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Links for 2005-02-07

9 replies on “Links for 2005-02-07”

With respect to your first link, I once was emailed an excerpt from someone’s conversation on AIM, which went: “i hate ram [me]. he has neat and interesting friends and a hot girlfriend and a way cooler website than me.” The internet is a strange beast.

Re: Push-to-Talk — I don’t know just how “huge” it is, but yes, it’s pretty popular here in USA.The main thing I like about it is that it’s less distracting to carry on a “half-duplex” conversation (as the article likens it) while driving than a conventional phone conversation. I don’t like to talk on the phone when I drive anyhow, but when it’s necessary, I’d rather do it with PTT.
On the downside, everywhere you go, you hear the chirp which announces each transmission, and people are blithely carrying on conversations, adding to the ambient noise.

Push-to-Talk (Walkie-talkie) is huge in my area (Washington, DC).
Think of how annoying it is being in a public place with a few people talking on a cell phone. Now imagine that you can hear both halves of the conversation, plus beeps before each incoming response. And everything is very, very filled with static. And both sides talk VERY LOUDLY.
Also the walkie talkie phones that NEXTEL offers are really big and bulky and don’t have any cool features besides their loudspeaker (camera, bluetooth, internet).

> Top 10 Web Companies to Work For
It’s a shame that the BBC isn’t on that list, but I’m not sure it’s an enormous surprise…

right, that’s it — you’re sacked.
singed,
The British Broadbastard Corporation, esq.

Push-to-Talk: I’ve spent a few holidays in Florida, and my experience of Push-to-Talk was generally with taxis and delivery guys, couriers etc. One taxi driver I got had his phone on hands-free, and basically used it like a walkie-talkie to contact the control centre.
It’s been touted for UK+Europe for quite some time now, but the real application for it likes with the types of businesses who have people on the move in a set region – making it easier, and cheaper to contact them quickly. Constsruction, taxi cabs, deliveries, bus companies and so on.

Yes, push-to-talk is big here, primarily through Nextel, though I think it’s faintly absurd, thanks to the chirpy stuff and the way it turns users into de-facto security guards. And Nextel phones are really fugly if you’re of a European sensibility.
And the BBC isn’t really a ‘web company’…

I understood what you meant about the BBC, Tom, but I can still see your point.
The BBC employs around 2,000 people who work solely on web (or web-related content, such as iTV). Sure, it’s a corporation, not a company – but I can’t think of too many organisations in the UK (‘companies’ or otherwise) who employ so many people just to produce web content.

Used to work for Nextel 5 years ago or so and I got rather addicted to PTT. It feel much less obtrusive to chirp someone for a few seconds, rather than call them.
At the time, there was no SMS capability in the US, so it became the way of IM-type conversations on the mobile, for me at least. After coming back to the UK, it was quickly forgot in favour of SMS again.
It’s neat though – should be useful in a few years when most new mobile have it and networks are properly behind it.

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