I have been using Yahoo! IM since 1999, but unable to log onto it over the last couple of years because of my employer’s URL filtering system and firewall settings. It seems like my account has been deactivated by Yahoo! Customer Service.
Reading an article about the usual failures of Enterprise Architecture in Skyscrapr I draw the following summary about what successful enterprise architectures have in common.
Today’s TechnNews article about Nokia’s smart2go brings up an interesting business model competing with GPS navigation devices such as Tom-Tom. Nokia’s German-based Gate5 smart2go is a free map service based on Symbian EPOC for Series 60, although probably we will see across other Nokia phones. smart2go offers free maps, which can be downloaded from a PC (I guess for planned usual routes) or over the air and bluetooth (for unplanned routes – oops, I am lost!) One can store map files to the phone’s MMC (obviously to its storage limit).
I had a quick go at Yahoo!’s new pipes product. Yahoo! pipes is an aggregator product (not intended for end-consumers) to visually program/constract feed aggregators from any sources. It looks complex as a consumer concept, and it is, but it’s actually really easy to use as a programming tool. It took me less than 5 minutes to create a feed aggregator for stock news.
Skype asked me yesterday to upgrade last night to the final 3.0 (I use Skype for video conferencing because of its ability to go through firewalls by tunneling on port 80). So having run the beta for over 3 months now, I thought it would be a good idea. During the install I was prompted to whether I wanted the Google toolbar installed, at which point I stopped the install and uninstalled Skype (I hate when install programs creep with toolbars, and all other sort of rubbish plugins that I did not ask for).