Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Remember that old wedding rhyme… “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”?  Well, it turns out that Windows launches are lot like weddings, or so it would seem.

In this case, the Windows Vista Signature Edition (numbered and signed by Bill Gates!) that Engadget is reporting on is the “something old”.  Here’s a photograph of the Windows 95 Special Edition. I snapped it a couple of minutes ago.  There are two of them sitting on my shelf here at home.

Everything 2.0’s Bob Stumpel has done a superb job of compiling a list of Communications 2.0 applications.  There were a bunch here that I’d never heard of, including some interesting European SMS applications. 

ZDNet’s Matt Miller (the Mobile Gadgeteer) has posted a short piece on iotum Talk-Now for Blackberry.  He nails the story when he says:

The application doesn’t simply broadcast the same availability to everyone, but uses a Relevance Engine to determine what status is shown to your contact based upon relationships you have established and what you are actually doing.

Exactly!

When we built Talk-Now, we simply repurposed the information in the iotum Relevance Engine to reflect availability and willingness to converse, as opposed to using that information to filter calls.  Talk-Now is a New Presence application.

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