20 Nov 08 Do You Use This Free Phone Service?
Do you use the AIM Free phone line service? I tried it out for a while some time back, and it worked quite well if you didn’t mind running AIM on your desktop all the time.
AIM Free Phoneline is
I haven’t used it since I moved my business lines to Skype, which gives me much more portability, and the ability to use my cellphone as well via their service. AIM free phone line tied you to your desk. Still it was, well, free, and it was useful before I had GrandCentral to separate my personal and business calls for me.
Anyway, it’s another service that AOL are closing down. From January 13, 2009, it will be no more. They seem to be taking stuff down bit by bit. The AOL journals went recently too.
I don’t use AOL myself these days, and I only dabbled with it out of curiosity in the past, but they seem to be slowing fading away. They’ve attempted to become more and more part of the ‘mainstream’ internet in recent times, but I wonder if they’ve left it too late. Perhaps they could have been one of the leaders of Social Media Networking if they’d followed a different strategy. After all like ‘em or loathe ‘em they were one of the leaders at one time in online connectivity, with millions of customers. It was where the majority of the newbies went, and it was part of the crapware installed on many many store-bought home PCs.
Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I had one of those AOL CDs appear in my mailbox…
Tags: aim, aol cds, bit by bit, business calls, business lines, cellphone, connectivity, crapware, curiousity, desk, free phone line, home pcs, journals, last time, mainstream internet, newbies, skype
07 Jul 08 The Yahoo Saga Goes On
So Ballmer at Microsoft and Icahn, the Billionaire Yahoo shareholder seem to be in cahorts to remove the present Yahoo Board and Jerry Yang, the CEO.
I cna see that on recent performance that Icahn has some valid points. Google continues to gorw market share, while Yahoo’s continues to shrink.
However, what concerns me is that Microsoft are hovering in the wings to get what they wanted all along, which is Yahoo’s share of the search pie.
Like many people I almost never use any other search engine than Google. One, because, like the rest of the human race, I’m a creature of habit, and secondly, Google almost always comes up with what I am looking for.
Google isn’t greatest at everything though. I think Picassa is way behind Flickr for photosharing; I think Google’s contact management sucks, but at the same time their email is way ahead of the pack, and I use it exclusively for my personal and business emails, and no longer have any kind of local email client on my computers anywhere. OK, I’ve got AIM, Yahoo, and Hotmail email accounts out there somewhere, but I don’t use them.
Why does Microsoft taking over Yahoo concern me then? I’m not really concerned that they are seriously going to rival Google anytime soon if ever, for search. Google are too far ahead. I’m simply concerned that the things that DO work in Yahoo, will get broken by a Microsoft takeover. It anything, I wish Flickr was part of Google, as the only thing that sucks with Flickr is the lousy mapping.
Tags: aim, billionaire, business emails, Carl C. Icahn, ceo, cna, contact management, creature of habit, email client, flickr, google, hotmail email, jerry yang, market share, microsoft takeover, other search engine, photosharing, search google, shareholder, steve ballmer, wings, yahoo board
05 Dec 07 Clear Out
Today’s clear out was not so much an item as junk. You see, in the process of clearing out the previous items over the last few days, I’ve been tidying up the upstairs sun room. I also ended up with a whole box full of trash – old paperwork, wrappers cartons, and various other small pieces of junk. It would be cheating really to photograph each small piece and claim that as a days effort – and I’d never achieve the ultimate aim of the project anyway, which is to get rid of the useless stuff around here that’s taking up space. So that was today’s effort.
Tags: aim, cartons, days effort, few days, paperwork, photograph, small piece, small pieces, sun room, taking up space, trash, upstairs, useless stuff
