Skype desktop-sharing route, and it was a great decision. Kevin shared his desktop with me, and we talked about the changes we wanted to make. I could watch the work unfold in real time in the window displaying Kevin’s desktop across the country. We accomplished in 30 minutes what would have taken us hours going back and forth via email. This collaboration made it seem as if we were in the same room working together, which in a way we were.

Today I collaborated with Simon of WebWorkerDaily. We needed to work on something together, and he rang me up via Skype. He shared his MacBook screen with me (pictured above), and we got our work done quickly. The Skype desktop sharing provided me with a remote window that was just as resolute as Simon’s screen, and I was able to follow everything that happened on his computer. We chatted while working on his computer, and it was a great session.

This was true remote collaboration, as I am in Houston and Simon is in the UK. That’s the beauty of Skype’s desktop-sharing method. The sharing, coupled with high quality audio chat, is outstanding for getting things done. I was impressed with the lack of lag in displaying the host’s screen. At times, it was hard to tell I wasn’t looking at my own desktop.

I have tried many different tools for collaborating remotely, and I must say that Skype’s implementation of desktop sharing is the best by far. It has been consistent in quality, and I’ve experienced no issues yet. Throw in the bonus of it being free, and Skype has created a winner.

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