Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Andy asks Are Skype Calls Getting Better.  He says that he's seeing better quality calls from Skype, and that more and more people are saying the same.  I'll add my voice to the mix.  Not only is the quality better, but it's consistently better.  Moreover, quality in no-headset situations has reached the point where I don't think twice about taking calls without my headset.  And Skype-In / Skype-Out calls are getting to be pretty good quality too. 

Having said that, the quality of Skype plug-ins (and I can only speak to Skype branded plug-ins) still stinks.  The Skype Internet Explorer plug-in has improved on IE 7, but I still don't use the Skype Plug-in for Outlook.  There appears to be some kind of conflict between Skype and Plaxo when both are plugged into Outlook, and Plaxo is much more valuable to me than Skype.

In the New Scientist, a group of researchers are demonstrating a UI prototype built around a "transparent" touch screen.  Rather than obscure the objects on screen when touching them with a finger, the user touches the back of the screen and sees shadow images of the fingers overlaying the objects on screen.

The video is very cool.  In practice, I would wonder about the practicality of their keyboard layouts, and how quickly users would become used to reverse touch typing.