Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Skype on mobile devices

Now you can take your pocketPC with you and using a set of headphones you can make calls from hotel room to anywhere.   Zennstrom also promises PSTN connectivity within 3 to 4 months.

Skype Announces Mobile Internet Phone Calls (Reuters via Yahoo! News). Internet phone company <b>Skype</b> Technologies said on Tuesday it has developed a version of its free calling software for handheld computers, a move that could undercut existing mobile-phone carriers.

I sent Niklas a piece of mail recently to ask how others could build applications for Skype. After all, he has built what appears to be the most successful VoIP network in the world today, and all he’s done is offer service for free.  Surely his business model is Isenbergs Stupid Network model – value comes from added services.  If I want to build a service for Skype, how do I do it?  

No answer as yet.

via Emergic: Google Platform OS.

John Battelle points to Rich Skrenta, and says:”Google is a massively distributed platform with its own OS, and how that has given Google the competitive edge to roll out cool stuff like Gmail. Very Web 2.0 stuff here - the Platform Web.”

Both links are worth a read.  In the 90’s the platform battle was about PC based API’s, and that has now clearly shifted.  The ASP business model is ripe for a platform play that uses an asset like Google has built in a fashion that incorporates third party development.

Passover firebombing in Montreal

The story of the firebombing of a Jewish school’s libary in Montreal has been weighing heavily on me all day.  It was a cowardly and hateful act.  In the middle of the night, extremists of some sort, crept up to the school, threw fire accelerants through the windows and burned a children’s library.  Notes left at the scene of the crime said that the act was in response to Ariel Sharon’s recent actions in Israel.  They burned kids books in retaliation for the actions of a foreign government.

I spoke with some of my Jewish friends, who tell me that the community as a whole is badly shaken.  I also heard of other anti-semitic gestures and acts committed yesterday as well.  Some compared yesterday to Hitler’s Kristallnacht. 

I am not anti-immigrant — quite the contrary.  I value and embrace the diversity of Canadian society, and the people that come here to live. But gosh, I am worried that some of the folks that have been coming to live here are bringing unacceptable prejudices with them.  Come to my country and live, please.  But leave your baggage, your hatreds, and your feuds, at the door.

Burning children’s books.  What next?