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Pastimes : Computer Learning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raptech who wrote (46026)	4/19/2005 6:40:30 PM
From: shadowman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 110653

Here's a recent NYTimes article about Skype...and Google maps. April 17, 2005 TECHNO FILES An Update on Stuff That's Cool (Like Google's Photo Maps) By JAMES FALLOWS THIS is a "where are they now?" report on some products and innovations previously described in this space. Let's start with Skype. This is the system that allows anyone with a computer and a broadband connection to call mobile or land-line telephones almost anywhere on earth for pennies per minute. When two people are at computers running Skype, they can talk to each other (using a headset or microphone) as long as they want, with sound quality far better than that of telephones, absolutely free. Skype conference calls can include up to five participants - I have used this feature to talk simultaneously, from Washington, with people in England, New Zealand and California, at no cost to any of us. Working out the time zones was the real challenge. Skype resembles Google, the gold standard of modern computing, in several ways. Its adoption rate has been phenomenal. When I wrote about it last September, it had been downloaded a total of 21 million times. Now the total is 100 million, and at any given moment more than two million Skype conversations are under way. Like Google, Skype keeps introducing new features - for instance, "SkypeIn," released two days ago, which allows users to create a local phone number and have all calls to that number forwarded to the user's Skype connection, wherever in the world that might happen to be. As with Google, once you get used to Skype, it's hard to imagine doing without. Also as with Google, Skype's problems mainly arise from its rapidly growing worldwide reach. For Google, the problem has been how much to tailor its results to varying political sensibilities: its versions in Germany and France, for instance, screen out many neo-Nazi sites. Skype has had to cope with the abundance of fraudulent credit cards. For the time being, it declines most credit cards and prefers payment via PayPal. Next, Google itself. In February, it introduced Google Maps, a faster and better-looking alternative to MapQuest and other online mapping sites. Last month it added a touch that made Google Maps different from any competitor: high-resolution aerial photos of the area covered by the maps, which visitors can zoom in on for a closer bird's-eye view. (These photos came from Keyhole, a company Google bought last year.) Go to www.maps.google.com, enter a ZIP code or address, and then click the "satellite" button to switch from map to photo. In either view you can get driving instructions from one point to another, as with other map sites. But when the route is traced in the photos, the turns and waypoints are much more vivid. But don't try this until you have an hour or two to spare. It is difficult to resist the temptation to zoom down to your own house, then your childhood elementary school, then Honolulu, then Disneyland. Not all of the country is shown in super-high-resolution: in general, the greater the population density, the sharper the image. After a lot of prowling around, I've found only part of the American landmass where the aerial view is deliberately obscured - and it's not the White House. (Answer next time.) If you click on the screen, you can pan from place to place, as if flying. A waste of time, perhaps, but fascinating. nytimes.com