Sunday, June 24, 2007

Phone geographics 2.0

It is now cheaper for me to call US cellular phones from Sweden than to call Swedish cellular phones from Sweden.

As the sole representative of non-distinguished cellular and landline phone numbers, the US cannot charge the caller differently for calling a cellular or a landline phone. The surcharge falls upon the callee (which btw is a big joke: how the f*** did AT&T pull off charging double for each call - both caller and callee!?).

With Skype, my calls are all local, meaning I am charged for a local landline call when I call a US cellular phone. In Sweden however, they charge me some ridiculous $0.50 / minute, the going rate.

Does this mean the American phone system shot themselves in the foot when they
thought up their double rate scheme without eyes on future digital communication / VoIP, or am I just fooling myself?

Either way, I can now be reached locally both from the US and Sweden, so give me a call!

Phone number: [This page left blank intentionally]

Edit: This obviously render the number in the previous post obsolete

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Don't e-mail me, Voice me

In a time-driven mass-communicative society and economy, the message based interchange (asynchronous read & reply) is well suited. However, sometimes it's nice or even necessary to use your voice instead of ASCII (or even RTF).

To the rescue: PrivatePhone.com, which currently gives free voicemail through non-free service ZeroNet.net. Extremely convenient, extremely cheap.

So next time you want to leave a personal message, don't e-mail me - Voice me:

(631) 458-0440


Edit: The number above has been rendered obsolete by the fact that I once again went back to Skype - see post above.

NYC - the northern hemisphere's tightest ass

I was walking down Broadway yesterday, on my way to catch up with a good friend who has it in her to be imaginative and creative, but mostly spends her time sharing the cynicism of her general surroundings.

There is no particular blame involved - I paid particular attention to the people I passed, and not a single one smiled.

Some people can't get themselves to leave this place (nor do they think there is any reason to). I couldn't make myself stay if I tried. Time to head south - who's coming with me?

Friday, June 8, 2007

MarcusWestin.com/blog - now with comments!

MW Chatter:

  1. I have a confession to make. My "blog engine" is now a thin xml import wrapper around my Blogger account atom feed. Why?
    1. Because I don't have to worry about my server crashing and deleting my database
    2. Because I can post to my blog from my cell phone using Blogger Mobile.
    3. Because I <3 Google
  2. I made a minor addition to my xml import wrapper to extract the blog and entry ID's to create a suitable link which allows readers to leave comments (see below). Why?
    1. Because I have an ego and love reading your comments on what I write.
    2. Because you have an ego and love commenting on what other people write.
    3. Because it was possible.
    4. Well, really Because I had a paper to write a paper for school.
I look forward to hearing from you all!

Vista not playing well with IPv6


"Microsoft acknowledges some 'compatibility issues,' but calls operating system its best ever"

In the meantime, vista machines are unable to send printer data over IPv6 without corrupting the data. That's quite a compatibility issue alright, when IPv6 is supposed to solve the looming IP shortage within years.

Common Microsoft™ *RTFM*! Or in this case: Read The F***** Specs.

YouTube - Middle Ages Tech Support




See - there's a reason why the Swedes make fun of the Norwegians. It's in their genes (and language - "blarrr").

Let's have a comment poll: Books vs Scrolls? Discuss speed of access, formatting issues, product lifespan, etc.