sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

VOIP is the new black, clearly: EBay is buying Skype, for $2.6 Billion, and only a couple of weeks back, Microsoft bought Teleo.

I'm feeling 1999 all over again: what exactly is the business model? When I worked on a (sadly now defunct but rather famous) internet mag/rag, the business model used to change regularly while I went to lunch. I was on the commercial side, I hasten to add: I came to writing late.

I mean, I always wrote (shopping lists, freeform crap, stories I used to email to friends, desperate for feedback, management reports with a witty edge) but I didn't write. And then, suddenly, I had my nice boom-erea executive payoff and take-the-laptop-too, and all the jobs I got offered were internety, and I felt burned, and it had been quite stressful, running around trying to raise money before the Americans pulled the plug (I had a huge A0 poster on my wall that said EMBRACE AMBIGUITY) and I just thought, what-the-hell. I'll take a bit of time off, write, study, see what happens.

First time ever in my life I've done that, and I haven't looked back since. I was born to be free-form, self-managing, self-employed (ie, the only job I can probably take is a top one). I'm the employee who sits in team meetings saying "but why are we doing it like that?" which not everyone likes. I made all my employers a lot of money though. And me a little, on my ESOPS (fables, some of them) and ShareSave and all manner of irregularly capitalised things.

This was supposed to be about internet telephony.

Oh well.

I must get Skype. I think I have slight new-tech inertia right now, as my TV set up is lousy too. It's just you have to learn a whole new thing and sometimes your old things fall over.

It's crazy because I have a lot of friends/clients overseas, so I do have an international calling habit. So do most of my friends, it seems: D mentioned at the weekend that even though many of my buddies are not geeks, he hears the word Skype around my friends more than he does in his tech job.

And I should have been an early adopter. I am for most things. I'm an early adopter with early adopter fatigue. You can't be a born again virgin.

I may be talking drivel.

No-one has commented for a while and I'm starting to feel like the kid in the playground who didn't get picked for the team (because I was that kid).

Say hi. Tell me about VOIP. I heard a headset is not so expensive, but then my desktop doesn't have bluetooth, although my laptop does, but my wireless network is not well, in an intermittent kinda way and that would be annoying.

"Hello?"