Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Link-o-rama
- Skype. Gives you free calls to anyone else with the software, and there are versions of the client for systems ranging from Mac to PocketPC. Even with a cheap-ass headset it's better quality than POTS, and you certainly can't argue with the price. The technology is very interesting too - apparently it uses peer-to-peer for everything from name lookup services to file transfer, as well as routing the call itself. I haven't tried the paid-for service, where you can call pretty much any landline on the planet from your PC for pennies, but if I ever find a great-uncle in the US (preferably old and monied), I'll be sure to put it to good use).
- Gmail. Slick free mail from the search engine gurus Google. This redefines many aspects of the web mail experience, and it just seems to get better the more you use it. I haven't been a member for long, but the no-postback way of working (through XMLHttpRequest calls in JavaScript) is so much more responsive that after a very short time you can't imagine going back to the old days of waiting for Hotmail to redraw its bloated UI each time you page through your spam. Free POP3 access (so you can read your mail through a normal email program on your home PC), keyboard shortcuts (although they're not switched on by default), threaded conversations, and, oh yes, 1000 Megabytes of storage complete the deal. Once it gets out of Beta and shakes off the PR damage that some recent security breaches caused, it will likely become the de facto standard.
- Firefox. OK, a product, not a site, but who would have thought that from the ashes of Netscape's doomed browser would come something as svelte and well-featured as this? It's a revelation. Many features, including the tabbed browsing interface, the cookie management functionality, plug-ins and so on are inspired by other products, like Opera and IE, but the integration here is faultless. I'm pro-Microsoft most of the time, but with all IE's security problems and lack of updates, there's really no good reason to stick with Explorer any longer.
- Wikipedia. 461,000 articles sounds like a lot...and it is. Covering everything you'd expect in a normal encyclopedia and a lot more, it's current, mostly accurate, and - uniquely - if you think you can do better than the existing contributors you can just edit the page you've just viewed. You would think that this would result in a chaotic mess, but it's self-repairing and constantly improving instead.
- The Inquirer. A great source of oft-updated technology news, with tongue planted firmly in cheek. From Mike Magee, previous editor of another great British tabloid technology site, The Register.
- Penny Arcade. Sometimes Tycho's news posts can be a touch pretentious, but you've got to love the comics - Mr. Period and his punctuation friends are my favourites.
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