Google’s Android mobile OS has been around for some time, and keeps getting better. This morning I discovered the wonderful news that Skype had finally arrived for Android. I immediately downloaded the new app – it installed beautifully but alas, it would not connect. At first I thought it had something to do with my phone’s internet connectivity, but I quickly checked and had no problems opening the phone’s web-browser and surfing. Hmmmmm. What could be the issue I wondered. I’m running version 2.1 of the OS, so that can’t be it. So I checked Skype’s website. As it turns out, Skype for Android is not universally compatible across hardware just yet.
What, what?
A check of the Skype website (http://blogs.skype.com/en/2010/10/android.html) provides all kinds of exciting information about the new Skype app in bright, colorful images and text. Then however, in dull, smaller sub-text” come the disclaimers that Skype is aware of problems with using the app on Samsung Galaxy S model phones. Again – what, what? Of the two top-selling Android phones on the market, HTC Android phones have no problems – yet the more capable Galaxy line does?
Why even release the app then if it is still in a “Beta” stage and cannot be used by half of the Android-based users out there??? This is a great disappointment for all of us who have been waiting quite patiently for Skype to become available on the Android platform. Kind of like getting a toy for Christmas only to find out you can’t play with it for a few months.
While Skype works to correct this apparent lapse in development/release judgment, the rest of you out there with a non-Samsung Galaxy S based Android might have better luck. Go ahead, check it out! Despite the grumblings of those disenfranchised users, Skype truly is an incredible business tool for communication and collaboration. For us here at Technology2Reality, Skype on a mobile phone represents the promise technology offers to un-chain us from the desk. It allows us to be more productive, more efficient, and more accessible. I guess I’ll just have to wait a little bit longer…
Now You See It, Now You Don’t: China Continues Human Rights Abuses Via the Internet
Over the past 20 years, we denizens of this small, backwater planet in the the far corner of the Milky Way have found in the Internet humanity’s greatest and most precious respite: solace in freely available, universally distributed and globally consumed knowledge – in realtime. It took 600o years (tongue-in-cheek), but that bite from the fruit of the tree of knowledge has been the most successful viral campaign every conceived.
It has allowed mankind to reach further, think longer, and to consider that which was not possible before its inception. The Internet has helped to bring everyone closer, to save lives and to give voice where none could be/was allowed to be heard before. Every aspect of our existence has been influenced by the paradigm changer that is the Internet.
So it is sad to read that China has chosen to use the Internet to continue conducting human rights abuses by censoring and silencing those who, without the Internet, would otherwise not exist to us in any other way. We would not know their plight, their situation, or their story. We would not know the truth.
China is working feverishly to “re-configure the Matrix” because one of their own citizens, Liu Xiaobo, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent protest in support of that which the Internet embodies. Liu sits in a Chinese prison cell because he believes in the freedom of choice, the freedom of democracy and the freedom of speech. His crime? He publicly stated that his government should allow the Chinese people to vote.
What’s your opinion? How has the Internet changed your life? To find out more about Liu’s situation or to read more about this latest abuse of power by the Chinese government, click here…http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101008/16184311344