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Skype creator Niklas Zennstrom made headlines recently for proclaiming that all phone calls will be free within 10 years.

It’s not be surprising to hear this coming from the creator of a communications software that is offering free calls to landlines and mobile phones to users based in the USA and recently announced a similar program for its French users for free landline and mobile calls in France. But with cable providers, traditional telephone companies, startups like Vonage and Sun Rocket, and just about every two-bit entrepreneur trying to cash-in on the VoIP craze one might question if Zenstrom’s prediction is realizable given the power behind the legacy of making money off of voice calls.

That being said, the idea of free phone calls is nothing new and I don’t find the prediction particulaly surprising or groundbreaking. What I do find surprising is that it’s making headlines in 2006 years after I first heard of zero cost phone calls as a grad student at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU in a course called Future of the Infrastructure (by far one of the best courses offered) taught by Art Kleiner. One of Art’s guest speakers first introduced the idea of free phone calls to me. I don’t remembmer the exact scenario he presented but his ideas stuck with me and I remember his argument was very convincing in support of the global free phone call scenario. If memory serves me he didn’t present a utopian view of free phone calls and we discussed the beneifts and prospective drawbacs such as telephoen spam.

I went to a concert this last week. An outdoor venue on a hot summer night. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to a summer lawn concert. So when the “lighter-light” slow ballad starts, I look around to see cell phone lights. Maybe it’s a sign that America’s youth is smoking less, but I doubt it. I think that it’s more a sign that one: those child-safe lighters are pain to hold up and that two: everyone under 30 has a cell phone. It turns out, it’s crazy easy to create a concert light show when everyone has a pleasant blue back lit cell phone. It caused me to wonder if there was a concert date in the near future that is nothing but cell phone lighters.

I recently heard a report on National Public Radio about a town outside of Chicago that has created a new road sign designed to be used in conjunction with the universally recognized stop sign.

Officials from Park Ridge, a Chicago suburb, contend that the universally recognized standard stop sign is no longer effective and only serves as an invitation to slow down. The new sign, also a red octagon, reads “STOP MEANS STOP” and is installed just below the existing stop sign.

As a design educator I discuss with my students the responsibility of a designer to ensure a design effectively communicates its targeted message to its audience. We do as much as we possibly can to ensure that the audience or user (in this case driver) knows what to do and how to do it. For this to happen we must first recognize that people are not the same and that an individual comes to a situation with their own knowledge and experience set. To prevent errors, mistakes, and miscommunication it’s the job of the designer to ensure the most effective information design for the maximum numbers of intended users.

Continue reading ‘STOP MEANS STOP: Diluting the Meaning of a Universal Symbol’

Google Talk Voice & IM Software

Google’s latest beta service, Google Talk is the talk of the town. A quick search on Google News returns several hundred items published in the past 24 hours about Google’s new instant messaging (IM) and voice chat service.

But once you get passed the hype and the media frenzy many reviewers are finding Google Talk underwhelming compared to feature rich veteran IM services like AIM and ichat or stable, established free voice chat services like Skype which is used by millions. In response to Google’s move into their territory, Skype has opened its software to encourage developers to incorporate Skype into their own products and services.
Continue reading ‘Talk Google Talk’

In an effort to stop forced user registration at major sites like The New York Times The Baltimore Sun and The Mercury News one site is urging users to sign the Internet Advertiser Wakeup Day Petition.

According to the site the petition was created by Tim Berners Lee who created the first website ever and is credited as the inventor of the world wide web.

Ironically, users have to provide their names and e-mail addresses to sign the petition so it makes me wonder if the petition is legit.

Tired of downloading Six Feet Under episodes using Bit Torent? Well soon you might be able to find shows and even watch them via Google.

Google video search is nothing new but now Google is teaming up with TV producers including Al Gore’s upstart cable network Current to offer access to videos through Google.

Yet again the former Vice President’s vision and technological forsight is evident just as when he was given the huge task of ensuring that the age of netowrked media was not hindered by government by his boss back in the early 1990s (Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet).

Now I just wonder how long this Google service will be in beta.

via What’s Next Blog

Recently at a dinner meeting one of my colleagues came back from the restroom marveling at how nice the bathroom was which prompted the rest of us at the table to take turns visiting the WC only to return and chime in our opinion (I was underwhelmed).

Bathroom decor critique (BDC) is a standard activity in New York and it seems restaurants and bars are fighting to come up with the coolest new bathroom design In the late 90s Bar 89 was the rage with their unisex self-fogging glass doors and more recently SEA in Williamsburgh with their pod-rooms surrounded by beaded curtains.
Continue reading ‘Atomic Dry Hands’

By now many of you surely have watched or at least heard about Googlezon, the Orwellian tale of the impact of new media or more specifically networked media on the news in by the year 2014.

In writing his seminal “The Medium is the Message” Marshall McLuhan asks us to not get blinded by the content but to also pay attention to the form of the medium in which the content is contained. He asks us to be aware that a media are extensions of ourselves and that they do not exist in a vacuum but are influenced by and a product of society.

The whole point in being aware of the message of a medium, according to McLuhan is to have an impact on what the change is. McLuhan says, “Control over change would seem to consist in moving not with it but ahead of it. Anticipation gives the power to deflect and control force.”

In other words the folks that created the Googlezon scenario are doing exactly what McLuhan had hoped we would do. By questioning and imagining the possibility we are moving ahead of what has happened and can anticipate the change and deflect or control its impact in order to stop something like Googlezon if it’s perceived to be detrimental to society. The question now is do we preceive it as detrimental and if so will anyone actually heed the efforts to deflect the damage?

Media Mogul Barry Diller’s IAC has agreed to buy the Ask Jeeves search engine for 1.85 billion dollars in a stock trade. IAC owns an extensive list of interactive propertiles including the Home Shopping Network, travel giant Expedia, CitySearch, and dating site Match.com.

This heats up the already very hot search engine war between the big three MSN, Google, and Yahoo not to mention Amazon’s A9 and other engines. In a statment released by IAC it’s clear Diller is taking aim directly at the other engines but most especially barking directly up Google’s tree.

We believe that in the future [Ask Jeeves] has the potential to become one of the great brands on the Internet and beyond, and by beyond we mean in wireless, in the search for anything on any device -Barry Diller

For quite some time it’s been clear from the Google mission and their acquisitions, tools and services that they see their role extending far beyond traditional search and web-based technology to the more general information accessibility. In fact the Google mission which is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” is simultaneously focused and broad allowing them to adapt to changes and developments in technology and the environment while still reaming true to their objective.

Ask Jeeve’s which previously purchased TEOMA and recently purchased blog aggregator Bloglines is Cleary preparing to do battle. How the new search engine war will pan out remains to be seen but it’s clear that the race is on and getting more complicated every day.

For several months I’ve noticed changes in website rankings on Google and it was clear something had changed in their algorithm. The Google change has been a major topic among internet and search engine professionals. Google regularly updates their algorithm and each time they do you can be sure to find a great deal of discussion and s