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In The Year 2525 If Man Is Still Alive

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Blogging has, for the majority of us, moved past the personal diary stage. You don’t really want to know what cereal I had for breakfast, when I showered, or the color of my socks do you? OK, you do – email me afterward then.

So Why blog?

I’ve heard this question many times.

I’ve heard a number of answers too. Some say that services such as Twitter or Friendfeed largely eliminate the need for blogging, as we can all interact in these services without setting up and maintaining a blog.

Now there are only so many minutes in a day (yes I know it’s 1440). I know I’ve been blogging less lately, as I’ve been spending more of my time in Friendfeed. Too much time, sometimes. However, it’s not wasted time, by and large, as there are many good links posted in there, and I learn new things all the time (as we all do).

Whoa! Hang on a minute…..

If there are links posted in there, that means they’re coming from a web site, and some of those links are blogs, right? Yes of course. Many links are to YouTube videos or mp3s at last.fm perhaps, yes, but there are many links I get to news sites, and blogs too.

My take on it is that if you wish to write longer articles, opinions, share news or a hobby, a blog is still the best place to do this. You can write what you want to, about what you like, and then share it on the social media networks with those you think might be interested in reading your diatribe.

Of course, if you’ve nothing to say, then blogging is perhaps not for you, but there’s few people that truly have nothing to comment on at all.

I’m not much of a science fiction fan, but one thing that does fascinate me, and it’s this. If we look back 500 years or so, communication was still basic, and storage of communications even more so. Only the rich could read, and write, afford to buy books, and so much history is based around the elite or ruling classes.

However, if we were in 2525 looking back to now, what a rich library we would already have to look through to see how the common person lived an every day life. How interesting it will be to see what we all got up to, and how we lived back here and now.

On second thoughts then, perhaps I should blog about my breakfast cereal and my socks after all. Even if you’re not interested in the minutiae of my life my great-great-great-great grandchildren might well be.

Bo Diddley

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Bo DiddleyEllas Otha Bates, who became Elias McDaniel, but was of course, better known as Bo Diddley, died Monday, at his home in Archer, Florida, at the age of 79. The cause of his death was given as heart failure.

He was a world famous guitarist and vocalist, and known for his unusually shaped, usually rectangular guitars.

He was famous for such blues classics as “Who Do You Love?”, Before You Accuse Me”, and of course “Bo Diddley”. His signature rhythm became known as the Bo Diddley beat.

I was fortunate enough to see him play live in England in the early 1980’s, and a great performance it was too, in a dance hall that was big enough to contain the audience, but small enough for it to be a more intimate kind of event than one gets in a concert hall.

Bo Diddley may be gone, but his music, and his musical influences will live on.

How To Save $700 A Year

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As I’ve mentioned before I’m a gadget geek, but only if I find the gadget both useful, and value for money. I’ve already written about this gadget in my tech blog over at http://ian.may.name but it’s just such a cool gadget and saves so much money, that I had to mention it in here for the benifit of a wider audience. You see, if I find some cool money saving thing I want to share it with everyone!

I’m talking about the Magic Jack.

Magic Jack The advertising makes it look too good to be true, but for once, my theory goes right out of the window!

You plug this gadget into the USB port on your windows PC, and plug the phone into the other end, and make as many phone calls as you wish. That’s it. Free. Well almost.

You go to their web site, and order one. They don’t even charge your card for 30 days, and if you don’t like it and send it back within that time, any calls you’ve made with it are free anyway.

It costs $39.99 plus about $6 shipping.

When it arrives you have to register it at the web site, and get yourself a phone number. Now, at the moment every US code isn’t covered, but they do say they are adding more all the time, and will allow one number change free of charge when your area code becomes available.

I’ve got Grand Central set up, with is a Google-run phone routing service, and you can get almost any code with them. They’re a free service, and you can add all your phone numbers into Grand Central and let it take care of the routing. To that end you can choose any area code you like on your Magic Jack.

Once you’ve registered your Magic Jack you can use it right away to make telephone calls. It comes with free voicemail, call forwarding, and 911 service. You can plug it in anywhere. You can also use it with a headset plugged into your computer, so if you wish you can take it to the office with you and use it there, either with a phone, or with a headset.

For your $39.99 you get one years unlimited calls to anywhere in the US and Canada. You can also add money to your account and make really inexpensive international calls. For example, you can call England land lines for around 2 cents a minute.

We’ve got one installed now at home, and plugged the cordless base station into it, so it works with all the phones around the house.

We’ve also replaced our fax line with My Fax at $10 a month so saved a packet (excuse the pun).

Here’s the math.

Vonage was costing us around $76 a month for a voice line, a fax line, a Virtual UK number, and a 800 number.

We seldom used the 800 number. Most folks have some kind of bulk long distance calling these days anyway. We bought a SkypeIn UK number for $24 for a year.

We signed up for the MyFax service for ten bucks a month. It works with your email, so less ink and paper too! $120 a year.

Magic Jack costs $19.99 a year for the phone service.

That’s a new current yearly total of $163.99

Vonage was costing $76.25 a month, and that works out at $915 a year.

Doing the math: 915 -163.99 = a saving of $751.01 a year or just over $62 a month!